MENTAL PHYSIOLOG Y. 



167 



to him, as to Celsus, people who have departed 

 from the faith of their fathers, in order to con- 

 struct a new religion out of the worst elements 

 of Judaism and heathenism. They would have 

 nothing to do with the eternal gods, whose laws 

 encompass them, in order that they might wor- 

 ship a dead Jew instead, and, with him, the 

 tombs and bones of other dead men, with which, 

 even in those days, there was fetichism enough. 

 Neither will they listen to Nature and her laws ; 

 they appeal to the will of God rather than to any 

 other authority, as if it could ever be opposed 

 to the laws of Nature. Nor will they understand 

 that it is impossible for all nations to have the 

 same religion, and that it is just because they are 

 assigned to different divinities that nations differ 

 so much in their character and gifts. But they 

 have no national worship themselves ; they fol- 

 low the teaching of those deceitful sectarians, 

 the Apostles, and have not even left this alone. 

 How little this teaching is good for is obvious 

 enough; for everything great and beautiful in the 

 world, all noble deeds and all eminent men, have, 

 as Julian believes, sprung out of heathendom. 

 Christianity is a religion of barbarism, and it can 

 only produce barbarians, men of servile minds. 



Thus do heathen polemics against Christianity 

 finally return to the same point of view from 

 which they set out. But these polemics had not 



hindered its advance, and it was a still more vain 

 hope that they could wrest the victory out of its 

 hands. When Cyril wiote his ten books against 

 Julian, the last hope of heathenism in the Roman 

 Empire had sunk into the grave with him. Even 

 the written attacks against the Christians grad- 

 ually diminished, although many particular doc- 

 trines were for a long time discussed between 

 Christian and heathen philosophers. 



It was not till recent centuries that these po- 

 lemics have been revived. Modern opponents of 

 Christianity have repeated many of the reproaches 

 with which Celsus and Porphyry once assailed it, 

 little as they could adopt their point of view as a 

 whole. In many of these reproaches, some who 

 are far from being in principle hostile to Chris- 

 tianity have perceived some truth, and have en- 

 deavored to reconstruct it so as to shield it from 

 them. These parallels, however, cannot be pur- 

 sued further here. Our purpose has been to 

 indicate how the contest of heathenism with 

 Christianity, and the varying attitudes of the 

 one to the other, are reflected in Greek and Ro- 

 man literature, in order to bring before the view 

 of our readers this aspect of the peculiarities and 

 motive of that world-wide movement out of which 

 modern society and its civilization have arisen, 

 with the triumph of the Christian religion. — Con- 

 temporary Review. 



MENTAL PHYSIOLOGY. 1 



TTTE reported in our impression of yester- 

 VV day an interesting lecture by Dr. Car- 

 penter on " Mental Automatism." The glimpse 

 our readers will thus have got of the question 

 may have probably roused a desire to know more 

 of it ; and we, therefore, make no apology for 

 noticing, somewhat tardily, Dr. Carpenter's 

 " Principles of Mental Physiology," in which 

 the whole subject is treated most ably and thor- 

 oughly. 



The study of the natural history of the human 

 mind, if it could be at all adequately pursued, or 

 carried to the attainment of any definite con- 



i " Principles of Mental Physiology, with their Applica- 

 tions to the Training and Di-cipline of the Mind, and the 

 Study of its Morbid Conditions." By "William B. Car- 

 penter, M. D., LL. D., F. R. S , F. L. S., F. G. 8., Registrar 

 of the University of London, etc. 8vo. pp. 737. Revised 

 edition, 1S77. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 



elusions, would so obviously transcend every 

 other in importance that it is unnecessary to 

 dwell upon the advantages which might be ex- 

 pected to follow from its cultivation. During 

 many years, unfortunately, this study was only 

 attempted by methods which were necessarily 

 sterile of results — that is to say, by the intro- 

 spective self-examination of persons more or less 

 gifted, in whom all mental processes had attained 

 the highest degree of complexity. The dawn of 

 a more hopeful future may be said to have com- 

 menced in this country nearly thirty years ago, 

 at the time when Mr. Justice Grove's discovery of 

 the correlation of the physical forces led almost 

 inevitably to the suggestion that the vital force, 

 the power underlying the actions of living organ- 

 isms, must itself be a kindred member of the 

 group formed by motion, light, heat, magnetism, 

 electricity, and chemical affinity ; and, when the 



