EDITOR'S TABLE. 



267 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



A DOUBTFUL PROP OF MORALITY. 



VERY persistent are the attacks of 

 the supporters of an effete phi- 

 losophy upon those intellectual views 

 which are renewing the life of the 

 world and enabling the human mind to 

 shake off the burden of spiritual tyr- 

 anny. Some of our readers may re- 

 member an article which we devoted a 

 couple of years ago to a novel by a cele- 

 brated member of the French Academy, 

 M. Octave Feuillet, the leading charac- 

 ter in which was a young woman who 

 had been brought up by a philosophical 

 uncle in complete emancipation from 

 theological beliefs, and who took, in the 

 most natural way in the world as the 

 direct result, we are given to understand, 

 of her acceptance of modern thought, 

 and particularly of the Darwinian theory 

 to a career of monstrous and cold- 

 blooded villainy. Her uncle was a be- 

 nevolent old gentleman ; but the evolu- 

 tion philosophy showed its perfect result 

 in the niece, who had imbibed it in her 

 very earliest years. This fine example of 

 a " novel with a purpose " appeared first 

 in the columns of the Revue des Deux 

 Mondes; and to-day we find in the same 

 periodical no less striking an example 

 of a drama with a purpose, the author 

 this time being M. George Duruy, and 

 the title of his production Ni Dieu ni 

 Maitre. In this work the philosophical 

 and philanthropical uncle of M. Feuil- 

 let's creation is replaced by a father 

 an eminent medical man of similar 

 views and similar character, who has 

 brought up his own two children in 

 complete independence of priestly con- 

 trol, and who, in return for all the affec- 

 tion he has lavished upon them, reaps 

 a harvest of selfishness and ingratitude. 

 "Without being as utterly depraved as 

 the delightful heroine of M. Feuillet's 

 romance, they are mere creatures of 

 pleasure and vanity, and when their 



poor father falls into ill-health and com- 

 parative poverty, instead of sympathiz- 

 ing with and aiding him, they have 

 nothing for him but complaints and re- 

 proaches. The uncle in M. Feuillet's 

 story and the father in M. Duruy's, it is 

 noticeable, are both physicians, these 

 authors paying the medical profession 

 the compliment of thinking that the 

 study and practice of medicine are par- 

 ticularly favorable to a philosophic cast 

 of mind. M. Duruy throws in an in- 

 teresting minor character in the person 

 of a smart young physician, who had 

 studied under the elder one, and who, 

 in the days of the latter's prosperity, 

 had become engaged to his daughter, 

 but who, having got possession of the 

 lucrative practice which the elder phy- 

 sician, through failing health, had been 

 compelled to hand over to him, throws 

 the daughter overboard without the 

 slightest compunction. This young man, 

 too, is offered to us as a shining example 

 of what free-thought means when re- 

 duced to practice. Tricked out as these 

 fictitious narratives are in all the graces 

 of style that literary art can command, 

 they are doubtless adapted to have an 

 effect on a certain class of minds. Rich 

 devotees of luxurious superstition will 

 be greatly edified by the demonstration 

 that not common sense but ecclesiastical 

 authority is to determine all questions 

 of education and conduct ; and timorous 

 souls in general will be glad to find that 

 they are justified in refraining from any 

 independent exercise of their minds 

 upon moral questions. Others, among 

 whom we count ourselves, find more of 

 "purpose" than of honesty in these 

 representations: to us they do not show 

 the true working out either of the an- 

 cient or of the modern principles of 

 morality, and we propose once more to 

 show why. 



One fact is incontrovertible, let liter- 



