MATERIALISM AND MORALITY. 479 



contemporary German literature without perceiving how potential still 

 is the school which relies wholly upon the positive sciences, and puts 

 aside entirely psychology and metaphysics. Its prevalence in Eng- 

 land may be sufficiently indicated by merely mentioning the names of 

 the three accomplished scientists at whose teaching we have already 

 glanced, the late Professor Clifford, Professor Huxley, and Mr. Her- 

 bert Spencer, not to speak of Professor Tyndall. But if Ave would see 

 this way of thinking have free course, if we would fully realize the 

 inglorious liberty of the sons of matter, it is upon France that we 

 must gaze. In that country, at the present moment, the most widely 

 influential school is unquestionably the medico-atheistic : the school 

 which inculcates sensism of the grossest kind, which reeks of the 

 brothel, the latrine, and the torture-trough. " A most superficial and 

 most degraded positivism," M. Beaussire tells us in his recent able 

 work,* "seems to have taken possession of well-nigh all souls." A 

 remnant, indeed, is left in the higher regions of French thought 

 which has not bowed the knee to the Baal of dead mechanism, nor 

 joined itself to the dung-god. In M. Caro and M. Janet, to mention 

 no others, may be found worthy successors of Cousin and Maine de 

 Biran. But unquestionably the two greatest intellectual forces in 

 France at the present time are M. Renan and M. Taine, neither of 

 whom can be claimed by spiritualism. I do not lose sight of the many 

 magnificent passages in which M. Renan pays homage to the super- 

 sensuous, the ideal, the divine. Yet there is ever before him the 

 haunting suspicion that, after all, Gavroche may be right — that " jouir 

 et mepriser"may be the last word of the true philosopher. There are 

 those who find the secret of his transitions of thought in the famous 

 mot of M. Sardou's comedy, " J'ai assez pratique le monde pour savoir 

 qu'on n'a jamais que la conviction de ses interets." There are those 

 again who tell us that in his profound and serene intellect every pass- 

 ing phase of contemporary thought is reflected like the clouds in the 

 bosom of the calm ocean. I am not ambitious to decide which ex- 

 planation is the true one. It is enough for me to point to his own 

 account of himself, which is that he does not know whether or no he 

 is a materialist : " Je ne sais bien si je suis spiritualiste on material- 

 iste. Le but du monde, e'est l'idee : mais je ne connais pas un cas ou 

 l'idee se soit produite sans matiere : je ne connais pas d'esprit pur, ni 

 d'eeuvre d'esprit pur." M. Taine has of late years been most promi- 

 nently before the world as the first living historian of his country, 

 perhaps of any country. But we must not forget that his high place 

 among contemporary thinkers was first won as a philosopher. A 

 closely knit system his is, indeed. But what a system ! A system of 

 mechanism and fatality, dealing with the universe as an immense and 



* " Les Principes de la Morale," Paris, 18S5. The extremely striking introduction 

 — whence my citation is taken — attracted much notice when it appeared originally in the 

 " Revue des Deux Mondes"of August 1, 18S4. 



