320 
What is Religion ? [June, 
wherefore. We cannot resolve the Infinite : the ancients 
were wiser than we ; they accepted benefits, and thanked 
the Gods. The inscription on the Temple of Isis was a 
check to man’s presumption : — “ I am what I am : none 
have ever penetrated the mystery which surrounds me ; 
none ever will penetrate it.” 
And with Thackeray say “ I would rather live in a wil- 
derness of monkeys, and listen to their chatter, than in a 
company of men who deny everything.” 
If C. N. wishes to stand forth to the world as the ex- 
pounder of a new philosophy, a drastic reforming of the 
world’s ideas, as he assumes, why does he not give his name 
in full ? Surely he is not so modest as to “ hide his light 
under a bushel ” ? — a small tin pot would be a nearer ideal. 
It is too much the custom of those gentlemen who pretend 
to know more than their fellows ; and when they, as they 
suppose, lead an onslaught into those regions which thinking 
men deem sacred, shelter themselves under an initial or a 
nom de guerre, — as Saladin, Julian, &c., — who send forth 
paeans in excelso, and join in a chorus of adulation each of 
the others’ extreme ability, and in imagination join in the 
shout — Behold the lights of the intellectual world. And 
what is the upshot of these rhapsodies ? a recapitulation of 
very stale metaphysics, old philosophies, and rank Mate- 
rialism : their inspiration appears to be Dr. Buchner, and the 
low school of German thought ; Dr. Lewins, the Messiah 
of the movement, adopts the old sophist Protagoras. From 
this category it is fair to except Captain McTaggart, who 
has really presented a very masterly attempt to defend a 
really indefensible position ; he has said much in correction 
of the uttered absurdities, and yet ends in a most illogical 
manner, viz., in the acceptance of this very crude assump- 
tion, Hylo-Idealism, of which neither of its parts, Mate- 
rialism and Idealism, are pursued to their logical conclusions. 
McTaggart, McTaggart, you are capable of something better 
than this. Prof. St. George Mivart’s work, “ Nature and 
Thought,” in its first three divisions, — “The Inner World,” 
“The Outer World,” “The Intellectual World,”— has 
anticipated all the Hylo-Idealistic theories, and has refuted 
them. All the arguments adduced in support of the theory 
in that work meet their answer. It is a work I should 
recommend for the perusal of Dr. Lewins and his enthusi- 
astic proselytes. If Capt. McTaggart has not met with the 
work, he will find in it a congenial study ; if he has met 
with it, then I am utterly at a loss to account for the con- 
clusions he has arrived at. Its last division “ Causes and 
