What is Religion 2 
[July, 
39 2 
tlien can be no wonder, when such views as_ above are 
enumerated, that the author does not tell us what is Rehgum, 
unless he supposes the solution of his query is Hy o-ldealism. 
He is careful to tell us he is not an Atheist ; but in what 
Hylo-Idealism differs from Atheism I am at a loss to con- 
ceive : his ally, Constance Arden, affirms it to be puie 
Monism. He says, “ Nor does it seem more glorious to be 
a little lower than the angels than to be the creator an 
fashioner of an ideal host of heaven, though their blight 
arrav be the offspring of a material organ. 
“Having traced our intellectual and moral faculties o 
their seat in the brain, we shall cease to enquire for the 
noumenon of this ultimate phenomenon, and shall find 
ample scope for ideal aspirations in the sublime generalisation, 
that the sun! the moon, the stars, the hills, and the plains 
are but products of our finitely infinite personality. Man, 
if pure of heart and lofty of mind, must be crowned with 
glory and honour, whatever be the first cause of his sov - 
reientv • a material origin cannot degrade his thought , 
lofty " ’ Can bathos go beyond this ? The sun and all the 
asUpnomical phalanx, the angels and the hosts of heaven, 
all the creations of Man ! 1 The Messiah steps in with a 
note to cap this grand sublimity. “ This apparent cata- 
X^V-a grand word-" will be seen to be rigidly scientific 
when we recognise the sublime fafts that life and death are 
only changes Sf condition, not of essence, -that the glories 
of our birth and state are shadows, and not substantial 
th Tt S is quite possible that the theory of Evolution, as pour- 
traved by Mr. Darwin, may show that there is no gulf 
between animal and man so far as his animal origin is con- 
cerned and so it may show that there is a gradation fiom 
the lowest forms of life in mental (so to speak) processes ; 
but it also shows that these gradations only ensue when the 
receptacle (not always a brain) is fitted for enlaiged aftion , 
but ft is quite another thing to say that the mental attribute 
(be what it may or however displayed) has its origination in 
the receptacle, -in other words, the vehicle through which 
it acts We find conductors adapted to sustain grtatci 
strains' but not those of creation,-!. the organ ,s exaftly 
adapted to the use to which it is to be put. There are some 
more pages of surface science, and surface reasonings and 
Absurdities in support of this theory exploded more than 
two Thousand years ago ; in faft, condemned and refuted 
almost on its utterance. It is most difficult in this the 
nineteenth century to treat the matter with patience, 01 to 
