realises these, possesses an absolute and indefeasible worth. It is only in such judgments of value that we can be said to possess "an absolute criterion." Mr Bradley says in more than one place that we possess such a criterion, but he also, like Hegel, confines himself too exclusively throughout his book to the intellectual necessities of all-inclusiveness and internal harmony, which, we found, did not carry us so far as he supposed. Our idea of what the Absolute must be is founded on the ideal necessities which our nature compels us to acknowledge. But the ideal necessities in question are not merely intellectual; they are æsthetical, ethical, and religious as well. For we must believe" (to quote Mr Bradley's own words) "that reality satisfies our whole being; our main wants-for Truth and Life, and for Beauty and Goodness must all find satisfaction (p. 159). necessity of our belief is not due, however, to any esoteric assurance on the point which we possess direct from the Absolute. It is an absolute certainty in the sense simply that it is an ultimate judgment on our part. It represents our deepest conviction as to absolute and relative worth-a conviction which does not admit of being supported, and therefore does not admit of being assailed, by argument.

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The

MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS.

THERE is some danger that the philosophical import

THERE

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ance of Mr Balfour's Foundations of Belief' may be obscured by the very circumstances which gave the book for a time such an extraordinary prominence. The tide of reviews and criticisms, which flowed so high in the weeks and months immediately following its appearance, has, for the time at least, completely ebbed; and the volatile curiosity of the general public has doubtless been transferred to other themes. But the book appeals to deeper interests and a more permanent audience. To that audience I venture to submit the following reconsideration of the subject. The multifarious and divergent estimates of the book may themselves serve, I think, by the very misapprehensions they reveal, to set its essential argument in a clearer light. And in the second place, I de

sire to call attention to an important change, an important advance, as it seems to me, in Mr Balfour's philosophical position, since the publication of his earlier volume. No critic, so far as I know, has commented on this change, although it serves, in great measure, to explain the conflicting judgments of Mr Balfour's argument; and the author himself seems hardly aware that he has in any way shifted his ground. But however insensible the advance may have been, and however closely the two positions may still seem at times to approach one another, the difference between them, from the point of view of philosophical construction, is vital.

Reviews and criticisms always indicate the personal equation of the reviewer. But in Mr Balfour's case the divergence of the critical voices had in it some of the elements of surprise. It was to be expected that naturalists and theologians would judge the book by different standards, and take diametrically opposite views of its value; and it is true that in general the Naturalist denounced it as "a plea for supernaturalism,” or as "written in the interest of the powers that be and the established creed." But theologians themselves were found as widely at issue with one another. It would have been natural, again, to find reviewers

of a Radical tendency inclined to pick flaws in the book, and those of a Conservative colour inclined to bless it altogether. And no doubt such a stream of tendency may be traced in some of the less important notices of the daily and weekly press. But perhaps the most acrid and unsympathetic notices that were written appeared in the Tory columns of Blackwood' and the Saturday Review.' The contrast of opinions was fairly typified in the titles given in the same week to their articles by two of our prominent weeklies. Mr Balfour as a Christian" was the one headline; "Mr Balfour the Sceptic" was the other. Both are written avowedly from an orthodox Christian standpoint; yet the one finds "the last hundred pages of the book," that is to say, the constructive suggestions towards a provisional philosophy, "almost unreadable." "We are supposed," says the critic, "to be taught theories of beliefs and realities'; but we find the beliefs qualified out of existence, and the reality attenuated till it is slighter than a shadow." The other reviewer is of opinion that Mr Balfour writes in these sections of his book "with amazing freshness and interest"; and he concludes by saying that "preachers will find much in it to repay their study, and to contribute to their work." If we confine our

attention to theologians who write above their own signature, Principal Fairbairn confesses to "deep disappointment." "Pleasure turned to pain, as the underlying philosophy was seen to be shifting sand rather than solid rock; the farther the reading proceeded, the less satisfactory the argument appeared." Professor Marcus Dods, on the contrary, declares that "if Mr Balfour's volume is the result of his enforced absence from the helm of the State, it is a strong argument for the continuance of the Liberal Government." He compares the book to Butler's 'Analogy,' and adds that "there are many who have read the older master with dissatisfaction, who will find in the teacher of to-day the conviction and help they seek."

Looking at another part of the field, we find Mr Alfred Benn, who writes in the main from the Naturalistic standpoint, confidently recommending the book to Roman Catholic believers "as bringing water to their mill." But Dr Barry, who is doubtless more entitled to speak for the Roman Catholic theologians, pronounces, in the 'Dublin Review,' that "the foundation is not true and will never stand." "Universal doubt, rather than religious dogma, will gain by the stroke that smites reason to the ground." "Montaigne