NOTE D, p. 9. Prayers for Change of Weather. The following is a fair specimen of such prayers : 'O Almighty Lord God, who for the sin of man didst once drown all the world, except eight persons, and afterward of Thy great mercy didst promise never to destroy it so again, we humbly beseech Thee, that although we for our iniquities have worthily deserved a plague of rain and waters, yet upon our true repentance Thou wilt send us such weather as that we may receive the fruits of the earth in due season; and learn both by Thy punishment to amend our lives, and for Thy clemency to give Thee praise and glory, &c.'-Church of England Book of Common Prayer. Of the efficacy of prayer to the Deity to interfere with or control the elements, Bacon's opinion was not doubtful. 'It was well answered' (he says) by him, who being shown in a temple the votive tablets of those who had escaped the peril of shipwreck, and being pressed whether he would then acknowledge the power of the gods, asked where were the portraits of those who had perished after making their vows, "Ubi sint illi depicti qui post vota nuncupata perierint ?"Nov. Org. lib. i. aph. 46. NOTE E, p. 22. Antagonism between the Baconian Philosophy and "The rise of the Baconian philosophy, with its determination to subordinate ancient principles to modern experience, was the heaviest blow which has ever been inflicted on the theologians, whose method is to begin, not with experience, but with principles which are said to be inscrutable. 'Over the inferior order of minds they still wield great influence; but the Baconian philosophy, by bringing their was gone. favourite method into disrepute, has sapped the very base of their system. From the moment that their method of investigation was discredited, the secret of their power From the moment men began to insist on enquiring into the validity of first principles, instead of accepting them without enquiry, and humbly submitting to them as matters of faith and of necessary belief; from that moment the theologians, driven from one post to another, and constantly receding before the pressure of advancing knowledge, have been forced to abandon entrenchment after entrenchment, until what they have retained of their former territory is hardly worth the struggle.'-Buckle, Hist. of Civilization, vol. ii. p. 412. NOTE F, p. 30. The Universality of Law. The growing belief in the universality of Law is so conspicuous to all cultivated minds as scarcely to need illustration. . . . . But though the fact is sufficiently familiar, the philosophy of the fact is not so. . . . . All minds have been advancing towards a belief in the constancy of surrounding co-existences and sequences. Familiarity with special uniformities has generated the abstract conception of uniformity -the idea of Law, and this idea has been in successive generations slowly gaining fixity and clearness. Especially has it been thus among those whose knowledge of natural phenomena is the most extensive men of science. The mathematician, the physicist, the astronomer, the chemist, severally acquainted with the vast accumulations of uniformities established by their predecessors, and themselves daily adding new ones, as well as verifying the old, acquire a far stronger faith in Law than is ordinarily possessed. Wherever there exist phenomena of which the dependence is not yet ascertained, these most cultivated intellects, impelled by the conviction that here, too, there is some invariable connection, proceed to observe, compare, and experiment; and when they discover the law to which the phenomena conform, as they eventually do, their general belief in the universality of Law is further strengthened. So overwhelming is the evidence, and such the effect of this discipline, that to the advanced student of Nature the proposition that there are lawless phenomena has become not only incredible, but almost inconceivable. This habitual recognition of Law distinguishes modern thought from ancient thought.'-Herbert Spencer's First Principles, part ii. chap. i., 'Laws in General,' secs. 35 & 39. NOTE G, p. 32. The Basis of Morality. If the first principles of morality be derivative, they are embraced by Science; if intuitive, they are partly theological and partly metaphysical. See Lecky's History of European Morals,' chap. i., 'Natural History of Morals,' discursive and interesting, but in language and method too rhetorical and vague for anything pretending to be a philosophical exposition of the subject. All female virtue is therein reduced to continence, and physiology simply ignored. See the subject of the true basis of morality more logically treated by Lord Shaftesbury (Inquiry concerning Virtue:' Characteristics, vol. ii), who agrees with Grotius (De Jure Belli et Pacis, prolegom.) in regarding our human nature, and not any contradiction or disregard of it, as the true foundation of virtue. Morality has now (since Cumberland's 'De Legibus Naturæ') to a very great extent been separated from Theology, but is not yet sufficiently allied with Science. Very few writers appear to have seen, as the fact probably is, that the inductive sciences, in connection with the scientific study of human nature, must be the ultimate source of all genuine morals. The want of appreciation of the truths and methods of the Sciences seems to me to be the weak part of Mr. Lecky's otherwise admirable literary discussion of the subject. NOTE H, p. 33. The Census Reports.-On The Law of Population.' It is scarcely possible to over-estimate the value of statistics, which, with the doctrine of averages, constitute so important a department of modern knowledge; and that branch of the subject which is embraced by the Census Reports is most especially valuable. It is to be regretted, therefore, that the compilers of these documents should be permitted to indulge in speculative reasoning on subjects they have evidently but imperfectly studied, or, more probably, are densely prejudiced upon. 6 The observations in the Census Report for 18611 on the theory, reasonings, and doctrine of Malthus' (who is referred to as a young hasty controversialist'),2 are perhaps as superficial and fallacious as anything that has ever been penned on the subject. The observations on the Laws of Population' in the preliminary Census report for 18713 are, in some respects, not quite so bad. The authors therein admit that to Malthus belongs the merit of having established by an elaborate statistical induction the law that population grows naturally at rates in geometrical progression, and that this principle deserves to be held as a discovery. The great naturalist of the age (Darwin) recognizes the generality of the law, and, extending it 6 1 Census of England and Wales, 1861, vol. iii., 'General Report,' pp. 24, 25. 2 The matured views of Malthus were published when he was sixty years of age. See 6th ed. of his treatise, 1826. 3 Census Preliminary Report, 1871, p. 26. to the whole of the organic kingdom, bases mainly on the resulting struggle for existence his doctrine of the development of the infinite variety of the forms of living nature.' Then follows, however, the assertion of perhaps as extravagant a reductio ad absurdum as was ever printed in a public document, viz., that by means of the doctrine of Malthus it is easy to prove that even by doubling slowly not only subsistence will be outstripped, but that the whole solar system in the end will be covered by human beings, or other beings increasing by the same law!' 6 In the face of the above-cited observations it may surprise the reader to be told that the entire argument of Malthus is based upon certain fundamental facts, which everybody's common sense must, on reflection, show him to be true, viz., that subsistence cannot be 'outstripped;' that people cannot possibly exist without subsistence; and that consequently if more are born (as is actually the case) than there is subsistence for, they do not 'outstrip' it, but, in the 'resulting struggle for existence,' they die. Of course if it can be believed that population can 'outstrip' subsistence, in other words, live without food, there can be no limit to credulity on the subject; at the same time it should be observed, that for the authors of the report to attempt, apparently on this ground, to drag 'the whole solar system' into the discussion is, however original as an idea, really only bewildering. If the writers of these reports could be induced to turn from the fictions of their imagination to the facts of real life, to study Malthus before flippantly criticising his conclusions, and to contemplate the miserable squalid lives led by the masses of the lower orders (rigidly resulting from their excessive numbers, which are obviously consequent on reckless and unrestrained propagation), they might perhaps be induced to reflect, that their crude and shallow utterances on this vital question, when embodied in public documents of authority, may be, not only worthless, but positively mischievous and cruel. Statistical collections published on authority ought to be |