the congress of Bern; with what passionate earnestness atheistic Positivism claimed its right to sieze upon youth and stamp them with its own doctrines. Should the power ever fall into the hands of these unbelievers, it is very evident what they would do. Doubtless they would sever the Church from the State, but it would only be to unite all the closer with it the school, in order to make it a hot-bed of Positivism and Materialism. Full of inward contempt for liberty, these self-styled free-thinkers would impose their godless catechism upon our children by law. Let us not open the way for them by imposing ours; nor give them the fatal example of violating a single conscientious scruple. And it is not only prudence that dictates these counsels; they are also the dictate of justice.

Thus, in conclusion, we do not believe that the State has the right to require by law the reading of the Bible in the schools which it controls; but it has not the right to forbid it. It should remain neutral, by leaving the teacher to follow his own conscience, at the same time consulting the preference of the parents A knowledge of sacred history should be required in all public examinations; for, that so important a page in general history should be understood, is a dictate of simple science. But the State may not go further. But if it be objected that such public schools will only furnish a very defective education, we admit it. We see in it another reason for founding competing schools. Perhaps the English system is preferable in this respect. There, the State has no schools of its own; but it grants aid to such as do exist and conform to certain conditions. These grants may amount to an immense sum. Thus the schools might have all necessary help, and what is equally important, the requisite liberty. I think the solution of the school question lies in this direction.

Such, then, is one of the great questions of the age; and such is the only answer we can give it. It places us in the presence of the sublimest duties and the most imminent perils of the times. How it is decided, will determine whether the in-rushing tide of popular sovereignty is to turn to the weal or the woe of the world. Now, in point of fact, it is undeniable that a spirit of impiety is tending to lay hold on the masses.

And when the government of nations falls into the hands of an unbelieving multitude, it is impossible to overdraw the deplorable consequences. To conjure these perils, two radically-opposed systems present themselves-the system of authority and the system of moral liberty, the system of state churches and legislated religion, and the system of free churches and free state, free schools and free conscience. For our part, the choice is not difficult to make. The system of authority is long ago condemned by its own fruits: its tyranny, its persecutions, its inquisitions, its now dying state churches, and its impotency to reform the masses-its whole past record in fact forbid us to put our hopes in it. Our hope is in liberty-in liberty and the almightiness of the truth when allowed fair play. Give us the liberty of teaching and writing-the liberty of proclaiming and defending the truth, and we fear not for the incoming into power of the masses The Gospel can transform them, the truth can banish their errors,-but only on condition of absolute liberty, liberty on the part of those who proclaim it, and liberty on the part of those who oppose it.

ARTICLE VIII.-PRESIDENT MCCOSH'S LOGIC.

The Laws of Discursive Thought; being a text-book of Formal Logic. By JAMES MCCOSH, LL. D., President of New Jersey College, Princeton; formerly Professor of Logic and Metaphysics, Queen's College, Belfast. New York: Robert Carter & Brothers, 1870. 12mo. pp. xix. 212.

It is well remarked by Dr. McCosh in the preface to his work that "the lingering life maintained by that old Aristotelian and scholastic logic, in spite of the ridicule poured upon it by nearly all the fresh thinkers of Europe for two or three centuries after the revival of letters, is an extraordinary fact in the history of philosophy." We think that the fact can be partially accounted for, as he says, "by supposing that the syllogism is substantially the correct analysis of the process which passes through the mind in reasoning." But beyond this, we think it can hardly be questioned that this remarkable pertinacity of life in logic is owing mainly to the instinctive demands of the human mind, when once it has awaked to the desire of knowledge, that there be given to it a knowledge of itself, so far at least as concerns the properties and laws of its own action. If we can know what thought is; if we can in any way learn what are the marks of legitimate and valid thought, how it can be recognized, how empty pretensions to knowledge can be detected and exposed, how the steps to knowledge can be guided and facilitated, how attained knowledge can be tested and assured, certainly it is a most desirable knowledge, and the fact that the science which professes to be the revealer of this knowledge has survived the assaults of the bitterest hostility raises a fair presumption that this knowledge is attainable as no one can question that it is desirable. An instinct so strong has the Creator's warrant to seek with the sure confidence of finding. The search may be long, but it shall triumph.

Who has a right to question the possibility and worth of such science? Not the lover of science, certainly; for what rational ground has he for seeking knowledge if he cannot know whether he knows? He may reasonably reject arrogant pretensions to a science of thought. He may reject erroneous or imperfect expositions of the nature and laws of thought. But to ridicule an honest effort to investigate what true knowledge and worthy thought are, or to ridicule a science of thought as in itself unworthy, savors of an arrogance, and presumption, and narrowness, that is itself most ridiculous. Men may, in overweening estimate of the higher importance and dignity of their own pursuits, underrate any other science or calling and be pardoned in the interest of human weakness. But it is too late in the age of the world and of human progress to decry science in any department of knowledge on any other ground than that of imperfection. We have had much of this in the recent times. Men in every department of human pursuit, from the agriculturist up to the orator, critic and poet, have scouted scientific expositions of the principles of art. Instinct, genius, tact, with the casual crumbs of intelligence that can be picked up under the tables of orderly spread science, are enough for them; systematic knowledge only cumbers and hampers. But reason and common sense have succeeded in most quarters in exposing this shallowness and narrowness. The grand truth is that all human culture, as all rational activity, must proceed in intelligence; and the more full and perfect that intelligence, the higher and more perfect will be the attainment. We have only to place side by side with this fundamental principle another truth equally undeniable, that all art, all eminence in human effort, is as dependent on practice as upon knowledge. The acquisition of intelligence must not displace active endeavor, but ever guide and foster it.

Logic professes to be a science of thought. It claims that there are principles which underlie all thought, to which thought must conform or be abortive. It claims that these principles may be ascertained and scientifically unfolded. It claims that a practical knowledge of these principles is as ee

sential to the perfection of the thinker as a practical knowledge of the principles of music to eminent musical skill, as a practical knowledge of the processes in any art to any great success in that art; that although a great mind may achieve great results in thought without systematic training in the processes of thought, just as great musicians have appeared who have never opened a musical primer, in this age of the world it is as preposterous to expect high intellectual skill or in fact high intellectual culture generally, without some practical acquaintauce with the nature of thought as the product of the intelligence, as to expect a Mozart or a Beethoven with no systematic training in the principles of music. If logic can make its claims to appear valid, if it can show that a science of human thought can be constructed which shall so exhibit its nature, its laws, its forms, that it may surely be known what is sound and legitimate thought, and that practical thinking may proceed intelligently and surely, it is a science worthy to be honored and also worthy to be studied in all intellectual culture.

The present is an age of unwonted intellectual activity. It is characterized by being specialized to a wide diversity of pursuit. A natural conseqnence is that science at this time is characteristically isolated and exclusive; that it is arrogant and pretentious in respect of its own field and work, and disdainful and contemptuous in respect of others. This great evil to scientific culture generally is to be attributed mainly, we believe, to the general exclusion of logical studies from our seats of education and means of intellectual training. A true science of thought is the one adequate bond of the sciences. It is the indispensable condition of the harmonizing of the divers sciences, as it is the condition of that cordial respect and courtesy which ought to reign between all classes of true thinkers and scholars, and which will bring them together in helpful intercourse and sympathy.

Particularly is the present age of science characterized by a predominance of observation over reflection. One would think from the general tendency in this direction that science was little else than gathering of facts. So it has come to pass that a fresh discovery gives warrant for any inference,-for any