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 w. WALLACE, Lectures on Natural Theology and Ethics. 409 be taken seriously. There is the usual protest against thinking of God as " personal" coupled with the admission that he is " more than a person " : the usual protest against thinking of him as moral or good, and yet there is always present a vague tendency to treat God as having something to do with the moral ideal and as a being capable of inspiring the aspiration and the effort of moral beings. In short Wallace probably felt the necessity of genuine Theism and its difficulties with about equal force. The lectures are full of interesting things about Theology and Eeligion, but it is to be feared that any one who goes to them with the expectation of finding any suggestions as to why he should believe in God and what he should believe about him will come away disappointed. Wallace would have ridiculed Mr. Spencer's worship of the Un- knowable. All that we know would to Wallace be in a sense knowledge of God, since God is all, but it may be doubted whether in point of moral or spiritual value or indeed of speculative satisfac- tion, there is very much difference between the worship of the Unknowable and the worship of the All. In the ethical Essays again we find chiefly criticism, appreciation, distinctions, essays on the meaning of words. They are full of interest and of varied learning (though it is strange that so learned & writer should think that a " man of religion" in Chaucer means one in holy orders). Everywhere valuable hints and suggestions : nowhere a connected argument or line of thought. Scarcely any- where do we find any articulate answer to any of the really difficult problems about which Moral Philosophers have been wont to busy themselves. One of the most characteristic, if one of the least satis- factory of these Essays is on "The Ethics of Socialism". Prof. Wallace insists on regarding Socialism as a vague tendency to increase the interference of the State with the individual : not as a scheme for righting a definite social injustice by a definite change of economical organisation. With such a conception of Socialism we can hardly expect the writer to come to close quarters with it. But yet here is a subject surely on which it would seem the philosopher ought to be able to offer some guidance to the practical man. To tell us that some socialists do not appreciate the " organic " nature of Society does not help us much. There is in short no discussion at all as to whether the thing is right or wrong. The philosopher's business is, it would seem, to see which way the stream of tendency is going. " And to follow it " the hasty reader may be disposed to conclude ; but no ! " The true attitude towards this movement is neither to ban or to bless it." The reader who is not in love with Wallace's line of thought cannot help asking himself whether it is not its tendency to make inevitable a similar attitude towards all philosophies, all creeds, all causes, all schemes of action. " Not to bless or to ban anything in heaven or earth " unless indeed we ban the crude "popular" philosophies which suggest that some things ought to be banned and others blessed is that really all that Philosophy has to teach us ? No wonder