Page:Philosophical Review Volume 9.djvu/674

658 world, the author takes a leap down to the nineteenth century, and considers some of the more recent doctrines regarding the relation between morality and Providence. He devotes one chapter to the modern optimists, taking Emerson and Browning as their representatives, and two chapters to what he calls 'modern dualism,' meaning those recent doctrines which try to account for the evil in the world by the assumption of a power of some kind antagonistic to the good principle. He touches briefly on Mill's essays on religion, and dwells at length on the anonymous work published some time ago entitled Evil and Evolution, in which the doctrine of the devil is set forth anew. Mr. Bruce also pays his respects to Mr. Benjamin Kidd and others who maintain that reason cannot furnish a basis for religion. His criticisms of these writers are judicial and often acute, and are among the best things in the book. He treats the ethical movement in this country and England with respect and sympathy, and emphatically asserts, in opposition to most theologians, that there can be morality of a high order without a belief in God. In the end, however, he reverts to Christianity as not only the best moral and religious system, but as all-sufficient. After reviewing what he had said of the characteristics of the other ancient religions, he says: "One does not need to be a clergyman or a professed apologist, but only a candid student of comparative religion to satisfy himself that the teaching of Christ combines the merits and avoids the defects specified in the foregoing review.… In its moral idea it unites the gentleness of Buddhism with the militant virtue of Zoroastrianism. Its doctrine of God satisfies all rational requirements.… Its doctrine of man equally commends itself to the instructed reason and conscience as all that can be desired" (p. 390).

I disagree entirely with the author in what seems to me to be an extravagant estimate of Christianity; but discussion of that subject would lead me too far afield. There is one point, however, in Mr. Bruce's exposition that calls for criticism. It seems to me that he has missed the most essential element in the moral order of the world. He has confined his attention almost exclusively to the question of retribution. What he is most concerned to know is whether the course of nature is such that in the long run the righteous will prosper and the wicked be punished. But surely the most essential question is whether the course of nature is favorable to the progress of righteousness itself. What a good man chiefly wants is to succeed in the pursuit and attainment of goodness, not to be rewarded for attaining it. Huxley a few years