nally falling into some of the old canting
commonplaces about people being happiest who have fewest wants. As if,
on the contrary, that action which he describes as the true element of
man, were not directly connected with the incessant multiplication of
wants. We may take this, however, as a casual lapse into the common form
of moralists of ascetic ages. In substance the _System of Nature_ is
essentially a protest against ascetic and quietist ideals.

* * * * *

The second half of the _System of Nature_ treats of the Deity; the
proofs of his existence; his attributes; the manner in which he
influences the happiness of men. What is remarkable is that here we have
an onslaught, not merely on the Church with its overgrowth of abuses,
nor on Christianity with its overgrowth of superstitions, but on that
great conception which is enthroned on unseen heights far above any
Church and any form of Christianity. It is theism, in its purest as in
its impurest shape, that the writer condemns. No more elaborate,
trenchant, and unflinching attack on the very fundamental propositions
of theology, natural or revealed, is to be found in literature. Pure
rationalism has nothing to add to this destructive onslaught. The tone
is not truly philosophic, because the writer habitually regards the
notion of a God as an abnormal and morbid excrescence, and not as a
natural growth in human development. He takes no trouble, and it would
have been an incredible departure from the mental fashion of the time if
he had taken any trouble, to explain theology, or to penetrate behind
its forms to those needs, aspirations, and qualities of human
constitution in which theology had its best justification, if not its
earliest source. He regards it as an enemy to be mercilessly routed,
not as a force with which he has to make his account. Still, as a piece
of rough and remorseless polemic, the second part of the _System of
Nature_ remains full of remarkable energy and power. The most eager
Nescient or Denier to be found in the ranks of the assailants of
theology in our own day is timorous and moderate compared with this
direct and on-pressing swordsman. And the attack, on its own purely
rationalistic ground, is thoroughly comprehensive. It is not made on an
outwork here, or an outwork there; it encircles the whole compass of the
defence. The conception of God is examined and resisted from every
possible side--cosmological, eth