ces as
the author just described, but who also owes much directly to him. In him
philosophy seems to degenerate into pantheism. Nature is a vast whole, in
which we are parts, vibrations of a chord, radiations of the eternal
light.(915) Starting from a unitarian point of view, Christianity appears
to be resolved into natural religion; and the historic view of
Christianity, and the habit of considering the revelation as something
long ago given, are regarded as being at the bottom of the decay of
religion. In his admiration of genius, he seems to imply an idolatry of
mere intellect; and developes that tendency which has been always
observable in pantheism to unite the worlds of good and evil, and teach
that evil is "good in the making." The universe is God; evil and good are
equally essential parts of it.

This peculiar tendency to narrow the barrier between the two worlds is
observable, not merely in direct admissions of writers like the one just
adduced, but lurks as a peculiar danger in the modern literature of
fiction. The danger in fiction, as in all art, can arise only from the
character of the subject portrayed, or the manner employed in producing
the copy. In the present day the evil arises specially from the latter
cause. The subjective spirit, causing a perception of the duty of
exactness, has contributed to foster a realistic taste in art, which
requires such minuteness of treatment, that a work of fiction so
constructed, while preserving the freshness of nature, may violate moral
perspective, and leave the impression that good and evil are inseparably
intermixed in each character or in nature itself. The very photographic
exactness of the modern novel copies the features without selection or
discrimination, and presents each moral character as a mixed one, and
makes evil pass into good, and good into evil. Though it is quite true
that no character is unmixed, yet it ought not to be forgotten that the
evil is present as a disease, the good as the normal state. If approached
from the philosophical side, the presence of evil as well as its origin is
inexplicable, save by the pantheistic hypothesis; if approached however
from the moral, our own instincts tell us that it is diametrically opposed
to good; and it is important to be on our guard against the influence of
modern literature, which in any way implies the contrary.

We have hitherto exhibited the systems in the present day, which by their
influence, direc