It is often said that though there may be two sides to an argument, there cannot be two sides to a fact; but with our present amount of training, how few facts' are there which are not matters of opinion! 'This is not a question as to a dogma, but as to a fact,' says Mrs. Oliphant of the Stigmata of St. Francis of Assisi. Who, however, are the witnesses to the wounds, which the Saint himself never showed during his life, and which certainly were never then seen by anyone if they did exist? In the next place, what is meant by the word fact? Even if the five marks in poor St. Francis's worn frame were proved to have been found there after his death, does this 'fact' in the least prove that they were inflicted supernaturally on him in his lifetime by Our Saviour in person, which is the only point in their existence in anywise interesting?

There is no word more fallacious, indeed, than fact: e.g. there is nothing more indubitable, attested by the eyes and senses of more witnesses, than that the sun moves every day across the sky; yet every educated man now knows that it never so moves at all. The most undeniable self-evident fact existent is no fact at all, but an illusion.

That the evidence of our senses is untrustworthy unless verified by some other process is a truism. Our eyes by the refraction of water see an object in the place where it is not; they are deceived by sleight of hand in every variety of way: our ears may be made to fancy the sounds which they hear are close to them, by means of conducting rods, when they are in reality produced yards away. The instances are endless. Our mental eyes vary in power as much, moreover, as do our bodily eyes in their appreciation of colour. The numerous mistakes made in railway signals, which consist mainly of green and red, have caused this faculty to be more gene

6

rally tested in the community than of old, and cases of colour blindness,' i.e. where red and green are identical, are found to be extremely common there is probably every shade, no two exactly alike, seen by different eyes, up to the perfect organ seeing both colours at their brightest. In the same way, the dulness of our powers of interpretation as well as of observation and attention, the want of practice in making out what we do see, and what that seeing really proves, follows a descending scale from the acuteness of Lord Lyndhurst or Lord Westbury for one set of conclusions, and Mr. Faraday or Mr. Tyndall for another, down to the intellect of Mr. Whalley, who sees a Jesuit conspiracy in everything, and of Sir George Bowyer, who proves the Pope's omniscience by his mistakes, or his success by the present state of Rome, or of the gentleman who the other day betted 500l. that the earth was flat, not round.'

Table-turning was an unpleasant instance of this weakness of the ordinary powers of observation and judgment among us. Hundreds of men and women of the greatest probity and honour, belonging to what are called (by courtesy) the educated classes, bore witness that large and heavy tables moved by their own proper will, without the assistants themselves exercising any pressure at all. What was their evidence worth scientifically? The motion, where there was any, is proved to have been caused by the unconscious exertion of the muscles in people who expected such action to take place-a wellknown and recognised fact in physics.

One of the best of our judges once remarked how astonished he was at the positiveness of assertion in almost all witnesses, and their confidence in their own recollection. For my part,' said he, 'unless my

attention has been specially drawn to an occurrence in order to remember it, I feel most uncertain of my own accuracy concerning the details.'

But it requires much knowledge and much observation to be aware of the extent of our own ignorance and inaccuracy: the sense of correctness must be developed before we suffer from its absence, either in ourselves or others.

The cultivation of an exact memory, the self-denying pursuit first of the perception, and then the expression of what is true, as distinguished from a vague, careless love of truth, depends more upon attention than upon any other faculty. The extreme inaccuracy, the exaggeration with which nearly all persons in ordinary conversation relate what they have seen or heard, is almost frightful when one remembers how much may sometimes depend upon it.

Independently moreover of this, few people attend sufficiently to what is said and done by others around them to recollect it correctly they are attending instead of this to themselves-to their own sensations and thoughts. And the mind appears incapable of taking in more than one set of impressions at a time with any sort of complete

ness.

In periods of great excitement it is evidently hopeless to expect any approach to accuracy: the actors are so engaged with their own deeds and their own perils, that those of others (minor in interest to them) seem hardly to be heeded at the moment. It is impossible, e.g., to ascertain any of the facts relating to the death of Gustavus Adolphus. It was the turning point of the battle--it was the turning point of a great historical period; yet no one could tell with certainty in what part of the army he was at the time-by whom he was killed-not even at what moment in the fight,

or whether Wallenstein was or was not present. And this was not uncertainty produced by distance in time or place, for immediately after the battle, and in the immediate neighbourhood of the field, the controversies began. After the Battle of the Alma one of the general officers was anxious to ascertain the moment when a certain major was killed, so as to ascertain when his successor took the command, on which depended some question of promotion or pension. The officer who rode beside him when he died gave evidence that the ruajor certainly crossed the brook: I was close to him, and saw him ride up the steep bank, and he fell from his horse some time after that.' His soldier servant declared 'Certainly he never got across the brook: I saw the horse making up the bank riderless, and tried myself to catch it. When we see how impossible it is to unravel the truth of an occur rence which took place a few weeks or months before, a kind of desperation comes over one at the absurdly small chance there must be of attaining certainty concerning a disputed fact of history: all that we can probably even hope to reach is a knowledge of the modes of thought of a particular period, the manner in which actions were regarded by contemporaries, as given in the writing of the time, which by diligent probing of contemporary documents may be ascertained with tolerable accuracy, and to this balanced hanging up of testimony our histories seem more and more to be tending. Even here, however, the temptation to fill up empty spaces and insert missing links is so strong, that only those who have had to do with such documents can tell how constantly on their guard they are obliged to be against this tendency to piece out facts by imagination. The native impatience of the human mind disdains that fortitude of re

signation which is implied in reject. ing all but verified facts and verified

conclusions.'

We have reached a transition point concerning evidences of all kinds when it behoves our religious teachers to use the utmost caution in laying no more weight of proof on each step in their arguments than it is able to bear. In striving to strengthen their case, 'the irrelevant facts, the unverified conclusions' which have hitherto been quietly taken as material points, must every day have less and less weight as the evidential sense' of the public which they address becomes more educated with regard to other matters, and be dangerous accordingly to the cause.

It has become the duty more particularly of this generation to cultivate accuracy of thought and accuracy of observation in ourselves and others, and the necessity of the study of science, cordially introduced into our colleges and schools, becomes daily more and more evident, to the end that the average mind of the public may be trained first to see facts clearly and then to judge logically as to their meaning. Society, speaking generally,' said Faraday in a lecture at the Royal Institution, is not only ignorant as respects education of the judgment, but is also ignorant of its ignorance.' 'Correct judgment with regard to surrounding objects, events, and consequences becomes possible only through knowledge of the way in which surrounding phenomena depend on each other.'

Evidence of the most startling kind may accumulate before our very eyes-as in the sanitary questions of the day-and unless it be on points which in some way appeal to our imaginations, little result will be attained. The intimate relations between disease and the want of proper water supply in quality and quantity, the absence of drainage and good air, and presence of dirt,

may be said to be so completely proved, that every case of zymotic

disease and of small-pox can be traced to our national neglect and ignorance; yet these questions are hardly glanced at by our legisla tors. The adulteration of food, drink, and drugs is distinctly shown to be poisoning our poorer neighbours, and to very seriously imperil the national health, yet year after year any interference is carelessly postponed; while the revelations hitherto made have only served to show the wrongly disposed how easily and successfully cheating may be carried out. Some general amount of training in physical science among our statesmen would materially assist our progress in these matters. The cultivation of the moral sense alone, though an incomparably higher element, is not enough. How few of us have the power of seeing with our eyes or hearing with our ears! The extraordinary narrowness of the range of observation in most men, shutting out a whole world of usefulness and of interest, may be tested by comparing the impressions of a number of individuals out together on a pleasure trip: the artist has only noticed the picturesque effects and lights and shades, the sailor has observed the weather and the machinery, the maid knows only how the people were dressed, the cook how the joints were carved, only the fine lady and the sanitarians have smelt the smells, even the naturalists have probably been engrossed each with his own particular objects, to the exclusion of the rest. A general observer is most rare.

To practise children in the power of accurate and quick perception, as for instance to narrate carefully and conscientiously any occurrence which has passed before them, or the objects of natural history seen during a walk, should be the first step in our training.

In the Tichborne case it has been

seen how small is the general power of defining faces or features. If we were asked to describe those belonging to our dearest friends, we should most of us find the greatest difficulty in doing so. We say that such and such people are alike,' but we could not undertake nine times out of ten to say why. A blurred, general, indistinct outline is all we most of us have of nature, instead of that intimate acquaintance which alone can bear fruit. Verification, the testing of our knowledge of every description, is described as the last best achievement of modern times, as opposed to the reception of even truth upon authority alone. The English nation is in the habit of priding itself upon this quality of truth, which in its highest sense cannot possibly be attained unless we cultivate the power of seeing and hearing correctly in physical matters, and of honestly striving to ascertain the value of testimony and the

grounds of argument in matters of thought. Without this we may honour the goddess with our lips, but our hearts will be far from her: she will continue at the bottom of her well while we are worshipping a false image of her, or rather of ourselves in her image. There can be no truth worth having without this accuracy both of perception and expression, and these are only to be acquired by long and patient cultivation, for which science offers the best possible training.

Unless more pains be taken with the education of the world in such qualities, our grandchildren will suffer as cruelly as we do ourselves from the imperfections of the evidence-even of the most truthful, honest, and honourable persons, in public and private life-from the illogical habits of thought of many among our shrewdest politicians, our most conscientious divines, and our cleverest writers,

HE

I

French Government has lately made itself the subject of two operations, or, let us say, it has passed through two trials equally important, which followed closely one upon the other. It began by making a loan of colossal proportions, demanding from France no less than two milliards. Not many days later it called on the nation to complete the National Assembly by sending to it one hundred and seventeen members to fill the vacant seats. This important election, still more considerable on account of the proportional number of electors who were called upon to give their votes than on account of the number of members to be elected, was a favourable occasion for ascertaining the sentiments and the disposition of the country in its present precarious and transitory situation. These two acts, following so closely one on the other and accomplished under such circumstances, were therefore of peculiar weight and importance.

The Government has come out triumphantly from this double trial. It demanded two milliards from the nation; the latter offered almost double this sum (we are not speaking at all of the aid from without, which amounted to an offer of more than half the sum demanded). The success of the loan, therefore, was complete, but the success of the elections was more decided still. Government had permitted the electors to choose freely from amongst the candidates of the different parties, every one promising welfare and improvement on condition of its particular badge being accepted, and France, putting aside all the hostile candidates, sent

the National Representation

scarcely any but men attached to the Government and ready to support it. This is surely a most important result; in the second as in the first point the Government has gained its cause-the country has openly declared it to be in the right. But it is not sufficient to prove in a general way the importance of these results; we results; we must examine more closely into them in order to appreciate their bearing, their exact significance and true character.

Such an attentive examination is specially necessary as regards the second result, that of the elections, for as to the first it is almost impossible properly to define it: it has to do with an act of a mixed character. The success of the loan has thrown a light rather upon the resources of the country than on its moral and political disposition; it has shown that the strength of France is not exhausted,. that in spite of her misfortunes she is not ruined or annihilated, and it has shown especially that her credit is unshaken and that the confidence in the Government is complete. This is doubtless a happy symptom. Confidence is a powerful element of prosperity and advance, but one must not overlook the fact that it may sometimes be a cause of ruin. It was this that overthrew France at the time of the last war, and if confidence still subsists after having been

so cruelly disappointed by events, we may hope that it is of a new kind-the confidence, enlightened through terrible realities, of a nation that feels its strength and is determined not to die, rather than that of an unreflecting people who, not feeling its own weakness or incapable of measuring its strength, is always ready rashly to undertake that which is beyond its power, and, still worse, that which is beyond what