'WHEREFORE DOST BRUISE ME? WEEPING HE EXCLAIM'D' (Inferno xxxii, 79).

From design drawn and engraved by William Blake (1827).

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ng to admit as Dantesque. Dante himself, for is always represented by Blake as a youthful, mate figure, with long flowing hair and a mild ting expression, as unlike as possible to the mal representation of the poet; and his Virgil is nilar type, without a trace of il Maestro' about Blake's indulgence in the grotesque is equally to the spirit of Dante. The three beasts in the to of the Inferno' are painted in kaleidoscopic the leopard, for instance, being variegated crimblue. The harpies in canto XIII, according to resemble old parrot-like dowagers with very plumage'; while the Charon of canto III he as 'very grotesque, almost ludicrous.' Yet the ful imaginings of Blake, with all their extravaand eccentricities, come more near to realising the s of Dante than the 'classical refinements' of n, which, though generally attractive by their and beauty of design, are too often frigid and incing.

h the death of Blake in 1827 closes the first period te illustration in England. Occasional subjects che Divina Commedia,' both oil-paintings and re. were exhibited at the Academy and other ions during the next thirty years; but, from the f Blake down to our own day, no other English of note seriously occupied himself with Dante till ti set to work on the famous series of studies from Tita Nuova' and the 'Commedia,' which, together is well-known volume on 'Dante and his Circle,' nseparably connected his name with that of Dante. art, as in literature, the record of England in the of Dante stands second to that of Italy alone. have seen, the first easel-picture of a subject from was painted by an English artist; and it was an hartist who first, outside of Italy, produced a ete series of illustrations to the 'Divina Commedia.' PAGET TOYNBEE.

Art. 4.-THE INFLUENCE OF DARWINISM UPON THEOLOGY.

1. Evolution and its relation to Religious Thought. By J. Le Conte. London: Chapman and Hall, 1888. 2. Science and the Faith. By Aubrey L. Moore. London: Kegan Paul, 1889.

3. Thoughts on Religion. By the late G. J. Romanes. Edited by Charles Gore. London: Longmans, 1895. 4. Development and Divine Purpose. By V. F. Storr. London: Methuen, 1906.

SINCE the birth of modern science in the sixteenth century, no great scientific generalisation has been without influence upon the theological thought of the age which produced it. The same would have been the case, doubtless, in the patristic period, during which the traditional ecclesiastical cosmogony was being shaped by the Fathers of the Church, if only certain conditions had obtained which were unfortunately wanting. Had there been drawn, in the early Christian centuries, any clear distine tion, such as has existed among us for generations, between empirically proved facts or laws, and results of the brilliant guess-work or imaginative and groundless speculation which constituted by far the larger part of the natural philosophy of the ancient Greeks; and had there been any rapid dissemination of the knowledge of such items of genuine science through the educated classes, so that the knowledge could easily have become common property instead of remaining the exclusive possession of individuals here and there, professedly engaged in empirical investigation; there can be little doubt that the early construction of Christian doctrine concerning the physical world and its past history would have been aided by the modicum of scientific truth that was then available. But, as things were, there was little sound knowledge of Nature that could be said to be empirically established, or to be received with any degree of unanimity, even amongst professed students of the physical sciences; extremely little, certainly, in comparison with the mass of speculative theory, such as the atomism of Leucippus and Democritus, and the still

larger body of more purely fanciful and absurd imagination that equally claimed to be 'natural philosophy.'

That the needle in this bundle of hay was not discovered by theologians, even by those who were learned in the natural philosophy of their day, is no great wonder. At the same time, however, it was the Church's lasting loss. For writers such as Basil and Augustine, who were interested in the world of Nature, and were as open-minded towards empirical truth as they were impatient of mere a priori web-spinning where matters of physical fact were concerned, might then have lent their influence to scientific teaching which afterwards the Church was led to oppose; and they might have constructed, or have indicated, the course to be patiently followed by those who should subsequently construct a system of cosmology with which sciences as yet unborn would in the future have less quarrel. But, for want of better light, the Fathers founded their teaching concerning the physical world upon the cosmogony of Genesis, expounded partly literally, partly allegorically, and partly in accordance with such elements of Greek philosophy as were capable of assimilation. Concurrently there grew up, and became engrained in popular theological belief, a view of Biblical inspiration which led Churchmen to see in the early narratives of Genesis, and other passages of the Bible, an authentic' revealed' account of the structure and mode of origin of the world and man.

Thus was forged the chain with which the Church was destined, in later times, to fetter science. Not only the doctrinal contents of the ecclesiastical cosmology and anthropology, but also the finality of the same was grounded on the gradually stereotyped belief in the inerrancy of the letter of Scripture. The idea became almost universal that the Bible was infallible as to matters of physical fact; that Genesis was one of the main foundations of Christian dogma; and that a science of Nature had been once and for all revealed, admitting of no correction and calling for no advance.

When modern science was born, it consequently had to enter, for its own freedom, upon a warfare with theological dogma and ecclesiastical authority. Each new science that successively came into being-geography, astronomy, geology, evolutionary biology-had