the famous monastic schools there, such as Bangor in the County Down. Once arrived at the Court of Charles the Bald he was immediately seen to tower above all his contemporaries from the fact of knowing Greek, by means of which he could penetrate deep into the mysteries of an intellectual world, whose echoes sounded very faintly across an intervening sea of turmoil and ignorance. Although not what would now be termed a scholar, his knowledge was much superior in kind to that of an early English hermit, to whose incessant prayers his Lord had granted the Latin tongue; but, as he pathetically adds, 'non mihi dedit per casus et grammaticam.' Scotus was accordingly placed at the head of the School of the Palace, and as the Court was not stationary some diffusion of learning must have taken place through the country. From that moment his name is conspicuous among the most remarkable of the age. Unfortunately for himself, although he does not appear to have been naturally of a disputatious turn, he became, at the request of others, mixed up in the bitter controversies of the day. In the dispute about predestination, Hincmar of Rheims, who was more a man of the world than a theologian, and Pardulus of Laon, commissioned him to write against Goteschalcus. He argued very strongly in opposition to the theory of a double predestination, that it was impossible that God, who is good, could ever have destined any of His creatures to eternal torment. 'Jesus Christ is the death of eternal death, and God predestines no one to death, because He is life.' The heresy of Pelagius suppresses grace, the opposite extreme destroys liberty; but Goteschalcus, worse than either, suppresses both liberty and grace. Scotus, however, in developing his arguments, went so far as to lay himself open to the accusation of denying eternal punishment, and became, in consequence, odious to both parties. The Councils of Valence and Langres in 855 and 859 pronounced against some of his doctrines. He appears, nevertheless, to have suffered very little molestation during his life, probably because he enjoyed the friendship of a powerful monarch, and a great reputation for personal sanctity.

When Radbertus brought out his treatise on the Sacrament, in which the bread and wine is said to be absolutely the Body and Blood of Christ which hung upon the cross, Erigena was again so unfortunate as to go beyond the opposite party, who believed that the elements were indeed the Body and Blood, but only mystically so, by maintaining that the Lord's Supper is merely commemorative. At least, that is said to have

been his opinion, for his De Cœna is lost. Certain it is, that Berenger, nearly two centuries afterwards, was forced to burn that work along with his own books.

When and how he died is unknown. He came into the light of history and passed out of it again as mysteriously as the famous bird which in the evening flew from darkness into darkness, through the Saxon king's illuminated hall. M. Taillandier shows pretty conclusively that he cannot have been the same as that Johannes Scotus who was killed by two of his monks; nor did he give up the ghost at Malmesbury, where he had been placed by Alfred, in heavy and bitter torment, stabbed to death by the pens of his scholars.

When any great man is lost to sight about whose character we possess a few facts, imagination is always busy in piecing them together and making a complete whole. We seem to see Johannes Scotus Erigena as the ideal head of a great philosophical and theological college; learned, religious, and sedate, but with sufficient humour dearly to enjoy his joke at an opportune moment. Such a moment, it is said, once occurred when Charles and his guests were assembled round the table after dinner. Quid intersit,' said that Monarch, inter Scotum et Sottum?' Tabula tantum,' was the reply: a repartee considered amazingly 'merry and facete' in the time of William of Malmesbury. From this story he appears to have been on very intimate terms with his patron; and it speaks much for his real worth that under such trying circumstances he was able to preserve a high place in his esteem, which, as far as we know, was never lost. In his writings he is always inclined to the merciful side. In controversy, less bitter than any contemporary author, he did not on occasions shrink from following out premisses to their conclusions, even at the risk of alienating friends. Still, like Erasmus, he was not the stuff of which martyrs are made.

When the turmoil and opposition of the outside world became too strong, he quietly withdrew into his academical life. We know that he did not write anything after 875, and this is the last date which can be fixed in his career. As history, which usually deals in tragedies, is silent about him after this, it may not perhaps be too hopeful to believe that he passed a quiet old age, and died at last in his bed.

ART. IX. THE PROVINCE OF SCEPTICISM AND THE LIMITS OF FREE THOUGHT.

1. The Creed of Science. By WILLIAM GRAHAM. (London: 1881.)

2. Evenings with the Sceptics. By JOHN OWEN. (London: 1881.)

3. Papers of the National Church Reform Union. (London: 1881.)

THERE is no question as to the fascination of Free Thought. For young and ardent minds freedom of any kind, whether of thought or action, has most natural charms; and for such minds freedom would seem to be the peculiar and inalienable characteristic of thought. Free as air' and 'fancy free' are the terms in which seem to run the charter of their intellectual liberties. Moreover, it is more than possible, it is undoubtedly the fact, that in this, as in other matters, unwise restrictions and undue attempts on the part of Authority to repress the speculations of adventurous minds, have frequently produced their natural result in causing such minds to run riot, and to carry liberty into excess.

Hence the history both of Philosophy and of Religion has been a history of reactions. The inquisitiveness of mankind has been checked in one direction, only to reappear with fresh vigour in another, whilst Authority has never failed after a time to reassert its claims, until the warfare has broken out afresh.

At present it would seem to be the turn of Scepticism. In science the old positions have been assailed one after another, and their assailants have scarcely had time to establish themselves in the seats of their predecessors before they have been assailed in turn, and had to retire before the advancing foe. It is, however, in the department of religion that the contest is most marked and most determined. There Authority has been most ruthlessly dislodged from her throne, whilst Scepticism boldly assumes the sceptre, and acknowledges no limit to her sway. The free-thinker claims absolute independence of Authority as such. He demands freedom from all which is conventionally received as true; freedom from the dictation of the past and from the prejudices of the present. Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri, he professes to approach every subject tabula rasa, and the more sacred the

subject in hand, the more unreservedly does he claim to liberate himself from the restraints which prejudice or custom or timidity have imposed upon its treatment. Nor is he in the least embarrassed by that sense of responsibility which certainly should act as a check in questioning received opinions, in attacking the objects of other men's reverence and, it may be, shaking the foundations of their moral convictions.

It is obvious that Free Thought, whilst canvassing without reserve the claims of Authority, must submit her own claims to a fair and impartial investigation. In the very nature of things, Scepticism is itself the proper subject of examination. It were surely an act of dogmatism, from which the Sceptic should be the first to shrink, to put forth paramount claims to independence, and at the same time to repel the criticism which it so freely exercises.

Now it seems to us that such an examination as we propose may lead to conclusions of no ordinary interest and importance; that we shall be able to assign to the sceptic an office of considerable dignity and influence, and to concede to him a legitimate position from which his opponents have most unwisely attempted to exclude him. It is most important that the disciples of Authority and the maintainers of dogma-amongst whom we claim most distinctly to be numbered should allow that Scepticism, that name of evil reputation among many minds, has, when rightly exercised, a legitimate office in the search for truth, and a most healthy action upon dogma itself; whilst, on the other hand, it will probably appear that Scepticism has an inveterate tendency to exceed all due bounds, and to defeat the very purpose of its existence by losing itself in absolute vacuity.

Now Scepticism is on its better side the inquiry for Truth; and for Truth, not as conventionally presented to us, but as it is in itself, divested of those incrustations of prejudice with which an unreasoning acceptance has in the course of ages been certain to encumber it. Whether Truth, thus pure and unalloyed, is really attainable by the human intellect, or if attained could be held in its grasp for a moment, is not now the question before us; but the desire and the attempt so to reach and so to possess it is clearly one with which we are bound to sympathize. Socrates, whom all the world has learned to honour, even perhaps sometimes in excess of his merits, was a sceptic in philosophy, Galileo in science, Augustine and Luther alike in theology. The man who meeting with the miraculous in Christianity investigates the nature of a miracle and asks whether it be possible is, so far, a sceptic. He,

again, who being taught to pray, investigates the nature and efficacy of prayer; or who, finding himself confronted by a system of sacramental grace, searches both into the authority upon which the doctrine rests, and into the nature and operation of that grace of which the doctrine teaches, is, again, so far a sceptic. In short, every man of quick intelligence and of reflective habit, who in the maturity of his reasoning faculties searches into the deeper and more exact meaning of those formulas which as a child he implicitly and without examination accepted--throws them into the crucible of his own mind, and tests them by reflection and by experience-is so far a sceptic. With such an exercise of reason no one can with propriety find fault; it is no less than an obligation resting upon strong and vigorous minds, and in fact a part, and a painful part, of their necessary trial. At the same time we would have it particularly observed, first, that we by no means nor for an instant imply that such an independent examination of the terms of their traditionary creed is the duty of all, or indeed of any but a comparatively very small proportion, of mankind. It can indeed be incumbent only upon such as are by natural powers and by subsequent training qualified for a task of peculiar and oftentimes most distressing difficulty. And such minds should accept the task only under a most serious sense of responsibility, and with the consciousness of enormous interests at stake, no less, it may be, than the peace and happiness of a whole life. Secondly, it is of the greatest importance that such persons should carefully inform themselves of the limitations under which any single mind, or indeed any aggregate of minds, can address themselves to the task. Thirdly, we would distinctly state that whilst for those whom we have in view the work in question is in fact inevitable, and such as they can neither honestly nor advantageously decline, there is no reason in the world to conclude that the result will be in the direction of unbelief. The process of inquiry may indeed not improperly be termed sceptical-confining the term to its etymological and better sense-but it may, and we believe, ought to issue in the more distinct conception, and the more tenacious grasp of the object of faith.

But what, we may ask meanwhile, is meant by Freedom of Thought? Is it that the mind is free as the bird upon the wing? Suppose this to be so: yet the bird that soars so gaily, and apparently in such unfettered flight, is limited by many inexorable conditions. The strength of its wing, the region of its food, the state of the surrounding atmosphere,