and radical opinions are quite incompatible with evolutional philosophy as expounded by Spencer. Indeed, Swinburne's views about government, about fraternity and equality, about liberty in all matters of thought and action, are heresies for the strictly scientific mind. The great thinkers of our century have exposed and overthrown the old fallacies of the French revolutionary school as to the equality of men and the meaning of liberty and fraternity. Swinburne still champions, or appears to champion, some of the erroneous ideas of Rousseau. Otherwise there is little fault to be found with his thoughts concerning the ultimate nature of things, except in the deep melancholy that always accompanies them. Meredith is a grand optimist. Swinburne is something very like a pessimist. There is no joy and no hope in his tone of speaking about the mystery of death; rather we find ourselves listening to the tone of the ancient Roman Epicureans, in the time when faith was dying, and when philosophy attempted, without success, to establish a religion of duty founded upon pure ethics. An important test of any writer's metaphysical position is what he believes about the soul. Swinburne's idea is very well expressed in the prelude to his "Songs before Sunrise." A single stanza would be enough in this case; but we shall give two, in order to show the pantheistic side of the poet's faith. Because man's soul is man's God still, What wind soever waft his will Across the waves of day and night To port or shipwreck, left or right, By shores and shoals of good and ill; And still its flame at mainmast height Through the rent air that foam-flakes fill Sustains the indomitable light Whence only man hath strength to steer Or helm to handle without fear. Save his own soul's light overhead, None leads him, and none ever led, Across birth's hidden harbour-bar, Past youth where shoreward shallows are, Through age that drives on toward the red Vast void of sunset hailed from far. To the equal waters of the dead; Save his own soul he hath no star, And sinks, except his own soul guide, Helmless in middle turn of tide. This is a very plain statement not only that man has no god, and that he makes his own gods, but that he never had a creator or a god of any kind. He has no divine help, no one to pray to, no one to trust except himself. So far this is in tolerable accord with the teaching of the Buddha, "Be ye lights unto yourselves; seek no refuge but in yourselves." But the question comes, What is man's soul? Is it divine? Is it part of the universal soul, a supreme and infinite intelligence? There is another meaning in the first line of the first stanza which I quoted to you about man's soul being man's god. Some verses from the wonderful poem called "On the Downs" will make the meaning plainer.