Chapter I: Front Matter

[Transcriber's Notes:

The first part of this volume (September 1879) was produced as Project Gutenberg Ebook #30048. The relevant part of the table of contents has been extracted from that document, and a brief title page added.

_Italic words_ have been enclosed in underscores. Greek letters have been transliterated and enclosed in equals signs, e.g. =psychê=.

As the oe ligature cannot be included in this format, it has been replaced with the separate letters, e.g. "Phoenician". Also note that on page 247, the original text shows a breve above the letter "e" in the Persian word for desert, "meru".

A few minor typographical errors have been silently corrected. Some inconsistent hyphenation and accents have been retained.]

THE
CONTEMPORARY
REVIEW

VOLUME XXXVI. OCTOBER, 1879

CONTENTS.

OCTOBER, 1879.
PAGE
India and Afghanistan. By Lieut.-Colonel R. D. Osborn 193

Critical Idealism in France. By Paul Janet 212

On the Moral Limits of Beneficial Commerce. By Francis W. Newman 232

The Myths of the Sea and the River of Death. By C. F. Keary 243

Mr. Macvey Napier and the Edinburgh Reviewers. By Matthew Browne 263

The Supreme God in the Indo-European Mythology. By James
Darmesteter 274

Lazarus Appeals to Dives. By Henry J. Miller 290

The Forms and Colours of Living Creatures. By Professor St.
George Mivart 313

Contemporary Life and Thought in Turkey. By an Eastern Statesman 334

Contemporary Books:--

I. History and Literature of the East, under the Direction
of Professor E. H. Palmer 350

II. Classical Literature, under the Direction of Rev.
Prebendary J. Davies 359

III. Essays, Novels, Poetry, &c.under the Direction of
Matthew Browne 366

INDIA AND AFGHANISTAN.

When the news arrived that Major Cavagnari and his companions had fallen victims to the fury of the Kabul populace, the _Daily Telegraph_ "called aloud, before Heaven, for a punishment which should ring from end to end of the Continent of Asia." It is a pity that so much fine and eloquent indignation should be expended on the Afghans instead of those who are truly responsible for the catastrophe which has evoked it. If ever there was a future event which might be predicted with absolute certainty, it was that Major Cavagnari and his companions would perish precisely as they have done. Twice, within forty years, have we invaded Afghanistan, although on both occasions we have frankly avowed that with the inhabitants of the country we had no cause of quarrel whatever. Nevertheless, we carried fire and sword wherever we went, cutting down their fruit trees, burning their villages, and leaving their women and children shelterless under a winter sky. What could we expect as the fruit of such acts, except that our victims--knowing, as we did, that they were revengeful, passionate, and too ignorant to forecast the consequences of their actions--should retaliate in kind the moment that they had the opportunity? The first invasion of Afghanistan is now known by general consent as "the iniquitous war;" but it is open to question if even that war was so elaborately contrived, or so long laboured for as this--the first act of which has terminated in the slaughter of Major Cavagnari and his escort.

The circumstances which preceded it are briefly these. For eighteen months Lord Lytton had attempted, by alternate threats and cajolery, to prevail upon the Ameer Shere Ali to make a surrender of his independence, and become a vassal of the Indian Empire. These attempts having failed, war was declared against him on the pretence that he had insulted us before all Asia by declining to receive a "friendly" mission sent by the Indian Government. This mission was _not_ friendly. It was notorious throughout India that it would go to Kabul charged with an _ultimatum_ which offered the Ameer the choice of war, or the sacrifice of his independence. But even this mission the Ameer never refused to receive--nay, it is certain that he would have received it if the opportunity had been given to him, so great was the value he attached to English friendship. But what the Government of India desired was not the reception of the mission, but a pretext for making war upon the Ameer. It knew that the policy which it meditated in Afghanistan would so completely destroy the sovereignty of the Ameer, that it was impossible he should agree to it. At the same time, it was impossible to declare war against an independent prince, simply because he declined to divest himself of his independence. The war must, somehow or another, be made to appear as if it were due to some act of the Ameer. Consequently, almost from the hour in which the announcement was made that the mission was to start, the Ameer was plied with insults and menaces which, if they were not intended to drive him to some act of overt hostility, had no purpose at all. And when these proved unavailing, Lord Lytton directed Sir Neville Chamberlain to attempt to force his way through the Khyber Pass, without waiting for the permission of the Ameer. In the most courteous manner the Afghan officer, in command at the Khyber, intimated to the mission that, without the sanction of his master, it was impossible to allow it to proceed; and this refusal was instantly telegraphed to England as a deliberate insult which must be wiped out in blood. From first to last, so far as his conduct towards us is concerned, the Ameer was absolutely blameless. During his entire reign his consistent endeavour had been to draw closer the ties of amity between himself and us. The Russian mission had forced its way to Kabul, despite of all his endeavours to hinder its advance; and there can be no question that but for the previous action of Lord Lytton that mission would never have come to Afghanistan. But eighteen months before that occurrence Lord Lytton had withdrawn our Native Agent from the Court of the Ameer. This had been done as a mark of displeasure, and a proof that no alliance of any kind existed between the two States. This proceeding Lord Lytton followed up by the occupation of Quetta, although he was well aware that such an occupation would be interpreted--and rightly--by the Ameer, as a menace to his independence, and the harbinger of war. So it came about that when the Russian mission knocked for admission at the doors of his capital, the Ameer found himself on the one side threatened by Russia, and on the other abandoned and threatened by Lord Lytton. Lord Lytton, in point of fact, is as directly responsible for the entry of the Russian mission to Kabul as he is for the dispatch of his own.

But if Lord Lytton's treatment of the Ameer was cruel and ungenerous, criminal, at least to an equal extent, was his treatment of the people over whom he ruled. At that time there was an appalling amount of suffering all over India. The country had been ravaged by a series of famines. In the Punjab prices were abnormally high. The North-West Provinces were still unrecovered from a dearth, during which the Government of India had exhibited a rapacity and indifference to human suffering which would, with difficulty, be credited in England. Terrible as is the mortality resulting from a famine in India, the death-roll represents but a tenth part of the suffering which such visitations inflict. For every human being that dies, ten are left, without money and without physical strength, to struggle feebly for existence on the margin of the grave. They cannot give a fair day's work for a fair day's wage. They may reckon themselves fortunate if their enfeebled powers can earn just sufficient to keep body and soul together. For all these wretched beings--and last year in Upper India they numbered many millions--the smallest rise of price in the necessities of life means death from hunger. A war, therefore, with the enormous rise of prices which it would immediately produce, was nothing less than a sentence of torture and death passed upon tens of thousands of our own subjects. Undeterred, however, by the warnings of experience, deaf to considerations of humanity and justice, the Government of India started on its wild-goose chase after a "Scientific Frontier." The victims whom it trampled to death in this mad chase have never been numbered--they never can be numbered. The Afghans who died in defence of their village homes form but a hundredth part of them. The residue was composed of our own mute and uncomplaining subjects.

A war thus wantonly commenced resulted in a failure as ignominious as it deserved. Long before the Treaty of Gundamuck the ambitious policy of the Government had become an object of contempt and ridicule all over India. It was known that Lord Lytton and his advisers were at their wit's end to discover something which might be made to do duty as a "Scientific Frontier," and so bring a misjudged enterprise to a conclusion. But it is the peculiarity of our Ministers to believe that they can arrest the inexorable sequence of cause and effect by a dexterous manipulation of the faculty of speech. Lord Beaconsfield appears to have imparted to his colleagues his own belief in the omnipotence of phrases to remove mountains, and make rough places smooth. So the Treaty of Gundamuck was no sooner signed than Ministers and Ministerial journals raised a great hymn of triumph over the wondrous things which they had wrought in Afghanistan. The one solid national advantage to be derived from the sacrifice of Cavagnari and his comrades, is that this method of treating facts will have to be laid aside. Lord Lytton is not likely to appeal again to his "carefully verified facts" as a proof that he is a much wiser man than Lord Lawrence. Lord Cranbrook will not again express his conviction that the "objections (to an English Resident) expressed by Shere Ali will be shown to have been without substantial foundation." Yakoub Khan and his five attendants are all that remain of that "strong, friendly, and independent Afghanistan" which Mr. Stanhope informed the House of Commons had been created by the war. The anguished cry of the _Daily Telegraph_ "for a punishment which shall ring from end to end of the Continent of Asia" is the latest expression of the "results incalculably beneficial to the two countries" which, according to Lord Lytton, were to flow from the Peace of Gundamuck.

A failure in policy more signal and more complete than this it is impossible to imagine. But it is to be noted that the Ministerial journals are doing their utmost to save the "Scientific Frontier" from the destruction which has overtaken the projects of the Ministry. And so long as a belief in this Frontier is cherished anywhere, the return to a safe and rational policy is obstructed. In the following pages, therefore, I shall, firstly, endeavour to show that the (so-called) "Scientific Frontier" is as purely fictitious as the "strong, friendly, and independent Afghanistan" which we were told had been created out of chaos by means of the war. And, secondly, I shall discuss the various lines of conduct which lie open to us, when we have occupied Kabul, in order to determine which is best fitted to ensure the stability of our Indian Empire and the contentment of its inhabitants.

The Scientific Frontier.

In all the discussions on this Frontier question, a very obvious, but all-important, fact has been persistently forgotten. It is that British rule in India is a rule based upon military supremacy; and that, therefore, our Indian army--English as well as native--is primarily a garrison, having its duties upon the places where it is quartered. We could not withdraw our troops from any part of India without incurring the risk of an outbreak in the districts thus denuded. The "Punjab Frontier Force" has always been a force distinct from the "Army of India," and recognized as having special duties of its own. So far as I know, in the discussions on a "Scientific Frontier" no reference has been made to the above circumstance. The Indian army has been spoken of as if it were so much fighting power, which we were free to concentrate at any point we pleased. And to this oversight is due the hallucination that an improved frontier would enable us to diminish the strength of the Indian garrison (properly so called). The fact is, that before this last war we had almost the very frontier which our situation in India required. If the authority of the Ameer had extended up to the boundaries of our Empire, troubles between the two States must have occurred, resulting inevitably in the extinction of the weaker. The evil of such an extension of territory no one denies; we should not only have had to hold Afghanistan with a strong garrison--certainly not less than twenty thousand men--but we should have been compelled to maintain a frontier force, to guard against aggression from without, either from Russia or Persia. Forty thousand men would have been needed for this double duty, in addition to the pre-existing garrison of India. But by a piece of supreme good fortune the authority of the Ameer did not begin where ours left off. Between us and him were interposed the tribes which dwell in the hills along our North-Western frontier. These tribes acknowledged allegiance neither to him nor to us. Broken up and divided amongst themselves, the worst they could inflict upon us was an occasional raid into our territories; and these we could repress without having to call the Ameer to an account for the lawlessness of his subjects. A few regiments of horse and foot were all that we needed for the defence of our frontier; while as against foreign invasion we possessed a frontier that needed no defence at all. That frontier consisted of the foodless deserts and inaccessible hills of Afghanistan. These were impenetrable to an invader, so long as we retained the friendship and the confidence of the people who dwell among them. Consequently, to quote the language of Sir Henry Rawlinson, "our main object has ever been, since the date of Lord Auckland's famous Simla Manifesto of 1838, to obtain the establishment of a strong, friendly, and independent Power on the North-Western frontier of India, without, however, accepting any crushing liabilities in return." We all know the manner in which Lord Auckland set about obtaining the "strong, friendly, and independent Power," and the "crushing liabilities" we had to accept in consequence. Tutored by experience, we adopted a wiser and more righteous policy, which was producing admirable results.

The difficulty of establishing a stable friendship with Afghanistan arises from the character of the people. It is the habitation, not of a nation, but of a collection of tribes, and the nominal ruler of Afghanistan is never more than the ruler of a party which, for the time, chances to be strongest. Consequently there never existed an authority, recognized as legitimate throughout the country, with which we could enter into diplomatic relations. At the same time, their divided condition crippled the Afghans for all offensive purposes. We had, therefore, nothing to fear in the way of unprovoked aggression, and our obvious policy was to win the confidence of these wild tribes and their chiefs, by carefully abstaining from encroachments on their independence. Such, in fact, has been the policy which every Governor-General has pursued in the interval which divides the "plundering and blundering" of Lord Auckland from the like achievements of Lord Lytton. And it had been attended with the greater success, because under the firm guidance of two remarkable men, Afghanistan had progressed considerably towards the status of an organized kingdom. Shere Ali had diligently trod in the footsteps of his father, the Dost, and it is in these terms that the Government of India describes the rule and policy of the Ameer in the year 1876:

"Those officers of our Government who are best acquainted with the
affairs of Afghanistan, and the character of the Ameer and his
people, consider that the hypothesis that the Ameer may be
intimidated or corrupted by Russia (even supposing there was any
probability of such an attempt being made) is opposed to his
personal character and to the feelings and traditions of his race,
and that any attempt to intrigue with factions in Afghanistan,
opposed to the Ameer, would defeat itself, and afford the Ameer the
strongest motive for at once disclosing to us such proceedings.
Whatever may be the discontent created in Afghanistan by taxation,
conscription, and other unpopular measures, _there can be no
question that the power of the Ameer Shere Ali Khan has been
consolidated throughout Afghanistan in a manner unknown since the
days of Dost Mahomed, and that the officers entrusted with the
administration have shown extraordinary loyalty and devotion to the
Ameer's cause_. It was probably the knowledge of the Ameer's
strength that kept the people aloof from Yakoub Khan, in spite of
his popularity. At all events, Herat fell to the Ameer without a
blow. The rebellion in Salpoora in the extreme West was soon
extinguished. The disturbances in Budukshan in the North were
speedily suppressed. _Nowhere has intrigue or rebellion been able to
make head in the Ameer's dominions._ Even the Char Eimak and the
Hazara tribes are learning to appreciate the advantages of a firm
rule.... But what we wish specially to repeat is that, from the date
of the Umballa Durbar to the present time, _the Ameer has
unreservedly accepted and acted upon our advice to maintain a
peaceful attitude towards his neighbours_. We have no reason to
believe that his views are changed."

This "strong, friendly, and independent Power"--this edifice of order and increasing stability--the British Government deliberately destroyed in the insane expectation of finding a "Scientific Frontier" hidden somewhere in the ruins. It is difficult to conceive of an action more impolitic or more cruel. In a month the labours of forty years were obliterated, old hatreds rekindled, and the wounds of 1838, which the wise and gentle treatment of former Viceroys had almost healed, were opened afresh.

We come next to the inquiry as to what this "Scientific Frontier" is, in order to obtain which this act of vandalism was perpetrated. This is a question involved in some obscurity. The _Times_ is the great champion of the "Scientific Frontier," but in its columns, as also in Ministerial speeches, it changes colour like a chameleon. Sometimes it is called the "possession of the three highways leading to India," thereby rendering the Empire "invulnerable." At other times it is recommended to us because it protects the trade through the Bolan Pass, and enables us to threaten Kabul. The fact is that the (so-called) "Scientific Frontier"--meaning thereby the frontier we acquired by the Treaty of Gundamuck--is a make-believe, an imposture. It is not the "Scientific Frontier" in pursuit of which we "hunted the Ameer to death" and reduced his territories to a condition of anarchy.

Those who have followed the history of the war with attention will remember that in September of last year the Calcutta correspondent of the _Times_ was smitten with a really marvellous admiration for Lord Lytton. "India," he wrote, "is fortunate in the possession at the present time of a Viceroy specially gifted with broad statesmanlike views, the result partly of most vigilant and profound study, partly of the application of great natural intellectual capacity to the close cultivation of political science and the highest order of statecraft." Here we have the portrait of the lion painted by himself; and it is not surprising that this superb creature should have regarded with considerable scorn the policy of his predecessors who never claimed to be "specially gifted" for the exercise of "the highest order of statecraft." "The present measure," the correspondent went on to say, "for the despatch of a mission to Kabul forms but a single move in an extensive concerted scheme for the protection of India, which is the outcome of a long-devised and elaborately worked-out system of defensive policy." Here we have a fine example of the "puff preliminary." In the issue of the _Times_ for the 10th September this "extensive concerted scheme for the protection of India" is detailed at length, and is there plainly set forth as intended for a barrier against Russia:--

"The Indian Government are most anxious to avoid adopting any policy
which would bear even the semblance of hostility towards Russia, but
the extreme probability of a collision sooner or later cannot be
overlooked. It is necessary, therefore, to provide for a strong
defensive position to guard against eventualities. From this point
of view it is indispensable that we should possess a commanding
influence over the triangle of territory formed on the map by Kabul,
Ghuznee, and Jellalabad, together with power over the Hindoo
Khosh.... This triangle we may hope to command with Afghan
concurrence if the Ameer is friendly. The strongest frontier line
which could be adopted would be along the Hindoo Khosh, from Pamir
to Bamian, thence to the south by the Helmund, Girishk, and
Kandahar, to the Arabian Sea. It is possible, therefore, that by
friendly negotiations some such defensive boundary may be adopted."

Such were the moderate designs entertained by the Indian Government when they dispatched what they called a "friendly mission" to the Court of the Ameer. If Lord Lytton imagined that "friendly negotiations" would obtain these tremendous concessions from the Ameer, it would show that a training in "the highest order of statecraft" does not preserve even a "specially gifted" Viceroy from the credulousness of an infant. But his acts show that he entertained no such belief. He felt, as every one must feel who reads the extract I have made, that demands such as these must be preceded by a war. Hence the menacing letters addressed to the Ameer; hence the rude and insulting manner in which Sir Neville Chamberlain was ordered to attempt an entrance into Afghanistan without awaiting the permission of the Ameer; and hence, finally, the monstrous fiction of a deliberate "insult" inflicted upon us, when, in point of fact, we had been the "insulters" all along. The obvious intention throughout was to obtain a pretext for declaring war, because without a war the "Scientific Frontier" was manifestly unattainable. Lastly, when war had been determined upon, the same "official" correspondent came forward in the _Times_ to make known the objects of the impending campaign. "We have," he wrote, "been driven into what will probably be a costly war entirely against our will, and all our endeavours to avoid it. The occasion, therefore, will now be seized to secure for ourselves the various passes piercing the mountain ranges along the whole frontier from the Khyber to the Bolan; and further _strategic measures will be adopted to dominate entirely the Suleiman range and the Hindoo Khosh_."

It is impossible not to admire the hardihood of this remarkable correspondent when he alleges that the war was "entirely against our will, and all our endeavours to avoid it." But this is not the matter with which I am at present concerned. The official character of these communications will be denied by no one, and they make it clear that the "Scientific Frontier" was intended as a barrier against Russia, and would have made the Hindoo Khosh the external boundary of the Indian Empire. Such a frontier is manifestly the dream of a military specialist, to whose mental vision the Indian Empire, with all its diverse interests, has no existence except as a frontier to be defended against the Russians. And it illustrates the ignorance and precipitate folly which has plunged us in our present difficulties that a project so wild should have been seriously entertained. To have carried it out the subjugation of Afghanistan would have been an indispensable preliminary, and then the civilizing of it, by means of a system of roads and strong garrisons throughout the country; the entire cost of these vast operations being defrayed by a country already taxed to the last point of endurance, heavily burdened with an increasing debt, and ravaged by periodical famines. Such, however, was the "Scientific Frontier" for which a "specially gifted Viceroy," trained in "the highest order of political statecraft," declared war against the Ameer. But the frontier which we obtained at the close of the war, and which Ministers and Ministerial journals would have us believe is the genuine article which they wanted from the beginning, is not only not this frontier, but it has not the smallest resemblance to it.

The new frontier does not differ from the old except in three particulars. We hold the Khyber Pass as far as Lundi Kotal, and we have acquired the right to quarter troops in the Kurram Valley and the Valley of Peshin. Of these the Kurram Valley is a mere _cul-de-sac_, leading nowhere. But I will not ask of my readers to accept of my judgment on this matter. Among the best known advocates for a forward and aggressive policy in Afghanistan is Dr. Bellew. An accomplished linguist and an experienced traveller, he accompanied Colonel Lumsden's mission to Kandahar in 1857; he was also a member of the mission entrusted with the settlement of the Seistan boundary question, and no man living is better acquainted with the geography and people of Afghanistan. I believe it will not be denied that Lord Lytton, during the recent war, trusted largely in his knowledge and suggestions. He has thus expressed himself on the policy of occupying the Kurram Valley:--

"The Kurram Valley would involve the addition of about one hundred
and fifty miles of hill frontage to our border, and would bring us
into contact with the independent Orakzais, Zaimukhts, Toris,
Cabul-Khel, Waziris, and others, against whose hostility and inroads
here, as in other parts of the border, we should have to protect our
territory. By its possession, as we are now situated, we should be
committed to the defence of a long narrow strip of land, a perfect
_cul-de-sac_ in the hills, hemmed in by a number of turbulent
robber-tribes, who are under no control, and acknowledge no
authority. In ordinary times its acquisition would add to the
serious difficulties of our position. In times of trouble or
disturbance on the border, its possession would prove a positive
source of weakness, a dead weight upon our free action. In it we
should run the risk of being hemmed in by our foes in the
overhanging hills around, of being cut off from our communications
with the garrison of Kohat, by the Orakzais on the one side, by the
Waziris on the other. These are the disadvantages of the step. In
return what advantages should we derive? Not one. With Kurram in our
possession we certainly could not flank either the Khyber or the
Goleri Pass, because between it and the one, intervenes the
impassable snowy range of Sufed Koh; and between it and the other,
intervenes the vast routeless hilly tract of the Waziris. From
Kurram we could neither command Kabul nor Ghazni, because the route
to either is by a several days' march, over stupendous hills and
tortuous defiles, in comparison with which the historical Khyber and
Bolan Passes, or even the less widely-known Goleri Pass, are as
king's highways."

This, I think, is sufficient to dispose of the Kurram Valley. If the old frontier has been rendered "invulnerable," it is not the acquisition of the Kurram Valley which has made it so. There remains the Peshin Valley. This valley is an open tract of country lying almost midway on the line of march between Quetta and Kandahar, but nearer to the former than the latter. Three easy marches from Quetta suffice to place a traveller in the centre of it. It cannot accurately be described as an extension of our frontier, because it is dissevered from it by more than two hundred miles of difficult country. Between the valley and British territory, the lands of the Khan of Khelat are interposed in one direction, and numerous robber-tribes--Kakers, Murrees, Bhoogtees--in another. Until the valley is securely linked to the Indus by a railway from Sukkur to the Bolan Pass--a costly work, which could not be executed in less than seven years--it will be impossible to quarter more than a few thousand men in it--and these for six months of the year will be as completely detached from their base of supply and reinforcement in India, as if a tract of empty space ran between them. So far from ensuring any increased security to India by our premature occupation of this valley, we have only enhanced the chances of a hostile collision with the rulers and people of Afghanistan. We were already in military occupation of Quetta, and until easy and rapid communication had been established between Quetta and the Indus, nothing was to be gained by a yet further advance from our base. As a barrier against Russia this frontier is without meaning, and no better proof of this fact could be adduced than Sir Henry Rawlinson's commentary upon its merits in the Article on the "Results of the Afghan War" which recently appeared in the _Nineteenth Century_:--

"The Afghan settlement is a very good settlement as far as it goes,
but it is not immaculate--_it is not complete_. To yield us its full
measure of defence, the Treaty must be supplemented by all
legitimate precautions and supports. _Persia must be detached from
Russia coûte que coûte._ Russia herself must not be left in any
uncertainty as to our intentions. She must be made to understand ...
_that she will not be permitted unopposed to establish herself in
strength ... even at Abiverd_, nor to commence intrigues against the
British power in India. She might indeed be warned that, if
necessary, we were prepared in self-defence to support the
Turcomans--with whom she has no legitimate quarrel--with arms or
money, or even to turn the tables on her by encouraging the efforts
of the Uzbegs to recover their liberty.... _It would be almost
fatuity at such a moment to withdraw our garrison from Candahar...._
Yacub Khan must be made to see that it is as much for his interest
as our own to hold an efficient body of troops in such a position
that, on the approach of danger ... _they might, with military
alacrity, occupy Herat as an auxiliary garrison_."

And what is implied in detaching Persia from Russia he explains in another part of his Essay.

"If Russia, as there is strong reason to believe, is now pushing on
to Merv or Sarakhs ... with the ultimate hope of occupying Herat,
then it might very possibly be a sound policy to extend to Persia
the provisions of the Asia Minor Protectorate, or even to support
her actively in vindicating her rights upon the frontier of
Khorassán."

From all which it would appear that our "Scientific Frontier" is simply good for nothing until it has been supplemented by an offensive and defensive alliance with the barbarian enemies of Russia all over the world. In order to ensure the safety of India, we must protect not only our own "Scientific Frontier," but we must guarantee the Sultan all his Asiatic possessions; we must be ready at any moment to fight for the "integrity and independence" of Persia; we must be prepared to march our troops to Herat, and to show a front against the Russians on the Oxus; we must provide the Tekeh-Turcomans with arms and money, and assist the Uzbegs in their attempts to recover their liberty. Such are the "legitimate precautions and supports" which are requisite to render the new frontier immaculate and complete. But if with a "Scientific Frontier" we remain liable to such tremendous demands as these, it passes imagination to conjecture in what respect we could have been worse off when our frontier was "haphazard."

The Circumstances of the Peace.

I shall next endeavour to show the circumstances which compelled the Indian Government to acquiesce in a peace which thus left the avowed object of the war unfulfilled. The preparations for the invasion of Afghanistan were on a scale corresponding to the magnitude of the enterprise as explained by the "official" correspondent of the _Times_. Troops were set in motion for the North-West frontier from garrisons in the extreme south of India. Men were sent from England to man heavy gun batteries. In addition to the troops under General Roberts, no less than three columns were formed to invade Afghanistan viâ Sukkur and the Bolan, and the same number to advance through the Khyber. The force which marched to Kandahar was supplied with four heavy gun batteries, and a fifth was sent up subsequently, although, except upon the supposition that permanent entrenched camps were to be formed in Afghanistan, these heavy guns were simply an encumbrance and a source of danger. But the campaign had barely commenced before the Government became aware that it had utterly miscalculated its cost and difficulty. It is easy enough for an army to enter Afghanistan; it is next to impossible for it to subsist when it has got there. It is easy enough to scatter the Afghans when collected in battle array; it is next to impossible to subjugate them because they never are _so_ collected. From these causes our raid into Afghanistan was but little removed from an ignominious failure. If we had not made peace we should have been compelled to evacuate the country from the enormous costliness of retaining troops in it. Under such circumstances, a peace was needed too urgently to allow the Government to stand out for any extraordinary concessions. They took what they could get, which proved to be, as we have seen, the right to place garrisons in the two valleys of Kurram and Peshin. But having gone to war in search of a "Scientific Frontier," no alternative was left to them except to frankly confess that they had not found it; or to affirm that these two valleys constituted it.

We come now to the causes of our failure. These are all-important, and ought to dissipate for ever the fear of an invasion of India by Russia or any other Power. The plan of the campaign required that Afghanistan should be invaded from three points; but the most important operation was understood to be the advance of General Stewart upon Kandahar. As soon as hostilities appeared inevitable, a small force under General Biddulph had been sent forward to secure Quetta against a sudden attack. General Stewart followed later on, and the two columns numbered upon paper about 20,000 men, with 60 guns. Meanwhile, a third column was ordered to assemble at Sukkur in support, and placed under the command of General Primrose. These extensive preparations were supposed to indicate the determination of the Indian Government to push on as far as Herat. The distance which had to be traversed between Sukkur and Kandahar is, roughly speaking, about four hundred miles, but the country presents extraordinary difficulties. From Sukkur to Jacobabad extends a level tract which, during the rains, is flooded to a depth of seven feet. Between Jacobabad and Dadur--a town situated at the entrance of the Bolan Pass--extends the Sinde desert. Any large force marching across this desert would have to take with them, not only food and forage, but water, for only at intervals of fifteen or twenty miles is the parched and barren soil pierced by a few brackish springs, which just suffice for the needs of the hamlets which have sprung up around them. For six months of the year this desert is literally impassable. A hot wind sweeps across it, which is fatal to man and beast. Only once did the Indian Government venture to send troops across it after this "blast of death" (as the natives call it) had begun to blow. This was in the last Afghan war. Some hundreds of native troops were sent as an escort in charge of supplies, and in four days one hundred Sepoys perished, three hundred camp followers, and (I think) nine officers out of fourteen. Beyond Dadur is the Bolan Pass. This Pass is about eighty miles in length; regular road there is none; what purports to be a road is merely the bed of a stream, which, during the rainy weather, is filled from bank to bank with a volume of rushing water. Neither food nor forage is obtainable in the Pass, and even the camels, when starting from Dadur, had to carry a seven days' supply of food for themselves. Between Quetta and Kandahar the country is open, but neither is food procurable for a large force, nor forage for the horses and camels. From first to last General Stewart's troops were almost wholly fed from India. The winter, luckily, was one of unprecedented mildness. But for this, in place of a march upon Kandahar, a terrible catastrophe could hardly have been averted. In ordinary seasons the snows fall heavily in and around Quetta early in November, and the cold is intense. The Bolan Pass is swept from end to end by hurricanes of wind and rain and snow. At the very time when these storms usually occur we had a dozen regiments and batteries straggling along the whole length of the Bolan Pass. Last year, however, there was neither snow nor hurricane, and our troops got through the Pass in safety. There was no opposition offered to our advance on Kandahar, but, from the want of food and the hardships which had to be endured, no less than twenty thousand camels perished upon the march. This mortality decided the campaign. When General Stewart reached Kandahar the situation was as follows:--The magazines at Quetta were nearly empty. Four months' food was collected at Sukkur, but awaited carriage for its transport to Quetta. The third column under General Primrose was assembling on the Indus, and needed ten thousand camels to enable it to advance. To supply all these wants there were at Sukkur about 1600 camels. In order to lessen the pressure on the Commissariat, General Stewart divided his forces, despatching one column to hunt for supplies in the direction of Giriskh, and sending another with the same object to Khelat-i-Ghilzie. These movements caused the death from cold and hunger of a large additional number of camels, and demonstrated that there was not food in that part of Afghanistan sufficient for a force so large as that collected at Kandahar. Sinde, meanwhile, had been swept so bare of camels that it was impossible to collect a sufficient number for the carriage of food to Quetta before the hot weather had set in, and the march across the desert was barred by "the blast of death." Immediate action was necessary if General Stewart's troops were not to starve; and eight thousand men returned to India, reducing the garrison left at Kandahar to four thousand. This number, it was trusted, the Commissariat would be able to feed during the hot weather. But even this small force was so scantily supplied with carriage that it could not have moved, in a body, for fifty miles in any direction. It was, so to speak, nailed to the spot on which it was encamped. This want of food, far more than the physical difficulties of the country, is and always will be the insuperable obstacle to carrying on extensive military operations in Afghanistan. The people obtain no more from the soil than just suffices for their own wants; and for days together an invading army has to pass over huge wastes with hardly a trace of human habitation, and consequently destitute of food.

Not a little amusing was the revulsion of feeling caused throughout India by the lame and impotent conclusion of the advance on Kandahar. It was a demonstration of the impossibility of an invasion which convinced those who were most reluctant to be convinced. If when we had all India from which to draw our supplies, and with no enemy to oppose us, our utmost efforts had merely sufficed to place four thousand men in Kandahar, and leave them there, isolated and defenceless, it was chimerical to suppose that the Russians could march for double that distance an army capable of attempting the conquest of India. "Kandahar," writes a military correspondent to the _Pioneer_--the official journal of India--"is acknowledged to be a mistake, and it is hoped that a British army will never again be dispatched in that direction; it is a mere waste of men, money, and means, and an unsuitable line for either attack or defence."

And the _Pioneer_, the very purpose of whose existence is to preach the infallibility of the Indian Government, thus endorses the remarks of its correspondent: "The theories about Kandahar are by this time exploded; indeed, there are many critics who have refused to adopt them from the very beginning; believing against General Hamley, that the main road into Afghanistan, whether we march as defenders of the Kabul Ameer or as avengers, must lie past Peshawur and Jelalabad."

The failure on the Kandahar side placed the Indian Government in an extremely difficult position. An advance on Herat was plainly out of the question; even one on Ghuznee was beyond the power of General Stewart and his troops. Elsewhere the aspect of affairs was hardly less cheering. The expedition in the Kurram Valley had resulted in the somewhat ignominious retreat out of Khost. We had about 15,000 men holding the line from the Khyber to Jelalabad; but in effecting this, 14,000 camels had perished, and several of the regiments had been more than decimated from sickness and exposure. We had not subjugated a rood of territory on which our troops were not actually encamped. The main strength of the Ameer's army was untouched, while all along our Trans-Indus frontier the hill tribes were in a state of dangerous unrest. The hot weather was coming on apace, when cholera and typhoid fever would be added to the number of our enemies. Thirty thousand troops had been set in motion, the garrisons in the interior of India dangerously weakened; three millions of money expended; and this was all that had been achieved. If now Yakoub Khan refused to come to terms, what was to be done? General Brown might be ordered to force his way from Jelalabad to Kabul, but what was he to do when he got there? The cost in money would be certainly heavy--the cost in men, not improbably, heavy also. And if, on our arrival at his capital, Yakoub Khan retired to either Balkh or Herat, we were powerless to follow him. Yakoub Khan, in fact, had the game in his hands. We had shot our bolt and failed. He had simply to decline to make peace, and keep out of our reach. We should then have been compelled either to evacuate the country, or to occupy it with the certainty that a little later on we should be compelled to withdraw, when the drain on the finances of India became too heavy to endure. Sir Henry Rawlinson rightly says, that a very small force can march from one end of Afghanistan to another; but a very large force is requisite permanently to hold it. The tribal divisions which hinder unity of resistance hinder also the achievement of any decisive victory. Each tribe is an independent centre of life, which requires a separate operation for its extinction.

Such was the dilemma in which the Government found themselves involved. It was almost equally disastrous either to withdraw or to advance. If the troops were withdrawn, they would return burdened with the ignominy of failure. If they advanced, it would be into a tangle of military and political embarrassments, the issue of which it was impossible to foresee. There was only one way of escape possible, and that was to relinquish the ambitious projects from which the war originated, and acquiesce in any settlement which the adversary would agree to. The result was the Treaty with Yakoub Khan--a Treaty which I have no hesitation in saying has placed in peril the existence of our Indian Empire.

It is, indeed, impossible to account for the infatuation or the obstinacy which caused the Indian Government to stipulate for the reception of an undefended British Envoy at the Court of a prince in the position of Yakoub Khan. It would have been so easy to have introduced a clause in the Treaty, to the effect that as soon as Yakoub Khan's authority was firmly established an English Envoy should be accredited to Kabul. This would have saved the political consistency of the Government without exposing the Indian Empire to the tremendous strain and peril of a second Afghan expedition. There was absolutely nothing to be gained, either in India or England, by immediately forcing an English Envoy on the luckless Yakoub; while it enormously enhanced the difficulties with which he had to cope. Nevertheless, in the face of historic precedents, in defiance of multiplied warnings, Lord Lytton deliberately resolved to reproduce, for the edification of Asia, the tragedy of Shah Soojah and Sir William Nacnaghten, the only difference being that on this occasion the principal parts were played by Yakoub Khan and Major Cavagnari. The fact is that from first to last in this bad business the chief agents were moving in a world of their own imagining. They appear to have persuaded themselves that they had but to refuse to _see_ facts, and the facts would vanish. They had but to publish in the _Times_ that Lord Lytton was a "Viceroy specially gifted," and forthwith he would become what he was described to be. They had but to assert that the Afghans had no objection to the presence of a British Envoy at Kabul, and immediately their objections would disappear. The mischief is done now past recall. Hardly even in 1857 was our Indian Empire in a position of greater peril than it is now. The persistent opposition between official acts and official language which has been the distinguishing characteristic of Lord Lytton's administration has created an universal disbelief in the sincerity of our speech and the equity of our intentions. In the circle which surrounds the Viceroy, it seems, indeed, to have become an accepted maxim that it is a matter of indifference whether or not the natives are heartily loyal to our rule. And Sir Alexander Arbuthnot, in his Minute on the Repeal of the Cotton Duties, notes the fact as "a grave political danger." It is a maxim which could not have been formulated except by the agents of a Government who felt that they had forfeited, past hope of recovery, the confidence of those they were set to rule over. Of the alienation itself there can be no question. The loyalty of the native has, probably, never been at a lower ebb since 1857. And any reverse in Afghanistan might kindle a flame that would spread from one end of India to the other.

But there is nothing to be gained by anticipating greater difficulties than already beset us. I will assume that no additional complications occur--that General Roberts has succeeded without much difficulty in the occupation of Kabul--that General Stewart has possession of Kandahar, and that all we have to determine is what to do with Afghanistan now we have got it. There are but three courses of conduct possible--withdrawal from the country altogether, a return to the arrangements formulated in the Treaty of Gundamuck, or annexation. I will consider the last first.

Annexation.

Nobody, so far as I know, desires to annex Afghanistan. But there are, I apprehend, but few who are aware of what is involved in "the annexation of Afghanistan," and the danger is that we may drift almost unwillingly into annexation, to discover the full consequences only when too late. Everybody is agreed that India cannot defray the costs. This is set down by the supporters of Government at a sum of five millions annually. I believe it would be much larger; but we will assume that five millions is a correct estimate. By no possibility could we screw this additional sum from the people of India. Already the expenses of the administration increase at a far quicker rate than the revenues which have to meet them. The costs of governing Afghanistan, therefore, would have to be defrayed from the English Exchequer. But assuming this to be arranged, the pecuniary difficulty is the smallest which has to be encountered. To garrison the interior and frontier of Afghanistan we should require not less than forty thousand men--one-half of whom would have to be English soldiers. For, until the interior of Afghanistan is completely opened out by roads which can be traversed throughout the year, the garrisons holding the country would have to be sufficiently strong to be independent of reserves and supports during the winter. And if we attempted to hold Balkh and Herat, twenty thousand English soldiers would not suffice. Now where are these English soldiers to come from? An addition of at least forty thousand men to our regular army would be required in order to supply them. But the English part of our Afghanistan garrison does not present so insuperable a difficulty as the native. It would not be safe, at least for many years, to organize our native garrison from the Afghans themselves. The regiments would have to be recruited in India specially for this service--but out of what races? The natives of the Southern parts of India have not the physique capable of enduring the severities of an Afghanistan winter. The Sikhs or Hindoos of Upper India would certainly not enlist in a service which carried them so far from their homes into the midst of an alien people and an alien faith. The only recruits we should obtain in large numbers would be Muhammadans. The danger, then, is obvious. In India the fierce fanaticism of the Moslem creed is mitigated by its contact with the milder tenets of Hindooism; but remove an Indian Moslem to Afghanistan, and he would very soon become inspired by the religious zeal of his co-religionists around him. We should be exposed to the risk, perpetually, of our native garrison combining with the people of the country to expel the infidel intruders from the land, and restore the supremacy of the Prophet. But even these dangers dwindle into insignificance when we contemplate the main result of an annexation of Afghanistan. That result would be that the hills and deserts of Afghanistan would no longer extend between the Russian Power and our own. We should have given to Russia the power to interfere directly in the internal concerns of India.

I have never supposed Russia to have any sinister designs upon India. After much reading I have failed to discover any proof of such designs. Those who suspect Russia obtain their evidence by a very simple process. They reject as incredible the objects assigned by the Russian Government as guiding its policy, and substitute their own fixed preconception in place of them. I believe that neither Russia nor any other Power would accept of India as a free gift. I cannot imagine a rational statesman coveting for his country so burdensome and unprofitable a responsibility. But that a Russian Government should ever attempt the invasion and conquest of India is to me beyond the power of belief. What Mr. Cobden wrote in 1835 appears to me as convincing at this day as it was then.

"China," he wrote, "affords the best answer to those who argue that
Russia meditates hostile views towards our Indian possessions. China
is separated from Russia by an imaginary boundary only; and that
country is universally supposed to contain a vast deposit of riches
well worthy of the spoiler's notice. Besides, it has not enjoyed the
'_benefit_' of being civilized by English or other Christian
conquerors--an additional reason for expecting to find a wealthy
Pagan community, waiting, like unwrought mines, the labours of some
Russian Warren Hastings. Why, then, does not the Czar invade the
Chinese Empire, which is his next neighbour, and contains an
unravaged soil, rather than contemplate, as the alarmist writers and
speakers predict he does, marching three thousand miles over regions
of burning deserts and ranges of snowy mountains to Hindostan, where
he would find that Clive and Wellesley had preceded him?"

Apart, however, from the question of motives, it is not possible to march an army from Herat to the Indus. And we must always bear in mind that even if the Russian army reached the Indus, their real work, instead of being over, would only then commence. With that vast extent of hill and desert behind them they would have before them some sixty thousand British troops in an entrenched position. Even a victory would leave the invader begirt about with dangers and difficulty; a defeat would be his utter annihilation. Not a soldier of the army of invasion would return to tell the tale. It is impossible to divine where or how Russia could raise the money for so gigantic an enterprise; and if the money was forthcoming it is not credible that any Government should fling it away on such a hopeless undertaking. In assuming that Russia will refrain from an attack upon India, there is no need to credit either the Government or the people with more than that ordinary common sense which hinders men and nations from attempting to achieve the impossible.

The danger to India arises not from the existence of any Russian designs against our Empire, but from the belief that such exist. This belief will, so to speak, hybernate for a season; then all at once we find it in full activity, and creating a panic in every heart of which it takes possession. These are the critical moments for the well-being and security of our Indian Empire. In such a period of panic we rushed into the disastrous war in Afghanistan in 1838. Under the influence of like feelings we involved ourselves in the inglorious raid the first act of which has just terminated. On both occasions we have been guilty of assailing a Prince whose only desire was to form an intimate alliance with us. On both occasions we have carried fire and sword among a people with whom we frankly avowed that we had no assignable cause of quarrel. But so long as Afghanistan extended between us and the Russian dominions in Asia it was physically impossible to declare war against Russia. In our unreasoning panic we fell upon the Ameer and his people, because there was no one else to attack. But if we make the Hindoo Khosh our military frontier, then Russia, by assembling a few thousand men upon the Oxus, can, whenever she pleases, agitate India from one end to the other. She will not need to attack. The menace will be sufficient. For we must remember that the undisputed supremacy of British rule in India depends, in the main, upon two conditions, both of which are destroyed if we annex Afghanistan. The one is, that no heavier burden be laid upon the people than they are willing to bear; and the other, the absence of any hope of deliverance. The cost of maintaining our supremacy in Afghanistan _will_ make the burden of our rule utterly intolerable alike to our native soldiers and our civil population; the assembling of a Russian army on the frontiers of Afghanistan will provide the hope of deliverance. The hazards and uncertainties of the situation would keep the natives in a state of perpetual unrest. The ambitious and the disaffected would engage in intrigue and conspiracy; trade would languish; the internal development of the country be abruptly arrested; and the Empire would assuredly be wrested from our hands on the occasion of the first European war in which we became involved.

The Treaty of Gundamuck.

Annexation being impossible, is it wise, or is it practicable, to return to the provisions of the Treaty of Gundamuck? It is neither wise nor possible, for the simple reason that this Treaty was based upon a fiction. It was grounded upon the utterly false assumption that there existed in Afghanistan a central authority, acknowledged as legitimate by all the people of Afghanistan, with whom we could establish permanent diplomatic relations. There is no such authority. Instances have been adduced of attacks made upon European Embassies in other Oriental countries, and the argument has been put forward, that as, notwithstanding such outbreaks, diplomatic relations have been maintained with Turkey and Persia, there is no reason to conclude from the fate of Major Cavagnari that they are impossible in Afghanistan. The cases are not parallel. The Ameer of Kabul has no such authority in his capital or throughout his dominions as the Sultan or the Shah. It is possible, though not very probable, that a British Envoy might reside in Kabul without being murdered, but the measure of his utility would depend upon the fluctuating fortunes of the Ameer to whom he was accredited. The only way to obviate this would be to place a force at the disposal of the Envoy, sufficient to put down all insurrectionary movements against the Ameer. But if we undertook this duty, we should become responsible for the character of the civil administration. We could not punish the victims of a cruel or rapacious Ameer, without at the same time cutting off at their source the cruelty and rapacity, by the deposition of an unworthy ruler. And thus, in a very brief time, we should find that virtually we had annexed the country. Facts are stubborn things, and it is worse than useless to fight against them. Those who contend that the murder of Major Cavagnari ought not to be allowed to overturn what they term the "settled policy" of the Ministry, are bound to show in what way this "settled policy" can be carried out. How do they propose to obtain an Ameer towards whom all the sections of the Afghans shall practise a loyal obedience? And if no such Ameer can be obtained, with whom or with what are we to establish diplomatic relations?

The Policy of Withdrawal.

There remains the policy of withdrawal. The surest barrier against foreign aggression in India is to be obtained in the contentment and prosperity of the people. A people thus situated are prompt to repel invasion, and secret intrigue is deprived of the conditions essential to its success. But in order that the people of India should be prosperous and contented, it is absolutely necessary that the financial burdens they have to carry--and especially the military charges--should not be enhanced. It is not possible to advance our military frontier--even to the extent of the (so-called) "Scientific Frontier"--without an enormous enhancement of our military expenditure. And all military expenditure is unprofitable, in the sense that it takes so much from the tax-payer and brings him no material equivalent. Consequently, whatever else this forward policy accomplishes, it cannot fail to impoverish the people and stimulate their discontent. Moreover, the incidents of the war have demonstrated that an invasion of India from Central Asia is physically impossible. We started from the Indus, firmly resolved to march to Herat, if necessary; but when we had reached Kandahar, we found it impossible to advance further. It would be equally impossible for a Russian army to march from Herat to the Indus. There is, therefore, no such reason for a change of frontier as was alleged in justification of the war.

In all probability there is not even a Tory in England who does not in his heart approve of a policy of withdrawal; but there are, he would say, difficulties in the way. There are. After all the glowing eulogies they have pronounced upon themselves, it will not be pleasant or easy for Ministers to transfer these eulogies to their opponents. It will be extremely disagreeable for a "specially gifted Viceroy" to have to confess that his chiefest gift was a gigantic capacity for blundering. But if India is to be preserved to the nation, there is no escape from this unpleasant alternative. Either Ministers must acknowledge an error that is now patent to all the world, or India must be saddled with the heavy costs and the incalculable risks of an annexation of Afghanistan. These risks, it must be remembered, are not transitory, but enduring; and if we accept them, we must be prepared for a doom of absolute effacement in the politics of Europe. The argument which will be urged against withdrawing from Afghanistan is, of course, the old familiar one--the loss of prestige. This is an argument impossible to refute because the exact worth of prestige is an unknown quantity, as to which no two people are agreed. But whatever be its value, to rush upon ruin and destruction in order to preserve our prestige is an act of insanity. It is as if a man should commit suicide in order to preserve his reputation for courage. When we retired from Afghanistan in 1842, we frankly confessed the mistake we had committed, and I am not aware that any evil resulted from the confession. The wrongs that we had done left behind them a legacy of evil, but not the confession of those wrongs. And so it is now. The frontier policy of Lord Lytton has ruined our reputation for justice, truthfulness, and generosity, and the stain of that policy must cling to us for ever. We shall not conceal or efface it by laying a crushing burden upon our native subjects and upon future generations of Englishmen, in order to evade the humiliation of a confession. On the contrary, we make what reparation is still in our power when, in the interests of both, we refuse to annex Afghanistan.

ROBERT D. OSBORN,
_Lieutenant-Colonel_.

CRITICAL IDEALISM IN FRANCE.

_La Science positive et la Métaphysique._ Par LOUIS LIARD,
Professeur à la Faculté des Lettres de Bordeaux. (Ouvrage couronné
par l'Institut de France.) Paris, 1879.

For some years past there has been observable in France, outside of and in opposition to Positivism, a growing movement in favour of idealism in general, and of the critical idealism of Kant in particular. This philosophy, which had previously found very few adherents in our country, has now begun to make its way into our teaching and our Universities. Berkeley and Kant have been the subjects of special works, and an attempt has been made to translate and reproduce their ideas by harmonizing them with the principal doctrines of spiritualism. We have here a movement full of promise and well deserving of attention.[1] Among the different productions affording some notion of this philosophical tendency, we make choice--as being both the most recent and the most complete--of a remarkable work, distinguished and crowned by the French Institute, _Positive Science and Metaphysic_, by a young and learned professor of Bordeaux, M. Louis Liard.

To begin with, M. Liard's work is well composed, its plan being simple, severe, and lucid. It divides itself into three parts. The first is devoted to determining the nature and limits of positive sciences--that is, of the sciences properly so called--and to showing that they cannot pretend to abolish or replace metaphysics. In this portion of his book the author discusses the three forms of the experimental philosophy of our day, namely--Positivism, the philosophy of association, and that of evolution.

In the second part, the author examines what he calls Criticism--that is to say, the philosophy of Kant. The preceding discussion having demonstrated that the human mind is incapable of departing from certain forms, certain laws, without which experience itself would be impossible,--the author now resolves these into five fundamentals: space, time, substance, cause, the Absolute. But are these forms or laws of the mind the laws of things as well? Have they an objective authority? We know that metaphysics hang upon the solution of this question. We know, too, what is the solution given by Kant to this great problem. In recognizing the necessary existence of these forms as laws of the mind he disputes their external reality; hence he only admits critical, not real and dogmatic metaphysic. Now, as regards this point the author of the book under our notice, instead of dissenting from Criticism as he had done from Positivism, appears on the contrary to accept it by its own name, and to admire and endorse its conclusions. He seems to grant or even to affirm that if Positivism is wrong, Criticism is right, and that, strictly speaking, metaphysic is not a science.

And yet if metaphysic were not a science in the strict sense of the word--that is to say, in the sense of objective sciences--would it follow that it was nothing, or nothing more than criticism itself? By no means: our author does not stop at that apparent solution; metaphysic according to him has an object that criticism has not reached, has not shaken; metaphysic has its own proper function, in which criticism can never take its place. Only instead of founding it on the object, we must found it on the subject. The mind must turn away from the external world and re-enter itself. It is there that, without need of forms or categories of which criticism has demonstrated the fallacy, the subject grasps itself not only in its phenomena but in its being, and determines itself in conformity to an end. This end is goodness: and this is the only notion we can form to ourselves of the Absolute. Thus, metaphysic is not the science of the object, but that of the subject; or if the name of science be still withheld, it is at least the study of the subject, and it is founded on and completed by morality. Thus, the author ends by an evolution very similar to that of Kant, but with certain differences which it will be our part to point out.

These constitute the three parts of the work. We will now take them up in succession.