adventurer named Arcangeli, who was formerly a cook and who four years before had been sent to prison as a thief. This man had come to Trieste on foot and without luggage and was also awaiting a chance to return to Italy. The two men became companions at table and the Italian volunteered to aid Winckelmann in finding a ship. During the week of waiting the two were constantly thrown together at table, and Winckelmann asked the Italian to visit him in his room, and they also took walks together. It seems strange that such an intimacy could have grown up between scholar and peasant; but Winckelmann wanted to remain incognito and was glad to while away the tedium of the days that passed in talking his beloved Italian, and Arcangeli pressed the acquaintance for his own purpose. With characteristic frankness Winckelmann had shown. him the medallions which he had brought from Vienna. The avarice of the Italian was at last aroused by these paltry souvenirs. The last morning while Winckelmann, without coat, cravat or wig, was seated at his table writing a letter, Arcangeli entered his room and the two spent a half hour walking up and down conversing. Winckelmann invited his companion to visit him in Rome and promised he would then disclose to him his identity and show him the palace in which he lived. His mysterious hints as to who he was aroused the suspicions of the Italian, who concluded that he was either a Jew or a Lutheran or perhaps a spy. After returning to his own room, he put a knife into his pocket and again entered Winckelmann's chamber on the plea of recovering his handkerchief. He then asked him again if he would show the medallions at the dinner table and, on Winckelmann's refusing once more, asked him why he was so reticent about his identity. Winckelmann, offended at his impertinence, did not answer, but reseated himself and began to write. Then Arcangeli quickly threw a noose over his head, dragged

him to the ground and stabbed him five times in the chest and stomach. A servant, aroused by the uproar, rushed in and found the Italian over the prostrate body of Winckelmann, who was groaning deeply. The murderer forthwith ran hatless out into the street. Winckelmann lived for six hours, during which he dictated his will and received the last offices of the Church. In his traveling chest were found his favorite authors-Homer, Plautus and Martial. He was buried in the plot of a brotherhood in the churchyard of the cathedral of San Giusti. Later, when his remains were crowded by new arrivals, his bones were cast into the common charnel house. It is pleasing to know that the cowardly assassin was soon caught on the Italian frontier and was brought back to Trieste and tried, and six weeks later, on the same day and at the same hour in which he committed the murder and before the window of the hotel where it had occurred, suffered the punishment of Ixion.

Thus Winckelmann departed from life as poor as he had entered it. But behind him lay his brief, though glorious, life of struggle and service. A more fearful end can scarcely be imagined. The gods, however, were kind to him, for they brought him death near the border of the two countries to which he, half German, half Italian belonged. He was only fifty-one years old and therefore still in the prime of vigor. In the beautiful words of Goethe "he had the advantage of figuring in the memory of posterity as one eternally able and strong; for the image in which one leaves the world is that in which one moves among the shadows." Goethe, then a lad of nineteen, just leaving the University of Leipsic for Strasburg, was eagerly awaiting the promised opportunity of meeting the great Hellenist, when he received the tidings of his death. In a letter which he wrote years after in Rome (1786), in speaking of the emotion which he felt on reading some of the cor

respondence of Winckelmann which had come into his possession, he said: "How bravely and diligently did he not work his way through all difficulties; and what good does it not do me-the remembrance of such a man in such a place." Walter Pater calls it a calamity that the expected meeting of these two never took place, for thereby German literary history lost a famous friendship. Though a bust of Winckelmann was set up in the Roman Pantheon only four years after his death, no monument marked the place of his passing until fifty years had gone by, when a beautiful statue was erected in the square of Trieste. It was almost a century before his native Stendal set up a monument to its greatest citizen. In 1805 Goethe wrote his Winckelmann und sein Jahrhundert, the title of which rightly appraises the European position of this famous scholar; in 1865-72, a full century after his death, Karl Justi gave to the world the first accurate account of Winckelmann's short life. In these latter years he has received the full meed of honor which his abilities and influence have merited.

WALTER WOODBURN HYDE.
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA.

CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS.

THE MECHANICAL EXPLANATION OF RELIGION.

There has been a common opinion in the past that what, in a broad sense, is known in philosophy as mechanical explanation— that is, explanation by antecedent cause,—is absolutely opposed to teleological explanation. According to this view, if some theory of a mechanical form is true, any teleological theory (concerning the same explicandum) must be false, and vice versa. This opinion is even still not uncommon, notwithstanding the philosophy of Leibniz and Kant's third critique. To me the contrary view appears to be correct, and the recognition of its truth to be very important, especially in the treatment of religious phenomena. A detailed argument in support of this contrary view has already appeared in this journal from the pen of its editor, Dr. Carus. In the present article I propose to offer an analysis of the situation, from a somewhat different standpoint, in further support of this theory.

Since the time of Fichte, the dominant school of speculative thought has tended toward explanation that is teleological. With regard to mechanical explanation two attitudes have been adopted. It has been said, on the one hand, that mechanical explanation, accurately carried out, is true "so far as it goes," but that it is not the whole truth, and that in particular, it must be supplemented by teleological explanation. On the other hand, the position that mechanical explanation is no explanation seems to have been held not infrequently. Advocates of this view would probably admit that to many physical phenomena no teleological explanation can reasonably be assigned; and, in so far as they held that explanation 1 Vol. XXIII, No. 2.

must be either mechanical or teleological, they would consequently have to admit that of such physical phenomena a mechanical explanation is the alternative to no explanation at all. They would be disinclined, nevertheless, to accept such explanation. And they would resent any attempt to explain mechanically something with regard to which they believed themselves possessed of a teleological explanation. This happens most frequently concerning things that are judged to be valuable, and perhaps most conspicuously in connection with religion.

Even those who admit that mechanical explanation is true “so far as it goes" often appear to share this resentment toward attempts to treat religion from the mechanical point of view. This is not because such attempts have always issued in explanations which were mechanically inadequate, even if this be true. Any thinker, even though he were to believe in the universality of mechanical explanation, would object to such explanation in so far as it was inaccurate. He might resent any general acceptance of the proposition that water under normal pressure boils at 211° F. And he might be willing to admit that the mechanical explanation of religion which sees its origin in the lust of priests and the tyranny of kings cannot be accepted as remotely probable. This, however, is not the attitude of the teleologist. He says, in effect, that such a phenomenon as religion, being of vital importance to man, must be explained by its function, not by its cause; and that its significance is destroyed by any theory which is in essence mechanical. He objects to "the Enlightenment" treatment of religion, not because it was inaccurate in detail, but because it was wrong in its form. And his position. seems at first sight to be borne out by modern philosophical speculation.

What is usually regarded as the idealistic attitude toward mechanical explanation, when this is offered as ultimate philosophical hypothesis, seems now established. We obviously cannot explain the whole of existence by something, as it were, antecedent to it. The alternative is for mechanical theory to explain part of the whole by an antecedent and "ultimate" part. The objection which then finally emerges is that the explanatory reality,-whatever form it assumes,―remains mechanically inexplicable. Explanation has been obtained perhaps even at the cost of creating a new explicandum.

It seems to be sometimes assumed that the only conclusion to be drawn from this position is that philosophical explanation must