We would call the special attention of our readers to
an article discussing the trial of the French Anarchists at Lyons. Our contributor was present during the whole proceedings, and his remarks will be found curiously instructive as to the social danger in France. It is impossible to doubt that Nihilism, as it is called here, has become in France a kind of Faith, wholly independent of reason, and has clutched men who would seem to be armoured against it both by education and by character. That phenomenon has been repeatedly witnessed in Asia, Sufeeism, for example, which is Nihilism unapplied to poli- tics, having repeatedly made converts of the best Persians and Indians—Akbar, it is difficult to doubt, was one, as were most of the Abbaside Khalifs—but it is new in the West. An educated and self-devoted European like M. Gauthier, who believes that there neither is nor ought to be any religion, any morality, any Government, or any law, is an evidence of possibilities in the human mind which have scarcely yet been studied. If the sect spread, we scarcely see how the great prin- ciple of religions tolerance could in such a case be enforced. The world would fall into a not unjustified panic.
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