APPENDIX.

NOTE TO PAGE 68.

Movements of Thought in the English-American People. THE group of names associated with William Smith's early years naturally suggests a glance at the principal intellectual forces in the English-speaking world of that time. Some survey of these forces is desirable for a just appreciation of the course taken by his thought. As an appropriate background to his intellectual history, and one which if occurring in the midst of the narrative might be felt as an interruption, — a brief and imperfect survey of this field is here ventured. It relates mainly to what may be called the mid-period of this century; subsequent to the time of its early Evangelicalism, of Scott and Byron and the Lake poets, and anterior to these later years in which the names of Darwin and Spencer, Matthew Arnold and George Eliot, hold prominence. It may be seen in "Thorndale" and "Gravenhurst" how closely William Smith's later writings are related to the philosophy of Evolution, which at present fills so large a place. But to summarize even briefly the thought and thinkers of our own generation is beyond the scope of this volume. The conspicuous factors of the present situation are glanced at in its later chapters; and we are still so near to the days of Mill and Maurice and their contemporaries that in describing them we are largely characterizing our own time.

We have to consider, first, an immense extension of

knowledge in the direction of the physical sciences. The influence of this class of studies upon the higher problems of man and society has been various and vast. It has made great addition to the store of facts with which the philosopher or theologian must reckon. Physical science, too, has deeply affected the general movement of the human mind, by the circumstance that all the knowledge which it acquires has the distinction of being verifiable. It affirms no discovery as certain until it can be submitted to tests which are beyond question, tests ultimately based on the physical senses. This solid, impregnable character of physical science is impressive and captivating to the mind; and, taken in connection with the immense extent of its recent acquisitions, it fosters the habit of expecting and insisting on the same note of certitude in all beliefs that are to be regarded as valuable. Prove, or abandon," is its attitude. Around physical science are grouped a cluster of other sciences, relating to subjects which do not admit of equally exact methods of verification, -- such subjects as history, language, and social administration. What is common to all study that may properly be called science is the method of close and patient observation, wide comparison, and constant and careful test of general conclusions. The effort of all science is to obtain knowledge which is exact, and which is capable of definite proof.

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At this point there naturally arises the question whether there are general laws of the human mind which must be followed in all sound thinking upon whatever subject. The effort to establish such laws makes a large part of the history of philosophy. A clear and vigorous restatement of one of the two great historic schools - a statement entirely in sympathy with the current attention to external phenomena was made by John Stuart Mill in his Logic." He found his strongest opponent, and the leading champion of the opposite school, in Sir William Ham

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ilton. Mill represented too the movement, called "Utilitarianism," toward shaping institutions, laws, and usages, upon principles broad yet definite, for "the greatest good of the greatest number." It was a movement which in its practicality and also in its moderation was characteristic of the English intellect. Among the philosophic thinkers, Mill was the most conspicuous champion of the special measures of governmental reform and popular liberty in his day. His personal character embodied the robust and manly virtues of courage, justice, and magnanimity. He made abstract themes vital by "one ruddy drop of manly blood." In an abstruse discussion upon the possibility and nature of human knowledge of the divine, he struck a note to which the common heart responded, when he declared that if he was told there existed a God whose morality was essentially different from human morality he would answer: "He shall not compel me to worship him. I will call no Being good who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow-creatures; and if such a Being can sentence me to Hell for not so calling him, to Hell I will go."

For the worshipping, the tender, the feminine side of man's nature, Mill had little to offer. The world seemed to him to show no evidence that it was under any divine control; it was full of injustice and imperfection; the only thing for us to do was to make it better. He had a very warm heart, which found its nourishment and support in elements which his philosophy scarcely took at all into its survey. In his youth he was helped out of a desperate mood of despondency by Wordsworth's poetry, — poetry inspired by beliefs wholly remote from the sensational philosophy. The happiness of his life, he tells us, was in his relation with the woman whom he married. Such love of man and woman, like all noble friendships, lies in a realm of life which logic and philosophy such as his have absolutely no power to interpret. In his last

days he was driven by the stress of love and sorrow to study those very problems of God and immortality which he had been wont to discard. His posthumous essays discuss these themes with entire candor and courage, and without attaining any clear and certain conclusion. The earlier habits of his mind scarcely qualified him for the most effective dealing with a question, of which it may perhaps be said that the older form was "Whether God is," and the later form "What God is." But, beyond the interest attaching to so free, fearless, and serious a treatment of the subject, the book is significant as an instance of how the stoutest soul, after rigorously confining itself to the questions of Time, may be driven by love and loss to ponder the questions of Eternity.

The progress of scientific knowledge has in many ways impressed the fact that what we call the spiritual life of man is closely affected by physical conditions. There have been discovered physical antecedents for many phenomena of thought, feeling, and will, which were formerly referred solely to the spiritual entity assumed to be incased within the human body. To these physical antecedents it is impossible to deny in many instances a force of causation. The suggestion is advanced, and with growing weight: Has not every mental act its physical antecedent or concomitant in the brain? And then comes the question: Is not a physical antecedent always the determining cause of the mental act? It is at least sure that the sphere of free will is far more limited than was once supposed. The supposition finds wide favor, that all the phenomena of mind are the products or functions of the bodily organism. Man in this view is not twofold, spirit and body, but single, and as an individuality is terminated altogether by the termination of the body. Against this pure materialism stands the fact, unaffected by all the new knowledge, that what we call mental phenomena are simply untranslatable into terms of matter; that an impassa

ble gulf of difference lies between phenomena of motion and phenomena of consciousness. But yet, it is urged, though there be a mysterious aspect of man's activities, a something which we cannot interpret or fathom, yet we know these spiritual activities solely as appearing in connection with a physical organism and in close dependence on it; and of any separate spiritual entity, or any persistence of the spiritual functions of the individual after the physical organism perishes, we do and can know nothing whatever. As of the individual, it is said, so of the universe as to any ultimate cause back of its outward manifestations, we can neither assert nor deny nor define. And this, in place of materialism, is agnosticism. Of the new thinking of our time, a considerable part has been done on the assumption, express or tacit, that subjects like God and immortality, and everything relating to superhuman being, are a mere waste of the intellect. The most conspicuous expression of this assumption was given by Comte, who formulated the whole field of human knowledge and thought, after discarding theology and metaphysics as delusions incident to the childish stages of the human mind. Of this "Positive " philosophy, Lewes was a prominent representative in England. The temper of the English Positivists is essentially this: "Let us have done with make-believe: let us away with superstitions of consolation as well as superstitions of horror; let us get out of the lumber-room where theology and metaphysics have for ages been piled mountain-high without establishing one verifiable certainty, and betake ourselves altogether to the fields of real knowledge and helpful human activities." A temper like this has spread far wider than the avowed Positivists, and is capable of blending with generous and ardent human sympathies. When united with strong moral purpose, there issues the "religion of humanity"; a religion whose creed is the service of mankind, and the attainment through mutual effort of the