OF THK SPIRIT. 



367 



before Mill's Essays were published, though probably 



not before two at least of them were written. This 



was Mansel's " Banipton Lectures" (1858) on 'The 55. 



Limits of Eeligious Thought.' Mansel reverts to the "Bamptoa 



'^ ° _ _ Lectures." 



position taken up by Francis Bacon, the separation of 

 Eeason and Eeligion. As since the time of Bacon two 

 great schools of philosophy had invaded the domain 

 of thought, the Critical and the Idealist movements, 

 Mansel's argument really forms a discussion as to how 

 much the position had been altered through those non- 

 empirical lines of reasoning, and he comes to the con- 

 clusion that neither the critical position taken up by 

 Kant, who founded religion on a purely ethical prin- 

 ciple, nor the reasoning of the Idealists, who tried to 

 reach the Absolute by a logical process, was really of 

 any avail. The attack was conducted from two points 

 of view — the purely theoretical and a practical one ; the 

 former is an outcome and extreme statement of the 

 position taken up by Sir William Hamilton in his 

 ' Philosophy of the Conditioned ' : the assertion that the 

 Unconditioned or Absolute cannot be reached by the 

 thinking process, of and in which it denotes merely a 

 limiting conception : it is the doctrine of the relativity 

 of human knowledge. The other motive in Mansel's 

 expositions is a practical one, the feeling of alarm, shared 



how in Hume and Mill similar 

 interests, and a similar turn of 

 mind, took almost the opposite 

 course in their respective mental 

 development. Hume started with 

 the discussion of fundamental no- 

 tions and terms, and finding the 

 problem insoluble betook himself 

 to practical problems moral and 



economical and the study of his- 

 torical facts. Mill started with 

 questions of social and political 

 interest, was driven on to the 

 study of inductive logic, and ulti- 

 mately to that of fundamental 

 metaphysical notions and terms 

 without arriving at finality any 

 more than Hume did. 



