868 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



with many other conservative English thinkers of the 

 day, lest the disastrous consequences of Hegel's 

 Philosophy, such as had been arrived at in Germany 

 by Feuerbach in theoretical and by Strauss and Baur 

 in their historical studies pertaining to religion, should 

 spread also and be accepted in this country. 



Over and against the purely negative philosophical 

 movement then prevalent in German thought Mansel 

 sets a positive assertion ; in fact, he resorts to Eevelation 

 in a much more decisive and emphatic manner than 

 Hamilton or Bacon had done before hira. Thus he 

 took a very short way towards that position which 

 Schelling, in the latest phase of his philosophy, tried 

 to reach through a complicated and mystical process 

 of reasoning. The Bampton Lectures created a great 

 impression, but the argument was discarded both by 

 5ti. believers and sceptics — by F. D. Maurice, who made 



Attacked by 



Maurice and a stroug attack on it, as well as by J. S. Mill, who 



Mill. *= J ' 



loathed it.-^ Preference to this once famous line of 



^ Those of Maurice and Mill are 

 only two among the many import- 

 ant criticisms which appeared at 

 the time, but I have chosen them 

 because they indicate the two 

 directions in which the religious 

 problem has been treated in sub- 

 sequent philosophic literature in 

 this country, not without influ- 

 ence from continental thought. 

 Both recognised the necessitj^ of 

 getting beyond the agnostic posi- 

 tion which became clearly defined 

 immediately after the appearance 

 of the Bampton Lectures. The 

 answer given by Mill in company 

 with prominent thinkers abroad is 

 Idealism. " The Ideal " becomes in 

 some way or other the expression 



of the Highest, a guiding principle, 

 and eventually an object of rever- 

 ence ; with some it is supposed to 

 be reached by a process of logical 

 thought. The answer given by 

 Maurice is more on the lines 

 adopted by Schleiermacher. It is 

 not idealistic but spiritualistic. Its 

 subject cannot be reached but onlj' 

 interpreted by philosophic thought ; 

 its central idea is the spirit, what 

 Renouvier termed the "Category 

 of Personality," and it rests upon 

 a larger and fuller psychology, a 

 broader mental experience. Maurice 

 seems to have had a clear view of 

 this when he wrote : " True testhet- 

 ics [using this term in the Kantian 

 sense] must have actually nothing 



