374 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



64. 

 Discussion 

 in ' Nine- 

 teenth 

 Century ' : 

 Martineau. 



into the foreground by English thinkers of very vari- 

 ous shades of opinion. In this regard it is interest- 

 ing to read the discussion which was started in the 

 second number of the first volume of the most prominent 

 and original of modern English Reviews, ' The Nine- 

 teenth Century' (April 1877). This Eeview, which 

 formed during the last generation the arena of in- 

 tellectual combat, with champions from all sides, was 

 characteristically started with a prefatory poem by 

 Tennyson.'^ 



The discussion I referred to deals with " the influ- 

 ence upon morality of a decline in religious belief." 

 It was termed "A Modern Symposium" (evidently 

 after the Attic Symposium of Plato), and was 

 started by Sir James Stephen. Some of the foremost 

 thinkers belonging to very different schools took up 

 the question. The most masterly piece of writ- 

 ing was by James Martineau (1805-1900), a thinker 

 who had independently worked for many years at the 

 higher philosophical problems, notably the ethical and 

 religious problems, and whose writings, the more im- 

 portant and systematic of which, however, only began to 

 appear Ave years later,^ might have had a greater in- 

 fluence upon the thought of his countrymen had it not 

 been for two reasons. The first was that he occupied a 

 position as a religious minister and a theological teacher. 

 This disqualified his philosophy in the eyes of a party 



^ Quoted already, iu a former 

 chapter, see supra, vol. iii. p. 530, 

 where the date was erroneously 

 given as 1875. 



2 'Types of Ethical Theory,' 2 



vols., 1882. ' A Study of Religion,' 

 2 vols., 1888. ' The Seat of Author- 

 ity in Religion,' 1890. All three 

 works have appeared in new edi- 

 tions. 



