326 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



to Drummond whilst I was dealing with the ' Vestiges/ 

 because the latter is probably the last example of that 

 class of books in which purely scientific thinkers took 

 any great interest. Similar publications which have 

 since appeared have made no impression on the course 

 of scientific thought, though they may have won a 

 place in the popular literature of their day. To bring 

 about that complete separation and independence of 

 the scientific and the religious arguments in this country 

 which has been recognised during the whole of the 

 nineteenth century on the Continent, two books have 

 probably contributed more than any others : Dean 

 28. Hansel's Lectures, 1 ' On the Limits of Religious Thought/ 

 Darwin. through its unanswerable logic ; and Darwin's ' Origin of 

 Species,' through treating fearlessly a scientific argu- 

 ment which was based upon observation and expanded 

 by legitimate inference without any reference to the 

 ulterior consequences which might be drawn from it. 

 It required some courage to attack a problem beset 

 with such difficulties and which had become hackneyed 



1 It is a remarkable coincidence, 

 showing the general tendencies of 

 English thought about the middle 

 of the century, that Dean Mansel's 

 " Bampton Lectures " appeared 

 just a year before the ' Origin of 

 Species.' The argument of the 

 Lectures " On the Limits of Re- 

 ligious Thought" was that which 

 was elaborated by Sir William 

 Hamilton on the lines of Kant's 

 ' Critique of Pure Reason ' in his 

 celebrated article in the ' Edinburgh 

 Review ' on the " Philosophy of the 

 Unconditioned." A further ap- 

 preciation of this line of reasoning, 

 which had its beginning in Hume's 

 sceptical writings a hundred years 



previously, belong to a different 

 section of this ' History. ' We shall 

 there see that in the negative por- 

 tion of this analysis lie also the 

 germs of the ideas put forward by 

 Herbert Spencer and Huxley under 

 the well - known terms of the 

 "Unknowable" and "Agnosticism," 

 and there is no doubt that both 

 Hamilton and Mansel had a con- 

 siderable influence in forming 

 Huxley's attitude in this respect. 

 He says, in 1863 ('Life,' vol. i. p. 

 242) : " I believe in Hamilton, 

 Mansel, and Herbert Spencer so 

 long as they are destructive, and 

 I laugh at their beards as soon as 

 they try to spin their own cobwebs.' 



