312 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



was a kind of dualism. No principle or position, how- 

 ever clearly enunciated in the beginning, was ever by 

 its first propounder carried to finality : there seems 

 always to have been a reluctance to attach much 

 credence to extreme consequences drawn out by slender 

 logic. Thus we have in Locke's Philosophy the two 

 principles of Sensation and Reflection, and further on 

 the two forms of natural and revealed knowledge. The 

 latter dualism is characteristic of all the philosophy of 

 the Scottish school, and it was revived in a different 

 form by Dean Mansel as an outcome of the latest 

 phase of Scottish philosophy, that represented by Sir 

 William Hamilton. But the extreme conclusions of 

 every logical argument will in the end be drawn, if not 

 by those who propounded it still without fail by some 

 of their followers, and thus we find that, in spite of the 

 realism of the English mind which clings to facts and 

 practical requirements, the time did arrive when attempts 

 had to be made to overcome the dualisms and latent 

 contradictions contained in the writings of philosophers, 

 from Bacon and Locke down to Hamilton and Mansel, 

 and to lay the foundations of a reasoned and consistent 

 philosophical creed. In the present connection it is 

 well to note that endeavours in this line of thought 

 existed long before and outside of the influence which 

 the study and criticism of German Idealism exerted, in 

 17. the same direction, in more recent times. The history 



Beginning 



a f crwd chf r ^ British philosophical thought can point to a distinct 

 and tolerably coherent search in quest of a philosophical 

 creed, beginning with James Mill and ending with 

 Herbert Spencer. It forms only an episode, though an 



