404 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



We also recognise, what is not of special interest in this 

 connection, how this argument of de Lamennais brings 

 him very close to some of the doctrines of Democracy 

 and Socialism of which he, later on, became a prominent 

 political exponent. 



When Mr Balfour, towards the end of the century, 

 again discussed the question of authority, of the centre 

 of appeal in matters of scientific and religious doctrine, 

 he had at his disposal the result of fully sixty years of 

 philosophical criticism. The epistemological discussions 

 raised by J. S. Mill as to the nature of inductive proof 

 had gradually made it clear that the strictest and best 

 established scientific theories rested upon a system of 

 axioms which were generally accepted, and the truth of 

 which itself rested on cumulative evidence, on coherence, 

 and on practical success ; and the same, he could argue, 

 obtained in matters of belief. In addition to this 

 epistemological argument which, since the appearance 

 of Mr Balfour's ' Foundations of Belief,' has received 

 further support through such eminent thinkers as Ernst 

 Mach in Germany and M. Poincare in France, as well as 

 through the pragmatist movement in this country, we 

 have the arguments drawn from the scientific doctrines 

 of environment, of evolution, and of inheritance, all of 

 which, applied to mental phenomena, teach us that 

 nothing, not even the best- defined logical conception 

 in the clearest of individual minds, can be understood 

 if detached from its surroundings or removed out of the 

 historical sequence in which it has been generated. 

 Thus religious beliefs, as well as scientific truths, rest 

 equally upon large and comprehensive bodies of doctrine 



