310 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



deep-seated, though frequently an unconscious, con- 

 viction that the foundations of natural knowledge were 

 not sufficiently firm, nor its principles sufficiently clear 

 to permit of indiscriminate application beyond a limited 

 region. We are acquainted with Newton's final verdict 

 regarding the Law of Gravitation, or of action at a dis- 

 tance, unduly extolled later on in the school of Laplace,^ 



who has not thrown off religious 

 belief, but never had it : I grew up 

 in a negative state with regard to 

 it. I looked upon the modern 

 exactly as I did upon the ancient 

 religion, as something which in no 

 way concerned me. It did not 

 seem to me more strange that 

 English people should believe what 

 I did not, than that the men I 

 read of in Herodotus should have 

 done so. History had made the 

 variety of opinions among man- 

 kind a fact familiar to me, and this 

 was but a prolongation of that fact. 

 This point in my early education 

 had, however, incidentally one bad 

 consequence deserving notice. In 

 giving me an opinion contrary to 

 that of the world, my father 

 thought it necessary to give it as 

 one which could not prudently be 

 avowed to the world. This lesson 

 of keeping my thoughts to myself, 

 at that early age, was attended 

 with some moral disadvantages, 

 though my limited intercourse with 

 strangers, especially such as were 

 likely to speak to me on religion, 

 prevented me from being placed in 

 the alternative of avowal or hypo- 

 crisy. I remember two occasions 

 in my boyhood on which I felt my- 

 self in this alternative, and in both 

 cases I avowed my disbelief and 

 defended it." At a much later 

 period he wrote (' Autobiographv,' 

 p. 189), "With those who, like all 

 the best and wisest of mankind, 

 are dissatisfied with human life as 



it is, and whose feelings are wholly 

 identified with its radical amend- 

 ment, there are two main regions 

 of thought. One is the region of 

 ultimate aims, the constituent ele- 

 ments of the highest realisable ideal 

 of human life. The other is that 

 of the immediately useful and 

 practically attainable, . . . and, to 

 say truth, it is in these two ex- 

 tremes principally that the real 

 certainty lies. My own strength 

 lay wholly in the uncertain and 

 slippery intermediate region, that 

 of theory of moral and political 

 science ; respecting the conclusions 

 of which in any of the forms in 

 which I have received or originated 

 them, whether as political economy, 

 analytic psychology, logic, philo- 

 sophy of history, or anything else, 

 ... I have derived a wise scepti- 

 cism, which, while it has not 

 hindered me from following out 

 the honest exercise of my thinking 

 faculties to whatever conclusions 

 might result from it, has put me 

 upon my guard against holding or 

 announcing these conclusions with 

 a degree of confidence which the 

 nature of such speculations does 

 not warrant, and has kept my 

 mind not only open to admit, but 

 prompt to welcome and eager to 

 seek, even on the questions on 

 which I have most meditated, any 

 prospect of clearer perceptions and 

 better evidence." 



^ See vol. ii. of this History, 

 p. 29. 



