530 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



57. 

 Popular in- 

 flBences : 

 the new 

 monthly 

 Reviews. 



the necessity of giving a correcter answer was felt 

 already by Mill, and notably by Lewes ; but a definite 

 answer was not given before Herbert Spencer treated 

 comprehensively the fundamental problems of philo- 

 sophical Thought in his ' First Principles.' It is 

 interesting to see how he made use of the argument of 

 Sir William Hamilton, the same which had led Mansel 

 to a re-assertion of that body of positive doctrine with 

 which the school of Mill had broken long before. 

 Huxley gave the popular name of Agnosticism to 

 Spencer's philosophy of the Unknowable, though it is 

 doubtful whether he himself remained satisfied with the 

 position it assumed. Another great popular influence 

 which did much to urge the necessity of a deeper study 

 of the fundamental problems, showing at the same time 

 the uncertainty which had taken hold of the foremost 

 thinkers of the Age, was the appearance in 1875 of a 

 new Periodical which professed to offer an arena for the 

 discussion of important questions to writers of all shades 

 of opinion.^ The ' Fortnightly Review ' had started ten 

 years before as the organ of independent thought ; ^ it 



^ This is finely expressed in 

 Tennyson's Prefatory Poem (' Nine- 

 teenth Century,' No. I., March 



1877): 



" Those that of late had fleeted far and 



fast 

 To touch all shores, now leaving to the 



skill 

 Of others their old craft seaworthy still, 

 Have charter'd this; where, mindful of 



the past, 

 Our true co -mates regather round the 



mast ; 

 Of diverse tongue, but with a common 



will 

 Here, in this roaring moon of daffodil 

 And crocus, to put forth and brave the 



blast ; 

 For some, descending from the sacred 



peak 



Of hoar high-templed Faith, have leagued 



again 

 Theii- lot with ours to rove the world 



about ; 

 And some are wilder comrades, sworn 



to seek 

 If any golden harbour be for men 

 In seas of Death and sunless gulfs of 



Doubt." 



2 The ' Fortnightly ' may be con- 

 sidered to have been the organ of 

 what on the Continent is sometimes 

 termed English Positivism. Since 

 the time when Lord Morley, as 

 second editor of the Review, re- 

 pudiated the designation of it as 

 ■' positivist," a term objectionable 

 also to Huxley and Spencer, the 



