OF REALITY. 



531 



was opposed by the ' Contemporary,' which treated of 

 fundamental questions of Knowledge and Belief in a con- 

 servative spirit ; the 'Nineteenth Century,' ^ branching oif 

 from this, contained in its first volume, under the title of 

 a " Symposium," a discussion by prominent thinkers of the 

 great underlying questions of Knowledge and Belief, of 

 Life and Existence, The very inconclusiveness of this 

 remarkable discussion, and, later on, the appearance of 

 Mr Mallock's articles entitled, " Is life worth living ? " 

 must have created in wider circles the conviction that it 

 was the task of philosophers to approach afresh those 

 great problems which had since the time of Descartes 

 occupied thinkers on the Continent, but which had 

 in this country only recently attracted the attention 

 they deserve. 



None of these various lines of thought, however, gave 

 a sufficiently distinct formulation of the underlying 

 problem ; none of them said, in plain words, that our 

 age had to a large extent lost what former ages pos- 

 sessed or thought they possessed, viz. : a definite concep- 

 tion of the truly Eeal — as distinguished from the many 

 surrounding realities, which proved, on examination, to be 

 merely apparent, devoid of intrinsic value, mere semblances 



term has ceased to be identical with 

 Comtism, not less in France itself 

 than in other countries. When 

 M. Brunetiere said, France would 

 not give up Positivism, he clearly 

 did not mean Comtism. 



1 The 'Nineteenth Century's' 

 appearance falls in time almost 

 exactly between the appearance of 

 two works which made a great 

 impression. The first was John 

 Henry (Cardinal) Newman's ' Gram- 



mar of Assent' (1870); the other, 

 Mr A. J. Balfour's ' Defence of 

 Philosophic Doubt' (1879). The 

 latter was followed by a more com- 

 prehensive Treatise on ' The 

 Foundations of Belief (1895). 

 These works form landmarks in the 

 history of religious philosophy in 

 England, and will be discussed 

 in a later chapter, which, under 

 the title " Of the Spirit," will deal 

 with this subject. 



