statements that are intended to review the whole situation and to summarise, provisionally at all events, the results that have been attained. Each of these attempts will, in its turn, be superseded by something that is wider in its outlook and wiser in its verdicts. This little book is an effort of this nature, and it is offered in the hope that it may serve some such useful and temporary purpose.

Much more competent writers than its author might well apologise for consenting to enter upon the task which he has been invited to undertake. All that he can say, by way of excuse for his boldness in complying, is that for many years he has endeavoured to follow the trend of modern thinking, and that the growing interest with which he has done this encourages him to hope that he may be able to make what he has to tell about it both intelligible and interesting to others. He does not imagine that he can escape mistakes, and he will most gladly submit himself to the correction of others who know better and see more clearly than he does. He only begs that those who disagree with his judgments will try to give him credit for a sincere desire to be true to facts, and to welcome the light, from whatever quarter it may have come.

When we speak of the age that is passing, we shall have in mind what may roughly be reckoned as the last hundred years. That space includes, for those of us who are not in our first youth, the time of our parents, and even, it may be, of our grandparents. The period has a certain distinctiveness of character in spite of superficial diversities. It was marked, as we have said, by the intelligence and vigour of its questionings. It was a time of intellectual movement and turmoil. It witnessed a succession of wonderful discoveries leading on to ever bolder investigations. Rapid generalisations were advanced, to be often as quickly abandoned. Only by degrees was it possible to see the new facts in their proper proportion and significance. Nor was it at all easy for men to keep their discussions free from heat and bitterness, when the most deeply-rooted convictions appeared to be assailed, and the most sacred associations to be regarded as of little account. Looking back, as we can, it is possible to see that in spite of the eddies and backwaters a steady progress was made. And it is of that progress that it will now be our endeavour to speak.

We know how it has happened to us over and over again in our own individual experiences to have been made conscious of a gradual modification of our opinions as new evidence has reached us, and we have had time to relate it to our previous understanding and knowledge. We have had our first thoughts, and our second thoughts, and then there have come third thoughts, which were the ripest and soundest of all. Just such a process of which we can mark the stages in ourselves is to be seen on a larger scale—in bigger print, as it were—in the thought movements of an age. In the case of the period which we are to review, the three stages have been more than commonly clear, as we shall aim to shew in the survey we are to make.

We shall begin with the First thoughts, which were those of what may be termed the older orthodoxy. These were very generally accepted; indeed, they were regarded as for the most part beyond the reach of serious contradiction. Then we shall pass to the Second thoughts, which were forced upon an astonished and bewildered generation by the onslaughts upon traditional views that were made from the side of physical science. For fifty years or more the debate went on, with challenge and counter-challenge, and much noise and dust of controversy. They were great days, and in them great men fought with great courage in great issues. We shall seek to do justice to both sides, to those who dared to proclaim and suffer for the new, and to those who shewed an equal courage in their resolute determination to be loyal to what they held to be the truth of the old.

Then, finally, it will be our difficult task to discriminate between the surging thoughts of that second period and those of the Third stage, through which we are advancing, and to shew what can already be made out of a common ground of agreement and co-operation, now much more likely to be reached than could at one time have been foreseen by the most optimistic imagination.

CHAPTER I

THE OLDER ORTHODOXY

Never had there been greater unanimity of opinion in England in regard to the religious interpretation of the world than that which prevailed at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The excesses on the Continent which had accompanied the advocacy of free thought had disposed men's mind to fall back upon authority, and most of all in matters that affected the basis on which the continuance of social order and moral conduct depended. The general position was clearly apprehended, and was accepted as if beyond dispute. Men spoke and thought of the Order of Nature. The world was a Cosmos, a regulated system. Order implied an Orderer. It was regarded by them as obvious that there must have been a First Cause, a great Architect and Maker of the Universe. They agreed with Aquinas that "things which have no perception can only tend toward an end if directed by a conscious and intelligent being. Therefore there is an Intelligence by which all natural things are ordered to an end."[1] They were fully prepared to endorse the indignant protest of Bacon: "I had rather believe all the folly of the 'Legend,' and the 'Talmud,' and the 'Alcoran,' than that this universal frame is without a mind."[2] In fact no other hypothesis seemed to them thinkable.

If at any time they felt a need for a more elaborate justification of their conviction, they had it ready to their hand in the familiar argument from design. Paley, when he set this out in his famous Natural Theology (1802), was only expressing with conspicuous ability the view that was then accepted in all circles from the highest to the lowest. He was preaching to those who were already in the fullest accord with his doctrine. They followed with eager approbation his reasoning about the watch that he supposed himself to have found on the heath. According to his assumption he had never seen a watch made, nor known of anyone capable of making such a thing. He concludes, nevertheless, that it must have been made by someone. "There must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its structure, and designed its use." "Neither would it invalidate our conclusion that the watch sometimes went wrong, or that it seldom went exactly right. The purpose of the machinery, the design and the designer, might be evident in whatever way we accounted for the irregularity of the movement, or whether we could account for it at all." "Nor would it bring any uncertainty into the argument if there were a few parts of the watch concerning which we could not discover, or had not yet discovered, in what manner they conducted to the general effect; or even some parts concerning which we could not ascertain whether they conducted to that effect in any manner whatever." Least of all could it be sufficient to