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Religion and Science from Galileo to Bergson

CHAPTER XIII SOME FINAL CONSIDERATIONS   Value of the History of Philosophy.—It may perhaps be felt that our protracted excursion has not advanced us far beyond the position at which we stood in the opening chapter. Indeed, the history of philosophy may seem not to establish any very definite conclusions; and those who study the subject in the hope that it will supply them with material for dogmatising are likely to be disappointed. We have to reconcile ourselves to the fact that the riddle of the universe has as yet received no final solution at the hands of the metaphysicians. It is only too evident that, as the poet says: <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table"> <tr><td>"Our little systems have their day,</td></tr> <tr><td> They have their day, and cease to be."</td></tr></table> And yet it would be an error to suppose that this lack of finality about philosophical opinion, or the want of unanimity among philosophers, indicates that no progress has been made. There are certain landmarks in the history of philosophy—such as Kant's Critique of Pure Reason—which mark a point behind which we shall not again regress (assuming that our culture and civilisation is preserved). Even if we have not grasped the whole truth about things yet, we are still justified in assuming that we are gradually, if painfully, getting nearer to the goal. [Pg 138]But surely we are entitled to believe that it is not the crude appetite for metaphysical dogma that attracts men to the history of philosophy. Its fascination rather resembles that of the history of religion: both are, as it were, Odysseys of the human spirit; nor is there any activity of man that has not its appeal to the human heart: for cor ad cor loquitur. And, again, we should reflect that those who ask for final conclusions, forget that the search for truth may be, in and for itself, of the highest spiritual value. The best starting-point for the history of philosophy is a famous passage from Lessing. "Not the truth which is at the disposal of every man, but the honest pains he has taken to come at the truth make the worth of a man. For not through the possession, but through the pursuit of truth do his powers increase, and in this alone consists his ever-increasing perfection. Possession makes us quiet, indolent, proud.... If God with all truth in His right hand, and in His left the single, unceasing striving after truth, even though coupled with the condition that I should ever and always err, came to me and said, 'Choose!' I would in all humility clasp this left hand and say, 'Father, give me this! Is not pure truth for Thee alone?'"[76] But there is another respect in which some knowledge of the history of thought may be an important advantage. It may not bestow upon us the liberty of dogmatising ourselves, but it does bestow upon us a certain imperturbability in the face of the dogmatisms of others. Airs of systematic omniscience, "the pride of a pretended knowledge," will leave us unimpressed[Pg 139] and undismayed. The latest pretentious product of popular philosophy will, in the majority of cases, be recognised as an old heresy in a new garb; "new" thought will not impress (at least, by its novelty) those who know that it is old. But it is against the crudities of materialistic naturalism that even a slight acquaintance with the history of ideas will form an antidote. The various exposures of it, from Hume and Kant to Bergson, will be to some extent familiar; and it will be a recognised fact that its chief popular attraction is at the same time its chief philosophic weakness; and this is that it is nothing more or less than a systematisation of the prejudices of common sense. "As a theory of first principles, the best that can be said of its pretensions is that they are ridiculous."[77] Some Deductions from History.—But, it may be asked, what definite conclusions have the foregoing chapters to offer? Some, if we are not mistaken, of a genuinely positive character. It will be necessary to recall certain facts and reflections to the minds of our readers. In the early chapters we noted the rise of an independent science, and the collapse of the medieval world view with which popular religious notions were associated so closely, that many conservative thinkers expected to see both involved in a common ruin. Science seemed to threaten the existence of a religion bound up with conceptions of space and of force which were being brought into discredit. These misgivings turned out, however, to be ill-founded. Certain advantages, no doubt, of simplicity[Pg 140] and definiteness, which had belonged to the old notions, had been irrecoverably lost; but thinkers like Giordano Bruno showed that the conception of an infinite universe was by no means hostile to religion; but that, on the contrary, it might be a conception of the highest spiritual value. Such are the sentiments expressed in some sonnets which precede Bruno's dialogue "On the Infinite Universe." "It seemed to Bruno as if he had never breathed freely until the limits of the universe had been extended to infinity, and the fixed spheres had disappeared. No longer now was there a limit to the flight of the spirit, no 'so far and no further'; the narrow prison in which the old beliefs had confined men's spirits had now to open its gates and let in the pure air of a new life."[78] The scientific did not seem to him incompatible with a fundamentally religious conception of the world, at least for those who were not afraid "to take ship upon the seas of the infinite." Dangers of the "Mechanical View."—Thus it was not science that was hostile to religion. This was not the case until science began to be associated with a certain fairly definite philosophy of a mechanistic, and later of a materialist, description. Religion could not have survived the final establishment of such a philosophy as this, for the indispensable element in a religious attitude of life is the idea that somehow there lies behind things a power or essence that has something in common with our own natures—something that can, without an abuse of language, be called personal. Any philosophy that rules out this idea creates an atmosphere in which religion cannot breathe. [Pg 141]And it was just this atmosphere that the mechanistic view, unless amplified by considerations of another kind (as it was e.g. in the case of Spinoza) tended to create. The "Mechanical View" Never Unchallenged.—And with regard to this mechanistic philosophy, we have to observe that it never seems to have commended itself, as a final and complete solution, to the best minds. In the seventeenth century, it will be remembered, the mechanical conception was transcended (though in entirely different ways) by Spinoza and by Leibniz, and the religious consciousness of the age, in the person of Pascal, protested against it. And although, during the eighteenth century, this philosophy persisted, and was considerably reinforced (with the help of further discoveries in the realm of physics) by the school of Holbach and Diderot, yet it had still to face the radical criticism of Kant. This criticism, as we shall remember, indicated that the mechanical view is a way in which the human mind—owing to its constitution—regards phenomena. If it is to understand them, the human mind cannot help viewing them in that fashion; it must subject things to the mould in which all its thought is cast. Mechanism is the medium through which the mind understands phenomena. It belongs not to the things in themselves, but to our way of understanding them. And attached to this radical criticism of mechanical notions, was an idealistic philosophy of the most genuinely religious and spiritual character. Kantian idealism is one of those contributions to human thought behind which we shall not again regress. It is a phenomenon of incalculable value and importance. The immediate results of Kant's critical idealism[Pg 142] was a luxuriant growth of a spiritual type of philosophy upon the ground he had cleared and prepared. Romanticism may be regarded as a revolt of those sides of human nature upon which the tyranny of mechanism pressed hardest—religion, speculation, poetry, music, art. "You may expel nature with a pitchfork, but she persists in returning." The Horatian remark is true also of the human mind; you may try to weed out religion and poetry, but your success will only be temporary; for nature herself is more persistent than the most earnest of materialists and (what is more) she outlives him. And with regard to the materialist or mechanistic view, it is highly interesting to note that its greatest attraction has consisted in something which, strictly speaking, is not its own property. In the eighteenth century in France, and in the nineteenth century in Germany and England, the popularity of this view was derived from its altogether illegitimate association with a high moral and social idealism, which (it is only too evident) had been borrowed—without sufficient acknowledgment—from the Christian tradition. The rather self-conscious atheism (for instance) of Shelley or Byron—which they had presumably derived from Diderot and his contemporaries—was less a denial of God than an affirmation of the rights of humanity. This generous philosophy of revolt from contemporary tyranny and pharisaism is atheistic only in name. The callous and cynical powers, both political and ecclesiastical, that were the object of their bitter attacks were the embodiments of atheism, for "He alone is the true atheist to whom the predicates of the Divine Being, e.g. love, wisdom, justice, are nothing."[79] [Pg 143]The Present Situation.—During the nineteenth century the mechanical view received some accession of strength owing to the reduction of biology to what seemed like subjection. But, at the same time, an idealistic philosophy had taken a strong hold in England, and towards the end of the century critical students of scientific method cast doubt upon the finality of the mechanical view. They regarded it as artificial, abstract, and symbolic only of reality. This critical movement may be associated with the names of Mach, Boutroux, and (perhaps above all) of Bergson. Moreover, towards the end of the century, a number of new facts in physics, biology, and psychology came to light and tended to discredit the mechanical view as a final explanation of reality. The indestructibility of matter, even the conservation of energy and of mass (corner stones of the mechanico-materialist view) began openly to be questioned, not by metaphysicians, but by men of science themselves. The foes of materialism were those of its own household.[80] Thus assailed from without by the philosophers, and from within by the scientists themselves, the mechanical view, after a reign of three centuries (disturbed though these may have been by successive rebellions) seems destined to disappear. It may indeed subsist as an approximate and convenient way of regarding reality, of which it will no longer pretend to give an absolute and complete account. It will continue to reign as a constitutional monarch, but the days of its tyranny are at an end. And it is not unlikely that future[Pg 144] generations will look with surprise upon our respect for a theory which to them will wear something of the same aspect as medieval astrology now presents to ourselves. Some Deductions.—If the history of thought showed no other results than the impaired prestige of naturalism, it would be worth attention and study. The facts undoubtedly compromise that prestige, for history indicates that at no period has naturalism been able to impose itself permanently. If there has been a movement in that direction, it has elicited a corresponding reaction. The human mind seems unable to remain satisfied with the negations which systematised common sense seeks to impose upon it. There is an instinctive appetite in humanity for a spiritual view of things, and Sabatier was undoubtedly right in observing that mankind is "incurably religious." Neither Hobbes, nor Holbach, nor Büchner, with the best will in the world, can exorcise from the human heart that instinct which seeks for itself personal relations with the universe—which sees a mind behind phenomena. This is one of those instincts of which it is true that the more you repress them the more insurgent they become—they will have their way in the end. Thus naturalism, blind to the mutilation of our nature of which it is guilty, is psychologically unsound. And yet, our nature is not so easily mutilated after all. Naturalistic dogmatism has it in its power to create an atmosphere which is unhealthy for religion, but that growth has its roots too deep for it to be easily destroyed. Springing as it does from the depths of our nature, it will prove as permanent as humanity itself. This is not to deny that this type of dogmatism may[Pg 145] do, as it actually has done, a great deal of harm. A plant may be strong and vigorous, but under unceasing bitter weather, it will tend to become discouraged. Otherwise it would not be worth while to write criticisms of naturalism. Freedom.—Perhaps the best service we can do is to protest against indulging an appetite for negative dogmatism. Such an attitude is a negation of the freedom of thought. And it is in an atmosphere of freedom that both religion and science flourish best. A hard and fast naturalistic outlook may prove, and actually has proved, an incubus from which even scientists themselves may pray to be delivered. Nor has religion always enjoyed that full measure of freedom which is indispensable to its vigorous life. The curious and sad fact is that the human mind seems to delight in creating prisons for itself. The scientific spirit created a mechanico-materialistic scheme which has ended by becoming the enemy of scientific research, and which (besides this) asks, as a sacrifice, the mutilation of our spiritual instincts. And so with religion. The religious instinct (like the scientific) tends to create its prisons. The pride of, a pretended knowledge reduces to a mechanical scheme the mysteries of life and death; it provides superficial standardised solutions for the problems of existence. Of course, it is clear enough, that in religion as in science, we cannot, even if we would, start each of us from the beginning. We have to accept and to revere the riches of knowledge and experience accumulated by those who have gone before. And yet, in religion as in science, life consists in movement; we must go forward. The past may be an inspiration, but it must not be the limit of our thought, or it becomes an incubus. The[Pg 146] glance must be forward not backward; the stream flows, and we are borne on its bosom. Humanity, like an explorer, has its face set towards the unknown. Both science and religion are children of freedom, without which the creative spirit in man is crushed. And here, with this note of warning (though perhaps rather of encouragement) we may close. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> FOOTNOTES: <div class="footnote">[1] The Grammar of Science, pp. 12, 13. </div> <div class="footnote">[2] Ptolemy of Alexandria: 127-151 A.D. </div> <div class="footnote">[3] J. M. Heald in art. "Aquinas" in Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics. </div> <div class="footnote">[4] Monks and theologians were betrayed into some controversial asperities. "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven" formed the appropriate text for a sermon by a Dominican. </div> <div class="footnote">[5] In spite of this, however, Descartes' works, in 1663, appeared in the Index of forbidden books: and his doctrines were banned by Royal decree from the French universities. Jesuit influences, which were not at all favourable to native religion in France (or elsewhere!), may have been responsible for this obscurantist policy. </div> <div class="footnote">[6] Merz, History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century, Vol. I, p. 384. </div> <div class="footnote">[7] Quoted by Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism, p. 4. </div> <div class="footnote">[8] Höffding, History of Modern Philosophy, Vol. I, p. 315. It may set the scruples of some at rest to be reminded that Aquinas himself applied the term Natura Naturans to God as the cause of all existence. Eckhart and Bruno had made a similar application of it (cf. Martineau, Study of Spinoza, p. 226). </div> <div class="footnote">[9] Here we may note, by way of an anticipation, a truth that Kant afterwards was the first to grasp clearly: that it is only when the mechanism of phenomena is proved, that religion can be purged of materialism. </div> <div class="footnote">[10] Cf. letter to Arnauld, quoted by Höffding, I, p. 347: "The substantial unity presupposes a complete, indivisible being. Nothing of this kind is to be found in figure or motion ... but only in a soul or a substantial form similar to that which we call an 'I.'" </div> <div class="footnote">[11] The Monadology (quoted by Pattison, Idea of God, p. 180). </div> <div class="footnote">[12] Inge, Christian Mysticism, p. 19. </div> <div class="footnote">[13] Cf. "With space the universe encloses me and engulfs me like an atom, but with thought I enclose the universe." A great saying. </div> <div class="footnote">[14] Novalis called him "the God-intoxicated": a bold phrase. </div> <div class="footnote">[15] We refer, of course, to the promulgation of the Bull Unigenitus, procured from Pope Clement XI by the Jesuits; when their opponents, the Jansenists "of all professions and classes, were subjected to imprisonment, confiscation, and every species of oppression" (Jervis, Student's History of France, p. 415). The man&oelig;uvre is characterised by another historian as a "struggle of narrow-minded fanaticism, allied to absolutely unscrupulous political ambition, against all the learning and virtue which the French clergy still possessed" (Chamberlain, Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, Vol. II, p. 379). </div> <div class="footnote">[16] Even before the age of the Revolution, Paris possessed many great schools. The Collège de France was founded in 1530; there was the College et École de Chirurgie, the Jardin des Plantes, the École royale des Mines, etc. (cf. Merz, History of European Thought, Vol. I, p. 107). </div> <div class="footnote">[17] Merz says of Newton: "In his own country that fruitful co-operation which can only be secured by an academic organisation and by endowment of research was wanting" (I, p. 99). As late as 1740 the whole revenue of the Royal Society was only £232 per annum. </div> <div class="footnote">[18] Morley, Voltaire, p. 41. </div> <div class="footnote">[19] He published his Élémens de la Philosophie de Newton in 1738. </div> <div class="footnote">[20] Höffding, Vol. I, p. 481. </div> <div class="footnote">[21] See note in Merz, Vol. I, p. 145. </div> <div class="footnote">[22] Merz, Vol. I, p. 143. </div> <div class="footnote">[23] The receipt and perusal of Rousseau's Emile, are said to have interrupted the walk on one occasion, to the great astonishment of the Königsbergers. </div> <div class="footnote">[24] Pringle Pattison, Idea of God, p. 26. </div> <div class="footnote">[25] "Atheism is aristocratic," was the reply of Robespierre to one who mocked at his Être Suprême. </div> <div class="footnote">[26] Confessions, Book XII. </div> <div class="footnote">[27] Höffding, Vol. II, p. 9. </div> <div class="footnote">[28] Fichte's word is Anschauung, for which the English language possesses no exact equivalent. It "implies something akin, though perhaps superior to, seeing or perceiving by means of the senses," and it approaches less closely to "inspiration" than does the English word "intuition." The term acquired a meaning somewhat akin to the amor intellectualis Dei of Spinoza, which we have met before. (See note in Merz, III, p. 445.) </div> <div class="footnote">[29] William James, A Pluralistic Universe, p. 92. </div> <div class="footnote">[30] Here again a certain ambiguity surrounds the German word. Geist is inadequately translated by either "mind" or "spirit": it comprises the meaning of both words (cf. Merz, III, p. 466). </div> <div class="footnote">[31] This does not mean that what is not good enough for philosophy is good enough for religion. The idea behind Schleiermacher is that what philosophy cannot sanction, religious experience can sanction. And it has to be remembered that, as a follower of Kant, he assigned very definite limits to the powers of philosophy. He was not an Hegelian—Hegel's and Schleiermacher's views of the religious problem are quite incompatible—the one believed, the other did not believe, that reason could solve that problem. </div> <div class="footnote">[32] Kopp, Geschichte der Chemie, Vol. I, p. 442 (quoted by Merz, Vol. I, p. 191). </div> <div class="footnote">[33] Merz, Vol. I, p. 218. </div> <div class="footnote">[34] According to one authority (Judd, in his Coming of Evolution) the number of known species of plants and animals must be placed at 600,000 (p. 10). </div> <div class="footnote">[35] Vestiges of Creation, published anonymously in 1844, passed through nine large editions by 1853. The author was Robert Chambers (1802-71), a geologist. </div> <div class="footnote">[36] Life and Letters, Vol. I, p. 168 (vide Judd, Coming of Evolution, p. 89). </div> <div class="footnote">[37] As a matter of fact, biologists soon demanded more than even Lyell's geology could give them. Recent discoveries about the nature of matter have, however, further extended the possible age of our planet. </div> <div class="footnote">[38] Darwin, Life, Vol. I, p. 93. </div> <div class="footnote">[39] "If we wish to fix a definite point to describe as the end of the idealistic period in Germany, no such distinctive event offers itself as the French Revolution of July, 1830" (Lange, History of Materialism, E.T., Vol. II, p. 245). </div> <div class="footnote">[40] A famous book which, though negative in its conclusions, places its author alongside Schleiermacher as one of the founders of the modern science of Religious Psychology. </div> <div class="footnote">[41] Balfour, Theism and Humanism, p. 36. </div> <div class="footnote">[42] "Evolution is an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion, during which the matter passes from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity, and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation." </div> <div class="footnote">[43] Spencer confessed that of the Synthetic Philosophy "two volumes are missing," the two important volumes on Inorganic Evolution, leading to the evolution of the living and of the non-living (cf. criticisms by Professor James Ward in his Naturalism and Agnosticism, Lecture IX). </div> <div class="footnote">[44] For an instance of the masterly work turned out by this school and of the attractiveness of their propaganda, read Huxley's lecture, "On a Piece of Chalk," delivered to the working men of Norwich during the meeting of the British Association in 1868. </div> <div class="footnote">[45] For this famous encounter, see Life of Huxley, Vol. I, pp. 179-89, and Life of J. R. Green, pp. 44, 45. </div> <div class="footnote">[46] As we shall subsequently find, this cosmic pessimism is less well grounded than Huxley believed. Still, Spencer's own scientific presuppositions were the same as Huxley's, so that the passage remains a pertinent criticism of the Evolutionary Philosophy as elaborated by him. </div> <div class="footnote">[47] It is instructive to observe that a similar note of latent pessimism is struck by the last notable survivor of the School we have endeavoured to describe. Viscount Morley at the end of his Recollections (1917), questioned as to the outcome of those generous hopes entertained with such confidence by his contemporaries, is compelled to ejaculate with philosophic brevity, circumspice, as he contemplates a spectacle of unparalleled horror. </div> <div class="footnote">[48] Storr, Development of English Theology in the Nineteenth Century, p. 329. See which book for a valuable chapter upon Coleridge. </div> <div class="footnote">[49] Foundations of Belief, p. 98. </div> <div class="footnote">[50] Foundations of Belief, p. 309. </div> <div class="footnote">[51] For this summary of Lotze's doctrine, see Merz, Vol. III, p. 615 and ff. </div> <div class="footnote">[52] Quoted by Ward in Pluralism and Theism, p. 103. For a brief yet adequate treatment of Mach's criticisms see Höffding's Modern Philosophers, pp. 115-21. </div> <div class="footnote">[53] R. B. Perry, Present Philosophical Tendencies, p. 351. </div> <div class="footnote">[54] It is impossible to go deeper into James' "theory of knowledge" without using technical language. A few of his own phrases, however, may help to elucidate things. "Abstract concepts ... are salient aspects of our concrete experiences which we find it useful to single out" (Meaning of Truth, p. 246). Elsewhere he speaks of them as things we have learned to "cut out" from experience, as "flowers gathered," and as "moments dipped out from the stream of time" (A Pluralistic Universe, p. 235). I owe these quotations to Perry, op. cit. </div> <div class="footnote">[55] Creative Evolution, p. 325. </div> <div class="footnote">[56] A Pluralistic Universe, p. 237. </div> <div class="footnote">[57] Creative Evolution, p. 174. </div> <div class="footnote">[58] i.e. Intellect is not (as it is generally represented to be) a developed form of instinct, nor instinct an embryonic form of intellect. </div> <div class="footnote">[59] The extraordinary and miraculous phenomena of instinct—especially as celebrated by the distinguished French scientist Fabre—cannot be rightly understood by trying to interpret them in terms of intellect. This is to misread them completely. </div> <div class="footnote">[60] Bergson's characterisation of Spencerian Evolutionism (Creative Evolution, p. 391). </div> <div class="footnote">[61] Creative Evolution, p. 286. </div> <div class="footnote">[62] Other notable pluralists in England are F. C. S. Schiller and Dr. MacTaggart. </div> <div class="footnote">[63] The logical conclusion, we say, though this may not be the ultimate truth about the matter. The most attractive theories are often the most superficial. </div> <div class="footnote">[64] Professor Cunningham in Pearson's Grammar of Science, Part I, p. 356. </div> <div class="footnote">[65] Quoted by W. C. D. Whetham in his Recent Development of Physical Science, p. 280. No reference is given by him. </div> <div class="footnote">[66] One theory attributes the existence of matter to occasional misfits among these grains. </div> <div class="footnote">[67] Quoted by Bishop Mercer. Problem of Creation, Appendix B. </div> <div class="footnote">[68] In Theism and Humanism. </div> <div class="footnote">[69] Mercer, op. cit., p. 106. </div> <div class="footnote">[70] Mechanism, Life, and Personality (1913), p. 81. </div> <div class="footnote">[71] Op. cit. pp. 64, 66. </div> <div class="footnote">[72] Professor J. Arthur Thomson, in an article entitled, "Is there one Science of Nature?" (Hibbert Journal, Oct., 1911). </div> <div class="footnote">[73] The Science and Philosophy of the Organism, Vol. II, p. 338. </div> <div class="footnote">[74] Op. cit. p. 101. </div> <div class="footnote">[75] Other names of distinguished scientists holding this view are: Sir W. Crookes the Physicist and Sir W. F. Barrett, F.R.S., in England, Dr. Hodgson and Prof. James Hyslop in America, Lombroso in Italy, Richet in France. </div> <div class="footnote">[76] From his Duplik. Quoted by Höffding, History of Philosophy, Vol. II, p. 21. </div> <div class="footnote">[77] F. H. Bradley on "Phenomenalism" (Appearance and Reality, p. 126). </div> <div class="footnote">[78] Höffding, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 129. </div> <div class="footnote">[79] Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity, p. 21. </div> <div class="footnote">[80] We now learn that conceptions of space of a highly unorthodox character are entertained by physicists and mathematicians, as the result of recent researches in the sphere of the gravitation of light. </div> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> [Pg 147] INDEX <ul class="IX"> <li>Agnosticism, 92</li> <li>Anti-clericalism, 43</li> <li>Aquinas, 9 f., 30 n.</li> <li>Aristotle, 8, 136</li> <li>Atomic theory, the, 49 <ul class="IX"> <li>collapse of, 126</li> </ul></li> </ul> <ul class="IX"> <li>Bacon, Lord, 16 f.</li> <li>Balfour, A. J., 105 f., 110, 128</li> <li>Bergson, 115-121, 143</li> <li>Berkeley, 55</li> <li>Boutroux, 112 f., 143</li> <li>Bradley, F. H., 104 f., 110, 122, 139</li> <li>Bruno, 12, 25, 29 f., 140</li> <li>Büchner, 86, 144</li> <li>Buffon, 77</li> </ul> <ul class="IX"> <li>Carlyle, Thomas, 38, 99-102</li> <li>Coleridge, S. T., 98 f.</li> <li>Comte, 85, 89, 92</li> <li>Copernicus, 11, 22, 25, 58</li> <li>Cunningham, Prof., 127</li> <li>Cusanus, 10</li> </ul> <ul class="IX"> <li>Dalton, 49, 83, 126</li> <li>Darwin, 80-83, 87 f.</li> <li>Descartes, 19-22, 26, 37, 43, 55, 74, 136</li> <li>Design, Argument from, 87 f.</li> <li>Diderot, 45 f., 48, 141, 144</li> <li>Driesch, 130 f.</li> </ul> <ul class="IX"> <li>Eckhart, 30 n.</li> <li>Encyclopædia, The, 45</li> <li>Electrons, 126</li> </ul> <ul class="IX"> <li>Feuerbach, 85, 95</li> <li>Fichte, 65-67</li> </ul> <ul class="IX"> <li>Galileo, 12-15, 22, 55, 79, 136</li> <li>Goethe, 30, 65</li> <li>Green, T. H., 103 f.</li> </ul> <ul class="IX"> <li>Haeckel, 88</li> <li>Haldane, Prof. J. S., 129, 132</li> <li>Harvey, William, 19, 22</li> <li>Hegel, 67-70</li> <li>Heine, 85</li> <li>Helmholtz, 75</li> <li>Hobbes, 22, 26, 43, 55, 144</li> <li>Holbach, 46-48, 141, 144</li> <li>Hume, 55 f., 58</li> <li>Huxley, 92 f., 95</li> </ul> <ul class="IX"> <li>Inge, 38 n.</li> </ul> <ul class="IX"> <li>James, William, 114 f., 123</li> <li>Jansenists, the, 43 n.</li> <li>Jesuits, the, 22 n., 26, 37, 43 n.</li> <li>Johnson, Dr., 47</li> </ul> <ul class="IX"> <li>Kant, 53-61, 66, 70, 77, 85, 137, 141 <ul class="IX"> <li>and Hegel compared, 69</li> <li>and Locke compared, 57</li> <li>and Rousseau compared, 65</li> </ul></li> <li>Kepler, 15</li> </ul> <ul class="IX"> <li>Lamarck, 77</li> <li>La Mettrie, 45, 48, 74</li> <li>Lange, 47, 84</li> <li>Laplace, 48 f.</li> <li>Larmor, Prof. J., 127</li> <li>Lavoisier, 49 f.</li> <li>Leibniz, 33-36, 41, 52 f., 122, 141</li> <li>Leonardo da Vinci, 14, 16, 132</li> <li>Lessing, 138[Pg 148]</li> <li>Locke, 52 f., 55 f.</li> <li>Lodge, Sir O., 134</li> <li>Lotze, 107-109</li> <li>Lyell, 78-80</li> </ul> <ul class="IX"> <li>Mach, 110-114, 143</li> <li>Malthus' Essay on Population, 80</li> <li>Meyer, 75</li> <li>McTaggart, 123 n.</li> <li>Modernism, 109</li> <li>Monads, 35 f., 122</li> </ul> <ul class="IX"> <li>"Natural Selection," 81, 87</li> <li>Newton, 23-26, 43, 44 n., 48, 82, 136</li> <li>Nietzsche, 94, 96 f.</li> </ul> <ul class="IX"> <li>Paley, 87</li> <li>Pascal, 22, 36-41</li> <li>Pearson, Prof. Karl, 1</li> <li>Pessimism, 95</li> <li>Positivism, 85, 95</li> </ul> <ul class="IX"> <li>Ritschl, 109</li> <li>Rousseau, 54 n., 62-65, 80</li> </ul> <ul class="IX"> <li>Sartor Resartus, 100</li> <li>Schelling, 65</li> <li>Schiller, 65</li> <li>Schiller, F. C. S., 123 n.</li> <li>Schleider, 75</li> <li>Schleiermacher, 70-72</li> <li>Spencer, Herbert, 35, 77, 89-92, 122</li> <li>Spinoza, 28-33, 41, 52 f., 67, 141</li> <li>"Spiritualism," 133-136</li> <li>Stephen, Leslie, 92</li> </ul> <ul class="IX"> <li>Tait, Prof., 128</li> <li>Thomson, Prof. J. A., 130 n.</li> </ul> <ul class="IX"> <li>Voltaire, 44 f.</li> </ul> <ul class="IX"> <li>Wallace, Alfred Russell, 81 f.</li> <li>Ward, Prof. James, 26 n., 91 n., 123</li> <li>Whöler, 74</li> </ul> <ul class="IX"> <li>Zeno's paradox, 117</li> </ul>     Printed in Great Britain at The Mayflower Press, Plymouth. William Brandon & Son, Ltd.     <hr style="width: 65%;" />   <h3>Transcriber's Notes:</h3> Punctuation has been corrected without note. Spelling, grammatical and typographical errors have been corrected in the text: Page 68: "understand" changed to "understands" Page 70: "fom" changed to "from" Page 128: "subjectly" changed to "subjectively" Page 138: "Odyssies" changed to "Odysseys" Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from the original. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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