THE SPIRITUAL MOVEMENT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. F EW thinkers have
ever made a worse shot than did John Stuart Mill when he expressed wonder that there had not been a revival of the Manichean philosophy. For what- ever else may be affirmed of the thought of the century just past and gone, one thing is certain.—viz., that all schools tended to the doctrine of philosophic unity, and that the principle of dualism was thoroughly discarded Whether we take the Hegelian system, or the idea of a "double-faced unity," or the so- called " philosophy of the Unconscious." or the idealistic Theism of some eminent thinkers, or the Spenoerian philosophy of evolution.—in all there is a strenuous attempt to reach a universal unity. a substance (in the sense of Spinoza) from which all phenomena take their origin. Of the philosophic) thought of the century nothing is clearer than this. We may also say that the religious mind of the century tended in the same direction. and doubtless aided in rearing the philo- sophic structure. The Evangelical movement of the previous century had dwelt on the great fact of evil, which it had found hard to reconcile with the conception of an all-righteous God. But in the nineteenth century, with its scientific doctrine of the unity of Nature, there arose (e.g., in the theology of Maurice) the idea expressed of old in the Bible.—" Is there evil in the city, and the Lord bath not done it ? " We do not say that the age-long problem found a real solution, although the doctrine of evolution suggested to men's minds in a more powerful way than before the idea that evil was at bottom privative and derivative from lower forms of life. All we con- tend for is that neither the philosophic nor the religious con- sciousness could find any rest in a dualistic view of the world. That appears to us to be the most signal and positive outcome of the thought of the last hundred years, and a most vital and important conclusion it certainly is.
The second conclusion, not perhaps so absolutely felt and expressed, yet in the main accepted, is the condemnation of materialism as a philosophic creed. A man who to-day used the language of Cabanis would be ridiculed alike by men of science and philosophers. Whatever else may be the explana- tion of this wonderful universe, thinkers have concluded that its origin cannot be expressed in terms of matter. Huxley declared that materialism " involves grave philosophical error." Darwin never claimed that his theory accounted for more than the forces at work on the outside fringe of a limited world. Mr. Spencer, though attempting to evolve a world out of material forces, traces these very forces up to an inscrutable and infinite Power of which nothing can be predicated save that it is. Science has almost discarded matter and deals in potential energy. The leading philosophers of the century, whether teaching with Fichte egoistic idealism, or with Hegel the identity of thought and being, or with Schopenhauer the world as a product and presentation of will, have all declared against materialism. It may probably be asserted with definite assurance that the ghost of materialism (if we may make use of such an expression) has been finally laid by the critical thought of the century.
But for the rest, are we not still in the element of criticism in which the century began, when the great exponent of the critical philosophy was ending his long career? All the thought of the present time is still centering round the lines drawn by Immanuel Kant. We see more or less clearly the limitations of his system, but the world has not arrived at any other. We have passed through many phases. The Hegelian theory, which so fascinated Germany half a century back, has declined in the land of its birth, though it has profoundly affected thought. Schelling's " Nature-philosophy " has singular affinities for modern science, but, like the work of Schopenbauer, it is rather a series of detached thoughts, of gleams of insight, than a consistent system in the Hegelian sense. Our much smaller English thinkers have produced no lasting effect, Dugald Stewart, who rounded off a system of philosophy for young Edinburgh Whiggism, is unread, and so is James Mill's philosophy of the mind. J. S. Mill has fared, from the philo- sophic point of view, little better ; and Mansel and Hamilton merely paved the way for the more thoroughgoing agnosticism of Mr. Spencer. If there is a positive tendency here at present, it is expressed by the so-called neo-Kantianism of Dr. Caird, which is widely held to provide an intellectual ground for religion. In Germany they have come to purely critical activity, not so much, perhaps, in the sense of an actual revolt against the ascendency of any school, but because the mind is weary, the spirit weighed down by the burden of actual life, and there must be a pause before the next bound onward.
Indeed, if one is to speak briefly of the movement of the last century, either in terms of philosophic thought or of spiritual consciousness (the outer and inner sides of the one human soul), one would say that that movement has itself been its own end. Positive results have not been reached ; outwardly there seems much chaos, and undoubtedly there is not a little. Never since the palmy days of Greece has mankind known more intense intellectual activity, never more eager attempts to state the religious problem in the terms of the intellect. The chambers of the mind have been ransacked, the grounds of man's faith in a spiritual world have been explored as never
before, the theory of knowledge has been examined from every point of view. From Strauss to Harnack, what learning and power have not been expended in criticism of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures ! The century, too, practically witnessed the unfolding of the portals of the East and the exposition of new Oriental philosophies.
Greek philosophy has been revived, and Plato and Aristotle more keenly scrutinised than during many generations.
There has been, too, a general desire for a restatement of Christianity which should at the same time reveal its spiritual power and reconcile it with the demands of the reason. Neither the scientific discoveries nor the historical criticism of the century, revolutionary as they have been, have indi- cated more passionate eagerness than the philosophic and religious activity by which the human mind has tried to give some answer to those questions which will never let it rest,— What, Whence, Whither ? And we have to confess that, from one point of view, we are no nearer an answer than when Napoleon was disputing with his savants under the sky of Egypt. But has this mental toil been in vain, as the dweller in Philistia supposes ? When we say that the movement of the century has been in the main analytic and critical rather than constructive, and that this critical movement has been an end in itself, what do we mean ?
There are two great results of any critical movement, each of first-rate importance. One is the resolution of a great and complex statement into its terms. That does not mean that the statement is being destroyed, but that its essential contents are being ascertained. All positive movements in human thought are followed by those periods of analysis when the mind turns on itself and is impelled to search for the grounds of its positive affirmations. For the time, as in the story of Osiris (the analogue, as readers of Milton will recognise, is not new), the beautiful and symmetrical form of truth seems to have been destroyed, and with Wordsworth we lay our curse on those who "murder to dissect." But analysis is an inevitable movement in the course of thought, since it helps us to realise and make our own the truth presented to us with a view to a larger statement. It is not the actual process of criticism so much as the preparation for the next leap that is vital as result. But it is also, in the second place, this very critical process which enlarges the mind; so that, while men think an epoch barren, they must look for its effects in this twofold way,—as a preparation for a deeper and wider state- ment, and as a training-ground for the mind. Are we saying too much when we claim this double gain for the nineteenth century in the domain of spiritual thought,—that its critical
movement, apparently leading us no further out of the chaos, has both enlarged and exalted man's mental and spiritual consciousness, and has prepared the way for the positive advance of another century P If this twofold effect has been wrought, and if the great idea of a spiritual monism as the principal achievement of the century has destroyed both dualism and materialism, we may, while looking back on the grey phantom that has vanished into the past, exclaim with Browning—as outcome of that century of quick and eager
change-
" That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows, Or decomposes but to recompose, Become my Universe that feels and knows."
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