BISHOP BUTLER
THE Analogy," says Leslie Stephen, " impresses us in literature like some mass of rock-piercing strata of a different formation, unmovable and undecayed, but yet solitary, excep- tional, and barren." Topical though it was, appearing when Deism was at full strength, it excited of itself but little con- troversy, and hardly deflected the current of theological speculation. Indeed, as Stephen remarks, in so far as it did influence contemporary enquirers, it probably had upon them an effect opposite to that which its author intended : it was more likely to turn a Deist into an Atheist than it was to turn him into an orthodox believer. Perhaps this was why by both sides it was left, so severely, alone.
Yet throughout the nineteenth century the fame of the Analogy persisted, and the reading of it played a part in the intellectual development of such diverse thinkers as James Mill and Newman. Today, who reads it ? Very few philo- sophical or theological students, one suspects, and no one else. And of those who attempt to scale this solitary rock, or to search among its crevices for flowers, many must have suffered the fate of the present reviewer, and have given in soon after setting out, wearied (to drop the metaphor) by the tedious iteration of analogical arguments—arguments Which have no force unless one accepts their author's unques- tioning assumption of .the existence of that Divine Author whose operations he seeks to illustrate.
Yet Butler does, or should, live by reason of his Rolls Sermons—admirable and still attractive in their style, their matter, and their spirit. Through them breathes that " moral sweetness " later attributed to Dean Church, and the language in which they are expressed is as lucid and persuasive as that of Berkeley.
Mr. Mossner is not concerned, however, with Butler, as a man or as a stylist ; he seeks only to make plain his position among the theologians of the " Age of Reason "—an age which extends, roughly speaking, from the Revolution of '88 to the Revolution of '89. Mr. Mossner takes his stand upon that barren rock, the Analogy, and " views the landscape o'er." Few students since the death of Leslie Stephen can have had as detailed a knowledge of this landscape as Mr. Mossner's he knows it intimately from end to end, and in mapping it out he never loses his sense of perspective. The result is a good book, and a not uninteresting book ; certainly a book which students of eighteenth-century thought will find most valuable as a work of reference and a guide.
It is shorter and more concise than Leslie Stephen's great work, and than Leland's View ; but then it has a more unified purpose than either of these books—more unified, but less humane, and for that reason it is less interesting. Stephen and Leland take us straight to their authors, make us interested in them as persons, and give us summary paraphrases of their tracts and dissertations ; being with them is like being in an eighteenth-century library, hung with portraits, and having our attention directed to books actually on the shelves. If you
like that kind of thing you are subjected to an immediate fascination. How far—for better or for worse—this kind of study has progressed since Stephen's day, and how different is Mr. Mossner's approach to his subject, will be indicated by a specimen from his -numerous notes :
" In the general conclusions to his monograph on The Relation of John Locke to English Deism (Chicago, 1918) S. G. Hefelblower does not allow sufficiently for. Locke's Deistic influence. Cf. also Stirling P. Lamprecht's Moral and Political Philosophy of John Locke (New York, 1918) p. 22n. But Lamprec.ht is surely misleading . . .2'
We are no longer in the library, we are in the seminar : books have been transformed into material.
JOHN SPARROW.
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