profess to unite the two extremes, and interinvolve the thought of Nothing inextricably, by a law of the intellect, with the thought of Absolute Being.

To this most excruciating pass, as it must appear to British souls, Science at the utmost seems to have conducted Metaphysics. How well the Laureate has expressed the real pain of the crisis! Always one of his peculiar merits is that he receives and ponders to the utmost the last scientific informations of the time, letting them sway his thoughts and occultly shape even the phrasing of his song; and no reader of the In Memoriam but must have noted this noble elegy, and its full philosophical significance:

CHAPTER IV.

THE YEAR 1865: LATEST DRIFTS AND GROUPINGS.

In order to describe more exactly the state of British Philosophy in 1865, I can take no better plan than that of attempting an enumeration of the chief currents and eddies of philosophical opinion that are now meeting and traversing each other at all angles within Great Britain.*

I.

There may be grouped together a few eminent men, speaking to the British public from the platforms of modes of thought announced as theirs long ago, and which they do not seek to adjust now, in any systematic manner, to the surrounding medium.

In this class may be again named MR. CARLYLE. We all know how great, both extensively and intensively, has been his influence on the British mind of his generation, and that

* The reader will be so good as to remember that this chapter was written in the year to which it refers. I have retained the present tense even in this edition, thinking there may be some advantages in doing so.

to omit the recognition of him from any history of recent British Philosophy would be to omit the part of Hamlet's father from the play of Hamlet. We all know, too, how his influence continues. No man is more wide-awake than he to this day; no man catches more willingly and inquisitively, out of the roar of speculations and events around him, the tones that are significant. And, by his frequent voice in reply, we know that he is listening, and not only listening, but always revolving the last news within his mind, and forming his judgments, and still caring for the state of Denmark. And, as for a generation past, whatever communication comes from that source flashes among us from coast to coast of our Denmark, and ends not even there. Nor, though the message may offend, and irritate, or even enrage, is it ever felt to be irrelevant. But of the system or mode of mind out of which there still come these fresh communications we have long had the theory before us as fully as it is ever likely to be. What a permanence of greatness in this personality! At whatever time of his life, and by whatever aid from without, Mr. Carlyle contrived to extricate himself so absolutely as it is clear he must have done from the coils of previous British systems, and to start with his own set of ideas and principles, certain it is that, since he began his career as a public teacher, we have seen him, more than most men, one and the same. Let him be supposed, then, remaining still apart on his well-known part of the stage, while we proceed with our general survey.

Occupying also their various particular positions, more or less known, from time past, and requiring here but to be mentioned, are such thinkers and writers as MR. ISAAC TAYLOR, DR. WHEWELL, DR. NEWMAN, MR. MAURICE, and

MR. F. W. NEWMAN.* There might be an interesting study of the mode of philosophical thought exhibited in the writings of each of these, and of its connexions with preceding powers and movements in British Philosophy. Partly because most of them are theologians, and have inwound their speculations with theological questions and controversies, I refrain from such a glance at each as, even from our present point of view, each might merit.— -But I cannot but ask you to note how, in Dr. Newman's case, we have a splendid instance over again of the power of a purely metaphysical notion, once formed and dwelt in, to dominate a man's whole life, and determine the nature of his practical activity. Dr. Newman had apparently at no time of his life concerned himself with philosophy except in and through Theology; but he tells us, in his Apologia pro Vitâ Suâ, how he recollects that from his very boyhood he carried with him a certain constitutional condition of mind, resembling, if I do not misinterpret his description of it, the Berkeleyan Idealism. All the external Universe seemed to him a deception, an angelic extravaganza, a spangled phantasmagory of zodiacal signs and hieroglyphics, a vivid environment of sacramental symbolisms and picture-writings, speaking to him of a great Being, besides whom and his own soul there was no other.† Dwelling long within the blazing ether of this cosmological conception, till his soul had learnt its language and could think in no other, but tenacious of a principle which had also strongly possessed him from an early age, that of the necessity of dogma, Dr.

* Three of this group of writers-Mr. Isaac Taylor, Dr. Whewell, and Mr. Maurice have died since the first edition of this volume was published.

+ See Apologia, p. 56, p. 59, and pp. 88-91.