We have said that there is a tendency at the present time to sacrifice particular dogmas and symbols, and retreat upon the final positions of belief in God and an immortal soul, and an ethical relation of the two, which should be independent of historical records. Such a tendency has always been evinced by great and comparatively independent Christian thinkers (such as Descartes and Leibnitz), but it is now extended to a very large section of educated believers. These positions, which it is hoped to retain after the fall of traditional authority, are the two main problems of meta physics. How do they stand after the keen struggle of antagonistic systems which has at length comparatively subsided? That is the only aspect of philosophic activity which interests the Rationalist as such. The problem of Realism versus Idealism is, to a great extent, connected with it such problems as the nature of time or space may be conveniently disregarded. But on the fundamental problems of the nature and origin of man and of the existence of God, the strongest and keenest minds of all countries, enriched with the thought of all ages, have laboured throughout the century. What is the verdict of this last decade of the century?
It may be stated briefly that, at the commencement of the century, orthodoxy in philosophy was represented by the Scotch school of Reid and Dugald Stewart—the only comprehensive system at that time in England. Rationalism was represented by the empirical philosophy. To these was soon added the Transcendental philosophy imported from Germany by Coleridge and De Quincey. The Scotch system has struggled manfully throughout, being defended and developed by the powerful Sir William Hamilton, Dean Mansel, and a few minor lights. Kantism and Hegelianism have divided with it the allegiance of theologizing philosophers; Platonism, also revived by Coleridge, has likewise found many adherents. Empiricism, fully developed into a complete antagonism to traditional Theism, has had a stupendous growth, and has propagated religious scepticism far and wide in one or other of the forms it has assumed in the hands of Mill, Spencer, and Huxley. The interesting revival of scholasticism by a small and feeble group of Roman Catholic scholars, and the irritating opposition of muddle-headed Protestant divines who think theology can
