views, and at length, in England and America, by the works of Draper
and Buckle, in the sixth and later decades of the century, the
conception of law in human history was widely if slowly popularized,
to the due indignation of the supernaturalists, who saw the last
great field of natural phenomena passing like others into the realm
of science. Draper's avowed theism partly protected him from attack;
but Buckle's straightforward attacks on creeds and on Churches brought
upon him a peculiarly fierce hostility, which was unmollified by
his incidental avowal of belief in a future life and his erratic
attacks upon unbelievers. For long this hostility told against his
sociological teaching. Spencer's Principles of Sociology nevertheless
clinched the scientific claim by taking sociological law for granted;
and the new science has continually progressed in acceptance. In the
hands of all its leading modern exponents in all countries--Lester
Ward, Giddings, Guyau, Letourneau, Tarde, Ferri, Durkheim, De Greef,
Gumplowicz, Lilienfeld, Schäffle--it has been entirely naturalistic,
though some Catholic professors continue to inject into it theological
assumptions. It cannot be said, however, that a general doctrine
of social evolution is even yet fully established. The problem is
complicated by the profoundly contentious issues of practical politics;
and in the resulting diffidence of official teachers there arises a
notable opening for obscurantism, which has been duly forthcoming. In
the first half of the century such an eminent Churchman as Dean Milman
incurred at the hands of J. H. Newman and others the charge of writing
the history of the Jews and of early Christianity in a rationalistic
spirit, presenting religion as a "human" phenomenon. [1928] Later
Churchmen, with all their preparation, have rarely gone further.