Hamilton, [1984] it was on the lines of a dialectical resistance
to the pantheism of Germany, in the interests of faith; though
Hamilton's dogmatic views were always doubtful. [1985] Admirably
learned, and adroit in metaphysical fence, he always grounded his
theism on the alleged "needs of our moral nature"--a declaration of
philosophical bankruptcy. The vital issue was brought to the front
after his death in the Bampton Lectures (1858) of his supporter
Dean Mansel; and between them they gave the decisive proof that the
orthodox cause had been philosophically lost while being socially
won, since their theism emphasized in the strongest way the negative
criticism of Kant, leaving deity void of all philosophically cognizable
qualities. Hamilton and Mansel alike have received severe treatment
at the hands of Mill and others for the calculated irrationalism
and the consequent immoralism of their doctrine, which insisted on
attributing moral bias to an admittedly Unknowable Absolute, and on
standing for Christian mysteries on the skeptical ground that reason
is an imperfect instrument, and that our moral faculties and feelings
"demand" the traditional beliefs. But they did exactly what was
needed to force rationalism upon open and able minds. It is indeed
astonishing to find so constantly repeated by trained reasoners the
old religious blunder of reasoning from the inadequacy of reason to
the need for faith. The disputant says in effect: "Our reason is not
to be trusted; let us then on that score rationally decide to believe
what is handed down to us": for if the argument is not a process of
reasoning it is nothing; and if it is to stand, it is an assertion
of the validity it denies. Evidently the number of minds capable of
such self-stultification is great; but among minds at once honest
and competent the number capable of detecting the absurdity must be
considerable; and the invariable result of its use down to our own
time is to multiply unbelievers in the creed so absurdly defended.
It is difficult to free Mansel from the charge of seeking to confuse
and bewilder; but mere contact with the processes of reasoning in
his Bampton Lectures is almost refreshing after much acquaintance
with the see-saw of vituperation and platitude which up to that time
mostly passed muster for defence of religion in nineteenth-century
England. He made for a revival of intellectual life. And he suffered
enough at the hands of his co-religionists, including F. D. Maurice,
to set up something like compassion in the mind of the retrospective
rationalist. Accused of having adopted "the absolute and infinite,
as defined after the leaders of German metaphysics," as a "synonym
for the true and living God," he protested that he had done
"exactly the reverse. I assert that the absolute and infinite,
as defined in the German metaphysics, and in all other metaphysics
with which I am acquainted, is a notion which destroys itself by
its own contradictions. I believe also that God is, in some manner
incomprehensible by me, both absolute and infinite; and that those
attributes exist in Him without any repugnance or contradiction at
all. Hence I maintain throughout that the infinite of philosophy is
not the true infinite." [1986] Charged further with borrowing without
acknowledgment from Newman, the Dean was reduced to crediting Newman
with "transcendent gifts" while claiming to have read almost nothing
by him, [1987] and winding up with a quotation from Newman inviting
men to seek solace from the sense of nescience in blind belief.
It was said of Hamilton that, "having scratched his eyes out in the
bush of reason, he scratched them in again in the bush of faith";
and when that could obviously be said also of his reverend pupil,
the philosophic tide was clearly on the turn. Within two years of the
delivery of Mansel's lectures his and Hamilton's philosophic positions
were being confidently employed as an open and avowed basis for the
naturalistic First Principles (1860-62) of Herbert Spencer, wherein,
with an unfortunate laxity of metaphysic on the author's own part,
and a no less unfortunate lack of consistency as regards the criticism
of religious and anti-religious positions, [1988] the new cosmic
conceptions are unified in a masterly conception of evolution as a
universal law. This service, the rendering of which was quite beyond
the capacity of the multitude of Spencer's metaphysical critics, marks
him as one of the great influences of his age. Strictly, the book is a
"System of Nature" rather than a philosophy in the sense of a study
of the grounds and limitations of knowledge; that is to say, it is on
the former ground alone that it is coherent and original. But its very
imperfections on the other side have probably promoted its reception
among minds already shaken in theology by the progress of concrete
science; while at the same time such imperfections give a hostile
foothold to the revived forms of theism. In any case, the "agnostic"
foundation supplied by the despairing dialectic of Hamilton and Mansel
has always constituted the most effective part of the Spencerian case.