To ADOLPHUS WILLIAM WARD, LITT.D., LL.D., Principal of Owens College, Manchester, MY DEAR WARD, If the following pages contain anything helpful towards the solution of the problems which I discuss, it is largely due to the masters of Teutonic thought cited by me from time to time. It has been their mission to reassert, in the language proper to the age, the idea of perfection as an inward condition of mind and spirit: to main. tain the truth, which underlies all rational philosophy, that the great mechanism of the world exists for something beyond itself: that it exists for the realization of moral worth-worth in character and in conduct. Kant and Hegel, Trendelenburg and Lotze, furnish an antidote to the dissolvent doctrine of sensualistic individualism, by which the French intellect seems hopelessly poisoned, and which has disastrously affected many an excellent understanding among ourselves. They, more than any other modern writers, have vindicated the conception of human society as organic and ethical. To you I directly owe it that vi I have learnt of these teachers. When, in my undergraduate days at Peterhouse, I enjoyed the advantage of your instruction as Classical Lecturer of the College and as my Private Tutor, you did much more than direct my Academical reading with: sagacious judgment, and supplement it with wide and accurate knowledge. Your precept and example sent me to the study of the language and literature of Germany, in which you alone, I think, of my Cambridge friends, were deeply versed. The debt of gratitude thus laid upon me I have never forgotten, and have long wished to record. You greatly add to it by your kindness in allowing me to write here a name so highly and so justly honoured by all students of English literature and of scientific history. SUMMARY. CHAPTER I. PROGRESS. One of the most striking characteristics of the present day is the great influence exercised by Shibboleths. The reason why this is so is to be found in the domination of the Many. The vast majority of men are swayed by rhetoric rather than by logic; and, in some cases, an apt phrase becomes a Shibboleth, the faculty of effectively pronouncing which is a key to popular favour The object of the present work is to examine seven Shibboleths which largely dominate contemporary life. The first of them is the Shibboleth of Progress, which is, in some sort, the parent of the rest. The word is employed very vaguely. Those who use it most carefully and conscientiously intend to signify by it the ascent of mankind from bad to good and from good to better: the advancement of our race towards perfection: the continuous enhancement of the value of human life But these are question-begging generalities, underlain by the profoundest problems. The positive value of life is not self-evident, does not admit of logical proof, and would be denied by the overwhelming majority The progressive races are a small minority of the human Wherein does this Progress consist? Two thousand years ago Sophocles struck the true note of it in the noble choric song which celebrates the might, the wondrousness, the cleverness of man The item of it which most strikes the imagination is the marvellous advance of the physical sciences In this sphere our Progress is absolute. But, more, the spirit in which the physicist works has vastly contributed to our advance in other provinces of the human intellect PAGE 4 5 7 9 In historical science, for example 10 In linguistic science 11 And in the new science of religion which has sprung from the science of language 11 But great as is our gain, direct and indirect, from the Progress of the physical sciences, there are drawbacks to it 12 Among them must we reckon the new dogmatism of physicists, who, committing the fault which they impute to theologians, seek to draw within their jurisdiction provinces of the human intellect with which physical science, as such, has no concern. 13 |