THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA BY ALFRED CALDECOTT, D.D. PROFESSOR OF logic and mental philoSOPHY IN KING's college, LONDON NEW YORK THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1901 + PREFACE THE literature of the Philosophy of Religion is composed of expositions differing from each other in various ways, and yet each professing that it has secured the true solution of the problem undertaken. In some cases it is plain that the profession is grounded upon a conviction that a victory over rival explanations has been won; in others, it appears rather as a comfortable assumption, in happy ignorance of what else is to be said. Before further effort is made, a conspectus of what has been done all over the field seems desirable. This is really only one case of the need for historical study which is felt in every department of philosophy and theology as the nineteenth century passes into the twentieth. The century now behind us has teemed with new ideas and fresh methods, and in some quarters it is closing in a mood of depression through our failure. to secure a commanding and dominant result for philosophy of religion after so much mental activity has been applied to it. A survey of the past and a comparison of the methods which compete for our acceptance in the present may be the remedy needed by the tendency to agnosticism on the one hand, and the apparently chaotic advocacy of incompatible systems on the other. Such a conspectus it is the aim of this volume to supply. It is not intended, however, to go beyond the limits of the literature of Britain and America, and the survey will begin with the period following upon the Reformation. This will give quite as much material as a single volume could usefully deal with, and the present writer makes no claim to be competent to deal with more. Of course it is true that British thought has moved in vital connection with thought on the Continent, sometimes in close attachment, at other times in 33 846 |