THE 19TH CENTURY During the 1 gth century, the methods of measurement and enumeration, coming down from Newton and Leibniz, were ap plied in many spheres with such success that, by 1850, a new scepticism, in the shape of positivism unaware of its own dogmas. acquired vogue. This was the heyday of materialism. The natural universe, with "matter" as substratum came to be viewed as a given changeless system wherein everything followed from an ir reversible cosmic order. The spiritual must be accounted merely a side-issue, devoid of intrinsic reality. On this scheme gravita tion, electricity, magnetism and other forces were paraded as properties of "matter"—all else betrayed the taint of illusion or, to be plain, superstition. The hidden postulate—that nothing is valid save sense-perception—inevitably led to dogmatism. Hence types of scepticism arose successively, agnosticism being the earliest, while, very gradually during the final quarter of the r9th century, more rapidly during the first quarter of the loth, the theological aspect of the issue fell in shadow, thanks to unpre cedented extension of natural knowledge and profound socio economic changes.
The Reign of Law.—The mechanical conception of nature ruled between 185o and 187o. The atomic theory, reverting to implica tions as old as Democritus, the theorem of the conservation of energy when energy was accounted a purely mechanical principle, the early hypotheses of physiology after the enunciation of the cell-theory, and the doctrine of evolution thrust into physical categories, lent seeming authority to the uniformity of "matter" as the whole import of the uniformity of nature. The "reign of law," reducing all phenomena to motion, appeared to warrant an ultimate philosophy bound to oust "Romantic" sentimentalism. Experiential test had established calculable truths ; therefore, it alone could guarantee the truth. In short, Hume's view, that nothing is valid save sense-perception, came to be identified with the system of actual science.
Agnosticism in Theology.—Meanwhile Protestant theology, notably in Germany, beset by opposition between inward faith and historical criticism, was fain to fall back upon abstract sub jectivity. Nature, conceived as a vast automatic mechanism, be
trays no spiritual purpose ; and the corporate witness of the Chris tian consciousness down the ages, being deprived of divine intima tion by positivist history, had become "naturalized" similarly. The contradiction between Reason and Faith seemed irremediable when Nature and the Church and the Scriptures could furnish no decisive guidance. Hence, relying upon a negative interpretation of Kant, Albrecht Ritschl (1822-88) and his disciples distin guished sharply between "scientific" and "religious" experience, denied theological validity to the former, and found the latter purely in the attitude of the believer to the object of his belief.
This attitude is determined by the psychical facts of sin, recogni tion of forgiveness, and conviction of restoration of the will to goodness, which, taken together, furnish sufficient evidence of the historical person of Jesus as a divine revelation, and the necessary antecedent of a God Who can reconcile. Thus, no matter what natural science and "scientific" history may conclude, these "value-judgments" of inward consciousness remain quite unaffected. So far as the believer is concerned, there is neither reign of natural law nor immanent development within human history. "Things-in-themselves" being inscrutable, have no bear ing upon individual conviction, which is a practical affair justified by results. "The redemption of man by the surrender of his own will to the will of the Whole" becomes irrelevant, because the Whole and its will have disappeared. So, as in ancient scepticism, man is the measure of all things, seeing that judgments of faith are "only intelligible as expression of the personal self-cer tainty of the human spirit which is in some way morally deter mined." Religion is no theory, but a practice "utilized by the living person as a means to his own ends." In short, religion is conserved at the price of objective truth. Later developments seem to show that this position has not been maintained with its pristine rigour.