The Life of Thomas Hardy
tinued to discourse uncompromising scientific agnosticism. The Essays and Reviews (innocuous reading for Twentieth Century eyes) were perused as evidence of the weakening of the religious and social fabric. The volume raised a "sandstorm" of heresy-trials, as a result of which "hell was dismissed with costs." Herbert Spencer announced the scheme of his rationalistic "synthetic philosophy"; backed by Kingsley, George Eliot and Froude, he engaged to apply a single key-conception to the whole material universe, including mankind; he saluted Darwin as the verifier of his own generalities; he attracted the bitter fire of Gladstone and of Martineau.
Thus did the Annus Mirabilis 1860 precipitate a vast unrest and disturb the placid lives of millions. With the dogmatic cosmology of the Old Testament going all to pieces, nothing seemed safe any longer. And matters did not mend. Mild people armed themselves fiercely and went out to champion their beliefs, old or new. Philosophic calm became a rare commodity. Kingsley's pragmatism ignited Newman’s mysticism and created the Apologia. Lecky's History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe, in 1865, followed by his History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne, in 1869, extended the boundaries of the tournament-lists. John Morley, editing the Fortnightly Review, made it the organ of "fighting-rationalism"; Leslie Stephen followed in his path with the Cornhill. And Ruskin, who might have gone on indefinitely as an art-critic, began to look away from Turner and Venice and into the hearts of men; his Unto This Last led off the line of his sociological essays.
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