t elements of life, which grouped themselves into their present forms
as the planet cooled. The difficulty and reluctance encountered by
this conception, arise solely from the fact that the theologic
conception obtained a prior footing in the human mind. Did the latter
depend upon reasoning alone, it could not hold its ground for an hour
against its rival. But it is warmed into life and strength by
associated hopes and fears--and not only by these, which are more or
less mean, but by that loftiness of thought and feeling which lifts
its possessor above the atmosphere of self, and which the theologic
idea, in its nobler forms, has engendered in noble minds.

Were not man's origin implicated, we should accept without a murmur
the derivation of animal and vegetable life from what we call
inorganic nature. The conclusion of pure intellect points this way
and no other. But the purity is troubled by our interests in this
life, and by our hopes and fears regarding the life to come. Reason
is traversed by the emotions, anger rising in the weaker heads to the
height of suggesting that the suppression of the enquirer by the arm
of the law would be an act agreeable to God, and serviceable to man.
But this foolishness is more than neutralised by the sympathy of the
wise; and in England at least, so long as the courtesy which befits an
earnest theme is adhered to, such sympathy is ever ready for an honest
man. None of us here need shrink from saying all that he has a right
to say. We ought, however, to remember that it is not only a band of
Jesuits, weaving their schemes of intellectual slavery, under the
innocent guise 'of education,' that we are opposing. Our foes are to
some extent of our own household, including not only the ignorant and
the passionate, but a minority of minds of high calibre and culture,
lovers of freedom moreover, who, though its objective bull be riddled
by logic, still find the ethic life of their religion unimpaired. But
while such considerations ought to influence the form of our argument,
and prevent it from ever slipping out of the region of courtesy into
that of scorn or abuse, its substance, I think, ought to be maintained
and presented in unmitigated strength.

In the year 1855 the chair of philosophy in the University of Munich
happened to be filled by a Catholic priest of great critical
penetration, great learning, and great courage, who had borne the
brunt of battle long before Doellinge