his soul was committed. He gave us an edition of Bishop Butler which for the first time made his works presentable and attractive. He edited; he assorted; he prefaced; he added subsidiary studies. He offered us the opportunity of reconsideration. He challenged us to say whether we were prepared to let the great tradition die.
That challenge has been made, as yet, in vain. It has roused no concern; it has evoked no new examination of Butler's claims to philosophical importance. His work remains still outside the current of living speculation.
Is it worth while, then, to go back on an issue that has been decided? The case has been made with incomparable force, under unique conditions of power and pathos; and the verdict has been adverse. Who can be presumptuous enough to repeat an experiment which has received already such an august and final dismissal?
No one, indeed, would dare it, if it was a matter which depended on personal qualifications. But that is, mercifully, not the case. The conditions which determine the doctrine and the concentration of the intellectual interests of an Age lie far beyond the range of personal influence. They lie back in the secret motions of organic growth; in the subtle processes of mental transformation; in the massed and manifold experiences which go to the creation of a social speculative temperament. There is a structure of living thought for ever in making, through infinite reaction on its environment, and in touch with a special atmosphere. To it, individuals are but accidental. It holds in itself its own principle of advance, and grows by the law of its own growth. Our highest function is to co-operate with its movement; to do our minute contributory work within its encompassing influence. We cannot force it. We know but dimly the springs on which it draws; the hidden source from which it derives its momentum. We can but lend ourselves to become the instruments through which it achieves its own peculiar process of intellectual assimilation.
And it is because there is so much in our immediate
