The Morning Leader, March 25, 1897:
Mr. Cecil is a born fighter. He attacks with courage and cunning and resource, having at command a never-failing artillery of invective to complete the havoc he works by means of his sapping and mining. This latter plan of campaign he mercilessly pursues by quotation after quotation from previous essays and pamphlets of his "irrationalist trio," preparing his reader for the overthrow of the citadel by showing how hollow and unsubstantial are the outworks. So savagely complete, indeed is the attack that as one gazes upon the ruins of Kidd, Drummond, and Balfour, a feeling of sympathy with the fallen philosophers must take the place of joy in the whizzing of the rationalist shells.
The method of attack adopted by this new and puissant slogger shows, perhaps, a little too much contempt for the enemy, a little too much confidence in the impregnability of the attacking party's position. But, although the book may enrage the philosophic doubters, it is bound to make a glorious show for the robuster members of the rationalist party. The author's advice to the former is to "feed on the religious novel of Mrs. Humphry Ward, the geology of Sir J. W. Dawson, the apologetics of Mr. Gladstone, and the biographies of Jesus that are said to be in preparation by Mr. Hall Caine, Mr. Ian Maclaren, and Mr. Crockett—three gentlemen whose capacity for sentimental fiction is the best guarantee of their fitness for such a task." Language of this kind is distinctly provocative, but it may be found bracing enough to the energetic rejector of scientific compromise. Whatever "Pseudo-Philosophy" may lack in urbanity and serenity, no charge can be brought against it on the score of dulness or stupidity. The book is at once a brilliant and pitiless exposure of loose thinking, and a literary entertainment of the richest kind.
Transcriber's Note:
- Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.
- Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.