[46] As we shall subsequently find, this cosmic pessimism is less well grounded than Huxley believed. Still, Spencer's own scientific presuppositions were the same as Huxley's, so that the passage remains a pertinent criticism of the Evolutionary Philosophy as elaborated by him.
[47] It is instructive to observe that a similar note of latent pessimism is struck by the last notable survivor of the School we have endeavoured to describe. Viscount Morley at the end of his Recollections (1917), questioned as to the outcome of those generous hopes entertained with such confidence by his contemporaries, is compelled to ejaculate with philosophic brevity, circumspice, as he contemplates a spectacle of unparalleled horror.
[48] Storr, Development of English Theology in the Nineteenth Century, p. 329. See which book for a valuable chapter upon Coleridge.
[49] Foundations of Belief, p. 98.
[50] Foundations of Belief, p. 309.
[51] For this summary of Lotze's doctrine, see Merz, Vol. III, p. 615 and ff.
[52] Quoted by Ward in Pluralism and Theism, p. 103. For a brief yet adequate treatment of Mach's criticisms see Höffding's Modern Philosophers, pp. 115-21.
[53] R. B. Perry, Present Philosophical Tendencies, p. 351.
[54] It is impossible to go deeper into James' "theory of knowledge" without using technical language. A few of his own phrases, however, may help to elucidate things. "Abstract concepts ... are salient aspects of our concrete experiences which we find it useful to single out" (Meaning of Truth, p. 246).
Elsewhere he speaks of them as things we have learned to "cut out" from experience, as "flowers gathered," and as "moments dipped out from the stream of time" (A Pluralistic Universe, p. 235).