of
Charles Austin and looked up to James Mill as their leader. The hatred
for 'sentimentalism' and 'vague generalities' and the indifference to
mere poetical and literary interests were common to both. The strong
points of Benthamism may, I think, be summed up in two words. It meant
reverence for facts. Knowledge was to be sought not by logical jugglery
but by scrupulous observation and systematic appeals to experience.
Whether in grasping at solid elements of knowledge Benthamists let drop
elements of equal value, though of less easy apprehension, is not to my
purpose. But to a man whose predominant faculty was strong common sense,
who was absolutely resolved that whatever paths he took should lead to
realities, and traverse solid ground instead of following some
will-o'-the-wisp through metaphysical quagmires amidst the delusive
mists of a lawless imagination, there was an obvious fascination in the
Bentham mode of thought. It must be added, too, that at this time J. S.
Mill, the inheritor of Bentham's influences, was at the height of his
great reputation. The young men who graduated in 1850 and the following
ten years found their philosophical teaching in Mill's 'Logic,' and only
a few daring heretics were beginning to pick holes in his system.
Fitzjames certainly became a disciple and before long an advocate of
these principles.

I find one or two other indications of disturbing studies. He says in a
letter that Greg's 'Creed of Christendom' (published in 1851) was the
first book of the kind which he read without the sense that he was
trespassing on forbidden ground. He told me that he had once studied
Lardner's famous 'Credibility of the Gospel History,' to which Greg may
not improbably have sent him. The impression made upon him was (though
the phrase was used long afterwards) that Lardner's case 'had not a leg
to stand upon.' From the Benthamite point of view, the argument for
Christianity must be simply the historical evidence. Paley, for whom
Fitzjames had always a great respect, put the argument most skilfully in
this shape. But if the facts are insufficient to a lawyer's eye, what is
to happen? For reasons which will partly appear, Fitzjames did not at
present draw the conclusions which to many seem obvious. It took him, in
fact, years to develope distinctly new conclusions. But from this time
his philosophical position was substantially that of Bentham, Mill, and
the empiricists, while the superstructure of