a trilateral figure which shall
not be also triangular. Carry out this view, says Fitzjames, and you
make our conceptions the measure of reality. Mysteries, therefore,
become nonsense, and miracles an impossibility. In fact, Ward's logic
would lead to Spinoza, not to the deity of Catholic belief. Ward might
retort that Fitzjames's doctrines would lead to absolute scepticism or
atheism. Fitzjames, in fact, still accepts Mill's philosophy in the
fullest sense. All truth, he declares, may be reduced to the type, 'this
piece of paper is blue, and that is white.' In other words, it is purely
empirical and contingent. The so-called intuitive truths 'two and two
make four' only differ from the truth, 'this paper is white' in that
they are confirmed by wider experience. All metaphysical verbiage, says
Fitzjames, whether Coleridge's or Ward's, is an attempt to convert
ignorance into superior kind of knowledge, by 'shaking up hard words in
a bag.' Since all our knowledge is relative to our faculties, it is all
liable to error. All our words for other than material objects are
metaphors, liable to be misunderstood--a proposition which he confirms
from Horne Tooke's nominalism. All our knowledge, again, supposes memory
which is fallible. All our anticipations assume the 'uniformity of
nature,' which cannot be proved. And, finally, all our anticipations
also neglect the possibility that new forces of which we know nothing
may come into play.

Such convictions generally imply agnosticism as almost a necessary
consequence. They might seem to show that what I have called the
utilitarian element in his thoughts had effectually sapped the base of
the Puritanic element. I certainly think that this was to some extent
the case. Fitzjames had given up the belief that the Gospel narrative
could be proved after the Paley method, and that was the only method
which, according to him, was legitimate. He had, therefore, ceased to
believe in the historical truth of Christianity. After going to India he
did not take part in church services, and he would not, I am sure, have
used such language about his personal convictions as he used in all
sincerity at the time of the 'Essays and Reviews' controversy. In short,
he had come to admit that no belief in a supernatural revelation could
be maintained in the face of modern criticism. He often read Renan with
great interest; Renan, indeed, seemed to him to be sentimental, and too
favourable to the view th