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man is reduced to a creature incapable of knowing, estimating, or realizing anything
whatsoever.

In the Associationalism of Hartley and Hume was advanced the theory that the
association of ideas is the fundamental principle of psychology and the explanation for all
mental phenomena. Hartley held that if a sensation be repeated several times there is a
tendency towards its spontaneous repetition, which may be awakened by association with
some other idea even though the object causing the original reaction be absent. The
Utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham, Archdeacon Paley, and James and John Stuart Mill
declares that to be the greatest good which is the most useful to the greatest number. John
Stuart Mill believed that if it is possible through sensation to secure knowledge of the
properties of things, it is also possible through a higher state of the mind--that is,
intuition or reason--to gain a knowledge of the true substance of things.

Darwinism is the doctrine of natural selection and physical evolution. It has been said of
Charles Robert Darwin that he determined to banish spirit altogether from the universe
and make the infinite and omnipresent Mind itself synonymous with the all-pervading
powers of an impersonal Nature. Agnosticism and Neo-Hegelianism are also noteworthy
products of this period of philosophic thought. The former is the belief that the nature of
ultimates is unknowable; the latter an English and American revival of Hegel's idealism.

Dr. W. J. Durant declares that Herbert Spencer's Great Work, First Principles, made him
almost at once the most famous philosopher of his time. Spencerianism is a philosophic
positivism which describes evolution as an ever-increasing complexity with equilibrium
as its highest possible state. According to Spencer, life is a continuous process from
homogeneity to heterogeneity and back from heterogeneity to homogeneity. Life also
involves the continual adjustment of internal relations to external relations. Most famous
of all Spencer's aphorisms is his definition of Deity: "God is infinite intelligence,
infinitely diversified through infinite time and infinite space, manifesting through an
infinitude of ever-evolving individualities." The universality of the law of evolution was
emphasized by Spencer, who applied it not only to the form but also to the intelligence
behind the form. In every manifestation of being he recognized the fundamental tendency
of unfoldment from simplicity to complexity, observing that when the point of
equilibrium is reached it is

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A CHRISTIAN TRINITY.

From Hone's Ancient Mysteries Described.