If it solved any part of the mystery,
it would be welcome, but it does not, it only adds new difficulties. It
is "a mere edifice of moonshine." The writer makes no attempt to prove
by logic that ultimate reality lies outside the limits of human reason.
He bases this conclusion on the fact that all philosophers hopelessly
contradict one another; if the subject-matter of philosophy were, like
physical science, within the reach of the intelligence, some agreement
must have been reached.
The Broad Church movement, the attempts to liberalize Christianity, to
pour its old wine into new bottles, to make it unsectarian and
undogmatic, to find compromises between theology and science, found no
favour in Leslie Stephen's eyes, and he criticized all this with a
certain contempt. There was a controversy about the efficacy of prayer.
Is it reasonable, for instance, to pray for rain? Here science and
theology were at issue on a practical
[217] point which comes within the domain of science. Some theologians
adopted the compromise that to pray against an eclipse would be foolish,
but to pray for rain might be sensible. "One phenomenon," Stephen wrote,
"is just as much the result of fixed causes as the other; but it is
easier for the imagination to suppose the interference of a divine agent
to be hidden away somewhere amidst the infinitely complex play of
forces, which elude our calculations in meteorological phenomena, than
to believe in it where the forces are simple enough to admit of
prediction.
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