Others, according to their own statement, received the same impression
from the phenomena of the same period. But the movement had begun
earlier; nor should I object to call it, as they do, a movement towards
"something deeper and truer than satisfied the last century[1]." It
began, I suppose, in the last ten years of the last century, and has
ever since been working onwards, though for a long time slowly and
secretly, and with no distinctly marked direction. But still, in
philosophy and general literature, there have been sufficient proofs
that the pendulum, which for nearly two hundred years had been swinging
one way, was now beginning to swing back again; and as its last
oscillation brought it far from the true centre, so it may be, that its
present impulse may be no less in excess, and thus may bring on again,
in after ages, another corresponding reaction.

[Footnote 1: See Mr. Newman's Letter to Dr. Jelf, p. 27.]

Now if it be asked what, setting aside the metaphor, are the two points
between which mankind has been thus moving to and fro; and what are the
tendencies in us which, thus alternately predominating, give so
different a character to different periods of the human history; the
answer is not easy to be given summarily, for the generalisation which
it requires is almost beyond the compass of the human mind. Several
phenomena appear in each period, and it would be easy to give any one of
these as marking its tendency: as, for instance, we might describe one
period as having a tendency to despotism, and another to licentiousness:
but the true answer lies deeper, and can be only given by discovering
that common element in human nature which, in religion, in politics, in
philosophy, and in literature, being modified by the subject-matter of
each, assumes in each a different form, so that its own proper nature is