behind his back. In contrast with it he was himself a heretic, with first
principles devastating every settled belief: and it was really this
venerable silent partner at home that his victory superseded, at least in
appearance and for a season. David did not slay Goliath, but he dethroned
Saul. Saul was indeed already under a cloud, and all in David's heart was
not unkindness in that direction. Bradley might almost be called an
unbelieving Newman; time, especially, seems to have brought his suffering
and refined spirit into greater sympathy with ancient sanctities.
Originally, for instance, venting the hearty Protestant sentiment that
only the Christianity of laymen is sound, he had written: "I am happy to
say that 'religieux' has no English equivalent". But a later note says:
"This is not true except of Modern English only. And, in any case, it
won't do, and was wrong and due to ignorance. However secluded the
religious life, it may be practical indirectly _if_ through the unity of
the spiritual body it can be taken as vicarious". The "_if_" here saves
the principle that all values must be social, and that the social organism
is the sole moral reality: yet how near this bubble comes to being
pricked! We seem clearly to feel that the question is not whether
spiritual life subserves animal society, but whether animal society ever
is stirred and hallowed into spiritual life.

All this, however, in that age of progress, was regarded as obsolete:
there was no longer to be any spirit except the spirit of the times. True,
the ritualists might be striving to revive the latent energies of
religious devotion, with some dubious help from aestheticism: but against
the rising tide of mechanical progress and romantic anarchy, and against
the mania for rewriting history, traditional philosophy then seemed
helpless and afraid to defend itself: it is only now beginning to recover
its intellectual courage. For the moment, speculative radicals saw light
in a different quarter. German idealism was nothing if not self-confident;