Henry Longueville Mansel, Dean of St. Paul’s, was born at Cosgrove rectory, Northamptonshire, October 6, 1820. Educated at Merchant Taylors’ and St. John’s College, Oxford, he became reader in Philosophy in 1855, Waynflete professor in 1859, professor of Ecclesiastical History and canon of Christ Church in 1867, and Dean of St. Paul’s in 1869. He died at Cosgrove Hall, 31st July 1871. The pupil and part-editor of Hamilton, he went beyond his master in emphasising the relativity of knowledge—alleging, to the consternation of many, that we have no positive conception of the attributes of God. His works are Aldrich’s “Logic” (1849), “Prolegomena Logica” (1851), article “Metaphysics” in 8th edition of the “Encyclopædia Britannica” (1857), “The Limits of Religious Thought” (Bampton Lectures, 1858), “The Philosophy of the Conditioned” (1866), and “The Gnostic Heresies” (with Life, 1874). See Dean Burgon’s “Twelve Good Men” (1888).

Personal

  My first acquaintance with Dean Mansel was made twenty years ago at the University, when he had everything to give, and I had everything to receive. As I think of him, his likeness seems to rise before me. In one of those picturesque and old-world Colleges, in rooms which, if I remember rightly, on one side looked upon the collegiate quadrangle with its sober and meditative architecture, and on the other caught the play of light and shade cast by trees almost as venerable on the garden grass;—in one of those rooms, whose walls were built up to the ceilings with books, which, nevertheless, overflowed on the floor, and were piled in masses of disorderly order upon chairs and tables, might have been seen sitting day after day the late Dean, then my private tutor, and the most successful teacher of his time in the University. Young men are no bad judges of the capabilities of a teacher; and those who sought the highest honours of the University in the Class schools thought themselves fortunate to secure instruction such as he gave,—transparently lucid, accurate, and without stint, flowing on through the whole morning continuously making the most complicated questions clear.

  Only incidentally hitherto has anything been said about Mansel’s wit. So remarkable a feature may not be passed by with a passing allusion only. He stood alone among the men of his time for the brilliancy of his epigrams—repartees—puns—witty sayings. Wit in him was something all distinct from humour,—delightful, suppose, as Sydney Smith’s. Further yet was it removed from that irresistible drollery which depends for its success on exuberant animal spirits—laughs immoderately at its own jokes—and at last sends you to bed with aching sides and eyes blinded with pleasant tears. Neither again was it as a raconteur that Mansel was famous: meaning thereby that delightful conversational faculty—(it must have been pre-eminently conspicuous in Sir Walter Scott)—which is ever illustrating the matter in hand by first-rate anecdotes, or by reproducing the brilliant sayings of famous men. Least of all was there in Mansel any of that sarcastic bitterness which makes certain utterers of bons mots the terror as much as the admiration of society. He was never known to say a cruel thing of anybody. Sarcasm was not one of his weapons. He was always good-natured, always good-tempered. His wit was purely intellectual; and its principal charm was that it was so spontaneous—so keen—so uncommon—above all, for the most part, so unpremeditated…. Let it be declared in conclusion concerning the Theologian, Metaphysician, and Philosopher, whose life we have been tracing in outline,—that although he will be chiefly remembered by posterity for the profundity of his intellect,—as by his contemporaries he was chiefly noted for the brilliancy of his wit;—yet by those who knew him best, he will while memory lasts be held in reverence chiefly for his simple piety,—his unfeigned humility,—the unquenchable ardour of his childlike faith.

General

  The general spirit of this book, “Limits of Religious Thought,” is scholarly and liberal; and probably the deviations from this tone are involuntary and intellectual merely. But there are examples of controversial unfairness, which, though sanctioned by usage, we deeply lament to see.

  It must be twenty years since, a boy, I read Hamilton’s essay on the unconditioned, and from that time to this, ontological speculation has been a folly to me. When Mansel took up Hamilton’s argument on the side of orthodoxy (!) I said he reminded me of nothing so much as the man who is sawing off the sign on which he is sitting, in Hogarth’s picture.

  With regard to Mr. Mansel’s book, “Limits of Religious Thought” itself, we must confess we find it a very difficult book on which to pass a judgment, favorable or unfavorable. The author is evidently a man of honest intentions, of ability, and varied and solid learning. He appears to be very well read in modern philosophical and theological literature, and, though not blessed with a true philosophical genius, he has much intellectual strength and logical acuteness. Whether we agree or disagree with him, we are obliged to respect him as a superior man, and, as a scholar who devotes himself honestly to serious studies. So much we willingly say of the author. But his Lectures themselves are very far from satisfying us. Though written by an Oxford scholar they are hardly English, at least are written in an English with which we are not, and hope we never shall be, familiar. Words are used in an unusual, frequently, it strikes us, in an un-English sense, and are unintelligible to one not familiar with the German schools of philosophy, either at first hand, or through the Scotsman Sir William Hamilton. His terminology is continually deceiving us, and we frequently find that we have understood his terms in a contrary sense from the one intended. His style has its merits, but is not our good old-fashioned English style; it wants the directness, clearness, and naturalness of the better class of English writers. His thought is not English, but Scoto-German, and is nearly as muddy as that of Schelling or Hegel. The reason of this is not in the original character of the author’s mind, nor in the abstruse and difficult nature of the subjects treated, but in the false or defective system of philosophy which he has had the misfortune to adopt.

  Is [“Philosophy of the Conditioned”] nothing more than the doctrine of orthodox theology. But its essential feature is this: The faith which is ultimate and independent of knowledge is not in this philosophy a sentiment, the issue of the heart, or a conviction having its ground in aspiration, love, and devotion, but it subsists in the cold light of the intellect itself, where alone intellectual philosophy could profess to find it. It subsists as a logical necessity of thinking something to exist which is unthinkable—not merely something which we have not yet thought of—not the unknown simply, but the unknowable. Sir William Hamilton professes to demonstrate this necessity in the passage so often quoted from his review of Cousin.

  Mansel’s Bampton Lecture on “The Limits of Religious Thought” was published some ten years ago. It was the application of Hamilton’s “Philosophy of the Conditioned to Religious Thinking.” Such application was not made to any great extent by the master himself. This was done most vigorously by the ablest disciple, doubtless, of the renowned philosopher. The work is carefully prepared, and logically it is very able. It should also be said that in it valuable suggestions are made in respect to objections to some of the doctrines of religion. But that which gives to the work its special and permanent interest, as well as a temporary notoriety, is the main assumption of Mansel in regard to the possibilities of thought as wholly conditioned and relative.

  To my mind Mansel’s “Bampton Lectures” and the reception they met with were a sign of the times. They seemed to me far more irreligious than Herbert Spencer. They left religion as a mere cry of despair.

  He stepped at once into the foremost rank of modern Theological writers; and the classical Tutor, the Professor of Moral Philosophy, however eminent locally, became at once a power beyond the walls of the University. From this time he wielded an influence which he never lost; and which, had he lived, he would, I believe, have largely increased. But those lectures were its origin. They passed through several editions; were repeatedly reviewed and canvassed; and became almost a text-book in the schools of the University.

  A writer whose works illustrate the literary beauty there may be in closeness, and with obvious repression or economy of a fine rhetorical gift.

  Was rather a man of possibilities than of execution. In the wide range of his reading he cannot have fallen far short of his master, Hamilton. He was also a keen and able reasoner and the weight of his learning was relieved by flashes of a wit of the good old scholastic class. His works, however, have hardly been as successful as they perhaps deserved to be.

  His style is essentially manly and straightforward, and he never beats the bush without starting a hare. But his prose, though devoid of ornament, was far from being colloquial. On the contrary, much of what he wrote is pitched in a high strain of rhetoric. It is rhetoric charged with unbending gravity; rhetoric in which the strokes of humour are severe and grim; rhetoric that often breaks into scathing rebuke and merciless denunciation; rhetoric withal that is never palpably forced, exaggerated, or insincere; but it is rhetoric the sombre tone of which is scarce once relieved by a touch of the gentler sentiments or kindlier feelings. In this respect Mansel presents a curious contrast to Butler. Butler is nothing if not persuasive and winning. Mansel would compel assent by sheer force of logic, nor does he condescend to disguise or keep in the background the consequences necessarily involved in the acceptance of his first proposition in a chain of reasoning. To persons of loose habits of thought he must be unsympathetic, if not actually repellent. But he will ever occupy a high place in the esteem of those who value consistency in argument, skill in controversy, and a powerful and impressive style of writing, which is often lofty and impassioned, though never animated by those tender and amiable emotions which are so popular with the mass of mankind.

  There are some who think that Henry Longueville Mansel was actually in more than one respect, and might, with some slight changes of accidental circumstance, have been indisputably, the greatest philosopher of Britain in the nineteenth century. Of the opinion entertained by contemporaries of great intellectual gifts, that of Mark Pattison, a bitter political and academical opponent, and the most acrimonious critic of his time, that Mansel was, though according to Pattison’s view, an “arch-jobber,” an “acute thinker, and a metaphysician” seems pretty conclusive. But Mansel died in middle age, he was much occupied in various kinds of University business, and he is said by those who knew him to have been personally rather indolent…. It may be contended that Mansel was on the whole rather intended for a critic or historian of philosophy than for an independent philosophical teacher; and in this he would but have exhibited a tendency of his century. Yet he was very far from mere slavish following even of Hamilton, while the copying, with a little travesty and adjustment of German originals, on which so much philosophical repute has been founded in England, was entirely foreign to his nature and thought…. His natural genius, moreover, assisted by his practice in miscellaneous writing, which though much less in amount of result than Mill’s was even more various in kind, equipped him with a most admirable philosophical style, hitting the exact mean between the over-popular and the over-technical, endowing even the “Prolegomena Logica” with a perfect readableness, and in the “Metaphysics” and large parts of the editorial matter of the “Aldrich” showing capacities which make it deeply to be regretted that he never undertook a regular history of philosophy.

  Mansel’s power of acute and lucid reasoning was shown in his “Prolegomena Logica” (1851), and afterwards in his “Philosophy of the Conditioned” (1866). Both were developments of Hamilton’s principles, and they have suffered from the general discredit of the Hamiltonian school. Mansel is better known now, by name at least, on account of his “Limits of Religious Thought,”… which was the occasion of a controversy between him and Maurice.