Then, finally, it will be our difficult task to discriminate between the surging thoughts of that {12} second period and those of the Third stage, through which we are advancing, and to shew what can already be made out of a common ground of agreement and co-operation, now much more likely to be reached than could at one time have been foreseen by the most optimistic imagination. {13} CHAPTER I THE OLDER ORTHODOXY Never had there been greater unanimity of opinion in England in regard to the religious interpretation of the world than that which prevailed at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The excesses on the Continent which had accompanied the advocacy of free thought had disposed men's mind to fall back upon authority, and most of all in matters that affected the basis on which the continuance of social order and moral conduct depended. The general position was clearly apprehended, and was accepted as if beyond dispute. Men spoke and thought of the Order of Nature. The world was a Cosmos, a regulated system. Order implied an Orderer. It was regarded by them as obvious that there must have been a First Cause, a great Architect and Maker of the Universe. They agreed with Aquinas that "things which have no perception can only tend toward an end if directed by a conscious and intelligent being. Therefore there is an {14} Intelligence by which all natural things are ordered to an end."[1] They were fully prepared to endorse the indignant protest of Bacon: "I had rather believe all the folly of the 'Legend,' and the 'Talmud,' and the 'Alcoran,' than that this universal frame is without a mind."[2] In fact no other hypothesis seemed to them thinkable.