At the close of the last century the philosopher James Seth remarked that ‘if one were asked to name the two most characteristic attitudes of the latter half of the nineteenth century, one would be safe in answering – Evolutionism and Agnosticism'. Seth went on to observe how noteworthy and surprising it was that an age which saw such remarkable achievements in science ‘should be also the Age of Agnosticism, the epoch of the creed Ignoramus et ignorabimus'. The late Victorians, too, were struck by this fact, and it constituted a major point of debate between Anglicans and other theists, positivists, and the agnostics themselves concerning the very possibility, the limits, and the effects of this rapidly advancing temper of mind.

We only recently have come to recognize that major shifts in what people believe and in the way they live their lives are traceable not only or even primarily to intellectual causes. This is apparent to us now in assessing the spread of secularization in England in the latter half of the nineteenth century.