John S. Haller Jr. is searching for certitude. He does not find it. In his most recent study, Haller examines the life and work of a select group of intellectuals who groped through the debris of a crumbling past and who offered alternative sources of faith. The Victorian “crisis of belief” or “crisis of faith” is a commonplace among scholars. Haller rightly credits the work of Lance St. John Butler, Timothy Larsen, Susan Budd, and others in the field. While slightly conventional, Haller's volume nevertheless offers a valuable reference to those who struggled with doubt and its aftermath. As Haller puts it, “no longer able to square the unfolding of new discoveries with the broken pieces of Christian dogma, the scientific, literary, and philosophical thinkers of the day turned their personal anguish into an ethical undertaking to discover a substitute set of standards applicable to the secular world” (14). What is particularly noteworthy in Haller's analysis is that he shows how these efforts only created new edifices that would also eventually crumble.

Although he mentions several factors that led to doubt, he focuses, somewhat unfortunately, on the rise of the natural sciences, particularly the onset of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. I say this is “unfortunate” because Darwin himself did not blame science for his religious doubts. Haller also incorrectly asserts that Darwin was raised in an orthodox Christian home (8). Darwin did receive an orthodox Anglican education, but he had a nominal Christian upbringing. His freethinking father wanted him to become a clergyman because it would provide a comfortable lifestyle. Indeed, the male Darwins were “lukewarm” theists at best.

In any event, Haller begins with French philosopher Auguste Comte, who envisioned history as progressive, with the “eventual triumph of science over the delusional promises offered by theology and metaphysics” (14). Comte's positivism, Haller argues, was the attempt to restore certainty “amidst the strains affecting the political, social, and moral issues of the period” (14). Haller helpfully contextualizes Comte's ideas by pointing out the influence of Baron d'Holbach and Henri de Saint-Simon on his thought (23). From Saint-Simon he learned of the continued relevance and function of religion, and thus his later notion of the “Religion of Humanity” should not be divorced from his positivist philosophy. Comte, in fact, greatly admired the moral structure and authority of the Catholic Church and thus used it as foil to map out his own substitute religion. Like his master Saint-Simon, Comte was motivated by a “concern for solving society's social, political, and moral problems” (38–39). But Comte did not solve the problem of doubt; he merely ignored it by focusing on his own vision of the future. This became his substitute religion, and indeed for many who came after him.

Most subsequent figures in Haller's narrative, in fact, are directly or indirectly influenced by Comte's “Religion of Humanity.” John Henry Newman's critique of “liberalism,” for example, was largely a reaction to Comte and his followers (48). More indirect influence can be seen in Herbert Spencer's doctrine of the “Unknown.” Unfortunately, some of Haller's sources on Spencer are a bit dated, and one is rather surprised by the absence of work by Mark Francis, Michael W. Taylor, and Bernard Lightman, all of whom have written excellent studies on Spencer in recent years. Because of this, Haller's interpretation of Spencer is slightly off. Nevertheless, Haller is correct in saying that Spencer's reputation rivaled Darwin's (65). In fact, when many American Protestants embraced evolutionary theory, it was Spencer's neo-Lamarckian understanding of evolution rather than Darwin's. That so many of the religiously liberal accepted Spencer's ideas is no surprise, as he himself was greatly influenced by liberal streams in Methodism, Quakerism, and Socinian groups (68). Spencer's answer to rising uncertainty was, of course, his doctrine of the “Unknown,” which he posited as the solution to the conflict between “science and religion” (75). That the “Unknown” brought comfort to many Victorians is indicative of changes in religious thought at the end of the century.

Haller's commentary on Alfred Russel Wallace is more insightful, noting particularly how his Spiritualism acted as a substitute to orthodox Christian belief (82). The religious context is again essential. Wallace, the co-discoverer of evolution by natural selection, enjoyed the preaching of dissenters (83). Haller also aptly summarizes the key divergence Wallace took in discussing human evolution. “A superior intelligence,” according to Wallace, “guided the development of man in a definite direction, and for a special purpose” (95). This “theistic evolutionary theology” made Wallace of course more open to Spiritualism (96). But as Haller is careful to point out, Spiritualism was more of a response against religious orthodoxy than science (99).

Naturally, the next step would be the agnosticism of Thomas Huxley, and Haller does indeed devote an entire chapter to “Darwin's bulldog.” But like his chapter on Spencer, much of the scholarship Haller cites are older studies, and the omission of more recent work is perplexing. Haller is correct to refer to Huxley as a “positivist,” despite his ridicule of Comte and his followers (112). While Huxley berated Comte's followers as “Catholicism-minus-Christianity,” his own position resembled something like a “Protestantism-minus-Christianity.” Indeed, a religious sentiment is still very much present in Huxley's agnosticism, as Haller acknowledges (123).

Haller then recounts the life and thought of John Fiske, a somewhat neglected figure at the end of the nineteenth century. Fiske was a disciple of Spencer and attempted to modify his doctrine of the “Unknown” for an American audience. But just as those who came before him, Fiske's substitute religion ultimately failed to win the hearts and minds of the orthodox. Many conservative theologians correctly saw his substitute as little more than the “natural religion” of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English deism. Unsurprisingly, Fiske himself was influenced by liberal-minded Swedenborgians and freethinking Quakers (132, 134).

The same can be said of Haller's next figure, William James, who substituted traditional Christian belief with his Emersonian pragmaticism (153). Like Fiske, James seemed to have been influenced by Swedenborgian mysticism, which he picked up from his father (155). A major figure in early twentieth-century intellectual life in America and beyond, James was one of the founders of modern psychology. His general account of religion, though, is Scheiermacherian in that it takes religious experience to be what is primary, and theology and institutional forms as secondary. Thus with James we reach the culmination of a trajectory that began with liberal Protestant thought but ultimately goes beyond it, for James went further than any other nineteenth-century figure in focusing completely on the individual. James's view ultimately collapses into something like Meliorism, New Thought, or a “Gospel of Wellness,” which in many ways is the logical conclusion of “natural religion” (163).

In his concluding chapters, Haller introduces us to the relatively unknown figures of Lester Frank Ward and Paul Carus. Unsurprisingly, both Ward and Carus were disciples of Comte. Ward, who was an American botanist and the first president of the American Sociological Association, set forth a cosmic philosophy intent on substituting “revealed religion” (177). The German-American philosopher Carus similarly made science into a religion (192). Carus is a fascinating character, for he argued throughout his career that “true science and religion could never be in conflict” (21). But like many other nineteenth-century intellectuals, Carus demanded that “religion” needed radical transformation. Like others, he promoted Meliorism and, as founder of the journal Monist, argued that “God, the human spirit, and the universe were one” (196). Ultimately, like Comte, Carus saw himself as a prophet calling forth a new religion that worshiped human achievement. The “Kingdom of God,” he wrote, “is within us” (203–204).

In a very brief conclusion, Haller notes that the Great Wars destroyed this optimism in progress (225). While society no doubt now lives with much ambiguity and doubt about God, morality, and purpose, what is clear, from the popularity of such writers as Edward O. Wilson, David Christian, and Yuval Noah Harari, many continue to find hope in the Religion of Humanity. Thus, while Haller closes his book lamenting the problems of tribalism, fragmentation, and loss of vision in our world today (226), one wonders indeed if this is the end result of worshiping, as Comte did, “an animal of no consequence.”