A synthesis of the lifelong thinking of British theologian philosopher JAMES MARTINEAU (1805-1900), this astonishing work, written when he was 80 and published in 1885, continues to offer important insight into the borderlands between faith and reason. A devout champion of Christianity, Martineau was also one of the first religious thinkers to recognize the import of Darwin's theory of evolution, and here, he interprets and applies ethics-which he defines as "the doctrine of human character"-in a world undergoing a radical paradigm shift.In Volume I, Martineau examines the philosophies of Plato, Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, and Comte and explores concepts of how we know what we know, how we can interpret knowledge, and what separates truth from fact.