Mallock, William Hurrell. Is Life Worth Living? New York: John Wurtele Lovell, 1880. [10191]
Green cloth with gilt titles & decoration, light soil, 7 1/2 5 1/4 inches. Contemporary owner's signatures on ffep, 328 clean and unmarked pp.; some smudges to binding. Good. Hardcover.
An interesting presentation of a Catholic philosophy of life, dedicated to John Ruskin. It is in opposition to positivist philosophy and socialism. The final chapter which treat of religion in particular has Mallock arguing that Protestantism, based upon the Bible, has been debunked by the new Biblical Criticism, while the Catholic Church makes no such claim as putting the Bible first, but the Church itself is the source of belief.
William Hurrell Mallock (1849-1923), English novelist, economist, and Roman Catholic writer.
"His keen logic and give for acute exposition and criticism were displayed in later years both in fiction and in controversial works. In a series of books dealing with religious questions he insisted on dogma as the basis of religion and on the impossibility of founding religion on purely scientific data. In Is Life Worth Living? (1879) and the satirical novel The New Paul and Virginia (1878) he attacked positivist theories and defended the Roman Catholic Church; one of his uncles, Hurrell Froude, had been a founder of the Oxford Movement." - wikipedia.
