I 
 
REESE LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Class 
 
/ 
 
\ 
 
THE 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL 
 
 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY, 
 
 FROM ITS ORIGIN IN GREECE DOWN TO 
 THE PRESENT DAY. 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE HENRY LEWES. 
 
 " Man is not born to solve the mystery of Existence ; but be must nevertheless attempt it, 
 in order that he may learn how to keep within the limits of the Knowable." GOETHE. 
 
 " For I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs, 
 And the thoughts of men are widened by the process of the suns." 
 
 LIBRARY EDITION, 
 
 MUCH EXLAEGED AND THOEOUGHLY REVISED. 
 
 XEW YORK: 
 D. APPLETOK AND COMPANY, 
 
 346 & 348 BROADWAY. 
 M DCCC LVII. 
 
L-4 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THIS new edition may almost be considered as a new 
 work, so many are the additions and so extensive the 
 alterations. Seven new names have been added to the 
 list of philosophers, ABELAED, ALGAZZALI, GIORDANO 
 BRUNO, HARTLEY, DARWIN, CABANIS, and GALL. An 
 Introduction, setting forth the distinguishing character 
 istics of Philosophy and Science, replaces the original 
 Introduction. Under the heads of SOCRATES, the SOPH 
 ISTS, ARISTOTLE, BACON, SPINOZA, HUME, CONDILLAC, 
 KANT, and ECLECTICISM, considerable additions and alter 
 ations will be found ; and, throughout, the revision has 
 been such that scarcely a paragraph remains unaltered. 
 
 The work was written ten years ago, and was ad 
 dressed to a popular audience. Ten years have not 
 been without their influence on the historian ; and 
 moreover, the success of the work has so greatly ex 
 ceeded any thing that could reasonably have been anti 
 cipated not only -in respect to sale, but in the directions 
 of its influence that on undertaking this Library Edi 
 tion I felt the necessity of modifying both the aim and 
 scope of the work. A graver audience was to be ad 
 dressed, a graver tone adopted. "Without forgetting the 
 general public, I had now to think also of what students 
 would require. Many polemical passages, many ex- 
 
IV PREFACE. 
 
 tracts, and some digressions, have been removed ; and 
 the space thus gained has prevented the new matter 
 from swelling the work to an inconvenient size. Many 
 references and other bibliographical details have been 
 added, although the principle of abstinence from unne 
 cessary citation has still been preserved. 
 
 The labor bestowed on this Edition will, I hope, ren 
 der it more worthy of public acceptance. To my friend, 
 the Kev. "W. G. Clark, of Trinity College, Cambridge, 
 an acknowledgment is due for the kindness with which 
 he permitted me to profit by his accomplished scholar 
 ship and taste, in the revision of the proofs ; but while 
 thanking him publicly for his many suggestions and 
 corrections, I must exonerate him from every iota of 
 responsibility either as to the opinions or the statements 
 in this volume. 
 
 The Introduction explains the purpose of this History 
 and the principles of its composition ; let me therefore 
 only add here that, although availing myself of the la 
 bors of other historians and critics, I have not restricted 
 myself to them. The works of the various philosophers, 
 with rare exceptions, have been studied at first hand, 
 and have furnished the extracts and abstracts ; that is 
 to say, I have either collected the passages myself, or 
 have verified them by reference to the originals, in al 
 most all cases. While, therefore, this History makes no 
 pretension to a place beside the many erudite and com 
 prehensive Histories previously published, it claims to 
 be regarded as something very different from a mere 
 compilation. The novelty of its conception made direct 
 acquaintance with the originals indispensable. Having 
 to exhibit the Biography of Philosophy in its rise, 
 growth, and development, I could not always have 
 
PREFACE. V 
 
 drawn my material from writers who had no such aim ; 
 many of the passages most significant for my purpose 
 being totally disregarded by my predecessors. 
 
 In another respect also I have innovated, namely, in 
 the constant interweaving of criticism with exposition. 
 This was necessary to my purpose of proving that no 
 metaphysical system has had in it a principle of vitality ; 
 none has succeeded in establishing itself, because none 
 deserved to succeed. In this way I have been led to 
 express every conclusion to which the study of meta 
 physical problems has led me ; in some places espe 
 cially in the refutation of Sensationalism, and in the 
 physiological discussion of psychological questions 
 I have been forced to content myself with a brief and 
 imperfect exposition of my own views ; and the reader 
 is requested to regard them rather in their bearing as 
 criticisms, than as expressing what I have to say 011 
 such difficult topics. 
 
 The following list comprises some of the many general 
 Histories which the student will find useful, should he 
 desire ampler detail than w r as consistent with the size 
 and plan of this volume : 
 
 In English. Hitter, History of Philosophy , 3 vols. ; 
 Tennemann, Manual of the History of Philosophy, 
 1 vol. ; Victor Cousin, Introduction to the History 
 of Philosophy r , 1 vol. ; Morell, History of Specula 
 tive Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century, 2 vols. 
 (2d edition, much improved). 
 
 In French. Degerando, Ilistoire Comparee des Sys- 
 temes de Philosophic, 4 vols. (2d edition); Renou- 
 vier, Manuel de la Philosophic Ancienne, 2 vols., 
 and Manuel de la Philosophic Moderne, 1 vol. ; 
 Damiron, Ilistoire de la Philosophic en France au 
 
VI PKEFACE. 
 
 XIX Siecle, 1 vol. ; Galuppi, Lettres Pldlosoplii- 
 ques, 1 vol. 
 
 In German. Hitter, Geschichte der Philosophie^ 9 vols. ; 
 Tennemann, Geschichte der Philosophic ?, 11 vols. ; 
 Hegel, Geschichte der Philosophic, 3 vols. ; Zeller, 
 Die Philosophic der Griechen, 2 vols. ; Brandis, 
 Geschichte der Griechisch-Romischen Philosophic, 
 2 vols. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PART I. ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 Speculations on the Nature of the Universe. 
 
 CHAPTER I. THE PHYSICISTS. Thales. Anaximenes. Diogenes of 
 Apollonia 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. THE MATHEMATICIANS. Anaximander of Miletus. Py 
 thagoras. Philosophy of Pythagoras. Translations from Aristotle s 
 Metaphysics , 10 
 
 CHAPTER III. THE ELEATICS. Xenophanes. The Philosophy of 
 Xcnophanes. Parmenides. Zeno of Elea/ 37 
 
 SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 Speculations on the Creation of the Universe, and on the Origin of 
 Knowledge. 
 
 Heraclitus. Anaxagoras. Empedocles. Democritus 63 
 
 THIRD EPOCH. 
 
 Intellectual Crisis. The Insufficiency of all Attempts towards a Solution 
 V/ of the Problem of Existence, as well as that of Knowledge, produces the 
 Sophists. 
 
 THE SOPHISTS. What were they ? Protagoras 102 
 
 FOURTH EPOCH. 
 
 A New Era opened by the Invention of a New Method. 
 SOCRATES. The Life of Socrates. Philosophy of Socrates 122 
 
 FIFTH EPOCH. 
 
 Partial Adoption of the Socratic Method. 
 
 The Megaric School. Euclid. The Cyrenaic School. Aristippus. The 
 Cynics. Antisthenes and Diogenes .... 169 
 
Vlll CONTENTS. 
 
 SIXTH EPOCH. 
 
 Complete Adoption and Application of the Socratic Method. 
 
 PLATO. Life of Plato. Plato s Writings : their Character, Object, and 
 Authenticity. Plato s Method. Plato s Ideal Theory. Plato s Psy 
 chology. Summary of Plato s Dialectics. Plato s Theology and 
 Cosmology. Plato s View of the Beautiful and the Good. Plato s 
 Ethics 186 
 
 SEVENTH EPOCH. 
 
 Philosophy again reduced to a System : Close of the Socratic Movement. 
 Aristotle. 
 
 CHAPTER I. ARISTOTLE. -Life of Aristotle. Aristotle s Method. 
 Aristotle s Logic. Aristotle s Metaphysics 241 
 
 CHAPTER II. SUMMARY OF THE SOCRATIC MOVEMENT 266 
 
 EIGHTH EPOCH. 
 
 Second Crisis of Greek Philosophy : the Skeptics, Epicureans, Stoics, 
 and the New Academy. 
 
 CHAPTER I. THE SKEPTICS. Pyrrho 268 
 
 CHAPTER II. THE EPICUREANS. Epicurus 274 
 
 CHAPTER III. THE STOICS. Zeno 281 
 
 CHAPTER IV. THE NEW ACADEMY. Arcesilaus and Carneadcs 293 
 
 CHAPTER V. SUMMARY OF THE EIGHTH EPOCH 305 
 
 NINTH EPOCH. 
 
 Philosophy allies itself with Faith : the Alexandrian Schools. 
 CHAPTER I. PVISE OF NEO-PLATONISM. Alexandria. Philo 807 
 
 CHAPTER II. ANTAGONISM OF CHRISTIANITY AND NEO-PLATONISM. Plo- 
 tinus. The Alexandrian Dialectics. The Alexandrian Trinity. 
 The Doctrine of Emanation 314 
 
 CHAPTER III. PROCLUS 332 
 
 CONCLUSION OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY 336 
 
 PART II. MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 TRANSITION PERIOD. 
 
 FROM PROCLUS TO BACON. Scholasticism. Life of Abclard. Philosophy 
 of Abelard. Algazzali. Revival of Learning. Giordano Bruno 343 
 
IX 
 
 FIKST EPOCH. 
 
 Foundation of the Inductive Method. 
 
 The Life of Bacon. Bacon s Method. The Spirit of Bacon s Method. 
 Was the Method New and Useful ? 893 
 
 SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 Foundation of the Deductive Method. 
 
 CHAPTER I. DESCARTES. Life of Descartes. The Method of Des 
 cartes. Application of the Method. Is the Method True ? 435 
 
 CHAPTER II. SPINOZA. Spinoza s Life. Spinoza s Doctrine 456 
 
 CHAPTER III. FIRST CRISIS IN MODERN PHILOSOPHY 403 
 
 THIRD EPOCH. 
 
 Philosophy reduced to a Question of Psychology. 
 CHAPTER I. HOBBES 495 
 
 CHAPTER II. LOCKE. Life of Locke. On the Spirit of Locke s Wri 
 tings. Locke s Method. The Origin of our Ideas. Elements of 
 Idealism and Skepticism in Locke. Locke s Critics 506 
 
 CHAPTER III. LEIBNITZ 541 
 
 CHAPTER IV. SUMMARY OF THE THIRD EPOCH 546 
 
 FOURTH EPOCH. 
 
 The Subjective Nature of Knmvledge leads to Idealism. 
 
 BERKELEY. The Life of Berkeley. Berkeley and Common Sense. 
 Idealism 548 
 
 FIFTH EPOCH. 
 
 The Arguments of Idealism carried out into Skepticism. 
 
 HUME. Life of Hume. Hume s Skepticism. Hume s Theory of Causa 
 tion 570 
 
 SIXTH EPOCH. 
 
 The Origin of Knowledge reduced to Sensation ly the confusion of 
 Thought with Feeling : the /Sensational School. 
 
 CHAPTER I. CONDILLAC. Life of Condillac. Condillac s System ... 5S9 
 
 CHAPTER II. HARTLEY. Life of Hartley. Hartley s System 603 
 
 CHAPTER III. DARWIN 609 
 
 SEVENTH EPOCH. 
 
 Second Crisis : Idealism, Skepticism, and Sensationalism producing 
 the Reaction of Common Sense. 
 
 REID 618 
 
 1* 
 
X CONTENTS. 
 
 EIGHTH EPOCH. 
 
 Recurrence to the Fundamental Question respecting the Origin of 
 Knowledge. 
 
 KANT. Life of Kant. Kant s Historical Position. Kant s Psychology. 
 Consequences of Kant s Psychology. Examination of Kant s Fun 
 damental Principles 680 
 
 NINTH EPOCH. 
 
 Ontology reasserts its Claim. The Demonstration of the Subjectivity 
 of Knowledge once more leads to Idealism. 
 
 CHAPTER I. FICHTE. Life of Fichte. Fichte s Historical Position. 
 Basis of Fichte s System. Fichte s Idealism. Application of Fichte s 
 Idealism 675 
 
 CHAPTER II. SCHELLING. Life of Schelling. Schelling s Doctrines.. 705 
 
 CHAPTER III. HEGEL. Life of Hegel. Hegel s Method. Absolute 
 Idealism. Hegel s Logic. Application of the Method to Nature and 
 History, Religion and Philosophy 715 
 
 TENTH EPOCH. 
 
 Psychology seeking its Basis in Physiology. 
 CHAPTER I. CABANIS 740 
 
 CHAPTER II. PHRENOLOGY. Life of Gall. Gall s Historical Position. 
 Cranioscopy. Phrenology as a Science 749 
 
 ELEVENTH EPOCH. 
 Philosophy finally relinquishing its Place in favor of Positive Science. 
 
 CHAPTER I. ECLECTICISM 769 
 
 CHAPTER II. AUGUSTS COMTE 776 
 
 CONCLUSION 788 
 
 INDEX .. .. 791 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 I. ON THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE. 
 
 PHILOSOPHY is everywhere in Europe fallen into discredit. 
 Once the pride and glory of the greatest intellects, and still 
 forming an important element of liberal culture, its present de 
 cadence is attested no less by the complaints of its few followers 
 than by the thronging ranks of its opponents. Few now believe 
 in its large promises ; still fewer devote to it that passionate pa 
 tience which is devoted by thousands to Science. Every day 
 the conviction gains strength that Philosophy is condemned, by 
 the very nature of its impulses, to wander forever in one tortu 
 ous labyrinth within whose circumscribed and winding spaces 
 weary seekers are continually finding themselves in the trodden 
 tracks of predecessors, who, they know, could find no exit. 
 
 Philosophy has been ever in movement, but the movement 
 has been circular ; and this fact is thrown into stronger relief by 
 contrast with the linear progress of Science. Instead of perpet 
 ually finding itself, after years of gigantic endeavor, returned to 
 the precise point from which it started, Science finds itself year 
 by year, and almost day by day, advancing step by step, each 
 accumulation of power adding to the momentum of its progress ; 
 each evolution, like the evolutions of organic development, bring 
 ing with it a new functional superiority, which in its turn be 
 comes the agent of higher developments. Not a fact is discov 
 ered but has its bearing on the whole body of doctrine ; not a 
 mechanical improvement in the construction of instruments but 
 opens fresh sources of discovery. Onward, and forever onward, 
 mightier and forever mightier, rolls this wondrous tide of discov 
 ery, and the " thoughts of men are widened by the process of 
 the suns." While the first principles of Philosophy are to this 
 day as much a matter of dispute as they were two thousand 
 years ago, the first principles of Science are securely established, 
 
Xll INTEODUCTION. 
 
 and form the guiding lights of European progress. Precisely 
 the same questions are agitated in Germany at the present mo 
 ment that were agitated in ancient Greece ; and with no more 
 certain Methods of solving them, with no nearer hopes of ulti 
 mate success. The History of Philosophy presents the specta 
 cle of thousands of intellects some the greatest that have made 
 our race illustrious steadily concentrated on problems believed 
 to be of vital importance, yet producing no other result than a 
 conviction of the extreme facility of error, and the remoteness of 
 any probability that Truth can be reached.* The only conquest 
 has been critical, that is to say, psychological. Vainly do some 
 argue that Philosophy has made no progress hitherto, because 
 its problems are so complex, and require more effort than the 
 simpler problems of Science ; vainly are we warned not to con 
 clude from the past to the future, averring that no progress will 
 be made because no progress has been made. Perilous as it 
 must ever be to set absolute limits to the future of human ca 
 pacity, there can be no peril in averring that Philosophy never 
 will achieve its aims, because those aims lie beyond all human 
 scope. The difficulty is impossibility. IS T o progress can be 
 made because no certainty is possible. To aspire to the knowl 
 edge of more than phenomena, their resemblances, co-exist 
 ences, and successions, is to aspire to transcend the inexorable 
 limits of human faculty. To know more, we must be more. 
 
 The reader will have perceived that I use the word Philosophy 
 in some restricted sense ; and as this is the sense which will be 
 attached to it throughout the present History, an explanation 
 becomes requisite. In all countries the word Philosophy has 
 come to be used with large latitude, designating indeed any and 
 every kind of speculative inquiry ; nay, in England, as Hegel 
 notices with scorn,f microscopes, telescopes, barometers, and 
 balances, are freely baptized " philosophical instruments ;" New- 
 
 * Compare Kant in the Preface to the 2cled. of the Kritik derreinen Ver- 
 nunft: "Der Metaphysik . . . ist das Schicksal bisher noch so giinstig 
 nicht gewesen dass sie den sichern Gang einer \Visscnschaft einzuschlagen 
 vermogt hatte ; oh sie glcich alter 1st als alle iibrige. . . . E ist also kein 
 Zweifel dass ihr Verfahren bisher ein blosses Herumtappen, und, was das 
 Schlimmste ist, unter blossen Begriffen gewesen scy." 
 
 t Gencldchte der Phllosopliie, \. 7 2. 
 
INTRODUCTION. Xlll 
 
 ton is called a philosopher ; and even Parliamentary proceedings 
 get named philosophical ; so wide a range is given to this 
 word. Such expressions may be criticised, but no criticism will 
 root them out of our language ; and it is futile to argue against 
 whatever has become thus familiar and extensive. Neverthe 
 less, when any one undertakes to write a History of Philosophy, 
 he must define the limits of his undertaking ; and as I have not 
 the slightest intention of including either microscopic inquiries, 
 or Parliamentary debates, within my narrative, but of rigorously 
 limiting it to such topics as are comprised in other Histories of 
 Philosophy, it is indispensable to define the word " Philosophy," 
 by limiting it exclusively to Metaphysics, in direct antithesis to 
 Science. This is the sense it bears in all other Histories ; except 
 that the demarcation from Science is not always rigorously made. 
 
 In the early days of speculation all Philosophy was essentially 
 metaphysical, because Science had not distinctly emerged. The 
 particular sciences then cultivated, no less than the higher gene 
 ralities on Life, Destiny, and the Universe, were studied on one 
 and the same Method ; but in the course of human evolution a 
 second Method grew up, at first timidly and unconsciously, grad 
 ually enlarging its bounds as it enlarged its powers, and at last 
 separating itself into open antagonism with its parent and rival. 
 The child then destroyed its parent ; as the mythic Zeus, calling 
 the Titans to his aid, destroyed Saturn and usurped his throne. 
 Observation and Experiment were the Titans of the new Method. 
 
 There are many who deplore the encroachment of Science, 
 fondly imagining that Philosophy would respond better to the 
 wants of man. This regret is partly unreasoning sentiment, 
 partly ignorance of the limitations of human faculty. Even 
 among those who admit that Philosophy is an impossible at 
 tempt, there are many who think it should be persevered in, be 
 cause of the lofty views it is supposed to open to us. This is as 
 if a man desirous of going to America should insist on walking 
 there, because journeys on foot are more poetical than journeys 
 by rail and steam ; in vain is he shown the impossibility of 
 crossing the Atlantic on foot ; he admits that grovelling fact, 
 but his lofty soul has visions of some mysterious overland route 
 by which he will pass. He dies without reaching America, but 
 
XIV INTRODUCTION. 
 
 to the hist gasp he maintains that ho has discovered the route 
 on which others may reach it, 
 
 Header ! let us hear no more of the lofty views claimed as 
 the exclusive privilege of Philosophy. Ignorant indeed must the 
 man be who nowadays is unacquainted with the grandeur and 
 sweep of scientific speculation in Astronomy and Geology, or 
 who has never been thrilled by the revelations of the Telescope 
 and Microscope. The heights and depths of man s nature, the 
 heights to which he aspires, the depths into which he searches, 
 and the grander generalities on Life, Destiny, and the Universe, 
 find as eminent i\ place in Science as in Philosophy, with the 
 simple difference that they are less vague and are better founded. 
 And even were we compelled to acknowledge that the lofty 
 views of Philosophy were excluded from Science, the earnest 
 mind would surely barter such loftiness for Truth. Our strug 
 gle, our passion, our hope, is for Truth, not for loftiness ; for sin 
 cerity, not for pretence. If we cannot reach certain heights, let 
 us acknowledge them to be inaccessible, and not deceive our 
 selves and others by phrases which pretend that these heights 
 are accessible. Bentham warns us against ** question-begging 
 epithets ;" and one of these is the epithet " lofty," with which 
 Philosophy allures the unwary student. As a specimen of the 
 sentiment so inappropriately dragged in to decide questions not 
 of sentiment but of truth, consider the following passage deliver 
 ed from the professorial chair to students whose opinions were to 
 be formed : 
 
 u A spirit of most misjudging contempt has for many years 
 become fashionable towards the metaphysical contemplations of 
 the elder sages. Alas! I cannot understand on what principles. 
 Is it, then, a matter to be exulted in that we have at length dis 
 covered that our faculties are only formed for earth and earthly 
 phenomena? Are we to rejoice at our own limitations, and 
 delight that we can be cogently demonstrated to be prisoners ot 
 sense and the facts of sense ? In those early struggles after a 
 higher and more perfect knowledge, and in the forgetfulness of 
 every inferior science through the very ardor of the pursuit, 
 there is at least a glorious, an irresistible testimony to the loftier 
 destinies of man ; and it might almost be pronounced that in 
 
INTRODUCTION. XV 
 
 such a view, their very errors evidence a truth higher than all 
 our discoveries can disclose ! When Lord Bacon, with his clear 
 and powerful reasonings, led our thinkers from these ancient 
 regions of thought (then newly opened to the modern world) to 
 the humbler but more varied and extensive department of induc 
 tive inquiry, I represent to myself that angel-guide, all light and 
 grace, who is pictured by our great poet as slowly conducting 
 the first of our race from Paradise, to leave him in a world, vast, 
 indeed, and varied, but where thorns and thistles abounded, and 
 food often uncertain and often perilous was to be gained only 
 by the sweat of the brow and in the downcast attitude of servile 
 toil."* 
 
 It would be an insult to the reader s understanding to answer 
 the several absurdities and " question-begging" positions of this 
 passage, which however is a typical specimen of much that may 
 be met in modern writers ; all that I feel called upon to notice 
 is the opening sentence. Contempt for the metaphysical specu 
 lations of the elder sages is the last feeling I should acknowledge, 
 however erroneous I may believe them to be. They were the 
 precursors of modern Science. Without them we should have 
 been in darkness. The forlorn hope of Humanity can never be 
 an object of contempt. We follow the struggles of the early 
 thinkers with intense interest, because we trace in their defeats 
 the causes of future victory. 
 
 The historical connection of Science with Philosophy, and the 
 essential differences between them, which led to their separation 
 and the final neglect of Philosophy, will be understood ^better 
 when the characteristics of the two are clearly set forth. The 
 object of both is the same, namely, Explanation of all phenom 
 ena. Their characteristic differences, therefore, do not lie in the 
 v thing sought, so much as in the Method of search. I have met 
 with no satisfactory statement of these characteristic differences ; 
 and the readiest way I can think of to make them intelligible, 
 will be to exhibit the Metaphysical and Scientific Methods in 
 
 * Archer Butler, Lectures on the Hist, of Ancient Philosophy, ii. 109. The 
 varied and accurate erudition of Mr. W. II. Thompson s notes to these lec 
 tures gives these volumes their chief value. 
 
XVI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 operation on the search after the causes of the same phenome 
 non ; for instance, that of " Table-turning."* 
 
 A few persons stand round a table, gently resting their hands 
 on it, but sedulously careful not to push in any direction. In a 
 little while the table moves, at first slowly, afterwards with grow 
 ing velocity. The persons are all of the highest respectability, 
 above suspicion of wilful deceit. The phenomenon is so unex 
 pected, so unprecedented, that an explanation is imperiously de 
 manded. We have here an illustration of the origin of Philoso 
 phy. In presence of unusual phenomena, men are unable to 
 
 \ remain without some explanation which shall render intelligible 
 to them how the unusual event is produced. They are specta 
 tors merely ; condemned to witness the event, unable to pene 
 trate directly into its causes, unable to get behind the scenes 
 and see the strings which move the puppets, they guess at what 
 they cannot see. In this way Man is intcrpres Naturae. Whether 
 he be metaphysician or man of science, his starting-point is the 
 same ; and they are in error who say that the metaphysician 
 differs from the man of science in drawing his explanation from 
 the recesses of his own mind in lieu of drawing it from the ob- 
 
 y servation of facts. Both observe facts, and both draw their in 
 terpretations from their own minds. Nay, strictly considered, 
 there is necessarily, even in the most familiar fact, the annexa 
 tion of mental inference something added by the mind, sug 
 gested by, but not given in, the immediate observation. Facts 
 are the registration of direct observation and indirect inference, 
 congeries of particulars partly sensational, partly ideal. The sci 
 entific value of facts depends on the validity of the inferences bound 
 up with them ; and hence the profound truth of Cullen s paradox, 
 that there are more false facts than false theories current. 
 
 The facts comprised in the phenomenon of " Table-turning" 
 
 * There is difficulty in selecting a suitable illustration, because if an un 
 disputed scientific truth be chosen, the reader may not be able to place him 
 self at the metaphysical point of view: whereas if a disputed point be 
 chosen he may perhaps himself adopt the metaphysical explanation, and re 
 fuse to acknowledge the scientific explanation. "Table-turning" escapes 
 both objections. The mania is sufficiently recent to permit our vividly real 
 izing the mental condition of the theorists ; and the error is sufficiently ex 
 ploded to admit of being treated as an error. 
 
INTRODUCTION. XV11 
 
 are by no means so simple as they have been represented. Let 
 us however reserve all criticism, and fix our attention solely on 
 the phenomenon, which, expressed in rigorous terms, amounts to 
 this : the table turns ; the cause of its turning unknown. To 
 explain this, one class of metaphysical minds refers it to the 
 agency of an unseen spirit : connecting this spiritual manifesta 
 tion with others which have been familiar to him, the interpreter 
 finds no difficulty in believing that a spirit moved the table ; for 
 the movement assuredly issued from no human agency ; the re 
 spectable witnesses declare they did not push. Unless the table 
 moved itself, therefore, the conclusion must be that it was moved 
 by a spirit. 
 
 Minds of another class gave another explanation, one equally 
 metaphysical, although its advocates scornfully rejected the spir 
 itual hypothesis. These minds were indisposed to admit the ex 
 istence of Spirits as agents in natural phenomena ; but their in 
 terpretation, in spite of its employing the language of science, 
 was as utterly removed from scientific induction as the spiritual 
 interpretation they despised. They attributed the phenomenon 
 to Electricity. Connecting this supposed electrical manifestation 
 with some other facts which seemed to warrant the belief of ner 
 vous action being identical with electricity, they had no hesita 
 tion in affirming that electricity streamed from the tips of the 
 fingers ; and it was even suggested by one gentleman that " the 
 nervous fluid had probably a rotatory action, and a power of 
 throwing off some of its surplus force." 
 
 Each of these explanations was very widely accepted by the 
 general public, although few persons of any reasoning power 
 now accept them. The obvious defect in both lies in the utter 
 absence of any guarantee. We ought to be satisfied with no 
 explanation which is without its valid guarantee. Before we 
 purchase silver spoons we demand to see the mark of Silver 
 smiths Hall, to be assured that the spoons are silver, and not 
 plated only. The test of the assayer dispels our misgivings. In 
 like manner when the motion of a table is explained by spiritual 
 agency, instead of debating whether the spirit bring airs from 
 heaven or blasts from hell, we suffer our skepticism to fall on the 
 preliminary assumption of the spirit s presence. Prove the pres- 
 
XV111 INTEODUCTION. 
 
 ence of the spirit, before you ask us to go further. We may 
 admit that, if present, the spirit is capable of producing this mo 
 tion of the table ; but we cannot permit you to assume such a 
 presence merely to explain such a movement; for if the fact to 
 be explained is sufficient proof of the explanation, we might 
 with equal justice assume that the movement was caused by an 
 invisible dragon who turned the table by the fanning of his awful 
 wings. 
 
 A similar initial error is observable in the electrical hypothesis. 
 Electricity may be a less intrinsically improbable assumption, but 
 its presence requires proof. After that step had been taken, we 
 should require proof that electricity could comport itself with 
 reference to tables and similar bodies in this particular manner. 
 We have various tests for the presence of electricity ; various 
 means of ascertaining how it would act upon a table. But see 
 ing that the gentleman who spoke so confidently of " currents 
 issuing from the tips of the fingers" never once attempted to 
 prove that there were currents ; and knowing moreover that these 
 currents, if present, would not make a table turn, all men of true 
 scientific culture dismissed the explanation with contempt. 
 
 Such were the metaphysical Methods of explaining the phe 
 nomenon. Let us now watch the scientific Method. The point 
 sought is the unknown cause of the table s movement. To reach 
 the unknown we must pass through the avenues of the known ; 
 we must not attempt to reach it through the unknown. Is 
 there any known fact with which this movement can be allied ? 
 The first and most obvious suggestion is, that the table was 
 pushed by the hands which rested on it. There is a difficulty 
 in the way of this explanation, namely, that the persons declare 
 solemnly they did not push ; and, as persons of the highest re 
 spectability, we are bound to believe them. Is this statement of 
 any value ? The whole question is involved in it. But the phi 
 losophical mind is very little affected by guarantees of respecta 
 bility in matters implicating sagacity rather than integrity. 
 The Frenchman assured his friend that the earth did turn round 
 the sun, and offered his jjarole d honneur as a guarantee ; but in 
 the delicate and difficult questions of science paroles tPhonneur 
 have a quite inappreciable weight. We may therefore set aside 
 
INTRODUCTION. XIX 
 
 the respectability of the witnesses, and, with full confidence in 
 their integrity, estimate the real value of their assertion, which 
 amounts to this : they were not conscious of pushing. We now 
 see that the fact, which was imagined to be simple, namely, that 
 " the persons did not push," turns out to be excessively dubious, 
 namely, " they were not conscious of pushing." If we come to 
 examine such a case, we find Physiology in possession of abun 
 dant examples of muscular action accompanied by no distinct 
 consciousness, and some of these examples are very similar to 
 those of the unconscious pushing, which may have turned the 
 table ; and we are thus satisfied of three important points : 
 1. Pushing is an adequate cause, and will serve to explain the 
 movement of the table, as well as either the supposed spirit or 
 electricity. 2. Pushing may take place without any distinct 
 consciousness on the part of those who push. 3. Expectant at 
 tention is known to produce such a state of the muscles as would 
 occasion this unconscious pushing. 
 
 Considered therefore as a mere hypothesis, this of unconscious 
 pushing is strictly scientific ; it may not be true, but it has ful 
 filled the preliminary conditions. Unlike the two hypotheses it 
 opposes, it assumes nothing previously unknown, or not easily 
 demonstrable ; every position has been verified ; whereas the 
 metaphysicians have not verified one of their positions : they 
 have not proved the presence of their agents, nor have they 
 proved that these agents, if present, would act in the required 
 manner. Of spirit we know nothing, consequently can predicate 
 nothing. Of electricity we know something, but what is known 
 is not in accordance with the table-turning hypothesis. Of push 
 ing we know that it can and does turn tables. All then that is 
 required to convert this latter hypothesis into scientific certainty, 
 is to prove the presence of the pushing in this particular case. 
 And it is proved in many ways, positive and negative, as I showed 
 when the phenomenon first became the subject of public investi 
 gation. Positive, because if the hands rest on a loose table 
 cloth, or on substances with perfectly smooth surfaces which 
 will glide easily over the table, the cloth or the substances will 
 move, and not the table. Negative, because if the persons are 
 duly ivarned of their liability to unconscious pushing, and are 
 
XX INTRODUCTION. 
 
 told to keep vigilant guard over their sensations, they do not 
 move the table, although previously they have moved it fre 
 quently. When we have thus verified the presence of uncon 
 scious pushing, all the links in the chain have been verified, and 
 certainty is complete. 
 
 Reviewing the three explanations which the phenomenon of 
 table-turning called forth, we elicit one characteristic as distin 
 guishing the scientific Method, namely, the verification of each 
 stage in the process, the guaranteeing of each separate point, the 
 cultivated caution of proceeding to the unknown solely through 
 the avenues of the known. The germinal difference, then, be 
 tween the metaphysical and scientific Methods, is not that they 
 draw their explanations from a different source, the one employ 
 ing Reasoning where the other employs Observation, but that 
 the one is content with an explanation which has no further 
 guarantee than is given in the logical explanation of the diffi 
 culty ; whereas the other imperatively demands that every as 
 sumption should be treated as provisional, hypothetical, until it 
 has been confronted with fact, tested by acknowledged tests, in 
 a word, verified. The guarantee of the metaphysician is purely 
 logical, subjective : it is the intellectus sibi permissus ; the 
 guarantee of the other is derived from a correspondence of the 
 idea with experience. As Bacon says, all merely logical explana 
 tions are valueless, the subtlety of nature greatly surpassing that 
 of argument : " Subtilitas naturas subtilitatem argumentaudi 
 multis partibus superat ;" and he further says, with his usual 
 felicity, " Sed axiomata a particularibus rite et ordine abstracta 
 nova particularia rursus facile indicant et designant." It is these 
 "new particulars" which are reached through those already 
 known, and complete the links of the causal chain. 
 
 Open the history of Science at any chapter you will, and its 
 pages will show how all the errors which have gained acceptance 
 gained it because this important principle of verification of par 
 ticulars was neglected. Incessantly the mind of man leaps for 
 ward to " anticipate" Nature, and is satisfied with such anticipa 
 tions if they have a logical consistence. When Galen and Aris 
 totle thought that the air circulated in the arteries, causing the 
 pulse to beat, and cooling the temperature of the blood, they 
 
INTRODUCTION. XXI 
 
 were content with this plausible anticipation ; they did not verify 
 the facts of the air s presence, and its cooling effect ; when they 
 said that the " spirituous blood" nourished the delicate organs, 
 such as the lungs, and the " venous blood" nourished the coarser 
 organs, such as the liver ; when they said that the " spirit," 
 which was the purer element of the blood, was formed in the 
 left ventricle, and the venous blood in the right ventricle, they 
 contented themselves with unverified assumptions. In like man 
 ner, when in our own day physiologists of eminence maintain 
 that in the organism there is a Vital Force which suspends chem 
 ical actions, they content themselves with a metaphysical unver 
 ified interpretation of phenomena. If they came to rigorous 
 confrontation with fact, they would see that so far from chemical 
 action being "suspended" it is incessantly at work in the organ 
 ism ; the varieties observable being either due to a difference of 
 conditions (which will produce varieties out of the organism), or 
 to the fact that the action is masked by other actions. 
 
 If the foregoing discussion has carried with it the reader s as 
 sent, he will perceive that the distinguishing characteristic of 
 Science is its Method of graduated Verification, and not, as some 
 think, the employment of Induction in lieu of Deduction. All 
 Science is deductive, and deductive in proportion to its separa 
 tion from ordinary Jcnoivledge, and its co-ordination into sys 
 tematic Science. " Although all sciences tend to become more 
 and more deductive," says a great authority, "they are not 
 therefore the less inductive ; every step in the deduction is still 
 an induction. The opposition is not between the terms Induc 
 tive and Deductive, but between Deductive and Experimental."* 
 Experiment is the great instrument of Verification. The differ 
 ence between the ancient and modern philosophies lies in the 
 facility with which the one accepted axioms and hypotheses as 
 the basis for its deductions, and the cultivated caution with which 
 the other insists on verifying its axioms and hypotheses before 
 
 * Mill s System of Logic : perhaps the greatest contribution to English 
 speculation since Locke s Essay. Had Mr. Mill invented a new terminology 
 and expressed himself with less clearness, he would assuredly have gained 
 that reputation for profundity which, by a thorough misconception of the 
 nature of thought, is so often awarded to obscurity. 
 
XXI] INTRODUCTION. 
 
 deducing conclusions from them. We guess as freely as the 
 ancients ; but we know that we are guessing; and if we chance 
 to forget it, our rivals quickly remind us that our guess is not 
 evidence. Without guessing, Science would be impossible. We 
 should never discover new islands, did we not often venture sea 
 wards with intent to sail beyond the sunset. To find new land, 
 we must often quit sight of land. As Mr. Thompson admirably 
 expresses it : " Philosophy proceeds upon a system of credit, 
 and if she never advanced beyond her tangible capital, our wealth 
 would not be so enormous as it is."* While both metaphysician 
 and man of science trade on a system of credit, they do so with 
 profoundly different views of its aid. The metaphysician is a 
 merchant who speculates boldly, but without that convertible 
 capital which can enable him to meet his engagements. He 
 gives bills, yet has no gold, no goods to answer for them ; these 
 bills are not representative of wealth which exists in any ware 
 house. Magnificent as his speculations seem, the first obstinate 
 creditor who insists on payment makes him bankrupt. The 
 man of science is also a venturesome merchant, but one fully 
 alive to the necessity of solid capital which can on emergency be 
 produced to meet his bills ; he knows the risks he runs whenever 
 that amount of capital is exceeded ; he knows that bankruptcy 
 awaits him if capital be not forthcoming. 
 
 The contrast therefore between Philosophy and Science, or 
 Metaphysics and Positive Philosophy, is a contrast of Method ; 
 but we must not suppose that the Method of the one is Deduc 
 tion, while that of the other is Observation. Nothing can be 
 more erroneous than the vulgar notion of the " Inductive Method," 
 as one limited to the observation of facts. Every instructed 
 thinker knows that facts of observation are particular theories ; 
 that is to say, every fact which is registered as an observation is 
 constituted by a synthesis of sensation and inference. We shall 
 see this illustrated presently. To it must be added the truth 
 that Science is constantly making discoveries by Reasoning alone, 
 aloof from any immediate exercise of Observation, aloof indeed 
 from the very phenomena it classifies ; for when facts are regis- 
 
 * Outlines of the Laws of Thought, p. 312. 
 
INTRODUCTION. XXI 11 
 
 tered in formulas, we resign ourselves to the manipulation of 
 these formulas as symbols or equations, assured that the result 
 will accord with Nature. Fresnel predicted the change in polar 
 ization from no observation of facts immediately lying before 
 him, but from a happy elucidation of algebraic symbols. As 
 tronomy is more studied on paper than through the telescope, 
 which however is called upon to verify the results figured on 
 paper. So that if we compare our astronomical and geological 
 theories with the cosmical speculations of a Plato or a Hegel, 
 we shall not find them deficient in the speculative daring which 
 outruns the slow process of observation, but we shall find the 
 difference to lie initially in the rigor with which our deductive 
 formulas are established, and in the different estimates we form 
 of what is valid evidence. 
 
 Galileo made Astronomy a science when he began to seek the 
 unknown through the known, and to interpret celestial phenom 
 ena by those laws of motion which were recognized on the sur 
 face of the earth. Geology became possible as a science when 
 its principal phenomena were explained by those laws of the 
 action of water, visibly operating in every river, estuary, and bay. 
 Except in the grandeur of its sweep, the mind pursues the same 
 course in the interpretation of geological facts which record the 
 annals of the universe, as in the interpretation of the ordinary 
 incidents of daily life. To read the pages of the great Stone- 
 book, and to perceive from the wet streets that rain has recently 
 fallen, are the same intellectual processes. In the one case the 
 mind traverses immeasurable spaces of time, and infers that the 
 phenomena were produced by causes similar to those which have 
 produced similar phenomena within recent experience ; in the 
 other case, the mind similarly infers that the wet streets and 
 swollen gutters have been produced by the same cause we have 
 frequently observed to produce them. Let the inference span 
 with its mighty arch a myriad of years, or span but a few min 
 utes, in each case it rises from the ground of certain familiar indi 
 cations, and reaches an antecedent known to be capable of pro 
 ducing these indications. Both inferences may be wrong : the 
 wet streets may have been wetted by a water-cart, or by the 
 bursting of a pipe. We cast about for some other indication of 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 rain besides the wetness of the streets and the turbid rush of 
 gutters, which might equally have been produced by the burst 
 ing of a water-pipe. If we see passers-by carrying wet umbrellas, 
 some still held above the head, our inference is strengthened by 
 this indication, that rain, and no other cause, produced the phe 
 nomena. In like manner, the geologist casts about for other 
 indications besides those of the subsidence of water, and as they 
 accumulate, his conviction strengthens. 
 
 While this is the course of Science, the course of Philosophy 
 is very different. Its inferences start from no well-grounded 
 basis ; the arches they throw are not from known fact to un 
 known fact, but from some unknown to some other unknown. 
 Deductions are drawn from the nature of God, the nature of 
 Spirit, the essences of Things, and from what Reason can postu 
 late. Rising from such mists, the arch so brilliant to look upon 
 is after all a rainbow, not a bridge. 
 
 To make his method legitimate, the Philosopher must first 
 prove that a co-ordinate correspondence exists between Nature 
 and his Intuitional Reason,* so that whatever is true of the one 
 must be true of the other. The geologist, for example, pro 
 ceeds on the assumption that the action of waters was essen 
 tially the same millions of years ago as it is in the present day ; 
 so that whatever can be positively proved of it now, may be con 
 fidently asserted of it then. He subsequently brings evidence 
 to corroborate his assumption by showing that the assumption is 
 necessary and competent to explain facts not otherwise to be 
 consistently explained. But does the Philosopher stand in a 
 similar position ? Does he show any validity in his preliminary 
 assumption ? Does he produce any evidence for the existence of 
 a nexus between his Intuitional Reason and those noumena or 
 essences, about which he reasons ; does he show the probability 
 of there being such a correspondence between the two, that what 
 
 * By Intuitional Reason I here wish to express what the Germans call 
 Vernunft, which they distinguish from Verstand, as Coleridge tried to make 
 Englishmen distinguish between Reason and Understanding. The term 
 Reason is too deeply rooted in our language to be twisted into any new direc 
 tion ; and I hope by the unusual " Intuitional Reason" to keep the reader s 
 attention alive to the fact that by it is designated the process of the mind 
 engaged in transcendental inquiry. 
 
INTRODUCTION. XXV 
 
 is true of the one may be accepted as probable of the other ? 
 Nothing of the kind. He assumes that it is so. He assumes, as 
 a preliminary to all Philosophy, that Intuitional Reason is com 
 petent to deliver verdicts, even when the evidence is entirely 
 furnished by itself. He assumes that Intuitions are face to face 
 with Existences, and have consequently immediate knowledge of 
 them. But this immense assumption, this gratuitous begging of 
 the whole question, can only be permitted after a demonstration 
 that the contrary assumption must be false. Now it is certain 
 that we can assume the contrary, and assume it on evidence as 
 cogent as that which furnishes his assumption. I can assume 
 that Intuitions are not face to face with Existences ; indeed this 
 assumption seems to me by far the most probable ; and it is 
 surely as valid as the one it opposes ? I call upon the metaphy 
 sician to prove the validity of his assumption, or the invalidity 
 of mine. I call upon him for some principle of verification. He 
 may tell me (as in past years the Hegelians ued to tell me, not 
 without impatience) that " Reason must verify itself;" but un 
 happily Reason has no such power ; for if it had, Philosophy 
 would not be disputing about first principles ; and when it claims 
 the power, who is to answer for its accuracy, quis custodiet ipsos 
 custodes ? If Philosophy is possible, its only basis rests on the 
 correspondence between Nature and Intuitional Reason. But a 
 correct analysis of our intellectual processes will furnish a solvent 
 which will utterly destroy the last shred of organic basis out of 
 which Philosophy grows. 
 
 Reasoning, if I rightly apprehend it, is the same intellectual 
 process as Perception, with this difference, that Perception is in 
 ferential respecting objects present, and Reasoning is inferential 
 respecting objects absent. In the laxity of current language, 
 sensations and perceptions are almost convertible terms ; but if 
 we rigorously separate from our perceptions all those elements 
 not actually given in the momentary sensations, it will be evident 
 that Perception is distinguished from Sensation by the addition 
 of certain inferences : as when we perceive a substance to be 
 hard, square, odorous, sweet, etc., from certain inferences rising- 
 out of its form, color, etc., although we do not actually touch, 
 smell, or taste the object. What is this process of inference ? It 
 
XXVI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 is a presentation before the consciousness of something which has 
 been formerly observed in conjunction with the object, and is 
 therefore supposed to be now actually present in fact, although 
 not present in sensation. I have no sensation of sweetness when 
 I see the lump of sugar ; but the sight of the sugar brings before 
 my consciousness the sweetness, which the sugar will bring to 
 my sensibility when in contact with my tongue. I perceive the 
 sweetness ; and I do this by making present to my mind what is 
 absent from sense. I infer that the lump of white substance be 
 fore me is sugar, as I infer that it rains when I see, from my 
 window, water falling on the streets. In both cases the inference 
 
 O 
 
 may be wrong. The white substance may be salt ; the falling- 
 water may be the spray of the garden-hose. But in each and 
 every case of Perception, a something is added to the Sensation, 
 and that something is inferential, or the assumption of some 
 quality present in fact which is not present in sense. 
 
 Reasoning is likewise inferential, but about objects which, al 
 though they were formerly given in sense, are now absent alto 
 gether. Reasoning is the presentation before the consciousness, 
 of objects which, if actually present, would affect the conscious 
 ness in a similar way. It mentally supplies their existence. 
 Thus, when from the wet streets and turbulent gutters I conclude, 
 or infer, that it has rained, I make present to myself the phe 
 nomena of falling water in somewhat the same order as the fall 
 ing water would follow if present. On closely attending to any 
 chain of Reasoning we shall find that- if it were possible to real 
 ize all the links in the chain, i. e. so to place the actual objects in 
 their connected series that we could see them, this mental series 
 would become a visible series, and, in lieu of reasonings, would 
 afford direct perceptions. Good reasoning is the ideal assem 
 blage of facts, and their re-presentation to the mind in the order 
 of their actual series. It is seeing with the mind s eye. Bad 
 reasoning will always be found to depend on some of the objects 
 not being mentally present ; some links in the chain are dropped 
 or overlooked ; some objects instead of being re-presented are 
 left absent, or are presented so imperfectly that the inferences 
 from them are as erroneous as the inferences from imperfect 
 vision are erroneous. Bad reasoning is imperfect re-presentation. 
 
INTRODUCTION. XXV11 
 
 This explanation of the intellectual operations is, I believe, 
 novel ; should it be accepted, it will light up many obscure ques 
 tions. But for the present we must only notice its bearing on 
 Philosophy. When the table-turners concluded that electricity 
 was the cause of the table s movement, they did not make present 
 to their minds the real facts of electricity and its modes of opera 
 tions ; otherwise they would have seen that electricity would not 
 turn the table round, and they would have seen this almost as 
 vividly as if a battery had been then and there applied to the 
 table. Faraday, on the contrary, did make these facts mentally 
 present, so as not to need the actual presence of a battery ; and 
 his correct reasoning might not be owing to any greater general 
 vigor of ratiocination, but to his greater power of making these 
 particular facts mentally present. Describe an invention to Dr. 
 Neil Arnott, and he will be able to reason on its practicability 
 almost as well as if he saw the machine in operation : because 
 he can mentally make present to himself all the details of struc 
 ture, and from these infer all the details of action, just as his 
 direct inferences would follow the actual presentation of the 
 objects. There are two modes of detecting false logic, and there 
 are but two : either we must reduce the argument to a series of 
 sensations make the facts in question visible to sense, and show 
 that the sequences and co-existences of these facts are not what 
 the reasoner asserted them to be ; or we must mentally supply 
 the place of this visible demonstration, and by re-presenting the 
 objects before the mind, see where their sequences and co-exist 
 ences differ from what the reasoner asserted them to be. 
 
 If all Reasoning be the re-presentation of what is now absent 
 but formerly was present, and can again be made present, in 
 other words, if the test of accurate reasoning is its reduction to 
 fact, then is it evident that Philosophy, dealing with transcen 
 dental objects which cannot be present, and employing a Method 
 which admits of no verification (or reduction to the test of fact) 
 must be an impossible attempt. And if I am asked how it is 
 that philosophers have reasoned at all on transcendental subjects, 
 since according to my statement they could only reason by 
 making such subjects present to their minds, the reply is that 
 they could not, and did not, make present to their minds any 
 
XXV111 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 such subjects at all ; the Infinite was really conceded by them 
 as Finite, the Unconditioned as Conditioned, Spirit as Body, 
 Noumenon as Phenomenon ; for only thus were these things 
 conceivable at all. Thus it is only possible to take the first step 
 in Philosophy by bringing transcendental subjects within the 
 sphere of experience, i. e. making them no longer transcendental. 
 Thus, and thus only, is it possible for us to reason on such topics. 
 
 All this will doubtless be utterly denied by metaphysicians. 
 They proceed on the assumption that Intuitional Reason, which 
 is independent of experience, is absolute and final in its guaran 
 tee. The validity of its conclusions is self-justified. Hegel 
 boldly says, " Whatever is rational is real, and whatever is real is 
 rational, das Vernunftige. ist wirlclicli und das Wirkliche ver- 
 nunftig" And writers of less metaphysical rigor frequently 
 avow the axiom, and always imply it. Thus in a remarkable 
 article on Sir W. Hamilton, which appeared in the Prospective 
 Review (understood to be by Mr. James Martineau), we read that 
 Philosophy in England has dwindled down to mere Psychology 
 and Logic, whereas its proper business is with the notions of 
 Time, Space, Substance, Soul, God ; " to pronounce upon the 
 validity of these notions as revelations of real Existence, and, if 
 they be reliable, use them as a bridge to cross the chasm from 
 relative Thought to absolute Being. Once safe across, and 
 gazing about it in that realm, the mind stands in presence of the 
 objects of Ontology." 
 
 " Once safe across ;" this is indeed the step which constitutes 
 the whole journey; unhappily we have no means of getting safe 
 across ; and in this helplessness we had better hold ourselves 
 aloof from the attempt. If a man were to discourse with ampli 
 tude of detail and eloquence of conviction respecting the inhabit 
 ants of Sinus, setting forth in explicit terms what they were 
 like, what embryonic forms they passed through, what had been 
 the course of their social evolution and what would be its ulti 
 mate stage, we should first ask, And pray, Sir, what evidence 
 have you for these particulars ? what guarantee do you offer for 
 the validity of these conclusions ? If lie replied that Intuitional 
 Reason assured him these things must be so from the inherent 
 necessities of the case, he having logically evolved these conclu- 
 
INTRODUCTION. XXIX 
 
 sions from the data of Keason ; Ave should suppose him to be 
 either attempting to mystify us, or to be hopelessly insane. Nor 
 would this painful impression be removed by his proceeding to 
 affirm that he never thought of trusting to such fallacious argu 
 ments as could be furnished by observation and experiment 
 tests wholly inapplicable to objects so remote from all experience, 
 objects accessible only by Reason. 
 
 In the present day, speculations on Metaphysics are not, in 
 trinsically, more rational than speculations on the development 
 of animated beings peopling Sirius ; nay, however masked by 
 the ambiguities of language and old familiarities of speculation, 
 which seem to justify Metaphysics, the attempt of the Philoso 
 pher is really less rational, the objects being even less accessible. 
 Psychology has taught us one lesson at least, namely, that we 
 cannot know causes and essences, because our experience is lim 
 ited to sequences and phenomena. Nothing is gained by 
 despising Experience, and seeking refuge in Intuition. The 
 senses may be imperfect channels, but at any rate they are in 
 direct communication with their objects, and are true up to a cer 
 tain point. The error arising from one sense may be corrected 
 by another ; what to the eye appears round, the hand feels to be 
 square. But Intuition has no such safeguard. It has only itself 
 to correct its own errors. Holding itself aloof from the corrobo- 
 rations of Sense, it is aloof from all possible verification, because 
 it cannot employ the test of confrontation with fact. 
 
 This conviction has been growing slowly. It could never 
 have obtained general acceptance until Philosophy had proved 
 its incapacity by centuries of failure. In the course of our His 
 tory we shall see the question of Certitude continually forced 
 upon philosophers, always producing a crisis in speculation, 
 although always again eluded by the more eager and impatient 
 intellects. Finally, these repeated crises disengage the majority 
 of minds from so hopeless a pursuit, and set them free to follow 
 ^ Science which has Certitude. If our History has any value, it is 
 in the emphatic sanction it thus gives to the growing neglect of 
 Philosophy, the growing preference for Science. In the former 
 edition I adopted the common view which regards the distinc 
 tion between Philosophy and Science as lying in the pursuit of 
 
XXX INTRODUCTION. 
 
 different objects. " Philosophy aspires to the knowledge of 
 essences and causes. Positive Science aspires only to the knowl 
 edge of Laws. The one pretends to discover what things are, 
 in themselves, apart from their appearances to sense ; and whence 
 they came. The other only wishes to discover their modus ope- 
 randi, observing the constant co-existences and successions of 
 phenomena among themselves, and generalizing them into some 
 one Law? But this I no longer regard as the whole truth. It 
 
 ^ 0* 
 
 does not discriminate between scientific and metaphysical specu 
 lation on subjects within the scope of Science ; such for instance 
 as the phenomena of life, or such as table-turning. The vital and 
 fundamental difference between the two orders of speculation 
 does not lie in their objects, but in their methods. A priori, 
 indeed, w r e might conclude that such a circumscription of the 
 aims of speculation as is implied in Science would necessarily 
 bring about a corresponding change in Method ; in other words, 
 that men having once relinquished the pursuit of essences and 
 causes would have been forced to adopt the Method of Verifica 
 tion, because that alone was competent to lead to certitude. But 
 History tells a different tale. Men did not adopt the Method of 
 Verification because they had previously relinquished all attempts 
 to penetrate into causes ; but they relinquished all attempts to 
 penetrate into causes because they found that the only Method 
 which could lead to certainty was the Method of Verification, 
 which was not applicable to causes, Hence a gradual elimina 
 tion followed the gradual rise of each particular science ; till at 
 last, in the doctrine of Auguste Comte, all inquiry is limited to 
 such objects as admit of verification, in one way or another. 
 
 The Method of Verification, let us never forget, is the one 
 grand characteristic distinguishing Science from Philosophy, 
 modern inquiry from ancient inquiry. Of the ancients, Fonte- 
 nelle felicitously says : " Souvent de faibles convenances, de 
 petites similitudes, des discours vagues et confus, passent chez 
 eux pour des preuves : aussi rien ne leur coute a prouver" The 
 proof is, with us, the great object of solicitude. We demand cer 
 tainty ; and as the course of human evolution shows certainty to 
 be attainable on no other Method than the one followed by Sci 
 ence, the condemnation of Metaphysics is inevitable. 
 
INTRODUCTION. XXXI 
 
 Grand, indeed, has been the effort of Philosophy ; great the 
 part it has played in the drama of civilization ; but the part is 
 played out. It has left the legacy bequeathed by every great 
 effort. It has enriched all succeeding ages, but its work is ac 
 complished. Men have grown less presumptuous in speculation, 
 and inconceivably more daring in practice. They no longer 
 attempt to penetrate the mystery of the universe, but they ex 
 plore the universe, and yoke all natural forces to their splendid 
 chariot of Progress. The marvels of our age would have seemed 
 more incredible to Plato, than were the Arabian Nights to Ben- 
 tham ; but while Science thus enables us to realize a wonderland 
 of fact, it teaches us to regard the unhesitating temerities of Plato 
 and Plotinus as we regard the efforts of a child to grasp the moon. 
 
 Philosophy was the great initiator of Science. It rescued the 
 nobler part of man from the dominion of brutish apathy and 
 helpless ignorance, nourished his mind with mighty impulses, 
 exercised it in magnificent efforts, gave him the unslaked, un- 
 slakable thirst for knowledge which has dignified his life, and 
 enabled him to multiply tenfold his existence and his happiness. 
 Having done this, its part is played. Our interest in it now is 
 purely historical. 
 
 The purport of this history is to show how and why the inte 
 rest in Philosophy has become purely historical. In this purport 
 lies the principal novelty of the work. There is no other His 
 tory of Philosophy written by one disbelieving in the possibility 
 of metaphysical certitude. 
 
 II. LIMITS OF THE WORK. 
 
 Having explained what is the final purpose of this History, 
 and makes it subservient to the general History of Humanity 
 rather than to any philosophical system, I will now briefly indi 
 cate the reasons which, apart from the limitations of my own 
 knowledge, have determined the selection of the illustrative 
 types. Brucker, having no purpose beyond that of accumulating 
 materials, includes in his History the speculations of Antedilu 
 vian, Scythian, Persian, and Egyptian thinkers. Mr. Maurice, 
 who has a purpose, also includes Hebrew, Egyptian, Hindoo, 
 
XXX11 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Chinese, and Persian philosophies.* Other historians vary in 
 their limits, upon not very intelligible grounds. I begin with 
 Greece, because in the history of Grecian thought all the epochs 
 of speculative development are distinctly traceable ; and as I write 
 the Biography of Philosophy, it is enough for my purpose if any 
 where I can find a distinct filiation of ideas. Rome never had a 
 philosophy of its own ; it added no new idea to the ideas bor 
 rowed from Greece. It occupies no place therefore in the 
 development of Philosophy, and is omitted from this Biog 
 raphy. 
 
 The omission of the East, so commonly believed to have exer 
 cised extensive and profound influence on Greece, will to many 
 readers seem less excusable. But to unfold the arguments which 
 justify the omission here, would require more space than can be 
 spared in this Introduction. It is questionable whether the East 
 had any Philosophy distinct from its Religion ; and still more 
 questionable whether Greece borrowed its philosophical ideas.f 
 True it is that the Greeks themselves supposed their early teach 
 ers to have drunk at the Eastern fount. True it is that modern 
 orientalists, on first becoming acquainted with the doctrines of 
 the Eastern sages, recognized strong resemblances to the doc 
 trines of the Greeks ; and a RothJ finds Aristotle to be the first 
 independent thinker, all his predecessors having drawn their 
 speculations from the Egyptian ; while a Gladisch makes it 
 quite obvious (to himself) that the Pythagorean system is nothing 
 but an adoption of the Chinese, the Heraclitic system an adop 
 tion of the Persian, the Eleatic of the Indian, the Empedoclean 
 of the Egyptian, the Anaxagorean of the Jewish. But neither 
 the vague tradition of the Greeks, nor the fallacious ingenuity of 
 moderns, weigh heavy in the scale of historical criticism. It is 
 true that coincidences of thought are to be found between 
 Grecian and many other systems ; but coincidences are no evi- 
 
 * Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, part i., second edition, 1850 : a 
 work of singular fascination and great ingenuity. 
 
 1 1 have elsewhere stated reasons for this belief. Edinburgh Review, April, 
 1847, p. 352 gg. 
 
 % GescJdchte unserer abendlandischen Philosophic, i. p. 228 sq. 
 
 Die Religion und die Ph dosop)ne in Hirer weltgesch. Entwickelung . 
 
INTRODUCTION. XXX111 
 
 dence of direct filiation ; and he has studied the history of spec 
 ulation to little purpose who is not thoroughly familiar with the 
 natural tendency of the mind to sweep into the same tracks, 
 where others have been before, where others will find themselves 
 afterwards. Moreover, many of these coincidences, upon which 
 historical theories are based, turn out, on close inspection, to be 
 merely verbal, or at the best, approximative. Thus the physical 
 speculations of the Greeks often coincide in expression with those 
 of modern science. Does this prove that the moderns borrowed 
 their science from the ancients ? M. Dutens thought so, and has 
 written an erudite but singularly erroneous book to prove it. 
 Democritus asserted the Milky Way to be only a cluster of stars ; 
 but the assertion was a mere guess, wholly without proof, and 
 gained no acceptance. It was Galileo who discovered what De 
 mocritus guessed. Thus also Empedocles, Pythagoras, and Plato, 
 are said to have been perfectly acquainted with the doctrine of 
 gravitation ; and this absurdity is made delusive by dint of 
 forced translations, which elicit something like coincidence of 
 expression, although every competent person detects the want of 
 coincidence in the ideas.* 
 
 Waiving all discussion of disputable and disputed points, it is 
 enough that in Greece from the time of Thales, and in Europe 
 from the time of Descartes, a regular development of Philosophy 
 is traceable, quite sufficient for our purpose, which is less that of 
 narrating the lives and expounding the opinions of various think 
 ers, than of showing how the course of speculation necessarily 
 brought about that radical change in Method which distinguishes 
 Philosophy from Science. In pursuance of such an aim it was 
 perfectly needless to include any detailed narrative of the specu 
 lations which, under the name of Scholasticism, occupied the 
 philosophical activity of the Middle Ages. Those speculations 
 were either subordinate to Theology, or were only instrumental 
 in perfecting philosophical language ; and in this latter respect 
 the historian of Philosophy is no more called upon to notice 
 them, than a writer on the art of War would be called upon to 
 
 * Karsten expresses the distinction well : " Empedocles poetice adumbravit 
 idem quod totseculis postea mathematicis raiionibus demonstratum est a New- 
 tono. 1 Philos. Graicorum Operum Reliquiae, p. xii. 
 
XXXIV INTRODUCTION. 
 
 give a history of tlie armorers of Milan or the sword-manufac 
 turers of Toledo. t 
 
 The same principle which determines the selection of Epochs 
 also determines the selection of the points of doctrine to be ex 
 pounded. It is obvious that in nothing like the space to which 
 this work is limited could even the barest outline of all the opin 
 ions held by all the philosophers be crowded ; nor would ten 
 times the space suffice for an exposition of those opinions with 
 any thing like requisite detail. Brucker s vast compilation, and 
 Hitter s laborious volumes, are open for any student desirous of 
 more detailed knowledge; but even they are imperfect. My 
 purpose is different ; I write the Biography, not the Annals of 
 Philosophy, and I am more concerned about the doctrines 
 peculiar to each thinker than about those held by him in com 
 mon with others. If I can ascertain and make intelligible the 
 doctrines which formed the additions of each thinker to the pre 
 vious stock, and which helped the evolution of certain germs of 
 philosophy, collateral opinions will need only such mention as is 
 necessary to make the whole course of speculation intelligible. 
 Thus limited in scope, I may find myself more at ease in the dis 
 cussion of those points on which attention should be fastened. 
 More space can be given to fundamental topics. In restricting 
 myself to Descartes, Spinoza, and Kant, without noticing Carte 
 sians, Spinozists, and Kantians, I also on the same principle re 
 strict myself to what is in each thinker peculiar to him, and 
 directly allied to the course of philosophical development. The 
 student who needs the Pandects of Philosophy will have to look 
 elsewhere : this work only pretends to be a Summary. 
 
FIRST EPOCH. 
 SPECULATIONS ON THE NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 THE PHYSICISTS. 
 
 I. THALES. 
 
 ALTHOUGH the events of his life, no less than the precise doc 
 trines of his philosophy, are shrouded in mystery, and belong to 
 the domain of fable, nevertheless Thales is very justly considered 
 as the father of Greek Speculation. He made an epoch. He 
 laid the foundation-stone of Greek philosophy. The step he took 
 was small, but it was decisive. Accordingly, although nothing 
 but a few of his tenets remain, and those tenets fragmentary and 
 incoherent, we know enough of the general tendency of his doc 
 trines to speak of him with some degree of certitude. 
 
 Thales was born at Miletus, a Greek colony in Asia Minor. 
 The date of his birth is extremely doubtful ; but the first year of 
 the 36th Olympiad (B. c. 636) is generally accepted as correct. 
 He belonged to one of the most illustrious families of Phoenicia, 
 and took a conspicuous part in all the political affairs of his 
 country, a part which earned for him the highest esteem of his 
 fellow-citizens. His immense activity in politics has been denied 
 by later writers, as inconsistent with the tradition, countenanced 
 by Plato, of his having spent a life of solitude and meditation ; 
 while on the other hand his affection for solitude has been ques 
 tioned on the ground of his political activity. It seems to us 
 that the two things are perfectly compatible. Meditation does 
 
 1 
 
2 THE PHYSICISTS. 
 
 not necessarily unfit a man for action ; nor does an active life 
 absorb all his time, leaving him none for meditation. The wise 
 man will strengthen himself by meditation before he acts; and 
 he will act, to test the truth of his opinions. 
 
 Miletus was one of the most flourishing Greek colonies ; and 
 at the period we are now speaking of, before either a Persian or a 
 Lydian yoke had crushed the energies of its population, it was a 
 fine scene for the development of mental energies. Its commerce 
 both by sea and land was immense. Its political constitution 
 afforded the finest opportunities for individual development. 
 Thales both by birth and education would naturally be fixed 
 there, and would not travel into Egypt and Crete for the prose 
 cution of his studies, as some maintain, although upon no suffi 
 cient authority. The only ground for the conjecture is the fact 
 of Thales being a proficient in mathematical knowledge ; and 
 from very early times, as we see in Herodotus, it was the fashion 
 to derive the origin of almost every branch of knowledge from 
 Egypt. So little consistency is there however in this narrative 
 of his voyages, that he is said to have astonished the Egyptians 
 by showing them how to measure the height of their pyramids 
 by their shadows. A nation so easily astonished by one of the 
 simplest of mathematical problems could have had little to teach. 
 Perhaps the strongest proof that he never travelled into Egypt 
 or that, if he travelled there, he never came into communication 
 with the priests is the absence of all trace, however slight, of 
 any Egyptian doctrine in the philosophy of Thales which he 
 might not have found equally well at home. 
 
 The distinctive characteristic of the Ionian School, in its first 
 period, was its inquiry into the constitution of the universe. 
 Thales opened this inquiry. It is commonly said : " Thales 
 taught that the principle of all things was water." On a first 
 glance, this will perhaps appear a mere extravagance. A smile 
 of pity may greet it, accompanied by a reflection on the smiler s 
 part, of the unlikelihood of his ever believing such an absurdity. 
 But the serious student will be slow to accuse his predecessors of 
 
TIIALES. 3 
 
 sheer and transparent absurdity. The history of Philosophy 
 may be the history of errors ; it is not a history of follies. All 
 the systems which have gained acceptance have had a pregnant 
 meaning, or they would not have been accepted. The meaning 
 was proportionate to the opinions of the epoch, and as such 
 is worth "penetrating. Thalcs was one of the most extraordinary 
 men that ever lived, and produced an extraordinary revolution. 
 Such a man was not likely to have enunciated a philosophical 
 thought which any child might have refuted. There was deep 
 meaning in the thought, to him at least. Above all, there was deep 
 meaning in the attempt to discover the origin of things. Let us 
 endeavor to penetrate the meaning of his thought ; let us see if 
 we cannot in some shape trace its rise and growth in his mind. 
 
 It is characteristic of philosophical minds to reduce all im 
 aginable diversities to one principle. As it is the inevitable 
 tendency of religious speculation to reduce polytheism to mon 
 otheism, to generalize all the supernatural powers into one 
 expression, so also was it the tendency of early philosophical 
 speculation to reduce all possible modes of existence into one 
 generalization of Existence itself. 
 
 Thales, speculating on the constitution of the universe, could 
 not but strive to discover the one principle the primary Fact 
 the substance, of which all special existences were but the modes. 
 Seeing around him constant transformations birth and death, 
 change of shape, of size, and of mode of existence he could not 
 regard any one of these variable states of existence as Existence 
 itself. He therefore asked himself, What is that invariable Ex 
 istence of which these are the variable states ? In a word, What 
 is the beginning of things ? 
 
 To ask this question was to open the era of philosophical 
 inquiry. Hitherto men had contented themselves with accepting 
 the world as they found it ; with believing what they saw ; and 
 with adoring what they could not see. 
 
 Thales felt that there was a vital question to be answered 
 relative to the beginning of things. He looked around him, and 
 
4 THE PHYSICISTS. 
 
 the result of his meditation was the conviction that Moisture was 
 the Beginning. 
 
 He was impressed with this idea by examining the constitution 
 of the earth. There also he found moisture everywhere. All 
 things he found nourished by moisture; warmth itself he 
 declared to proceed from moisture ; the seeds of all things are 
 moist. Water when condensed becomes earth. Thus convinced 
 of the universal presence of water, he declared it to be the 
 beginning of things. 
 
 Thales would all the more readily adopt this notion from 
 its harmonizing with ancient opinions; such for instance as 
 those expressed in Hesiod s Theogony, wherein Oceanus and 
 Thetis are regarded as the parents of all such deities as had any 
 relation to Nature. "He would thus have performed for the 
 popular religion that which modern science has performed for 
 the Book of Genesis : explaining what was before enigmatical."* 
 
 It is this which gives Thales his position in Philosophy. 
 Aristotle calls him 6 <r% Toia jTr^ ap^voj (piXotfopia^, the man 
 who made the first attempt to establi^c a physical Beginning, 
 without the assistance of myths. He has consequently been 
 accused of Atheism by modern writers ; but Atheism is the 
 growth of a much later thought, and one under no pretence to 
 be attributed to Thales, except on the negative evidence of 
 Aristotle s silence, which we conceive to be directly counter 
 to the supposition, since it is difficult to believe Aristotle 
 would have been silent had he thought Thales believed or disbe 
 lieved in the existence of any thing deeper than Water, and prior 
 to it. Water was the dpp>j, the beginning of all. When Cicero, 
 following and followed by writers far removed from the times of 
 Thales, f says that he "held water to be the beginning of things, 
 but that God was the mind which created things out of the 
 water," he does violence to the chronology of speculation. We 
 
 * Benj. Constant, Du, Polythelsme Itomain, i. 167. 
 
 t And uncritically followed by many moderns who feel a dilficulty in 
 placing themselves at the point of view of ancient speculation. 
 
ANAXIMENES. O 
 
 agree with Hegel that Thales could have had no conception of 
 God as Intelligence, since that is the conception of a more 
 advanced philosophy. We doubt whether we had any concep 
 tion of a Formative Intelligence or of a Creative Power. Aris 
 totle* very explicitly denies that the old Physicists made any 
 distinction between Matter (j uXrj -x.au <ro uflroxgffxsvov) and the 
 Moving Principle or Efficient Cause (?j app^O f^is xivTjtfswj) ; and he 
 further adds that Anaxagoras was the first who arrived at a con 
 ception of a Formative Intelligence.! Thales believed in the Gods 
 and in the generation of the Gods : they, as all other things, had 
 their origin in water. This is not Atheism, whatever else it may be. 
 If it be true that he held all things to be living, and the world to 
 be full of demons or Gods, there is nothing inconsistent in this 
 with his views about Moisture as the origin, the starting-point, 
 the primary existence. 
 
 It is needless however to discuss what were the particular 
 opinions of a thinker whose opinions have only reached us in 
 fragments of uncritical tradition; all we certainly know is that 
 the step taken by Thales was twofold in its influence : first, to 
 discover the Beginning, the prima materia of all things (y ap/rj) ; 
 secondly, to select from among the elements that element which 
 was most potent and omnipresent. To those acquainted with 
 the history of the human mind, both these notions will be sig 
 nificant of an entirely new era. 
 
 II. ANAXIMENES. 
 
 Anaximander is by most historians placed after Thales. We 
 agree with Hitter in giving that place to Anaximenes. The 
 reasons on which we ground this arrangement are, first, that in 
 so doing we fqllow our safest guide, Aristotle ; secondly, that the 
 doctrines of Anaximenes are the development of those of Thales; 
 whereas Anaximander follows a totally different line of specula 
 tion. Indeed, the whole ordinary arrangement of the Ionian 
 
 * Arist. Metaph. i. 3. 
 
 t It will presently be seen that Diogenes was the first to conceive this. 
 
6 THE PHYSICISTS. 
 
 School seems to have proceeded on the conviction that each dis 
 ciple not only contradicted his master, but also returned to the 
 doctrines of his master s teacher. Thus Anaximander is made to 
 succeed Thales, though quite opposed to him ; whereas Anax- 
 imenes, who only carries out the principles of Thales, is made the 
 disciple of Anaximander. When we state that 212 years, i. e. 
 six or seven generations, are taken up by the lives of the four 
 individuals said to stand in the successive relations of teacher and 
 pupil, Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Anaxagoras, the 
 reader will be able to estimate the value of the traditional rela 
 tionship. 
 
 The truth is, only the names of the great leaders in philosophy 
 were thought worth preserving ; all those who merely applied or 
 extended the doctrine were very properly consigned to oblivion. 
 This is also the principle upon which the present history is com 
 posed. No one will therefore demur to our placing Anaximenes 
 second to Thales : not as his disciple, but as his historical suc 
 cessor ; as the man who, taking up the speculation where Thales 
 and his disciples left it, transmitted it to his successors in a more 
 developed form. 
 
 Of the life of Anaximenes nothing further is known than that 
 he was born at Miletus, probably in the 63d Olympiad (B. c. 529), 
 others say in the 58th Olympiad (B. c. 548), but there is no pos 
 sibility of accurately fixing the date. He is said to have discov 
 ered the obliquity of the Ecliptic by means of the gnomon. 
 
 Pursuing the method of Thales, he could not satisfy himself 
 of the truth of his doctrine. Water was not to him the most 
 significant element. He felt within him a something which 
 moved him he knew not how, he knew not why ; something 
 higher than himself; invisible, but ever-present : this he called 
 his life. His life he believed to be air. Was there not also 
 without him, no less than within him, an ever-moving, ever- 
 present, invisible air? The air which was within him, and which 
 he called Life, was it not a part of the air which was without 
 him? and, if so, was not this air the Beginning of things? 
 
DIOGENES OF APOLLONIA. 7 
 
 He looked around him and thought his conjecture was con 
 firmed. The air seemed universal.* The earth was as a broad 
 leaf resting upon it. All things were produced from it ; all things 
 were resolved into it. When he breathed, he drew in a part of 
 the universal life. All tilings were nourished by air, as he was 
 nourished by it. 
 
 To Anaximencs, as to most of the ancients, Air breathed and 
 expired seemed the very stream of life, holding together all the 
 heterogeneous substances of which the body was composed, giving 
 them not only unity, but force, vitality. The belief in a living 
 world that is to say, of the universe as an organism was very 
 ancient, and Anaximenes, generalizing from the phenomena of 
 individual life to universal life, made both dependent on Air. In 
 many respects this was an advance on the doctrine of Thales, 
 and the reader may amuse himself by finding its coincidence with 
 some speculations of modern science. A grave chemist like 
 Dumas can say, "Les Plantes et les Animaux derivent de Fair, 
 ne sont que de 1 air condense, ils viennent de Pair et y retournent ;" 
 and Liebig, in a well-known passage of the Chemical Letters, elo 
 quently expresses the same idea. 
 
 III. DIOGENES OF APOLLONIA. 
 
 Diogenes of Apollonia is the proper successor to Anaximenes, 
 although, from the uncritical arrangement usually adopted, he is 
 made to represent no epoch whatever. Thus, Tennemann places 
 him after Pythagoras. Hegel, by a strange oversight, says that 
 we know nothing of Diogenes but the name. 
 
 Diogenes was born at Apollonia, in Crete. More than this 
 we are unable to state with certainty ; but as he is said to have 
 been a contemporary of Anaxagoras, we may assume him to have 
 flourished about the 80th Olympiad (B. c. 460). His work On 
 
 * When Anaximenes speaks of Air, as when Thales speaks of Water, we 
 must not understand these elements as they appear in this or that deter 
 minate form on earth, but as Water and Air pregnant with vital energy and 
 capable of infinite transmutations. 
 
8 THE PHYSICISTS. 
 
 Nature was extant in the time of Simplicius (the sixth century 
 of our era), who extracted some passages from it. 
 
 Diogenes adopted the tenet of Anaximenes respecting Air as 
 the origin of things ; but he gave a wider and deeper significa 
 tion to the tenet by attaching himself more to its analogy with 
 the Soul.* Struck with the force of this analogy, he was led to 
 push the conclusion to its ultimate limits. What is it, he may 
 have asked himself, which constitutes Air the origin of things ? 
 Clearly its vital force. The air is a Soul ; therefore it is living 
 and intelligent. But this Force or Intelligence is a higher thing 
 than the Air, through which it manifests itself; it must conse 
 quently be prior in point of time ; it must be the ap^ philoso 
 phers have sought. The Universe is a living being, spontaneously 
 evolving itself, deriving its transformation from its own vitality. 
 
 There are two remarkable points in this conception, both in 
 dicative of very great progress in speculation. The first is the 
 attribute of Intelligence, with which the ctp^j is endowed. Anax 
 imenes considered the primary substance to be an animated 
 substance. Air was Life, in his system, but the Life did not 
 necessarily imply Intelligence. Diogenes saw that Life was not 
 only Force, but Intelligence ; the air which stirred within him 
 not only prompted, but instructed. The Air, as the origin of all 
 things, is necessarily an eternal, imperishable substance ; but as 
 soul, it is also necessarily endowed with consciousness. " It knows 
 much," and this knowledge is another proof of its being the pri 
 mary substance ; " for without Reason," he says, " it would be 
 impossible for all to be arranged duly and proportionately ; and 
 whatever object we consider will be found to be arranged and 
 ordered in the best and most beautiful manner." Order can re 
 sult only from Intelligence ; the Soul is therefore the first (apx*/)- 
 This conception was undoubtedly a great one ; but that the 
 
 * By Soul ($vx> i) we must understand Life in its most general meaning, 
 rather than Mind in the modern sense. Thus the treatise of Aristotle ncpl 
 t//ux??s is a treatise on the Vital Principle, including Mind, not a treatise on 
 Psychology. 
 
DIOGENES OF APOLLONIA. 9 
 
 reader may not exaggerate its importance, nor suppose that the 
 rest of Diogenes doctrines were equally reasonable and profound, 
 we must for the sake of preserving historical truth advert to one 
 or two of his applications of the conception. Thus : 
 
 The world, as a living unity, must like other individuals derive 
 its vital force from the Whole : hence he attributed to the world 
 a set of respiratory organs, which he fancied he discovered in the 
 stars. All creation and all material action were but respiration 
 and exhalation. In the attraction of moisture to the sun, in the 
 attraction of iron to the magnet, he equally saw a process of res 
 piration. Man is superior to brutes in intelligence because he 
 inhales a purer air than brutes who bow their heads to the 
 ground. 
 
 These naive attempts at the explanation of phenomena will 
 suffice to show that although Diogenes had made a large stride, 
 he. had accomplished very little of the journey. 
 
 The second remarkable point indicated by his system is the 
 manner in which it closes the inquiry opened by Thales. Thales, 
 starting from the conviction that one of the four elements was 
 the origin of the world, and Water that element, was followed 
 by Anaximenes, who thought that not only was Air a more uni 
 versal element than Water, but that, being life, it must be the 
 universal Life. To him succeeded Diogenes, who saw that not 
 only was Air Life, but Intelligence, and that Intelligence must 
 have been the First of Things. 
 
 We concur therefore with Ritter in regarding Diogenes as the 
 last philosopher attached to the Physical method ; and that in 
 his system the method receives its consummation. Having thus 
 traced one great line of speculation, we must now cast our eyes 
 upon what was being contemporaneously evolved in another di 
 rection. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 THE MATHEMATICIANS. 
 
 I. ANAXIMANDER OF MILETUS. 
 
 " As we now, for the first time in the history of Greek Philos 
 ophy, meet with contemporaneous developments, the observa 
 tion will not perhaps be deemed superfluous that in the earliest 
 times of philosophy, historical evidences of the reciprocal influ 
 ence of the two lines either entirely fail or are very unworthy of 
 credit ; on the other hand, the internal evidence is of very limit 
 ed value, because it is impossible to prove a complete ignorance 
 iu one, of the ideas evolved and carried out in the other ; while 
 any argument drawn from an apparent acquaintance therewith 
 is far from being extensive or tenable, since all the olden philos 
 ophers drew from one common source the national habit of 
 thought. When indeed these two directions had been more 
 largely pursued, we shall find in the controversial notices suffi 
 cient evidence of an active conflict between these very opposite 
 views of nature and the universe. In truth, when we call to 
 mind the inadequate means at the command of the earlier philos 
 ophers for the dissemination of their opinions, it appears ex 
 tremely probable that their respective systems were for a long 
 time known only within a very narrow circle. On the supposi 
 tion, however, that the philosophical impulse of these times was 
 the result of a real national want, it becomes at once probable 
 that the various elements began to show themselves in Ionia 
 nearly at the same time, independently and without any external 
 connection. 1 * 
 
 * Kilter, i. 965. 
 
ANAXIMANDER OF MILETUS. 11 
 
 The chief of the school we are now about to consider was 
 Anaximander of Miletus, whose birth may be dated in the 42d 
 Olympiad (B. c. 610). . He is sometimes called the friend and 
 sometimes the disciple of Thales. We prefer the former rela 
 tion ; the latter is at any rate not the one in which this history 
 can regard him. His reputation, both for political and scien 
 tific knowledge, was very great ; and many important inven 
 tions are ascribed to him, amongst others that of the sun-dial 
 and the sketch of a geographical map. His calculations of the 
 size and distance of the heavenly bodies were committed to wri 
 ting in a small work, which is said to be the earliest of all philo 
 sophical writings. He was passionately addicted to mathema 
 tics, and framed a series of geometrical problems. He was the 
 leader of a colony to Apollonia; and he is also reported to 
 have resided at the court of the tyrant Polycrates, in Samos, 
 where also lived Pythagoras and Anacreon. 
 
 No two historians are agreed in their interpretation of Anaxi- 
 mander s doctrines ; few indeed are agreed as to the historical 
 position he is to occupy. 
 
 Anaximander is stated to have been the first to use the term 
 apX*) for the Beginning of things. What he meant by this 
 term principle is variously interpreted by the ancient writers ; 
 for, although they are unanimous in stating that he called it the 
 infinite (TO atfsipov), what he understood by the infinite is yet 
 undecided.* 
 
 On a first view, nothing can well be less intelligible than this 
 tenet : " The Infinite is the origin of all thino-s." It either looks 
 
 O O 
 
 like the monotheism of a far later date,f or like the word-jug 
 glery of mysticism. To our minds it is neither more nor less 
 
 * Ritter, i. 267. 
 
 t "Which it certainly could not have been. To prevent any misconcep 
 tion of the kind, we may merely observe that the Infinite here meant, was 
 not even the Limitless Power, much less the Limitless Mind, implied in the 
 modern conception. In Anuxagoras, who lived a century later, we find TO 
 arcipov to be no more than vastness. See Simplicius, Phys. 33, b, quoted in 
 Kitter, 
 
12 THE MATHEMATICIANS. 
 
 difficult of comprehension than the tenet of Thales, that " Water 
 is the origin of all things." Let us cast ourselves back in imagi 
 nation into those early days, and see if we cannot account for the 
 rise of such an opinion. 
 
 On viewing Anaximander side by side with his great prede 
 cessor and friend, Thales, we cannot but be struck with the ex 
 clusively abstract tendency of his speculations. Instead of the 
 meditative Metaphysician, we see a Geometrician. Thales, whose 
 famous maxim, " Know thyself," was essentially concrete, may 
 serve as a contrast to Anaximander, whose axiom, " The Infinite 
 is the origin of all things," is the ultimate effort of abstraction. 
 Let us concede to him this tendency ; let us see in him the geo 
 metrician rather than the moralist or physicist ; let us endeavor 
 to understand how all things presented themselves to his mind 
 in the abstract form, and how mathematics was the science of 
 sciences, and we shall then perhaps be able to understand his 
 tenets. 
 
 Thales, in searching for the origin of things, was led, as we 
 have seen, to maintain water to be that origin. But Anaxi 
 mander, accustomed to view things in the abstract, could not 
 accept so concrete a thing as Water : something more ultimate 
 in the analysis was required. Water itself, which in common 
 with Thales, he held to be the material of the universe, was it 
 not subject to conditions ? What were those conditions ? This 
 Moisture, of which all things are made, does it not cease to be 
 moisture in many instances? And can that which is the origin 
 of all, ever change, ever be confounded with individual things? 
 Water itself is a thing; but a Thing cannot be All Things. 
 
 These objections to the doctrine of Thales caused him to re 
 ject, or rather to modify, that doctrine. The ctp^rj, he said, was 
 not Water; it must be the Unlimited All, TO cwrtjpov. 
 
 Vague and profitless enough this theory will doubtless appear. 
 The abstraction "All" will seem a mere distinction in words. 
 But in Greek Philosophy, as we shall repeatedly notice, distinc 
 tions in words were generally equivalent to distinctions in things. 
 
AX AXIM ANDES OF MILETUS. 13 
 
 And if the reader reflects how the mathematician, by the very 
 nature of his science, is led to regard abstractions as entities, 
 to separate form, and treat of it as if it alone constituted body, 
 there will be no difficulty in conceiving Anaximander s distinc 
 tion between all Finite Things and the Infinite All. 
 
 It is thus only we can explain his tenet ; and this explanation 
 seems borne out by the testimony of Aristotle and Theophrastus, 
 who agree, that by the Infinite he understood the multitude of 
 elementary parts out of which individual things issued by sepa 
 ration. " By separation :" the phrase is significant. It means 
 the passage from the abstract to the concrete, the All realizing 
 itself in the Individual Thing. Call the Infinite by the name of 
 Existence, and say, " There is existence per se, and Existence per 
 aliud ; the former is Existence, the ever-living fountain whence 
 flow the various existing Things" In this way we may, perhaps, 
 make Anaximander s meaning intelligible. 
 
 Let us now hear Ritter. Anaximander " is represented as ar 
 guing that the primary substance must have been infinite to be 
 all-sufficient for the limitless variety of produced things with 
 which we are encompassed. Now, although Aristotle especially 
 characterizes this infinite as a mixture, we must not think of it 
 as a mere multiplicity of primary material elements; for to the 
 mind of Anaximander it was a Unity immortal and imperishable 
 an ever-producing energy. This production of individual 
 things he derived from an eternal motion of the Infinite."" 
 
 The primary Being, according to Anaximander, is unquestion 
 ably a Unity. It is One yet All. It comprises within itself the 
 multiplicity of elements from which all mundane things are com 
 posed ; and these elements only need to be separated from it to 
 appear as separate phenomena of nature. Creation is the de 
 composition of the Infinite. How does this decomposition origi 
 nate? By tire eternal motion which is the condition of the 
 Infinite. "He regarded," says Hitter, "the Infinite as being in 
 a constant state of incipiency, which, however, is nothing but 
 a constant secretion and concretion of certain immutable ele- 
 
14 THE MATHEMATICIANS. 
 
 ments ; so that we might well say, the parts of the whole are 
 constantly changing, while the whole is unchangeable." 
 
 The idea of elevating an abstraction into a Being the origin 
 of all things is baseless enough ; it is as if we were to say, 
 "There are numbers 1, 2, 3, 20, 80, 100; but there is also 
 Number in the abstract, of which these individual numbers are 
 but the concrete realization : without Number there will be no 
 numbers." Yet so difficult is it for the human mind to divest 
 itself of its own abstractions, and to consider them as no more 
 than as abstractions, that this error lies at the root of the majority 
 of philosophical systems. It may help the reader to some tole 
 rance of Anaximander s error to learn that celebrated philoso 
 phers of modern times, Hegel and others, have maintained pre 
 cisely the same tenet, though somewhat differently worded: 
 they say, that Creation is God passing into activity, but not ex 
 hausted by the act ; in other words, Creation is the mundane 
 existence of God ; finite Things are but the eternal motion, the 
 manifestation of the All. 
 
 Anaximander separated himself from Thales by regarding the 
 ^abstract as of higher significance than the concrete : and in this 
 tendency we see the origin of the Pythagorean school, so often 
 called the mathematical school. The speculations of Thales tend 
 ed towards discovering the material constitution of the universe ; 
 they were founded, in some degree, upon an induction from ob 
 served facts, however imperfect that induction might be. The 
 speculations of Anaximander were ivkolly deductive; and, as 
 such, tended towards mathematics, the science of pure deduction. 
 
 As an example of this mathematical tendency we may allude 
 to his physical speculations. The central point in his cosmo- 
 preia was the earth ; for, being of a cylindrical form, with a base 
 in the ratio 1 : 3 to its altitude, it was retained in its centre by 
 the aid and by the equality of its distances from all the limits 
 of the world. 
 
 From the foregoing exposition the Reader may judge of the 
 propriety of that ordinary historical arrangement which places 
 
PYTHAGOKAS. 15 
 
 Anaximander as the successor of Thales. It is clear that he 
 originated one of the great lines of speculative inquiry, and that 
 one, perhaps, the most curious in all antiquity. By Thales, 
 Water, the origin of things, was held to be a real physical ele 
 ment, which in the hands of his successors became gradually 
 transformed into a merely representative emblem of something 
 wholly different (Life or Mind) ; and the element which lent its 
 name as the representative was looked upon as a secondary 
 phenomenon, derived from that primary force of which it was the 
 emblem. Water was the real primary element with Thales ; with 
 Diogenes, Water (having previously been displaced for Air) was 
 but the emblem of Mind. Anaximander s conception of the All, 
 though abstract, is nevertheless to a great degree physical : it is 
 All Things. His conception of the Infinite was not ideal; it 
 had not passed into the state of a symbol ; it was the mere de 
 scription of the primary fact of existence. Above all, it involved 
 no conception of intelligence except as a mundane finite thing. 
 His TO ctTTejpov was the Infinite Existence, but not the Infinite 
 Mind. This later development we shall meet with hereafter in 
 the Eleatics. 
 
 II. PYTHAGORAS. 
 
 The life of Pythagoras is enshrouded in the dim magnificence 
 of legends, from which the attempt to extricate is hopeless. Cer 
 tain general indications are doubtless to be trusted ; but they are 
 few and vague. 
 
 As a specimen of the trouble necessary to settle any one point 
 in this biography, we will here cite the various dates given by 
 ancient authors and modern scholars as the results of their in 
 quiries into his birth. Diodorus Siculus says 61st Olympiad ; 
 Clemens Alex., 62d 01.; Eusebius, 63d or 64th Ol. ; Stanely, 
 53d 01.; Gale, 60th 01.; Dacier, 47th Ol. ; Bentley, 43d 01.; 
 Lloyd, 43d 01.; Dodwell, 52d 01. ; Ritter, 49th Ol. ; Thirl- 
 wall, 51st 01. : so that the accounts vary within the limits of 
 eighty-four years. If we must make a choice, we should decide 
 
16 THE MATHEMATICIANS. 
 
 with Bentley ; not only from respect for that magnificent scholar, 
 but because it agrees with the probable date of the birth of one 
 known to have been Pythagoras s friend and contemporary, Anaxi- 
 mander. 
 
 Pythagoras is usually classed amongst the great founders of 
 Mathematics ; and this receives confirmation from what we know 
 of the general scope of his labors, and from the statement that 
 he was chiefly occupied with the determination of extension and 
 gravity, and measuring the ratios of musical tones. His science 
 and skill are of course absurdly exaggerated, as indeed is every 
 portion of his life. Fable assigns him the place of a saint, a 
 worker of miracles, and a teacher of more than human wisdom. 
 His very birth was marvellous, some accounts making him the 
 son of Hermes, others of Apollo : in proof of the latter, he is 
 said to have exhibited a golden thigh. With a word he tamed 
 the Daunian bear, which was laying waste the country ; with a 
 whisper he restrained an ox from devouring beans. He was 
 heard to lecture at different places, such as Metapontum and 
 Taurominium, on the same day and at the same hour. As he 
 crossed the river, the river-god saluted him with "Hail, Pythag 
 oras !" and to him the harmony of the Spheres was audible 
 music. 
 
 Fable enshrines these wonders. But that they could exist, 
 even as legendary lore, is significant of the greatness of Pythag 
 oras. It is well said by Sir Lytton Bulwer that " not only all 
 the traditions respecting Pythagoras, but the certain fact of the 
 mighty effect that in his single person he afterwards wrought in 
 Italy, prove him also to have possessed that nameless art of mak 
 ing a personal impression upon mankind, and creating individual 
 enthusiasm, which is necessary to those who obtain a moral 
 command, and are the founders of sects and institutions. It is 
 so much in conformity with the manners of the time and the 
 objects of Pythagoras, to believe that he diligently explored the 
 ancient religious and political systems of Greece, from which he 
 had been long a stranger, that we cannot reject the traditions 
 
PYTHAGORAS. 17 
 
 (however disfigured with fable) that he visited Delos, and affect 
 ed to receive instructions from the pious ministrants of Delphi."* 
 It is no ordinary man whom Fable exalts into its poetical region. 
 Whenever you find romantic or miraculous deeds attributed, be 
 certain that the hero was great enough to sustain the weight of 
 this crown of fabulous glory. 
 
 But the fact thus indicated is a refutation of the ordinary tra 
 dition of his having borrowed all his learning and philosophy 
 from the East. Could not so great a man dispense with foreign 
 teachers ? Assuredly he could, and did. But his countrymen, 
 by a very natural process of thought, looked upon his greatness 
 as the result of his Eastern education. No man is a prophet in 
 his own country ; and the imaginative Greeks were peculiarly 
 prone to invest the distant and the foreign with striking attributes. 
 They could not believe in wisdom springing up from amongst 
 them 5 they turned to the East as to a vast and unknown region, 
 whence all novelty, even of thought, must come. 
 
 When we consider, as Hitter observes, how Egypt was pecu 
 liarly the wonder-land of the olden Greeks, and how, even in 
 later times, when it was so much better known, it was still, as it 
 is to this day, so caleuJated to excite awe by the singular char 
 acter of its people, which, reserved in itself, was always obtrud 
 ing on the observer s attention through the stupendous struc 
 tures of national architecture, we can easily imagine how the 
 Greeks were led to establish some connection between this mighty 
 East and their great Pythagoras. 
 
 But, although we can by no means believe that Pythagoras 
 was much indebted to Egypt for his doctrines, we are not skepti 
 cal as to the account of his having travelled there. Samos was in 
 constant intercourse with Egypt. If Pythagoras had travelled 
 into Egypt, or indeed listened to the relations of those who had 
 done so, he would have thereby obtained as much knowledge of 
 Egyptian customs as appears in his system ; and that without 
 
 * Jihen*, its Rise and Fati, ii. 412. 
 
18 THE MATHEMATICIANS. 
 
 having had the least instruction from the Priesthood. The doc 
 trine of metempsychosis was a public doctrine with the Egyp 
 tians ; though, as Ritter says, he might not have been indebted 
 to them even for that. Funeral customs and abstinence from 
 particular kinds of food \vere things to be noticed by any traveller. 
 But the fundamental objection to Pythagoras having been in 
 structed by the Egyptian Priests, is to be sought in the consti 
 tution of the priestly caste itself. If the priests were so jealous 
 of instruction as not to bestow it even on the most favored oi 
 their countrymen unless belonging to their caste, how unreason 
 able to suppose that they would bestow it on a stranger, and one 
 of a different religion ! 
 
 The ancient writers were sensible of this objection. To get 
 rid of it they invented a story which we shall give as it is given 
 by Brucker. Polycrates was in friendly relations with Amasis, 
 King of Egypt, to whom he sent Pythagoras, with a recommen 
 dation to enable him to gain access to the Priests. The king s 
 authority was not sufficient to prevail on the Priests to admit a 
 stranger to their mysteries : they referred Pythagoras therefore 
 to Thebes, as of greater antiquity. The Theban Priests were 
 awed by the royal mandate, but were loth to admit a stranger 
 to their rites. To disgust the novice, they forced him to undergo 
 several severe ceremonies, amongst which was circumcision. But 
 he could not be discouraged. He obeyed all their injunctions with 
 such patience that they resolved to take him into their confi 
 dence. He spent two-and-twenty years in Egypt, and returned 
 perfect master of all science. This is not a bad story : but there 
 is one objection to it it is not substantiated. 
 
 To Pythagoras the invention of the word Philosopher is 
 ascribed. When he was in Peloponnesus he was asked by Loon- 
 tius, what was his art. " I have no art ; I am a philosopher," 
 was the reply. Leontius never having heard the name before, 
 asked what it meant. Pythagoras gravely answered, " This life 
 may be compared to the Olympic games : for as in this assembly 
 some seek glory and the crowns ; some by the purchase or by 
 
PYTHAGORAS. 19 
 
 the sale of merchandise seek gain ; and others, more noble than 
 either, go there neither for gain nor for applause, but solely to 
 enjoy this wonderful spectacle, and to see and know all that 
 passes. We, in the same manner, quit our country, which is 
 Heaven, and come into the world, which is an assembly where 
 many work for profit, many for gain, and where there are but 
 few who, despising avarice and vanity, study nature. It is these 
 last whom I call Philosophers ; for as there is nothing more noble 
 than to be a spectator without any personal interest, so in this 
 life the contemplation and knowledge of nature are infinitely 
 more honorable than any other application." It is necessary to 
 observe that the ordinary interpretation of Philosopher, as Py 
 thagoras meant it, a " lover of wisdom," is only accurate where the 
 utmost extension is given to the word "lover." Wisdom must 
 be the rt be-all and the end-all here" of the philosopher, and not 
 simply a taste or a pursuit. It must be his mistress, to whom a 
 life is devoted. This was the meaning of Pythagoras. The word 
 which had before designated a wise man was tfo^oj. But he 
 wished to distinguish himself from the Sophoi, or philosophers 
 of his day, by name, as he had done by system. What was the 
 meaning of Sophos ? Unquestionably what we mean by a wise 
 man, as distinct from a philosopher ; one whose wisdom is prac 
 tical, and turned to practical purposes ; one who loves wisdom 
 not for its own sake so much as for the sake of its uses. Now 
 Pythagoras loved wisdom for its own sake. Contemplation was 
 to him the highest exercise of humanity : to bring wisdom down 
 to the base purposes of life was desecration. He called himself 
 therefore a Philosopher a Lover of "Wisdom to demarcate 
 himself from those who sought Wisdom only as a power to be 
 used for ulterior ends. 
 
 This interpretation of the word Philosopher may explain some 
 of his opinions. Above all, it explains the constitution of his 
 Secret Society, into which no one was admitted except after a 
 severe initiation. For five years the novice was condemned to 
 silence. Many relinquished the task in despair; they were 
 
20 THE MATHEMATICIANS. 
 
 unworthy of the contemplation of pure wisdom. Others, in 
 whom the tendency to loquacity was observed to be less, had the 
 period commuted. Various humiliations had to be endured ; 
 various experiments were made of their powers of self-denial. 
 By these Pythagoras judged whether they were worldly-minded, 
 or whether they were fit to be admitted into the sanctuary of 
 science. Having purged their souls of the baser particles by 
 purifications, sacrifices, and initiations, they were admitted to the 
 sanctuary, where the higher part of the soul was purged by the 
 knowledge of truth, which consists in the knowledge of imma 
 terial and eternal things. For this purpose he commenced with 
 Mathematics, because, as they just preserve the medium between 
 corporeal and incorporeal things, they can alone draw off the 
 mind from Sensible things and conduct them to Intelligibles. 
 
 Shall we wonder, then, that he was venerated as a God ? He 
 who could transcend all earthly struggles, and the great am 
 bitions of the greatest men, to live only for the sake of wisdom, 
 was he not of a higher stamp than ordinary mortals ? Well 
 might later historians picture him as clothed in robes of white, 
 his head crowned with gold, his aspect grave, majestical, and 
 calm ; above the manifestation of any human joy, of any human 
 sorrow ; enwrapt in contemplation of the deeper mysteries of ex 
 istence; listening to music and the hymns of Homer, Hesoid, 
 and Thales, or listening to the harmony c-f the spheres. And to 
 a lively, talkative, quibbling, active, versatile people like the 
 Greeks, what a grand phenomenon must this solemn, earnest, 
 silent, meditative man have appeared ! 
 
 From Sir Lytton Bulwer s Athens we borrow the following- 
 account of the political career of Pythagoras : " Pythagoras 
 arrived in Italy during the reign of Tarqumms Superbus, accord 
 ing to the testimony of Cicero and Aulus Gellius, and fixed his 
 residence in Crotofl, a city in the bay of Tarentum, colonized by 
 Greeks of the Achaean tribe. If we may lend a partial credit to 
 the extravagant fables of later disciples, endeavoring to extract 
 from florid super-addition some original germ of simple truth, it 
 
PYTHAGOKAS. 21 
 
 would seem that he first appeared in the character of a teacher 
 of youth, and, as was not unusual in those times, soon rose from 
 the preceptor to the legislator. Dissensions in the city favored 
 his objects. The Senate (consisting of a thousand members, 
 doubtless of a different race from the body of the people the 
 first the posterity of the settlers, the last the native population) 
 availed itself of the arrival and influence of an eloquent and re 
 nowned philosopher. He lent himself to the consolidation of 
 aristocracies, and was equally inimical to democracy and tyranny. 
 But his policy was that of no vulgar ambition. He refused, at 
 least for a time, ostensible power and office, and was contented 
 with instituting an organized and formidable society, not wholly 
 dissimilar to that mighty Order founded by Loyola in times com 
 paratively recent. The disciples admitted into this society un 
 derwent examination and probation : it was throuo-h degrees that 
 they passed into its higher honors, and were admitted into its 
 deeper secrets. Religion made the basis of the fraternity, but 
 religion connected with human ends of advancement and power. 
 He selected the three hundred who at Croton formed his Order, 
 from the noblest families, and they were professedly reared to 
 know themselves, that so they might be fitted to command the 
 world. It was not long before this society, of which Pythagoras 
 was the head, appears to have supplanted the ancient Senate and 
 obtained the legislative administration. In this Institution Py 
 thagoras stands alone ; no other founder of Greek philosophy re 
 sembles him. By all accounts he also differed from the other 
 sages of his time in his estimation of the importance of women. 
 He is said to have lectured to, and taught them. His wife was 
 herself a philosopher, and fifteen disciples of the softer sex rank 
 among the prominent ornaments of his school. An Order based 
 upon so profound a knowledge of all that can fascinate or cheat 
 mankind could not fail to secure a temporary power. His in 
 fluence was unbounded in Croton : it extended to other Italian 
 cities; it amended or overturned political constitutions; and had 
 Pythagoras possessed a more coarse and personal ambition, he 
 
22 THE MATHEMATICIANS. 
 
 might perhaps have founded a mighty dynasty, and enriched our 
 social annals with the result of a new experiment. But his was 
 the ambition not of a hero, but a sage. He wished rather to 
 establish a system than to exalt himself. His immediate followers 
 saw not all the consequences that might be derived from the 
 fraternity he founded ; and the political designs of his gorgeous 
 and august philosophy, only for awhile successful, left behind 
 them but the mummeries of an impotent freemasonry, and the 
 enthusiastic ceremonies of half-witted ascetics. 
 
 " It was when this power, so mystic and so revolutionary, had, 
 by the means of branch societies, established itself throughout a 
 considerable portion of Italy, that a general feeling of alarm and 
 suspicion broke out against the sage and his sectarians. The 
 anti-Pythagorean risings, according to Porphyry, were suffi 
 ciently numerous and active to be remembered long generations 
 afterwards. Many of the sage s friends are said to have perished, 
 and it is doubtful whether Pythagoras himself fell a victim to the 
 rage of his enemies, or died a fugitive amongst his disciples at 
 Metapontum. Nor was it until nearly the whole of Lower Italy 
 was torn by convulsions, and Greece herself drawn into the con 
 test as pacificator and arbiter, that the ferment was allayed. The 
 Pythagorean institutions were abolished, and the timocratic de 
 mocracies of the Achseans rose upon the ruins of those intellectual 
 but ungenial oligarchies. 
 
 " Pythagoras committed a fatal error when, in his attempt to 
 revolutionize society, he had recourse to aristocracies for his 
 agents. Revolutions, especially those influenced by religion, can 
 never be worked out but by popular emotions. It was from this 
 error of judgment that he enlisted the people against him ; for 
 by the account of Neanthes, related by Porphyry, and indeed 
 from all other testimony, it is clearly evident that to popular 
 not party commotion his fall must be ascribed. It is no less 
 clear that after his death, while his philosophical sect remained, 
 his political code crumbled away. The only seeds sown by 
 philosophers which spring up into great States, are those 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF PYTHAGORAS. 23 
 
 that, whether for good or evil, are planted in the hearts of the 
 Many." 
 
 We cannot omit the story which so long amused the world, 
 respecting his discovery of the musical chords. Hearing one day, 
 in the shop of a blacksmith, a number of men striking successively 
 a piece of heated iron, he remarked that all the hammers, except 
 one, produced harmonious chords, viz. the octave, the fifth, and 
 the third; but the sound between the fifth and the third was dis 
 cordant. On entering the workshop, he found the diversity of 
 sounds was owing to the difference in the weight of the hammers. 
 He took the exact weights, and on reaching home suspended four 
 strings of equal dimensions, and hanging a weight at the end of 
 each of the strings equal to the weight of each hammer, he struck 
 the strings, and found the sounds correspond with those of the 
 hammers. He then proceeded to the formation of a musical scale. 
 
 On this, Dr. Burney, in his History of Music, remarks : " Though 
 both hammers and anvil have been swallowed by ancients and 
 moderns with most ostrich-like digestion, yet upon examination and 
 experiment it appears that hammers of different size and weight 
 will no more produce different tones upon the same anvil, than 
 bows or clappers of different size will from the same string or bell." 
 
 We close here our account of the life of Pythagoras, reminding 
 the reader that one great reason for the fabulous and contradic 
 tory assertions collected together in histories and biographies 
 arises from the uncritical manner in which the " authorities" have 
 been used. To take only one " authority" as an example : lam- 
 blicus wrote his Life of Pythagoras with a view of combating the 
 rising doctrine of Christianity, and of opposing by implication a 
 Pagan philosopher to Christ. The miracles that were attributed 
 to Pythagoras have no better source than this. 
 
 III. PHILOSOPHY OF PYTHAGORAS. 
 
 There is no system in the whole course of our history more 
 difficult to seize and represent accurately than that commonly 
 known as the Pythagorean. It has made prodigious noise in the 
 
24: THE MATHEMATICIANS. 
 
 world; so much so as to be often confounded with its distant 
 echoes. An air of mystery, always inviting to a large class, sur 
 rounds it. The marvellous relations concerning its illustrious 
 founder, the supposed assimilation it contains of various elements 
 of Eastern speculation, and the supposed symbolical nature of its 
 doctrines, have all equally combined to render it attractive and 
 contradictory. Every dogma in it has been traced to some prior, 
 philosophy. Not a vestige will remain to be called the property 
 of the teacher himself, if we restore to the Jews, Indians, Egyp 
 tians, Chaldeans, Phoenicians, nay even Thracians, those various 
 portions which lie is declared to have borrowed from them. 
 
 All this pretended plagiarism we incline to think extremely 
 improbable: Pythagoras was a consequence of Anaximander; 
 and his doctrines, in as far as we can gather from their leading- 
 tendency, were but a continuation of that abstract and deductive 
 philosophy of which Auaxiniauder was the originator. 
 
 At the outset we must premise, that whatever interest there 
 may be in following out the particular opinions recorded as be 
 longing to Pythagoras, such a process is quite incompatible with 
 our plan. The greatest uncertainty still exists, and must for 
 ever exist amongst scholars, respecting the genuineness of those 
 opinions. Even such as are recorded by trustworthy authorities 
 are always vaguely attributed by them to " the Pythagoreans," 
 not to Pythagoras. Modern criticism has clearly shown that the 
 works attributed to Timseus and Archytas are spurious ; and that 
 the supposed treatise of Ocellus Lucanus on the " Nature of the 
 All" cannot even have been written by a Pythagorean. Plato 
 and Aristotle, the only ancient w ? riters who are to be trusted in 
 this matter, do not attribute any peculiar doctrines to Pythagoras. 
 The reason is simple. Pythagoras taught in secret ; and never 
 wrote. What he taught his disciples it is impossible accurately 
 to learn from what those disciples themselves taught. His influence 
 over their minds was unquestionably immense ; and this influence 
 would communicate to his school a distinctive tendency, but not 
 one accordant doctrine ; for each scholar would carry out that 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF PYTHAGORAS. 25 
 
 tendency in the direction which best suited his tastes and 
 powers.* 
 
 The extreme difficulty of ascertaining accurately what Pythag 
 oras thought, or even what his disciples thought, will not em 
 barrass us if we can but ascertain the general tendency of their 
 speculations, and, above all, the peculiarity of their method. 
 For this difficulty which, to the critical historian insuperable, 
 only affects us indirectly renders indeed our endeavor to seize 
 the characteristic method and tendency more hazardous and 
 more liable to contradiction ; but it does not compel us to inter 
 rupt our march for the sake of storming every individual fortress 
 of opinion we may encounter on our way. We have to trace 
 out the map of the philosophical world ; we must be careful to 
 ascertain the great outlines of each country : this we may be 
 enabled to do without absolutely being acquainted with the in 
 ternal varieties of that country, for geographers are not bound 
 to be also geologists. 
 
 What were the method and tendency of the Pythagorean 
 school ? The method, purely deductive ; the tendency, wholly 
 towards the consideration of abstractions as the only true ma 
 terials of science. Hence the name not unfrequently given to 
 that school, of " the Mathematical." The list of Pythagoreans 
 embraces the greatest names in mathematics and astronomy, 
 Archytas and Philolaus, and subsequently Hipparchus and 
 Ptolemy.f 
 
 * We assume this to be the case ; but we do not assume it groundlessly. 
 We are guided by the striking analogy afforded by the celebrated Saint-Si 
 mon. Like Pythagoras, the Frenchman published no complete account of 
 his system, lie communicated it to his disciples ; and, as his influence over 
 their minds was almost unparalleled, the tendency of his philosophy took 
 deep root, though producing very different fruits in different minds. Those 
 moderately acquainted witli French writers will appreciate this when we 
 simply enumerate MM. Augustin Thierry, Auguste Comte, Pierre Leroux, 
 Michel Chevalier, Le Pere Enfantin, and M. Bazard, all disciples of Saint- 
 Simon. 
 
 t .^Eschylus, a disciple of Pythagoras, makes his Titan boast of having 
 discovered for men, Number, the highest of the sciences ; Kat 
 c&xov ao^ifffudrwv. ifcvpov aiirotj. Prom., 459. 
 
 2 
 
26 THE MATHEMATICIANS. 
 
 We may now perhaps, in some sort, comprehend what Pythag 
 oras meant when he taught that Numbers were the principles 
 of Things : <rou api^jxouV aiVfous sTvou <rr t s outfiaf,* or, to translate 
 more literally, " Numbers are the cause of the material existence 
 of Things;" outfiot being here evidently the expression of concrete 
 existence. This is confirmed by the wording of the formula 
 given elsewhere by Aristotle, that Nature is realized from Num 
 bers : c^v (fjtfw s dpi^jaojv tfuviflVao i.j Or again : Things are 
 but the copies of Numbers : jju fAyjrfiv s/vou TO, ov-ra rwv dpifyxGJv.J 
 What Pythagoras meant was, that numbers were the ultimate 
 nature of things. Anaximander saw that things in themselves 
 are not final ; they are constantly changing both position and 
 attributes ; they are variable, and the principle of existence must 
 be invariable j he called that invariable existence THE ALL. 
 
 Pythagoras saw that there was an invariable existence lying 
 beneath these varieties ; but he wanted some more definite ex 
 pression for it, and he called it Number. Thus each individual 
 thing may change its position, its mode of existence ; all its pe 
 culiar attributes may be destroyed except one, namely, its numer 
 ical attribute. It is always " One" thing; nothing can destroy 
 that numerical existence. Combine the Thing in every possible 
 variety of ways, and it still remains " One ;" it cannot be less than 
 "one," it cannot be made more than "one." Resolve it into its 
 minutest particles, and each particle is one. Having thus 
 found that numerical existence was the only invariable exist 
 ence, he was easily led to proclaim all Things to be but copies 
 of Numbers. " All phenomena must originate in the simplest 
 elements," says Sextus Empiricus, " and it would be contrary to 
 reason to suppose the Principle of the Universe to participate in 
 the nature of sensible phenomena. The Princijtia are conse 
 quently not only invisible and intangible, but also incorporeal." 
 
 As numerical existence is the ultimate state at which analysis 
 can arrive with respect to finite Things, so also is it the ultimate 
 
 * Ari.stot. Metapli. i. 6. t De Code, iii. 1. J Mdcqili. i. 6. 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF PYTHAGORAS. 27 
 
 state at which we can arrive with respect to the Infinite, or Ex 
 istence in itself. The Infinite, therefore, must be One. One is 
 the absolute number; it exists in and by itself; it has no need 
 of any relation with any thing else, not even with any other 
 number; Two is but the relation of One to One. All modes of 
 existence are but finite aspects of the Infinite ; so all numbers 
 are but numerical relations of the One. In the original One 
 all numbers are contained, and consequently the elements of the 
 whole world. 
 
 Observe, moreover, that One is necessarily the &p%ri the be 
 ginning of things so eagerly sought by philosophers, since, where- 
 ever you begin, you must begin with One. Suppose the num 
 ber be three, and you strike off the initial number to make two, 
 the second then will be One. In a word, One is the Beginning 
 of all things. 
 
 The verbal quibble on which this, as indeed the whole system 
 reposes, need not excite any suspicion of the sincerity of Pythag 
 oras. The Greeks were unfortunately acquainted with no lan 
 guage but their own : and, as a natural consequence, mistook 
 distinctions in language for distinctions in things. It has been 
 well said by Dr. Whewell, that " all the first attempts to com 
 prehend the operations of Nature led to the introduction of ab 
 stract conceptions, vague indeed, but not therefore unmeaning. 
 And the next step in philosophizing necessarily was to make 
 those vague abstractions more clear and fixed, so that the logical 
 faculty should be able to employ them securely and coherently. 
 But there were two ways of making this attempt; the one, by 
 examining the words only, and the thoughts which they call up ; 
 the other, by attending to the facts and things which bring these 
 abstract terms into use. The Greeks followed the verbal or no 
 tional course, and failed."* 
 
 It is only by mea.ns of the above explanation that we can any 
 way credit the belief in distinctions so wire-drawn as those of 
 
 * History of the Inductive Sciences, i. 34. 
 
28 THE MATHEMATICIANS. 
 
 Pythagoras ; it is only thus that we can understand how he 
 could have held that Numbers were Beings. Aristotle attrib 
 utes this philosophy to the fondness of Pythagoras for mathe 
 matics, which concerns itself with the abstract, not with the 
 material existence of sensible things ; but surely this is only half 
 the explanation ? The mathematicians in our day not only rea 
 son entirely with symbols, which stand as the representatives of 
 things, without having the least affinity or resemblance to the 
 things (being wholly arbitrary marks), but very many of these 
 men never trouble themselves at all with inspecting the things 
 about which they reason by means of symbols. Much of the 
 science of Astronomy is carried on by those who never use a 
 telescope ; it is carried on by figures upon paper, and calcula 
 tions of those figures. Because, however, astronomers use num 
 bers as symbols, they do not suppose that numbers are more 
 than symbols. Pythagoras was not able to make this distinc 
 tion. He believed that numbers were things in reality, not 
 merely in symbol. When therefore Ritter says that the Pytha 
 gorean formula " can only be taken symbolically," he appears 
 to us to commit a great anachronism, and to antedate by several 
 centuries a mode of thought at variance with all we know of 
 Greek Philosophy ; at variance also with the express testimony 
 of Aristotle, who says, "The Pythagoreans did not separate 
 Numbers from Things. They held number to be the Principle 
 and Material of things, no less than their essence and power."* 
 The. notion that because we, in the present state of philosophy, 
 cannot conceive Numbers otherwise than as symbols, therefore 
 Pythagoras must have conceived them in the same way, is one 
 
 i. i. 5. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say, " Numbers are 
 the beginning of things, the cause of their material existence (iiA^v ro?j ovai : 
 Aristotle has before defined $\r) us causa materialis, cap. 3) and of their modi 
 fications (dij TtdOr] TE Kat $)." 
 
 The whole chapter should be consulted by those who believe in the sym 
 bolical use of numbers; a belief Aristotle had certainly no suspicion of. I 
 have translated all the passages bearing on this point at the close of this 
 Section. 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF PYTHAGORAS. 29 
 
 which has been very widely spread, but which we hold to be as 
 great an anachronism as Shakespeare s Hector quoting Aristotle, 
 or Racine exhibiting the etiquette of Versailles in the camp of 
 Aulis. And Hitter himself, after having stated with considerable 
 detail the various points in this philosophy, admits that the 
 essential doctrine rests on "the derivation of all in the world 
 from mathematical relations, and on the resolution of the rela 
 tions of space and time into those of units or numbers. All pro 
 ceeds from the original one, or primary number, or from the 
 plurality of units or numbers into which the one in its life-devel 
 opment divides itself." Now, to suppose that this doctrine was 
 simply mathematical, and not mathematico-cosmological, is to 
 violate all principles of historical philosophy ; for it is to throw 
 the opinions of our day into the period of Pythagoras. For a 
 final proof, consider the formula, ju-i jxyjo jv sivai TOL ovrct TWV 
 ctpi^jxwv, " Things are the copies of Numbers." This formula, 
 which of all others is the most favorable to the notion we are 
 combating, will on a close inspection exhibit the real meaning 
 of Pythagoras to be directly the reverse of symbolical. Symbols 
 are arbitrary marks, bearing no resemblance to the things they 
 represent ; a, 6, r, x are but letters of the alphabet ; the mathe 
 matician makes them the symbols of quantities, or of things ; 
 but no one would call x the- copy of an unknown quantity. But 
 what is the meaning of Things being copies of Numbers, if they 
 are Numbers in essence ? The meaning we must seek in an 
 terior explanations. We shall there find that Things are the 
 concrete existences of abstract Existence ; and that when numbers 
 are said to be the principia,, it is meant that the forms of ma 
 terial things, the original essences, which remain invariable, are 
 Numbers.* Thus a stone- is One stone ; as- such it is a copy of 
 One ; it is the realization of the abstract One into a concrete 
 
 * Hence we must caution against supposing Pythagoras tcv have antici 
 pated the theory of " definite proportions." Numbers are not the laws of 
 combination, nor the expression of those laws, but the essences which re 
 main invariable under every variety of combination- 
 
30 THE MATHEMATICIANS. 
 
 stone. Let the stone be ground to dust, and the particle of 
 dust is still a copy, another copy of the One. 
 
 The reader will bear in mind that we have only a few mystical 
 expressions, such as, "Number is the principle of Things," 
 handed down to us as the doctrines of a Thinker who created a 
 considerable school, and whose influence on philosophy was 
 undeniably immense. We have to interpret these expressions 
 as we best can. Above all, we have to give them some appear 
 ance of plausibility ; and this not so much an appearance of 
 plausibility to modern thinkers as what would have been plausi 
 ble to the ancients. Now, as far as we have familiarized our 
 selves with the antique modes of thought, our interpretation of 
 Pythagoras is one which, if not the true, is at any rate very 
 analogous to it ; by such a logical process he might have arrived 
 at his conclusions, and for our purpose this is almost the same as 
 if he had arrived at them by it. 
 
 This history has but to settle two questions respecting Py 
 thagoras : first, did he regard Numbers as symbols merely, or as 
 entities ? Second, if he regarded them as entities, how could he 
 have arrived at such an opinion ? The second of these questions 
 has been answered in a hypothetical manner in the remarks just 
 made; but of course the explanation is worthless if the first ques 
 tion be negatived, and to that question therefore we now turn. If 
 we are to accept the authority of Aristotle, the question is distinctly 
 and decisively answered, as we have seen, in favor of the reality 
 of Numbers. It is true that doubts are thrown on the authority 
 of Aristotle, who is said to have misunderstood or misrepresented 
 the Pythagorean doctrine ; but when we consider the compre 
 hensiveness and exactness of Aristotle s mighty intellect ; when 
 we consider further that he had paid more than his usual atten 
 tion to the doctrines of the Pythagoreans, having written a 
 specjal treatise thereon, we shall be slow to reject any statement 
 he may make unless better evidence is produced ; and where can 
 better evidence be sought ? Either we must accept Aristotle, or 
 be silent on the whole matter; unless, indeed, we prefer as 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF PYTHAGORAS. 31 
 
 many prefer our own sagacity to his authority. It may be 
 stated as a final consideration, that the view taken by the Stagi- 
 rite is in perfect conformity with the opinions of Anaximander; 
 so that given, the philosophy of the master, we might a priori 
 deduce the opinions of the pupil. 
 
 The nature of this Work forbids any detailed account of the 
 various opinions attributed to Pythagoras on subsidiary points. 
 But we may instance his celebrated theory of the music of the 
 spheres as a good specimen of the deductive method employed 
 by him. Assuming that every thing in the great Arrangement 
 (xotf/xos), which he called the world, must be harmoniously 
 arranged, and, assuming that the planets were at the same pro 
 portionate distances from one another as the divisions of the 
 monochord, he concluded that in passing through the ether they 
 must make a sound, and that this sound would vary according to 
 the diversity of their magnitude, velocity, and relative distance. 
 Saturn gave the deepest tone, as being the furthest from the 
 earth ; the Moon gave the shrillest, as being nearest to the earth. 
 
 It may be necessary just to state that the attempt to make 
 Pythagoras a Monotheist is utterly without solid basis, and 
 unworthy of detailed refutation. 
 
 His doctrine of the Transmigration of Souls has been regarded 
 as symbolical ; with very little reason, or rather with no reason 
 at all. He defined the soul to be a Monad (unit) which was 
 self-moved.* Of course the soul, inasmuch as it was a number, 
 was One, i. e. perfect. But all perfection, in as far as it is 
 moved, must pass into imperfection, whence it strives to regain 
 its state of perfection. Imperfection he called a departure from 
 unity ; two therefore was accursed. 
 
 The soul in man is in a state of comparative imperfection.^ 
 It has three elements, Reason (vouj), Intelligence (qpp^v), and 
 
 * Aristot,, De Animd, i. 2. 
 
 t Thus Aristotle expresses himself when he says that the Pythagoreans 
 maintained the soul and intelligence to be a certain combination of numbers, 
 TO SI roiovSl (sc. ruv dpi0/uwi/ nddos) </t>x; KOI vovf. Metaph., i. 5. 
 
32 THE MATHEMATICIANS. 
 
 Passion (dufxc^) : the two last man has in common with brutes ] 
 the first is his distinguishing characteristic. It has hence been 
 concluded that Pythagoras could not have maintained the doc 
 trine of transmigration, his distinguishing man from brutes being 
 a refutation of those who charge him with the doctrine.* The 
 objection is plausible, and points out a contradiction ; but there 
 is abundant evidence for the belief that transmigration was 
 taught.t The soul, being a self-moved monad, is. One, whether 
 it connect itself with two or with three ; in other words, the 
 essence remains the same whatever its manifestations. The One 
 soul may have two aspects, Intelligence and Passion, as in 
 brutes ; or it may have the three aspects, as in man. Each of 
 these aspects may predominate, and the man will then become 
 eminently rational, or able, or sensual. He will be a philosopher, 
 a man of the world, or a beast. Hence the importance of the 
 Pythagorean initiation, and of the studies of Mathematics and 
 Music. 
 
 "This soul, which can look before and after, can shrink and 
 shrivel itself into an incapacity of contemplating aught but the 
 present moment, of what depths of degeneracy is it capable ! 
 What a beast it may become ! And if something lower than 
 itself, why not something higher? And if something higher 
 and lower, may there not be a law accurately determining its 
 elevation and descent? Each soul has its peculiar evil tastes, 
 bringing it to the likeness of different creatures beneath itself; 
 why may it not be under the necessity of abiding in the condi 
 tion of that thing to which it had adapted and reduced itself ?" J 
 
 In closing this account of a very imperfectly known doctrine, 
 we have only further to exhibit its relation to the preceding 
 philosophy. It is clearly an offshoot of Anaximander s doctrine, 
 
 * Pierre Leroux, De V Ilumanite, i. 890-42&. 
 
 t Plato distinctly mentions the transmigration into beasts, Phadrus, p. 45. 
 And the Pythagorean Timceus, in his statement of the doctrine, also ex 
 pressly includes beasts. Timceus, p. 45. 
 
 I Maurice, Moral and Metaphysical PW#scphy. 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF PYTHAGOKAS. 33. 
 
 which it develops in a more logical manner. In Anaximander 
 there remained a trace of physical inquiry ; in Pythagoras 
 science is frankly mathematical. Assuming that number is the 
 real invariable essence of the world, it was a natural deduction 
 that the w 7 orld is regulated by numerical proportions ; and from, 
 this all the rest of his- system followed as a consequence. Anax- 
 imander s system is but a rude and daring sketch of a doctrine 
 which the great mathematical genius of Pythagoras developed. 
 The Infinite of Anaximander became the One of Pythagoras. 
 Observe that in neither of these systems is Mind an attribute of 
 the Infinite. It has been frequently maintained that Pythagoras 
 taught the doctrine of "a soul of the world." But there is no, 
 solid ground for the opinion, any more than for that of his 
 Theism, which later writers anxiously attributed to him. The 
 conception of an Infinite Mind is much later than Pythagoras. 
 He only regarded Mind as a phenomenon ; as the peculiar man 
 ifestation of an essential number ; and the proof of this assertion 
 we take to lie in his very doctrine of the soul. If the Monad, 
 which is self-moved, can pass into the state of a brute or of 
 a plant, in which state it successively loses its Reason (voS^) and 
 its Intelligence (<pp^jv) to become merely sensual and concupisci- 
 ble, does not this abdication of Reasoa and Intelligence distinctly 
 prove them to be only variable manifestations (phenomena) of 
 the invariable Essence ? Assuredly ; and those w r ho argue for 
 the Soul of the World as an Intelligence in the Pythagorean 
 doctrine, must renounce both the doctrine of transmigration and 
 the central doctrine of the system, the invariable Number as the 
 Essence of things. 
 
 Pythagoras represents the second epoch of the second Branch 
 of Ionian Philosophy ; he is parallel with Anaximenes. 
 
34: THE MATHEMATICIANS. 
 
 Translations from the 5th Chapter of Book I. of Aristotle s 
 Metaphysics. 
 
 " In the age of these philosophers [the Eleats and Atomists], 
 and even before them, lived those called Pythagoreans, who 
 at first applied themselves to mathematics, a science they im 
 proved ; and, having been trained exclusively in it, they fancied 
 that the principles of mathematics were the principles of all 
 things. 
 
 " Since numbers are by nature prior to all things, in Numbers 
 they thought they perceived greater analogies with that which 
 exists and that which is produced (ojaoiw/xa-ra -TfoXXa TO? outfi 
 KOLI T^VO/XS VOIS), than in fire, earth, or water. So that a certain 
 combination of Numbers was justice ; and a certain other com 
 bination of Numbers was Reason and Intelligence ; and a certain 
 other combination of Numbers was opportunity (xaipfc) ; and so 
 of the rest, 
 
 "Moreover, they saw in Numbers the combinations of har 
 mony. Since therefore all things seemed formed similarly to 
 Numbers, and Numbers being by nature anterior to things, they 
 concluded that the elements (tfroi^eTa) of Numbers are the ele 
 ments of things, and that the whole heaven is a harmony and 
 a Number. Having indicated the great analogies between Num 
 bers and the phenomena of heaven and its parts, and with the 
 phenomena of the whole world (<r)v 6 X.njv &axoVjUW)<fv), they 
 formed a system ; and if any gap was apparent in the system, 
 they used every effort to restore the connection. Thus, since 
 Ten appeared to them a perfect number, potentially containing 
 all numbers, they declared that the moving celestial bodies (TO. 
 4>gpofjvct xara rov oupavov) were ten in number; but because 
 only nine are visible they imagined (tfoioutfi) a tenth, the An- 
 tictlione. 
 
 " We have treated of all these things more in detail elsewhere. 
 But the reason why we recur to them is this that we may 
 learn from these philosophers also what they lay down as their 
 
35 
 
 first principles, and by what process they hit upon the causes 
 aforesaid. 
 
 "They maintained that Number was the Beginning (Princi 
 ple, &px*j) of things, the cause of their material existence, and 
 of their modifications and different states. The elements (tfroi^sra) 
 of Number are Odd and Even. The Odd is finite, the Even 
 infinite. Unity, the One, partakes of both these, and is both 
 Odd and Even. All number is derived from the One. The 
 heavens, as we said before, are composed of numbers. Other 
 Pythagoreans say there are ten Principia, those called co-ordi 
 nates : 
 
 The finite and the infinite. 
 
 The odd and the even. 
 
 The one and the many. 
 
 The right and the left. 
 
 The male and the female. 
 
 The quiescent and the moving. 
 
 The right line and the curve. 
 
 Light and darkness. 
 
 Good and evil. 
 
 The square and the oblong. 
 
 "... All the Pythagoreans considered the elements as ma 
 terial; for the elements are in all things, and constitute the 
 world. . . . 
 
 "... The finite, the infinite, and the One they maintained 
 to be not separate existences, such as are fire, water, etc. ; but 
 the abstract Infinite and the abstract One are respectively the 
 substance of the things of which they are predicated, and hence, 
 too, Number is the substance of all things (au-ro TO owreipov, 
 x.a.1 auTo TO s v, outf/av sivai TOUTOV). They began by attending 
 only to the Form, and began to define it ; but on this subject 
 they were very imperfect. They define superficially ; and that 
 which suited their definition they declared to be the essence 
 (causa materialis) of the thing defined ; as if one should main 
 tain that the double and the number two are the same thing, 
 
36 THE MATHEMATICIANS. 
 
 because the double is first found in the two. But two and the 
 double are not equal (in essence), or if so, then the one would 
 be many ; a consequence which follows from their (the Pytha 
 gorean) doctrine." 
 
 (We add also a passage from the *7th Chapter of the same Book.} 
 " The Pythagoreans employ the Principia and Elements more 
 strangely than even the Physiologists; the cause of which is 
 that they do not take them from sensible things (auras ux e 
 ajVdujrwv). However, all their researches are physical ; all their 
 systems are physical. They explain the production of heaven, 
 and observe that which takes place in its various parts, and its 
 revolutions ; and thus they employ their Principles and Causes, 
 as if they agreed with the Physiologists, that whatever is is 
 material (o/tfdqrov), and is that which contains what we call 
 heaven. 
 
 " But their Causes and Principles we should pronounce suffi 
 cient (ixavas) to raise them up to the conception of Intelligible 
 things, of things above sense (scrava/^vaj xa/ siei <ra avwre pw 
 <rwv OVTWV) ; and would accord with such a conception much 
 better than with that of physical things." 
 
 This criticism of Aristotle s is a perfect refutation of those who 
 see in Pythagoras the traces of symbolical doctrine. Aristotle 
 sees how much more rational the doctrine would have been had 
 it been symbolical; but this very remark proves that it was 
 not so. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 THE ELEATICS. 
 
 I. XENOPHANES. 
 
 THE contradictory statements which so Jong obscured the ques 
 tion of the date of Xenophanes birth, may now be said to be 
 satisfactorily cleared up. M. Victor Cousin s essay on the sub 
 ject will leave few readers unconvinced.* We may assert there 
 fore with some probability, that Xenophanes was born in the 
 40th Olympiad (B. c. 620-616), and that he lived nearly a hun 
 dred years. His birthplace was Colophon, an Ionian city of 
 Asia Minor ; a city long famous as the seat of elegiac and gnomic 
 poetry, and ranking the poet Mimnermus among its celebrated 
 men. Xenophanes cultivated this species of poetry from youth 
 upwards ; it was the joy of his youth, the consolation of his man 
 hood, and support of his old age. Banished from his native city, 
 he wandered over Sicily as a Rhapsodist ;f a profession he exer 
 cised apparently till his death, though, if we are to credit Plu 
 tarch, with very little pecuniary benefit. He lived poor, and died 
 poor. But he could dispense with riches, having within him treas 
 ures inexhaustible. He whose whole soul was en wrapt in the con 
 templation of grand ideas, and whose vocation was the poetical 
 expression of those ideas, needed but little worldly grandeur. 
 He seems to have been one of the most remarkable men of anti- 
 
 * Nouveaux Fragmens Pldlosopliiques. The critical reader will observe 
 some misstatements in this essay, but on the whole it is well worthy of 
 perusal. Karsten s Xenophanis Carminum Reliquiae \& of great value. 
 
 t The Khapsodists were the Minstrels of antiquity. They learned poems 
 by heart, and recited them to assembled crowds on the occasions of feasts. 
 Homer was a rhapsodist, and rhapsodized his own verses. 
 
38 THE ELEATICS. 
 
 quity, and also one of the most fanatical. lie had no pity for 
 the idle and luxurious superstitions of his time ; he had no toler 
 ance for the sunny legends of Homer, defaced as they were by 
 the errors of polytheism. He, a poet, was fierce in the combat 
 he perpetually waged with the first of poets : not from petty 
 envy ; not from petty ignorance ; but from the deep sincerity of 
 his heart, from the holy enthusiasm of his reverence. He who 
 believed in one God, supreme in power, goodness, and intelli 
 gence, could not witness without pain the degradation of the 
 Divine in the common religion. He was not dead to the poetic 
 beauty of the Homeric fables, but keenly alive to their religious 
 falsehood. Plato, whom none will accuse of wanting poetical 
 taste, made the same objection. The latter portion of the second 
 and the beginning of the third books of Plato s Republic are but 
 expansions of these verses of Xenophanes : 
 
 "Such things of the Gods are related by Homer and Hesiod 
 As would be shame and abiding disgrace to any of mankind ; 
 Promises broken, and thefts, and the one deceiving the other." 
 
 He who firmly believed in 
 
 " One God, of all beings divine and human the greatest, 
 Neither in body alike unto mortals, neither in spirit,"* 
 
 could not but see, "more in sorrow than in anger," the gross an 
 thropomorphism of his fellows : 
 
 "But men foolishly think that Gods are born like as men are, 
 And have too a dress like their own, and their voice and their figure : 
 But if oxen and lions had hands like ours, and fingers, 
 Then would horses like unto horses, and oxen to oxen, 
 Paint and fashion their god-forms, and give to them bodies 
 Of like shape to their own, as they themselves too are fashioned. "t 
 
 * This is to important a position to admit of our passing over the ori 
 ginal : 
 
 Elj Qt&s cv T Qtoiai Kin avQpuiroicrt niyioros 
 
 O&TC If pas Qvrjrnlaiv b^oiios oCrc vorjua. Fi itrjm. i., ed. Kftrsten. 
 Wiggers, in his Life of Socrales t expresses his surprise that Xenophanes 
 was allowed to speak so freely respecting the State Religion in Magna 
 Groecia, when philosophical opinions much less connected with religion 
 had proved so fatal to Anaxagoras in Athens. But the apparent contra 
 diction is perhaps reconciled when we remember that Xenophanes was a 
 poet, and poets have in all ages been somewhat privileged persons. 
 
 t Fragments v. and vi. are here united, as in Hitter ; the sense seems 
 
XENOPHANES. 39 
 
 In confirmation of which satire he referred to the Ethiopians, 
 who represent their gods with flat noses and black complexion ; 
 while the Thracians give them blue eyes and ruddy complexions. 
 Having attained a clear recognition of the unity and perfec 
 tion of the Godhead, it became the object of his life to spread 
 that conviction abroad, and to tear down the thick veil of super 
 stition which hid the august countenance of truth. He looked 
 around him, and saw mankind divided into two classes : those 
 who speculated on the nature of things, endeavoring to raise 
 themselves up to a recognition of the Divine ; and those who 
 yielded an easy unreflecting assent to the superstitions which 
 composed religion. The first class speculated ; but they kept 
 their speculations to themselves, and to a small circle of disciples. 
 If they sought truth, it was not to communicate it to all minds : 
 they did not work for humanity, but for the few. Even Pythag 
 oras, earnest thinker as he was, could not be made to believe in 
 the fitness of the multitude for truth. lie had two sorts of doc 
 trine to teach : one for a few disciples, whom he chose with ex 
 treme caution ; the other for those who pleased to listen. The 
 former doctrine was what he believed the truth ; the latter was 
 what he thought the masses were fitted to receive. Xenophanes 
 recognized no such distinction. Truth was for all men ; to all 
 men he endeavored to present it ; and for three-quarters of a 
 century he, the great Rhapsodist of Truth, emulated his country 
 man Homer, the great Rhapsodist of Beauty, and wandered into 
 many lands, uttering the thought which was working in him. 
 What a contrast is presented by these two Ionian singers ! con 
 trast in purpose, in means, and in fate. The rhapsodies of the 
 philosopher, once so eagerly listened to and affectionately pre 
 served in traditionary fragments, are now only extant in briefest 
 extracts contained in ancient books, so ancient and so uninterest 
 ing as to be visited only by some rare old scholars and a few 
 
 to demand this conjunction. But Clemens Alexandrinus quotes the sec 
 ond Fragment as if it occurred in another part of the poem; introducing 
 it with Kal rrdAiv ^<n, "and again he says." Karsten, p. 41. 
 
40 THE ELEATICS. 
 
 dilettanti spiders ; while the rhapsodies of the blind singer are 
 living in the brain and heart of thousands and thousands, who 
 go back to them as the fountain-source of poetry, the crystal 
 mirror of an antique world. 
 
 The world presented itself to Homer in pictures, to Xenophanes 
 in problems. The one saw Nature, enjoyed it, and painted it. 
 The other also saw Nature, but questioned it, and wrestled with 
 it. Every trait in Homer is sunny clear ; in Xenophanes there 
 is indecision, confusion. In Homer there is a resonance of glad 
 ness, a sense of manifold life, activity, and enjoyment. In Xeno- 
 phaues there is bitterness, activity of a spasmodic sort, infinite 
 doubt, and infinite sadness. The one was a poet singing as the 
 bird sings, carolling for very exuberance of life ; the other was a 
 Thinker, and a fanatic. He did not sing, he recited : 
 
 "All ! how unlike 
 To that large utterance of the early Gods I" 
 
 That the earnest philosopher should have opposed the sunny 
 poet, opposed him even with bitterness, on account of the de 
 graded actions and motives which he attributed to the Gods, is 
 natural ; but we must distinguish between this opposition and 
 satire. Xenophanes was bitter, not satirical. The statement de 
 rived from Diogenes, that he wrote satires against Homer and He- 
 siod, is erroneous.* Those who think otherwise are referred to 
 the excellent essay of Victor Cousin, before mentioned, or to 
 Hitter. 
 
 Rhapsodizing philosophy, and availing himself, for that pur 
 pose, of all that philosophers had discovered, he wandered from 
 place to place, and at last came to Elea, where he settled. Heo-el 
 questions this : he says he finds no distinct mention of such a 
 fact in any of the ancient writers; on the contrary, Strabo, in his 
 
 Kal iv circaiv, Kal iXeyclaS, Kal t d/</?utif Kurd Hai6&ov Kal 
 Here, says M. Cousin, the word ldn(3ov$ is either an interpolation of a copy 
 ist, as Feurlin and Rossi conjecture, or else it is a misstatement bv Diogenes. 
 There is not a single iambic verse of his remaining. But in his hexameters 
 he opposes Homer and Ilesiod, as we have seen. 
 
XENOPHANES. 41 
 
 sixth book, when describing Elea, speaks of Parmenides and 
 Zeno as having lived there, but is silent respecting Xenophanes, 
 which Hegel holds to be suspicious. Indeed the words of Dio 
 genes Laertius are vague. lie says, " Xenophanes wrote two 
 thousand verses on the foundation of Colophon, and on a colony 
 sent to Elea." This by no means implies that he lived there. 
 Nevertheless we concur with the modern writers who, from the 
 various connections with the Eleatics observable in his fragments, 
 maintain that he must actually have resided there. The reader 
 is again referred to M. Cousin on this point. Be that as it may, 
 Xenophanes terminated a long and active life without having 
 solved the great problem. The indecision of his acute mind 
 sowed the seeds of that skepticism which was hereafter to play so 
 large a part in philosophy. All his knowledge enabled him only 
 to know how little he knew." His state of mind is finely described 
 by Timon the sillograph, who puts into the mouth of Xenophanes 
 these words : 
 
 " Oh that mine were the deep mind, prudent and looking 1 to both sides! 
 Long, alas ! have I strayed on the road of error, beguiled, 
 And am, now, hoary of years, yet exposed to doubt and distraction 
 Manifold, all-perplexing, for whithersoever I turn me 
 I am lost in the One and All. 1 1 (cig tv raur<5 TE xav avcKijtro.}* 
 
 It now remains for us to state some of the conclusions at which 
 this great man arrived. They will not, perhaps, answer to the 
 reader s expectation ; as with Pythagoras, the reputation for ex 
 traordinary wisdom seems ill justified by the fragments of that 
 wisdom which have descended to us. But although to modern 
 philosophy the conclusions of these early thinkers may appear 
 trivial, let us never forget that it is to these early thinkers that 
 we owe our modern philosophy. Had there not been many a 
 
 " Gray spirit yearning in desire 
 To follow knowledge, like a sinking star, 
 Beyond the utmost bound of human thought,"t 
 
 * Preserved by Sextus Empiricus, Hypot. Pyrrkun. i. 224 ; and quoted 
 also by Eitter, i. 443. 
 t Tennyson. 
 
42 THE ELKATICS. 
 
 we should not have been able to travel on the secure terrestrial 
 path of slow inductive science. The impossible has to be proved 
 impossible, before men will consent to limit their endeavors to 
 the compassing of the possible. And it was the cry of despair 
 which escaped from Xenophanes, the cry that nothing can be 
 certainly known, which first called men s attention to the nothing 
 ness of knowledge, as knowledge was then conceived. Xenophanes 
 opens a series of thinkers, which attained its climax in Pyrrho. 
 That he should thus have been at the head of the monotheists, 
 and at the head of the skeptics, is sufficient to entitle his specu 
 lations to an extended consideration here. 
 
 II. THE PHILOSOPHY OF XENOPHANES. 
 The great problem of existence had early presented itself to his 
 mind ; and the resolution of that problem by Thales and Pythag 
 oras had left him unsatisfied. Neither the physical nor the 
 mathematical explanation could still the doubts which rose within 
 him. On all sides he was oppressed with mysteries, which these 
 doctrines could not penetrate. The state of his mind is graphic 
 ally painted in that one phrase of Aristotle s : ; Casting his eyes 
 upwards at the immensity of heaven, he declared that The One 
 is God." Overarching him was the deep blue, infinite vault, 
 immovable, unchangeable, embracing him and all things ; that 
 he proclaimed to be God. As Thales had gazed abroad upon the 
 sea, and felt that he was resting on its infinite bosom, so Xeno 
 phanes gazed above him at the sky, and felt that he was encom 
 passed by it. Moreover it was a great mystery, inviting yet de 
 fying scrutiny. The sun and moon whirled to and fro through 
 it ; the stars were 
 
 u Pinnacled dim in its intense inane." 
 
 The earth was constantly aspiring to it in the shape of vapor, the 
 souls of men were perpetually aspiring to it with vague yearn 
 ings. It was the centre of all existence ; it was Existence itself. 
 It was The One, the Immovable, on whose bosom the Many 
 were moved. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF XENOPHANES. 43 
 
 Is not this the explanation of that opinion universally attrib 
 uted to him, but always variously interpreted, "God is a sphere?" 
 The Heaven encompassing him and all things, was it not The 
 One Sphere which he proclaimed to be God ? 
 
 It is very true that this explanation does not exactly accord 
 with his physics, especially with that part which relates to the 
 earth being a flat surface, whose inferior regions are infinite, by 
 which he explained the fixity of the earth. M. Cousin, in conse 
 quence of this discrepancy, would interpret the phrase as meta 
 phorical. " The epithet spherical is simply a Greek locution, to 
 indicate the perfect equality and absolute unity of God, and of 
 which a sphere may be an image. The rf<paipixo of the Greeks 
 is the rotundus of the Latins. It is a metaphorical expression, 
 such as that of square, meaning perfect an expression which, 
 though now become trivial, had at the birth of mathematical 
 science something noble and elevated in it, and is found in most 
 elevated compositions of poetry. Sirnonides speaks of a man 
 square as to his feet, his hands, and his mind, meaning an ac 
 complished man ; and the metaphor is also used by Aristotle. 
 It is not, therefore, surprising that Xenophanes, a poet as well as 
 a philosopher, writing in verse, and incapable of finding the meta 
 physical expression which answered to his ideas, should have 
 borrowed from the language of imagination the expression which 
 would best render his idea." 
 
 We should be tempted to adopt this explanation, could we be 
 satisfied that the Physics of Xenophanes were precisely what it 
 is said they were, or that they were such at the epoch in which 
 he maintained the sphericity of God. This latter difficulty is in 
 superable, but has been unobserved by all critics. A man who 
 lives a hundred years, necessarily changes his opinions on such 
 subjects; and when opinions are so lightly grounded, as were 
 those of philosophers at that epoch, it is but natural to admit 
 that the changes may have been frequent and abrupt. In this 
 special instance, scholars have been aware of the very great and 
 irreconcilable contradictions existing between certain opinions 
 
44 THE ELEATICS. 
 
 equally authentic ; showing him to have been decidedly Physical 
 (Ionian) in one department, and as decidedly Mathematical (Pyth 
 agorean) in another. 
 
 As to the case in point, Aristotle s express statement of Xe- 
 nophanes having " looked up at heaven, and pronounced The One 
 to be God," is manifestly at variance with any belief in the in 
 finity of the lower regions of the earth. The One must be the 
 Infinite. 
 
 To return, however, to his Monotheism, or more properly 
 Pantheism, which is the greatest peculiarity of his doctrine : he 
 not only destroyed the notion of a multiplicity of Gods, but he 
 proclaimed the Self-existence and Intelligence of The One. 
 
 God must be Self-existent ; for to conceive Being as incipient is 
 impossible. Nothing can be produced from Nothing. AVhence, 
 therefore, was Being produced? From itself ? No; for then it 
 must have been already in existence to produce itself, otherwise 
 it would have been produced from nothing. Hence the primary 
 law : Being is self-existent. If self-existent, consequently eternal. 
 
 As in this it is implied that God is all-powerful and all-wise 
 and all-existent, a multiplicity of Gods is inconceivable. 
 
 It also follows that God is immovable, when considered as 
 The All : 
 
 " Wholly unmoved and unmoving it ever remains in the same place, 
 "Without change in its place when at times it changes appearance." 
 
 The All must be unmoved ; there is nothing to move it. It 
 cannot move itself; for to do so it must be external to itself. 
 
 We must not suppose that he denied motion to finite things 
 because he denied it to the Infinite. He only maintained that 
 The All was unmoved. Finite things were moved by God : 
 " without labor, he ruleth all things by reason and insight." His 
 monotheism was carefully distinguished from anthropomorphism, 
 as the verses previously quoted have already exemplified. Let 
 us only further remark on the passage in Diogenes Laertius, 
 wherein he is said to have maintained that " God did not re 
 semble man, for he heard and saw all things without respira- 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF XENOPIIANES. 45 
 
 /ton." This is manifestly an allusion to the doctrine of Anax- 
 imenes that the soul was air. The intelligence of God, being 
 utterly unlike that of man, is said to be independent of respi 
 ration.* 
 
 It is necessary to caution the reader against the supposition 
 that by the One God Xenophanes meant a Personal God, dis 
 tinct from the universe. He was a monotheist in contradistinc 
 tion to his polytheistical contemporaries ; but his monotheism 
 was pantheism. Indeed this point would never have been 
 doubted, notwithstanding the^ambiguity of language, if moderns 
 had steadily kept before their minds the conceptions held by the 
 Greeks of their Gods as personifications of the Powers of Nature. 
 When Xenophanes argued against the polytheism of his con 
 temporaries, he argued against their personifying as distinct dei 
 ties the various aspects of The One ; he was wroth with their 
 degradation of the divine nature by assimilating it to human 
 nature, by making these powers persons, and independent exist 
 ences, conceptions irreconcilable with that of the unity of God. 
 He was a monotheist therefore, but his monotheism was panthe 
 ism ; he could not separate God from the world, which was 
 merely the manifestation of God ; he could not conceive God 
 as the One Existent, and admit the existence of a world not God. 
 There could be but One Existence with many modes ; that one 
 was God. 
 
 There is another tenet of almost equal importance in his sys 
 tem, and one which marks the origin of that skeptical philoso 
 phy which we shall see henceforward running through all the 
 evolutions of this history, always determining a crisis in specula 
 tion. Up to the time of Xenophanes philosophy was unsus 
 pectingly dogmatical : it never afterwards recovered that simple 
 position. He it was who began to doubt, and to confess the in- 
 
 * Only by thus connecting one doctrine with another can we hope to un 
 derstand ancient philosophy. It is in vain that we puzzle ourselves with 
 the attempt to penetrate the meaning of these antique fragments of thought 
 unless we view them in relation to the opinions of their epoch. 
 
46 THE ELEATICS. 
 
 competence of Reason to solve doubts and compass the exalted 
 aims of philosophy. Yet the doubt was moral rather than psy 
 chological. It was no systematic skepticism : an earnest spirit 
 struggling after Truth, whenever he obtained, or thought he ob 
 tained, a glimpse of her celestial countenance, he proclaimed his 
 discovery, however it might contradict what he had before an 
 nounced. Long travel, various experience, examination of differ 
 ent systems, new and contradictory glimpses of the problem he 
 was desirous of solving, these working together produced in 
 his mind a skepticism of a noble, somewhat touching sort, wholly 
 unlike that of his successors. It was the combat of contradictory 
 opinions in his mind, rather than disdain of knowledge. His 
 faith was steady, his opinions vacillating. He had a profound 
 conviction of the existence of an eternal, all-wise, infinite Being; 
 but this belief he was unable to reduce to a consistent formula. 
 There is deep sadness in these verses : 
 
 " Surely never hath been, nor ever shall be a mortal 
 Knowing both well the Gods and the All, whose nature we treat of; 
 For when by chance he at times may utter the true and the perfect, 
 He wists not unconscious ; for error is spread over all things. 1 1 
 
 In vain M. Cousin attempts to prove that these verses are not 
 skeptical ; many of the recorded opinions of Xenophanes are of 
 the same tendency. The man who had lived to find his most 
 cherished convictions turn out errors, might well be skeptical of 
 the truth of any of his opinions. But this skepticism was vague ; 
 it did not prevent his proclaiming what he held to be the truth ; 
 it did not prevent his search after truth. 
 
 For although Truth could never be compassed in its totality 
 by man, glimpses could be caught. AXXdt p^povw ^rovvrss 
 fqpgupirfxoufl iv ajjosivov : we cannot indeed be certain that our knowl 
 edge is absolute ; we can only strive our utmost, and believe our 
 opinions to be probable. This is not scientific skepticism ; it 
 does not ground itself on an investigation of the nature of Intel 
 ligence and the sources of our knowledge : it grounds itself 
 solely on the perplexities into which philosophy is thrown. Thus 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF XENOPHANES. 47 
 
 reason (i. e. the logic of his clay) taught him that God the Infi 
 nite could not be infinite, neither could he be finite. Not in 
 finite, because non-being alone, as having neither beginning, 
 middle, nor end, is unlimited (infinite). Not finite, because one 
 thing can only be limited by another, and God is one, not many. 
 
 In like manner did logic teach him that God was neither 
 moved nor unmoved. Not moved, because one thing can only 
 be moved by another, and God is one, not many ; not unmoved, 
 because non-being alone is unmoved, inasmuch as it neither goes 
 to another, nor does another come to it. 
 
 With such verbal quibbles as these did this great thinker 
 darken his conception of the Deity. They were not quibbles to 
 him ; they were the real conclusions involved in the premises 
 from which he reasoned. To have doubted their validity would 
 have been to doubt the possibility of philosophy. He was not quite 
 prepared for that ; and Aristotle in consequence calls him " some 
 what clownish," aypoixorspoj (Met. i. 5) ; meaning that his con 
 ceptions were rude and undigested, instead of being systematized. 
 
 Although in the indecision of Xenophanes we see the germs 
 of later skepticism, we are disposed to agree with M. Cousin in 
 discrediting his absolute skepticism resting on the incompre 
 hensibility of all things dxaTaX^-^/la tfavrwv. Nevertheless some 
 of M. Cousin s grounds appear to us questionable.* 
 
 The reader will, perhaps, have gathered from the foregoing, 
 that Xenophanes was too much in earnest to believe in the in 
 comprehensibility of all things, however the contradictions of his 
 logic might cause him to suspect his and other people s conclu 
 sions. Of course, if carried out to their legitimate consequences, 
 his principles lead to absolute skepticism ; but he did not so 
 
 * E. g. He says : " It appears that Sotion, according to Diogenes, attrib 
 uted to Xenophanes the opinion, all things are incomprehensible ; but Dio 
 genes adds that Sotion was wrong on that point." (Fragmens, p. 89.) Now 
 this is altogether a misstatement. Diogenes says : " Sotion pretends that 
 no one before Xenoplianes maintained the incomprehensibility of all things ; 
 but he is wrong." Diogenes here does not deny that Xenophanes held the 
 opinion, but that any one held it before him. 
 
48 THE ELEATICS. 
 
 carry tbcm out, and we have no right to charge him with con 
 sequences which he himself did not draw. Indeed, it is one of 
 the greatest and commonest of critical errors, to charge the ori 
 ginator or supporter of a doctrine with consequences which he 
 did not see, or would not have accepted had he seen them. 
 Because they may be contained in his principles, it by no means 
 follows that he saw them. A man would be ridiculed if he 
 attributed to the discoverer of any law of nature the various dis 
 coveries which the application of that law might have produced ; 
 nevertheless these applications were all potentially existing in 
 the law ; but as the discoverer of the law was not aware of them, 
 he does not get the credit. Why, then, should a man have the 
 rfw-credit of conseqences contained, indeed, in his principles, but 
 which he himself could not see? On the whole, although 
 Xenophanes was not a clear and systematic thinker, it cannot 
 be denied that he exercised a very remarkable influence on the 
 progress of speculation ; as we shall see in his successors. 
 
 III. PARMENIDES. 
 
 The readers of Plato will not forget the remarkable dialogue 
 in which he pays a tribute to the dialectical subtlety of Par- 
 menides ; but we must at the outset caution them against any 
 belief in the genuineness of the opinions attributed to him by 
 Plato. If Plato could reconcile to himself the propriety of alter 
 ing the sentiments of his beloved master, Socrates, and of 
 attributing to him such as he had never entertained ; with far 
 greater reason could he put into the mouth of one long dead, 
 sentiments which were the invention of his own dramatic genius. 
 Let us read the Parmenides, therefore, with extreme caution ; 
 let us prefer the authority of Aristotle and the verses of Parmen 
 ides which have been preserved. 
 
 Parmenides was born at Elea, somewhere about the Cist 
 Olympiad (B. c. 536). This date does not contradict the rumor 
 which, according to Aristotle, asserted him to have been a disci 
 ple of Xenophanes, whom he might have listened to when that 
 
PARMENIDES. 49 
 
 great rhapsodist was far advanced in years. The most positive 
 statement, however, is that by Sotion, of his having been taught by 
 Ameinias and Diochoetes the Pythagorean. But both may be true. 
 Born to wealth and splendor, enjoying the esteem and envy 
 which always follow splendor and talents, it is conjectured that 
 his early career was that of a dissipated voluptuary, but Dio- 
 chcetes taught him the nothingness of wealth (at times, perhaps, 
 when satiety had taught him the nothingness of enjoyment), and 
 led him from the dull monotony of noisy revelry to the endless 
 variety and excitement of philosophic thought. He forsook the 
 feverish pursuit of enjoyment, to contemplate " the bright coun 
 tenance of Truth, in the quiet and still air of delightful studies." * 
 But this devotion to study was no egoistical seclusion. It did 
 not prevent his taking an active share in the political affairs of 
 his native city. On the contrary, the fruits of his study were 
 shown in a code of laws which he drew up, and which were 
 deemed so wise and salutary, that the citizens at first yearly 
 renewed their oath to abide by the laws of Parmenides. 
 
 " And something greater did his worth obtain, 
 For fearless virtue bringeth boundless gain." 
 
 The first characteristic of his philosophy, is the decided dis 
 tinction between Truth and Opinion : in other words, between 
 the ideas obtained through the Reason and those obtained 
 through Sense. In Xenophanes we noticed a vague glimmering 
 of this notion ; in Parmenides it attained to something like 
 clearness. In Xenophanes it contrived to throw an uncertainty 
 over all things ; which, in a logical thinker, would become 
 absolute skepticism. But he was saved from skepticism by his 
 faith. Parmenides was saved from it by his philosophy. He 
 was perfectly aware of the deceitful nature of opinion ; but he was 
 also aware that within him there was certain ineradicable convic 
 tions, in which, like Xenophanes, he had perfect faith, but which 
 he wished to explain by reason. Thus was he led in some sort to 
 
 * Milton. 
 3 
 
50 THE ELEATICS. 
 
 anticipate the celebrated doctrine of innate ideas. These ideas 
 were concerning necessary truths ; they were true knowledge : 
 all other ideas were uncertain. 
 
 The Eleatics, as Hitter remarks, believed that they recognized 
 and could demonstrate that the truth of all things is one and 
 unchangeable ; perceiving, however, that the human faculty of 
 thought is constrained to follow the appearance of things, and 
 to apprehend the changeable and the many, they were forced to 
 confess that we are unable fully to comprehend the divine truth 
 in its reality, although we may rightly apprehend a few general 
 principles. Nevertheless, to suppose, in conformity with human 
 thought, that there is actually both a plurality and a change, would 
 be but a delusion of the senses. While, on the other hand, we 
 must acknowledge, that in all that appears to us as manifold and 
 changeable, including all particular thought as evolved in the 
 mind, the Godlike is present, unperceived indeed by human 
 blindness, and become, as it were beneath a veil, indistinguishable. 
 
 We may make this conception more intelligible if we recall 
 the mathematical tendency of the whole of this school. Their 
 knowledge of Physics was regarded as contingent delusive. 
 Their knowledge of Mathematics eternal self-evident. Par- 
 menides was thus led by Xenophanes on the one hand, and Dio- 
 choetes on the other, to the conviction of the duality of human 
 thought. His Reason, i. e. the Pythagorean logic, taught him 
 that there is naught existing but The One (which he did not, 
 with Xenophanes, call God ; he called it Being). His Sense, on 
 the other hand, taught him that there were Many Things, be 
 cause of his manifold sensuous impressions. Hence he main 
 tained two Causes and two Principles : the one to satisfy the 
 Reason ; the other to accord with the explanations of Sense. 
 His work on " Nature" was therefore divided into two parts : in 
 the first is expounded the absolute Truth, as Reason proclaims 
 it ; in the second, human Opinion, accustomed to 
 
 "Follow the rash eye, and ears with singing sounds confused, and tongue," 
 which is but a mere seeming (^ofa, appearance) ; nevertheless 
 
PARMENIDES. 51 
 
 there is a cause of this seeming; there is also a principle, conse 
 quently there is a doctrine appropriate to it. 
 
 It must not be imagined, that Parmenides had a mere vague 
 and general notion of the uncertainty of human knowledge. He 
 maintained that thought was delusive because dependent upon 
 organization. He had as distinct a conception of this celebrated 
 theory as any of his successors, as may be seen in the passage 
 preserved by Aristotle in the 5th chapter of the 4th book of his 
 Metaphysics, where, speaking of the materialism of Democritus, 
 in whose system sensation was thought, he adds, that others have 
 shared this opinion, and proceeds thus : " Empedocles affirms, 
 that a change in our condition (<n)v s giv) causes a change in 
 our thought : 
 
 u Thought grows in men according to the impression of the moment; * 
 and, in another passage, he says : 
 
 " It is always according to the changes which take place in men 
 That there is change in their thoughts. " 
 
 Parmenides expresses himself in the same style : 
 
 "Such as to each man is the nature of his many-jointed limbs, 
 Such also is the intelligence of each man ; for it is 
 The nature of limbs (organization) which thinketh in men, 
 Both in one and in all ; for the highest degree of organization 
 gives the highest degree of thought."t 
 
 Now, as thought was dependent on organization, and as each 
 
 * ITpdj Traptbv yap HTJTIS ai^trai avQp&Ttotai. 
 
 t The last sentence, "for the highest degree of organization gives the 
 highest degree of thought," is a translation which, diifering from that of 
 every other we have seen, and being, as we believe, of some importance in 
 the interpretation of Parmenides system, it is necessary to state at full our 
 reasons. Here is the original of the verses in the text: 
 
 I2y yap tKaaros ? tcpaviv 
 Tuif vrfof dvdpuTTQtci irapioTTjKtv. To yap aM 
 "E<mv STTtp <f>pov(i ii(.\i<j)v <f>vats avdp&Trotai) 
 Kut irdaiv, Kal iravri rb yap i:\iov tari vdrjua. 
 
 The last sentence Eitter translates 
 
 " For thought is the fulness." 
 Objecting to Hegel s version of rd vXlov, " the most," and to that of Brandis, 
 
52 THE ELEATICS. 
 
 organization differed in degree from every other, so would the 
 opinions of men differ. If thought be sensation, it requires but 
 little reflection to show, that, as sensations from the same object 
 differ according to the senses of different persons, and indeed 
 differ at different times with the same person, therefore one 
 opinion is not more true than another, and all are equally false. 
 But Reason is the same in all men : that alone is the fountain of 
 certain knowledge. All thought derived from sense is but a 
 
 "the mightier," Kitter says the meaning is " the full." But we shall then 
 want an interpretation of " the full." What is it? He elsewhere slightly 
 alters the phrase thus : 
 
 " The fulness of all being is thought." 
 
 We speak with submission, but it appears to us that Kitter s assertion re 
 specting TO ;rAfoj> meaning " the full," or " the fulness," is unwarrantable. 
 The ordinary meaning is certainly "the more" or "the most," and hence 
 used occasionally to signify perfection, as in Theocritus: 
 
 Kai TJ puKohticas tirl TO ir\iov IKEO fiuaas. My. i. 20. 
 
 When Parmenides, therefore, uses the phrase TO ir\iov hrl voipa, he seems to 
 us to have the ordinary meaning in view ; he speaks of TU ir\iov as a necessary 
 consequence of the TroXu/ra/^Trros. Man has many-jointed limbs, ergo many 
 sensations; if he had more limbs he would have more sensations ; the high 
 est degree of organization gives the highest degree of thought. This ex 
 planation is in conformity with what Aristotle says on introducing the pas 
 sage; is in conformity with the line immediately preceding: 
 
 "EffTiv birtp Qpovfti ptA/iov <pvffi$ dvOpuTToiai ; 
 
 is in conformity with the explanation of the scholiast Asclepias, TO ir\iov IOTI 
 v6r}/*a, TtpoayiyvtTai IK Trjs TrX/ovoj uia6/iatus Kai a/tpifccrrt pas ; and, finally, is in 
 conformity with the opinion attributed to Parmenides by Plutarch, that 
 " sentir et penser ne lui paraissaient choses distinctes, ni entre eUes ni de 
 1 organisation." ! 
 
 It is on this account we reject the reading of TroXuTrXayxrwv, " far-wander 
 ing," in place of woXu*c>nrwv, "many-jointed," suggested by Karsten. The 
 change is arbitrary and for the worse ; woAwwAdyicrwv having reference only to 
 the feet, whereas the simile in Parmenides is meant to apply to the whole 
 man. 
 
 The meaning of the verses is, therefore, that the intelligence of man is 
 formed according to his many-jointed frame, i. e. dependent on his organ 
 ization. 
 
 i Ch. Renouvier, Manuel de la Philosophic Ancienne, i. 152, who cites Plutarch, 
 Opin. des Wittos. iv. 5. 
 
PARMENIDES. 53 
 
 seeming (oa) ; but thought derived from Reason is absolutely 
 true. Hence his antithesis to 5of a is always letting, faith. 
 
 This is the central point in his system. He was thereby ena 
 bled to avert absolute skepticism, and at the same time to admit 
 the uncertainty of ordinary knowledge. He had therefore two 
 distinct doctrines, each proportioned to the faculty adapted to it. 
 One doctrine, of Absolute Knowledge (Metaphysics, JASTO, TO, 
 (purfjxa), with which the faculty of pure Reason was concerned, 
 a doctrine called in the language of that day, the " science of 
 Being." The other doctrine, of Relative Knowledge, or Opinion 
 (Physics, rot qoutrtxa), with which the faculty of Intelligence, or 
 Thought, derived from Sense, was concerned, and which may be 
 called the Science of Appearance. 
 
 On the science of Being, Parmenides did not differ much from 
 his predecessors, Xenophanes and Pythagoras. He taught that 
 the,re was but one Being ; non-Being was impossible. The latter 
 assertion amounts to saying that non-existence cannot exist ; a 
 position which may appear extremely trivial to the reader not 
 versed in metaphysical speculations ; but which we would not 
 have him despise, inasmuch as it is a valuable piece of evidence 
 respecting the march of human opinion. It is only one of the 
 many illustrations of the tendency to attribute positive qualities 
 to words, as if they were things, and not simply marks of things ; 
 a tendency admirably exposed by James Mill, and subsequently 
 by his son.* It was this tendency which so greatly puzzled the 
 early thinkers, who, when they said that " a thing is not," be 
 lieved that they nevertheless predicated existence, viz. the ex 
 istence of non-existence. A thing is, and a thing is not ; these 
 
 * " Many volumes might be filled with the frivolous speculations concern 
 ing the nature of Being (rd tv, ovaia, Ens, Entitas, Essentia, and the like), 
 which have arisen from overlooking this double meaning of the words to be ; 
 from supposing that when it signifies to exist, and when it signifies to be some 
 specified thing, as to be a man, to be Socrates, to be seen, to be a phantom, or 
 even to be a nonentity, it must still at the bottom answer to the same idea ; 
 and that a meaning must be found for it which shall suit all these cases." 
 John Mill, System of Logic, i. 4, first ed. 
 
5i THE ELEATICS. 
 
 two assertions seemed to be affirmations of two different states of 
 existence ; an error from which, under some shape or other, later 
 thinkers have not always been free. 
 
 Parmenides, however, though affirming that Being alone ex 
 isted and that non-Being was impossible, did not see the real 
 ground of the sophism. He argued that Non-Being could not be, 
 because Nothing can come out of Nothing (as Xeuophanes taught 
 him) ; if therefore Being existed, it must embrace all existence. 
 
 Hence he .concluded that The One was all Existence, identical, 
 unique, neither born nor dying, neither moving nor changing. It 
 was a bold step to postulate the finity of the One, Xenophanes 
 having declared it to be necessarily infinite. But there is abund 
 ant evidence to prove that Parmeuides regarded The One as finite. 
 Aristotle speaks of it as the distinction between Parmenides and 
 Melissus : " The unity of Parmenides was a rational unity (<rou 
 xara Xoyov vos) ; that of Melissus was a material unity (TOU XCXTU 
 <n}v uXrjv). Hence the former said that The One was finite 
 (7r / <7rpao>s vov), but the latter said it was infinite (owrsjpov)." 
 From which it appears that the ancients conceived the Rational 
 unity as limited by itself; a conception it is difficult for us to 
 understand. Probably it was because they held The One to be 
 spherical : all the parts being equal : having neither beginning, 
 middle, nor end : and yet self-limited. 
 
 The conception of the identity of thought and existence is ex 
 pressed in some remarkable verses by Parmenides, of \vhich, as a 
 very different interpretation has been drawn from them, we shall 
 give a literal translation : 
 
 " Thought is the same thing as the cause of thought: 
 For without the thing in which it is announced 
 You cannot find the thought; for there is nothing, nor shall be 
 Except the existing." 
 
 Now, as the only Existence was The One, it follows that The 
 One and Thought are identical ; a conclusion which by no means 
 contradicts the opinion before noticed of the identity of human 
 thought and sensation, both of these being merely transitory 
 modes of Existence. 
 
ZENO OF ELEA. 55 
 
 Respecting the second or physical doctrine of Parmenides, we 
 may briefly say that, believing it necessary to give a science of 
 Appearances, he sketched out a programme according to the 
 principles reigning in his day. He denied motion in the abstract, 
 but admitted that according to appearance there was motion. 
 
 Parmenides represents the logical and more rigorous side of 
 the doctrine of Xenophanes, from which the physical element is 
 almost banished, by being condemned to the region of uncer 
 tain Sense, Knowledge. The ideal element alone was really 
 nourished by the speculations of Parmenides. Although he pre 
 served himself from skepticism, as we saw, nevertheless the 
 tendency of his doctrine was to forward skepticism. In his expo 
 sition of the uncertainty of knowledge, he retained a saving- 
 clause, that, namely, of the certainty of Reason. It only re 
 mained for successors to apply the same skepticism to the ideas 
 of Reason, and Pyrrhonism was complete. 
 
 IV. ZENO OF ELBA. 
 
 Zeno, by Plato called the Palamedes of Elea, must not be con 
 founded with Zeno the Stoic. He was on all accounts one of the 
 most distinguished of the ancient philosophers ; as great in his 
 actions as in his works , and remarkable in each for a strong, im 
 petuous, disinterested spirit. Born at Elea about the 70th Olym 
 piad (B. c. 500), he became the pupil of Parmenides, and, as some 
 say, his adopted son. 
 
 The first period of his life was spent in the calm solitudes of 
 study. From his beloved friend and master he had learned to 
 appreciate the superiority of intellectual pleasures the only 
 pleasures that do not satiate. From him also he had learned to 
 despise the splendors of rank and fortune, without becoming mis 
 anthropical or egoistical. He worked for the benefit of his fellow- 
 men, but declined the recompense of rank, or worldly honors, 
 with which they would have repaid those labors. His recom 
 pense was the voice of his own heart, beating calmly in the 
 consciousness of its integrity. The absence of ambition in so 
 
56 THE ELEATICS. 
 
 intrepid and exalted a mind, might well have been the wonder 
 ment of antiquity ; for it was no skeptical indifference, no disdain 
 for the opinions of his fellow-men, which made him shun office. 
 He was a delicate no less than an impetuous man, extremely 
 sensitive to praise and blame ; as may be seen in his admirable 
 reply to one who asked him why he was so hurt by blame : " If 
 the blame of my fellow-citizens did not cause me pain, their ap 
 probation would not cause me pleasure." In timid minds, 
 shrinking from the coarse ridicule of fools and knaves, this sensi 
 tiveness is fatal ; but in those brave spirits who fear nothing but 
 their own consciences, and who accept no approbation but such 
 as their consciences can ratify, this sensitiveness lies at the root 
 of much heroism and noble endeavor. One of those men was 
 Zeno. His life was a battle, but the battle was for Truth ; it 
 ended tragically, but it was not fought in vain. 
 
 Perhaps of all his moral qualities his patriotism has been the 
 most renowned. He lived at the period of Liberty s awakening, 
 when Greece was everywhere enfranchising herself, everywhere 
 loosening the Persian yoke, and endeavoring to found national in 
 stitutions on Liberty. In the general effervescence and enthusiasm 
 Zeno was not cold. His political activity we have no means of 
 judging ; but we learn that it was great and beneficial. Elea was 
 but a small colony ; but Zeno preferred it to the magnificence of 
 Athens, whose luxurious, restless, quibbling, frivolous, passionate, 
 and unprincipled citizens he contrasted with the provincial modesty 
 and honesty of Elea. He did, however, occasionally visit Athens, 
 and there promulgated the doctrines of his master, as we see by 
 the opening of Plato s dialogue, the Parmenidcs. There he 
 taught Pericles. 
 
 On the occasion of his last return to Elea, he found it had 
 fallen into the hands of the tyrant Nearchus (or Diomedon or 
 Demylos : the name is differently given by ancient writers). He, 
 of course, conspired against him, failed in his project, and was 
 captured. It was then, as Cicero observes, that he proved the 
 excellence of his master s doctrines, and proved that a coura- 
 
ZENO OF ELEA. 57 
 
 geous soul fears only that which is base, and that fear and pain 
 are for women and children, or men who have feminine hearts. 
 When Nearchus interrogated him as to his accomplices, he threw 
 the tyrant into an agony of doubt and fear by naming all the 
 courtiers : a master-stroke of audacity, and in those days not dis 
 creditable. Having thus terrified his accuser, he turned to the 
 spectators, and exclaiming, " If you can consent to be slaves from 
 fear of what you see me now suffer, I can only wonder at your 
 cowardice." So saying, he bit his tongue off, and spat it in the 
 face of the tyrant. The people were so roused that they fell upon 
 Nearchus and slew him. 
 
 There are considerable variations in the accounts of this story 
 by ancient writers, but all agree in the main narrative given 
 above. Some say that Zeno was pounded to death in a huge 
 mortar. We have no trustworthy account of his death. 
 
 As a philosopher, Zeno s merits are peculiar. He was the in 
 ventor of that logic so celebrated as Dialectics. This, which, in 
 the hands of Socrates and Plato, became a powerful weapon of 
 offence, is, by the universal consent of antiquity, ascribed to Zeno. 
 It may be defined as " A refutation of error by the reductio ad 
 absurdum as a means of establishing the truth." The truth to 
 be established in Zeno s case was the system of Parmenides ; we 
 must not, therefore, seek in his arguments for any novelty beyond 
 the mere exercise of dialectical subtlety. He brought nothing- 
 new to the system ; but he invented a great method of polemical 
 exposition. The system had been conceived by Xenophanes ; 
 precision had been given to it by Parmenides ; and there only 
 remained for Zeno the task of fighting for and defending it ; 
 which task he admirably fulfilled. " The destiny of Zeno was 
 altogether polemical. Hence, in the external world, the impet 
 uous existence and tragical end of the patriot; and, in the 
 internal world, the world of thought, the laborious character of 
 Dialectician." * 
 
 It was this fighter s destiny which caused him to perfect the 
 
 * Cousin, Fragmens PhilosopJiiques, art. Zenon d?Elee. 
 30 
 
58 THE ELEATICS. 
 
 art of offence and defence. He very naturally wrote in prose ; 
 of which he set the first example : for, as the wild and turbulent 
 enthusiasm of Xenophanes would instinctively express itself in 
 poetry, so would the argumentative subtlety of Zeno naturally 
 express itself in prose. The great Rhapsodist wandered from 
 city to city, intent upon earnest and startling enunciation of the 
 mighty thoughts stirring confusedly within him ; the great Lo 
 gician was more intent upon a convincing exposition of the 
 futility of the arguments alleged against his system, than upon 
 any propagande of the system itself; for he held that the truth 
 must be accepted when once error is exposed. " Antiquity," 
 says M. Cousin, " attests that he wrote not poems, like Xeno 
 phanes and Parmenides, but treatises, and treatises of an emi 
 nently prosaic character : that is to say, refutations." 
 
 The reason of this may be easily guessed. Coming as a young 
 man to Athens, to preach the doctrine of Parmenides, he must 
 have been startled at the opposition which that doctrine met 
 with from the subtle, quick-witted, and empirical Athenians, 
 who had already erected the Ionian philosophy into the reigning 
 doctrine. Zeno, no doubt, was at first stunned by the noisy ob 
 jections which on all sides surrounded him ; but, being also one 
 of the keenest of wits, and one of the readiest, he would soon 
 have recovered his balance, and in turn assailed his assailers. 
 Instead of teaching dogmatically, he began to teach dialectically. 
 Instead of resting in the domain of pure science, and expounding 
 the ideas of Reason, he descended upon the ground occupied by 
 his adversaries the ground of daily experience and sense-knowl 
 edge and turning their ridicule upon themselves, forced them 
 to admit that it was more easy to conceive The Many as a pro 
 duce of The One, than to conceive The One on the assumption 
 of the existing Many. 
 
 " The polemical method entirely disconcerted the partisans of 
 the Ionian philosophy," says M. Cousin, " and excited a lively 
 curiosity and interest for the doctrines of the Italian (Pytha 
 gorean) school ; and thus was sown, in the capital of Greek civili- 
 
ZENO OF ELEA. 59 
 
 zation, the fruitful germ of a higher development of philos 
 ophy." 
 
 Plato has succinctly characterized the difference between Par- 
 menides and Zeno by saying, that the master established the ex 
 istence of The One, and the disciple proved the non-existence of 
 The Many. 
 
 When he argued that there was but One thing really existing, 
 all the others being only modifications or appearances of that 
 One, he did not deny that there were many appearances, he only 
 denied that these appearances were real existences. So, in like 
 manner, he denied motion, but not the appearance of motion. 
 Diogenes the Cynic, who, to refute his arguments against motion, 
 rose and walked, entirely mistook the argument ; his walking 
 was no more a refutation of Zeno, than Dr. Johnson s kicking a 
 stone was a refutation of Berkeley s denial of matter. Zeno 
 would have answered : Very true ; you walk : according to 
 Opinion (TO (Jofatfrov) you are in motion ; but according to 
 Reason you are at rest. What you call motion is but the name 
 given to a series of similar conditions, each of which, separately 
 considered, is rest. Thus, every object filling space equal to its 
 bulk is necessarily at rest in that space ; motion from one spot 
 to another is but a name given to the sum-total of all these in 
 termediate spaces in which the object at each moment is at rest. 
 Take the illustration of the circle : a circle is composed of a 
 number of individual points, or straight lines ; not one of these 
 lines can individually be called a circle ; but all these lines, con 
 sidered as a totality, have one general name given them, viz. a 
 circle. In the same way, in each individual point of space, the 
 object is at rest ; the sum-total of a number of these states of 
 rest is called motion. 
 
 The original fallacy is in the supposition that Motion is a thing 
 superadded, whereas, as Zeno clearly saw, it is only a condition. 
 In a falling stone there is not the " stone" and a thing called 
 "motion;" otherwise there would be also another thing called 
 "rest." But both motion and rest are names given to express 
 
60 THE ELEATICS. 
 
 conditions of the stone. Even rest is a positive exertion of force. 
 Rest is force resistant, and Motion is force triumphant. It follows 
 that matter is always in motion; which amounts to the same as 
 Zeno s saying, there is no such thing as motion. 
 
 The other arguments of Zeno against the possibility of Motion 
 (and he maintained four, the third of which we have above ex 
 plained,) are given by Aristotle ; but they seem more like the in 
 genious puzzles of dialectical subtlety than the real arguments 
 of an earnest man. It has, therefore, been asserted, that they 
 were only brought forward to ridicule the unskilfulness of his 
 adversaries. We must not, however, be hasty in rescuing Zeno 
 from his own logical net, into which he may have fallen as easily 
 as others. Greater men than he have been the dupes of their 
 own verbal distinctions. 
 
 Here are his two first arguments : 
 
 1. Motion is impossible, because before that which is in mo 
 tion can reach the end, it must reach the middle point ; but this 
 middle point then becomes the end, and the same objection ap 
 plies to it since to reach it the object in motion must traverse 
 a middle point; and so on ad infinitum, seeing that matter is in 
 finitely divisible. Thus, if a stone be cast four paces, before 
 it can reach the fourth it must reach the second ; the second 
 then becomes the end, and the first pace the middle ; but before 
 the object can reach the first pace, it must reach the half of the 
 first pace, and before the half it must reach the half of that half; 
 and so on ad in/lnitum. 
 
 2. This is his famous Achilles puzzle. We give both the state 
 ment and refutation as we find it in Mill s Loyic (ii. 453). 
 
 The argument is, let Achilles run ten times as fast as a tortoise, 
 yet, if the tortoise has the start, Achilles will never overtake him ; 
 for, suppose them to be at first separated by an interval of a thou 
 sand feet; when Achilles has run these thousand feet, the tortoise 
 will have run a hundred, and when Achilles has run those hun 
 dred, the tortoise will have got on ten, and so on forever : there 
 fore Achilles may run forever without overtaking the tortoise. 
 
ZENO OF ELEA. 61 
 
 .Now the "forever" in the conclusion means, for any length of 
 time that can be supposed ; but in the premises, " forever" does 
 not mean any length of time it means any number of subdivisions 
 of time. It means that we may divide a thousand feet by ten, 
 and that quotient again by ten, and so on as often as we please ; 
 that there never need be an end to the subdivisions of the dis 
 tance, nor, consequently, to those of the time in which it is per 
 formed. But an unlimited number of subdivisions may be made 
 of that which is itself limited. The argument proves no other 
 infinity of duration than may be embraced within five minutes. 
 As long as the five minutes are not expired, what remains of 
 them may be divided by ten, and again by ten, as often as we 
 like, which is perfectly compatible with their being only five 
 minutes altogether. It proves, in short, that to pass through 
 this finite space requires a time wliich is infinitely divisible, but 
 not an infinite time; the confounding of which distinction Hobbes 
 had already seen to be the gist of the fallacy. 
 
 Although the credit of seeing the ground of the fallacy is 
 given by Mill to Hobbes, we must also observe that Aristotle had 
 clearly seen it in the same light. His answer to Zeno, which 
 Bayle thinks "pitiable," was, that a foot of space being only po 
 tentially infinite, but actually finite, it could be easily traversed 
 in a finite time. 
 
 We have no space to follow Zeno in his various arguments 
 against the existence of a multitude of things. His position may 
 be briefly summed up thus: There is but one Being existing, 
 necessarily indivisible and infinite. To suppose that The One 
 is divisible, is to suppose it finite. If divisible, it must be infi 
 nitely divisible. But, suppose two things to exist, then there 
 must necessarily be an interval between those two ; something 
 separating and limiting them. What is that something? It 
 is some other thing. But then, if not the same thing, it also 
 must be separated and limited ; and so on ad infinitum. Thus 
 only One thing can exist as the substratum for all manifold ap 
 pearances. 
 
02 THE ELEATICS. 
 
 Zeno closes the second great line of independent inquiry, 
 which, opened by Anaximander, and continued by Pythagoras, 
 Xenophanes, and Parmenides, we may characterize as the Math 
 ematical or Absolute system. Its opposition to the Ionian, Phy 
 sical or Empirical system was radical and constant. But, up to 
 the coming of Zeno, these two systems had been developed al 
 most in parallel lines, so little influence did they exert upon each 
 other. The two systems clashed together on the arrival of Zeno 
 at Athens. The result of the conflict was the creation of a new 
 method Dialectics. This method created the Sophists and the 
 Skeptics. It also greatly influenced all succeeding schools, and 
 may be said to have constituted one great peculiarity of Socrates 
 and Plato, as will be shown. 
 
 "We must, however, previously trace the intermediate steps 
 which philosophy took, before the crisis of Sophistry, which pre 
 ceded the era of Socrates. 
 
SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 SPECULATIONS ON THE CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE, AND 
 ON THE ORIGIN OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 I. HERACLITUS. 
 
 " LIFE is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those 
 who feel." This, Horace Walpole s epigram, may be applied to 
 Democritus and Heraclitus, celebrated throughout antiquity as 
 the laughing and the weeping philosophers : 
 
 "One pitied, one condemn d the woeful times; 
 One laugh d at follies, and one wept o er crimes." 
 
 Modern criticism has indeed pronounced both these character 
 istics to be fabulous ; but fables themselves are often only exag 
 gerations of truth, and there must have been something in each 
 of these philosophers which formed the nucleus round which the 
 fables grew. Of Heraclitus it has been well said, " The vulgar 
 notion of him as the crying philosopher must not be wholly dis 
 carded, as if it meant nothing, or had no connection with the 
 history of his speculations. The thoughts which came forth in 
 his system are like fragments torn from his own personal being, 
 and not torn from it without such an effort and violence as must 
 needs have drawn a sigh from the sufferer. If Anaximenes dis 
 covered that he had within him a power and principle which 
 ruled over all the acts and functions of his bodily frame, Herac- 
 
64: HERACLITUS. 
 
 litus found that there was a life within him which he could not 
 call his own, and yet it was, in the very highest sense, himself, 
 so that without it he would have been a poor, helpless, isolated 
 creature ; a universal life, which connected him with his fellow- 
 men, with the absolute source and original fountain of life."* 
 
 Heraclitus was the son of Ely son, and was born at Ephesus, 
 about the G9th Olympiad (B. c. 503). Of a haughty, melan 
 choly temper, he refused the supreme magistracy which his fel 
 low-citizens offered him, on account, according to Diogenes 
 Laertius, of their dissolute morals ; but as he declined the offer 
 in favor of his brother, we are disposed to think his rejection was 
 grounded on some other cause. Is not his rejection of magistracy 
 in perfect keeping with what else we know of him ? For in 
 stance : playing with some children near the temple of Diana, 
 he answered those who expressed surprise at seeing him thus 
 occupied, "Is it not better to play with children, than to share 
 with you the administration of affairs ?" The contempt which 
 pierces through this reply, and which subsequently grew into 
 confirmed misanthropy, may have been the result of morbid 
 meditation, rather than of virtuous scorn. Was it because the 
 citizens were corrupt, that he refused to exert himself to make 
 them virtuous ? Was it because the citizens were corrupt, that 
 he retired to the mountains, and there lived on herbs and roots, 
 like an ascetic ? If Ephesus was dissolute, was there not the rest 
 of Greece for him to make a home of? lie fled to the moun 
 tains, that he might there, in secret, prey on his own heart. He 
 was a misanthrope, and misanthropy is madness, not virtuous in 
 dignation ; misanthropy issues from the morbid consciousness of 
 self, not from the sorrowful opinion formed of others. The aim 
 of his life had been to explore the depths of his own nature. 
 This has been the aim of all ascetics, as of all philosophers : but 
 in the former it is morbid anatomy ; in the latter it is science. 
 
 The contemptuous letter in which he declined the courteous 
 
 * Maurice, Moral and Mdaphysical Philosophy. 
 
HEKACLITUS. 65 
 
 invitation of Darius to spend some time at his court, will best 
 explain his character : 
 
 " Heraditus of Ephesus to the Kiny Darius, son of Hystaspes, 
 health ! 
 
 " All men depart from the paths of truth and justice. They 
 have no attachment of any kind but avarice ; they only aspire to 
 a vain-glory with the obstinacy of folly. As for me, I know not 
 malice ; I am the enemy of no one. I utterly despise the vanity 
 of courts, and never will place my foot on Persian ground. Con 
 tent with little, I live as I please." 
 
 Misanthropy was the nucleus of the fable of Heraclitus as a 
 weeping philosopher, who refused the magistracy because the 
 citizens were corrupt. The story of his attempting to cure him 
 self of a dropsy by throwing himself on a dunghill, hoping that 
 the heat would cause the water within him to evaporate, is apoc 
 ryphal. 
 
 The Philosophy of Heraclitus was, and is, the subject of dis 
 pute. He expressed himself in such enigmatical terms, that he 
 was called " the Obscure." A few fragments have been handed 
 down to us.* From these it would be vain to hope that a con 
 sistent system could be evolved ; but from them, and from other 
 sources, w r e may gather the general tendency of his doctrines. 
 
 The tradition which assigns him Xenophanes as a teacher, is 
 borne out by the evident relation of their systems. Heraclitus is 
 somewhat more Ionian than Xenophanes : that is to say, in him 
 the physical explanation of the universe is more prominent. At 
 the same time, Heraclitus is neither frankly Ionian nor Italian ; 
 he wavers between the two. The pupil of Xenophanes Avould 
 naturally regard human knowledge as a mist of error, through 
 which the sunlight only gleamed at intervals. But the inheritor 
 of the Ionian doctrines would not adopt the conclusion of the 
 
 * Schleiermacher has collected, and endeavored to interpret them, in 
 Wolf and Buttmann s Museum der AUerthtunswissenschaften, vol. i. part iii. 
 
66 , HERACLITUS. 
 
 Mathematical school, namely, that the cause of this uncertainty 
 of knowledge is the uncertainty of sensuous impressions ; and 
 that consequently Reason is the only fountain of truth. Herac- 
 litus was not mathematician enough for such a doctrine : he 
 was led to maintain a doctrine directly opposed to it. He main 
 tained that the senses are the sources of all true knowledge, for 
 they drink in the universal intelligence. The senses deceive 
 only when they belong to barbarian souls : in other words, the 
 ill-educated sense gives false impressions, the rightly-educated 
 sense gives truth. Whatever is common is true ; whatever is 
 remote from the common, i. e. the exceptional, is false. The 
 True is the Unhidden.* Those whose senses are open to receive 
 the Unhidden, the Universal, attain truth. 
 
 As if to mark the distinction between himself and Xenophaues 
 more forcibly, he says : " Inhaling through the breath the Uni 
 versal Ether, which is Divine Reason, we become conscious. In 
 sleep we are unconscious, but on waking we again become intel 
 ligent ; for in sleep, w T hen the organs of sense are closed, the 
 mind within is shut out from all sympathy with the surrounding 
 ether, the universal Reason ; and the only connecting medium is 
 the breath, as it were a root, and by this separation the mind 
 loses the power of recollection it before possessed. Nevertheless 
 on awakening the mind repairs its memory through the senses, 
 as it were through inlets; and thus, coming into contact with 
 the surrounding ether, it resumes its intelligence. As fuel when 
 brought near the fire is altered and becomes fiery, but on being 
 removed again becomes quickly extinguished ; so too the portion 
 of the all-embracing which sojourns in our body becomes more 
 irrational when separated from it ; but on the restoration of this 
 connection, through its many pores or inlets, it again becomes 
 similar to the whole." 
 
 Can any thing be more opposed to the Eleatic doctrine ? That 
 system rests on the certitude of pure Reason ; this declares that 
 
 * AX>/0f TO nt Xf;0ov. This kind of play upon words is very character 
 istic of metaphysical thinkers in all ages. 
 
HERACLITUS. 67 
 
 Reason left to itself, i. e. the mind when it is not nourished by 
 the senses, can have no true knowledge. The one system is ex 
 clusively rational, the other exclusively material ; but both are 
 pantheistical, for in both it is the universal Intelligence which 
 becomes conscious in man, a conception pushed to its ultimate 
 limits by Hegel. Accordingly Hegel declares that there is not 
 a single point in the Logic of Heraclitus which he, Hegel, has 
 not developed in his Logic. 
 
 The reader will remark how in Heraclitus, as in Parmenides, 
 there is opened the great question which for so long agitated the 
 schools, and, which still agitates them, the question respecting 
 the origin of our ideas. He will also remark how the two great % 
 parties, into which thinkers have divided themselves on the ques 
 tion, are typified in these two early thinkers. In Parmenides 
 the idealist school, with its contempt of sense ; in Heraclitus the 
 materialist school, with its contempt of every thing not derived 
 from sensation. 
 
 With Xenophanes, Heraclitus agreed in denouncing the per 
 petual delusion which reigned in the mind of man ; but he placed 
 the cause of that delusion in the imperfection of human Reason, 
 not, as Xenophanes had done, in the imperfection of Sense. He 
 thought that man had too little of the Divine Ether (soul) within 
 him. Xenophanes thought that the senses clouded the intellec 
 tual vision. The one counselled man to let the Universal mirror 
 itself in his soul through the senses ; the other counselled him to 
 shut himself up within himself, to disregard the senses, and to 
 commune only with ideas. 
 
 It seems strange that so palpable a contradiction between two 
 doctrines should ever have been overlooked. Yet such is the 
 fact. Heraclitus is said to have regarded the world of Sense as 
 a perpetual delusion : and this is said in the very latest and not 
 the least intelligent of Histories, to say nothing of former works. 
 Whence this opinion ? Simply from the admitted skepticism of 
 both Heraclitus and Xenophanes with respect to Phenomena 
 (appearances). It is true they both denied the certainty of 
 
68 HEKACLITCS. 
 
 human knowledge, but they denied this on different grounds. 
 " Man has no certain knowledge," said Heraclitus, " but God has ; 
 and vain man learns from God just as the boy from the man." 
 In his conception, human intelligence was but a portion of the 
 Universal Intelligence ; but a part can never be otherwise than 
 imperfect. Hence it is that the opinion of all mankind upon 
 any subject (common sense) must be a nearer approximation to 
 the truth than the opinion of any individual ; because it is an 
 accumulation of parts, making a nearer approach to the whole. 
 
 While therefore he maintained the uncertainty of all knowl 
 edge, he also maintained its certainty. Its origin was Sense; 
 being sensuous and individual, it \vas imperfect, because indi 
 vidual ; but it was true as far as it went. The ass, he scornfully 
 said, prefers thistles to gold. To the ass gold is not so valuable 
 as thistle. The ass is at once right and wrong. Man is equally 
 right and wrong in all positive affirmations ; for nothing truly 
 iSj about which a positive affirmation can be made. " All is," 
 he said, " and all is not ; for though in truth it does come into 
 being, yet it forthwith ceases to be." 
 
 We are here led to his celebrated doctrine of all things as a 
 " perpetual flux and reflux ;" which Hegel declares to be an an 
 ticipation of his own celebrated dogma, Seyn und Nichtseyn ist 
 dasselbe : "Being and Non-Being is the same."* Heraclitus 
 conceived the principle ap^ of all things to be Fire. To 
 him Fire_was the type of spontaneous force and activity ; not 
 flame, which was only an intensity of Fire, but a warm, dry 
 vapor an Ether ; this was the beginning. He says : " The 
 w r orld was made neither by Godf nor man; and it was, and is, 
 
 * Much of the ridicule which this logical canon has excited, especially in 
 England, has been prompted by the blindest misunderstanding. The laugh 
 ers, misled by verbal ambiguity, have understood Hegel to say that Exist 
 ence and Non-Existence was one and the same, as if by Nichtseyn he meant 
 Nothing. He meant by Nothing No Thing no phenomenon. The position 
 is perhaps absurd, but it is not for metaphysicians to say so. 
 
 t This is the translation given in Hitter : it is not however exact; ovtc ns 
 Qt&v is the original, i. e. " neither one of the Gods," meaning of course one 
 of the polytheistic Deities. 
 
HERACLITUS. 69 
 
 and ever shall be, an ever-living fire in due measure self-enkin 
 dled and in due measure self-extinguished." That this is but a 
 modification of the Ionian system, the reader will at once discern. 
 The Fire, which here stands as the semi-symbol of Life and In 
 telligence, because of its spontaneous activity, is but a modifica 
 tion of the Water of Thales and the Air of Anaximenesj more 
 over, it is only semi-symbolical. Those who accept it as a pure 
 symbol overlook the other parts of the system. The system 
 which proclaims the senses as the source of all knowledge neces 
 sarily attaches itself to a material element as the primary one. 
 At the same time this very system is in one respect a deviation 
 from the Ionian ; in the distinction between sense-knowledge and 
 reflective knowledge. Hence we placed Diogenes of Apollonia 
 as the last of the pure lonians; although chronologically he 
 came some time after Heraclitus, and his doctrine is in many 
 respects the same as that of Heraclitus. 
 
 This Fire which is forever kindling into flame, and passing 
 into smoke and ashes; this restless, changing flux of things 
 which never are, but are ever becoming; this he proclaimed to 
 be God, or the One. 
 
 Take his beautiful illustration of a river: "No one has ever 
 been twice on the same stream ; for different waters are con 
 stantly flowing down ; it dissipates its waters and gathers them 
 again it approaches and it recedes it overflows and falls." This 
 is evidently but a statement of the flux and reflux, as in his 
 aphorism that " all is in motion ; there is no rest or quietude." 
 Let us also add here what Ritter says : 
 
 " The notion of life implies that of alteration, which by the 
 ancients was generally conceived as motion. The Universal 
 Life is therefore an eternal motion, and therefore tends, as every 
 motion must, towards some end, even though this end, in the 
 course of the evolution of life, present itself to us as a mere 
 transition to some ulterior end. Heraclitus on this ground sup 
 posed a certain longing to be inherent in Fire, to gratify which 
 it constantly transformed itself into some determinate form of 
 
70 ANAXAGORAS. 
 
 being, without, however, any wish to maintain it, but in the 
 mere desire of transmuting itself from one form into another. 
 Therefore, to make worlds is Jove s pastime." 
 
 He explained phenomena as the concurrence of opposite ten^ 
 dencies and efforts in the motion of the ever-living Fire, out of 
 which results the most beautiful harmony. All is composed of 
 contraries, so that the good is also evil, the living is dead, etc. 
 The harmony of the world is one of conflicting impulses, like 
 \ that of the lyre and the bow. The strife between opposite ten 
 dencies is the parent of all things : rtoXspos wavrcov JJLSV 
 stfri tfav-rwv Ss /SatfjXsuj, xa/ <rou fxsv (tsovs s6si$S TOVS 5s 
 <rou (xsv SQ-J\QVS stfoiytfs <rou 85 JXsuds pous. Nor is this simple met 
 aphor : the strife here spoken of is the splitting in two of that 
 which is in essence one ; the contradiction which necessarily lies 
 between the particular and the general, the result and the force, 
 Being and Non-Being. All life is change, and change is strife. 
 
 Heraclitus was the first to proclaim the absolute vitality of 
 Nature, the endless change of matter, the mutability and perish 
 ability of all individual things, in contrast with the eternal 
 Being, the supreme Harmony whch rules over all. 
 
 The view we have taken of his doctrines will at once explain 
 the position in which we have placed them. He stands with one 
 foot on the Ionian path, and with the other on the Italian ; but 
 his attempt is not to unite these two : his office is negative ; he 
 has to criticize both. 
 
 II. ANAXAGORAS. 
 
 Anaxagoras is generally said to have been born at Clazomena? 
 in Lydia, not far from Colophon. Inheriting from his family a 
 splendid patrimony, he seemed born to figure in the State ; but, 
 like Parmenides, he disregarded all such external greatness, and 
 placed his ambition elsewhere. Early in life, so early as his 
 twentieth year, the passion for philosophy engrossed him. Like 
 all young ambitious men, he looked with contempt upon the in 
 tellect exhibited in his native city. His soul panted for the 
 
ANAXAGOKAS. 71 
 
 capital. The busy activity, and the growing importance of 
 Athens, solicited him. He yearned towards it, as the ambitious 
 youth in a provincial town yearns for London; as all energy 
 longs for a fitting theatre on which to play its part. 
 He came to Athens. It was a great and stirring epoch. The 
 countless hosts of Persia had been scattered by a handful of 
 resolute men. The political importance of Greece, and of 
 Athens, the Queen of Greece, was growing to a climax. The 
 Age of Pericles, one of the most glorious in the long annals of 
 mankind, was dawning. The Poems of Homer formed the sub 
 ject of literary conversation, and of silent enjoyment. The early 
 triumphs of ^Eschylus had created a Drama, such as still re 
 mains the wonder and delight of scholars and critics. The 
 young Sophocles, that perfect flower of antique art, was then in 
 his bloom, meditating on that Drama which he was hereafter to 
 bring to perfection in the Antigone and the CEdipus Rex. The 
 Ionian philosophy had found a home at Athens; and the young 
 Anaxagoras shared his time with Homer and Anaximenes.* 
 
 Philosophy soon obtained the supreme place in his affections. 
 The mysteries of the universe tempted him. He yielded himself 
 to the fascination, and declared that the aim and purpose of his 
 life was to contemplate the heavens. All care for his affairs 
 was given up. His estates ran to waste, whilst he was solving 
 problems. But the day he found himself a beggar, he exclaimed, 
 " To Philosophy I owe my worldly ruin, and my soul s pros 
 perity." He commenced teaching, and he had illustrious pupils 
 in Pericles, Euripides, and Socrates. 
 
 He was not long without paying the penalty of success. The 
 
 * By this we no more intimate that he was a disciple of Anaximenes (as 
 some historians assert) than that he was a friend of Homer. But in some 
 such ambiguous phrase as that in the text, must the error of calling him the 
 disciple of Anaximenes have arisen. Brucker s own chronology is strangely 
 at variance with his statement : for he places the birth of Anaximenes, 56th 
 Olympiad; that of Anaxagoras, 70th Olympiad: thus making the master 
 fifty-six years old at the birth of the pupil ; and the pupil only became such 
 in the middle of his life. 
 
72 ANAXAGORAS. 
 
 envy and uncharitableness of some, joined to the bigotry of 
 others, caused an accusation of impiety to be brought against 
 him. He was tried, and condemned to death, but owed the 
 mitigation of his sentence into banishment, to the eloquence of 
 his friend and pupil, Pericles. Some have supposed that the 
 cause of his persecution was this very friendship of Pericles; 
 and that the statesman was struck at through the unpopular 
 philosopher. The supposition is gratuitous, and belongs rather 
 to the ingenuity of modern scholarship, than to the sober facts 
 of history. In the persecution of Anaxagoras there is nothiug 
 but what was very natural ; it occurred afterwards in the case of 
 Socrates, and it has subsequently occurred a thousand times in 
 the history of mankind, as the simple effect of outraged con 
 victions. Anaxagoras attacked the religion of his time : he was 
 tried and condemned for his temerity. 
 
 After his banishment he resided in Lampsacus, and there pre 
 served tranquillity of mind until his death. " It is not I who 
 have lost the Athenians ; it is the Athenians who have lost me," 
 was his proud reflection. He continued his studies, and was 
 highly respected by the citizens, who, wishing to pay some mark 
 of esteem to his memory, asked him on his death-bed in what 
 manner they could do so. He begged that the day of his death 
 might be annually kept as a holiday in all the schools of Lamp 
 sacus. For centuries this request was fulfilled. He died in his 
 seventy-third year. A tomb was erected to him in the city, with 
 this inscription : 
 
 " This tomb great Anaxagoras confines, 
 Whose mind explored the heavenly paths of Truth." 
 
 His philosophy contains so many contradictory principles, or 
 perhaps it would be more correct to say, so many contradictory 
 principles are attributed to him, that it would be vain to attempt 
 a systematic view of them. We shall, as usual, confine ourselves 
 to leading doctrines. 
 
 On the great subject of the origin and certainty of our knowl 
 edge, he differed from Xenophanes and Heraclitus. He thought, 
 
ANAXAGORAS. 
 
 with the former, that all sense-knowledge is delusive ; and, with 
 the latter, that all knowledge comes through the senses. Here is 
 a double skepticism brought into play. It has usually been held 
 that these two opinions contradict each other ; that he could not 
 have maintained both. Yet both opinions are tenable. His reason 
 for denying certainty to the senses, was the incapacity of distin 
 guishing all the real objective elements of which things are made. 
 Thus the eye discerns a complex mass which we call a flower ; but 
 discerns nothing of that of which the flower is composed. In other 
 words, the senses perceive phenomena, but do not, and cannot ob 
 serve noumena* an anticipation of the greatest discovery of 
 modern psychology, though seen dimly and confusedly by Anax- 
 agoras. Perhaps the most convincing proof of his having so con 
 ceived knowledge is in the passage quoted by Aristotle : " Things 
 are to each according as they seem to him" (o-n rojaOVa aurofg 1 
 TO, 6Wa, oTa av vtfo\a{3utfi). What is this but the assertion of all 
 knowledge being confined to phenomena ? It is further strength 
 ened by the passage in Sextus Empiricus, that " phenomena are 
 the criteria of our knowledge of things beyond sense," i. e., things 
 inevident are evident in phenomena (<r>j TWV d<5?jXwv xaTaX^sw?, 
 rot qcouvofASva). 
 
 It must not, however, be concluded from the above, that Anax- 
 agoras regarded sense as the sole origin of knowledge. He held 
 that the Reason (Xo ^o^) was the regulating faculty of the mind, 
 as Intelligence (vouf) was of the universe. The senses are accu 
 rate in their reports ; but their reports are not accurate copies of 
 Things. They reflect objects ; but they reflect them as these 
 objects appear to Sense. Reason has to control these impres 
 sions, to verify these reports. 
 
 * Noumenon is the antithesis to Phenomenon, which means Appearance; 
 Nouinenon means the Substratum, or, to use the scholastic word, the Sub 
 stance. Thus, as matter is recognized by us only in its manifestations (phe 
 nomena), we may logically distinguish those manifestations from the thing 
 manifested (noumenon). And the former will be the materia, circa quam ; 
 the latter, the materia in qua. Noumenon is therefore equivalent to the Es 
 sence ; Phenomenon to the Manifestation,. 
 
 4 
 
74: ANAXAGORAS. 
 
 Let us now apply this doctrine to the explanation of some of 
 those apparently contradictory statements which have puzzled all 
 the critics. For instance, Anaxagoras says that snow is not white 
 but black, because the water of which it is composed is black. 
 Now, in this he could not have meant that snow did not appear 
 to our senses white \ his express doctrine of sense-knowledge for 
 bids such an interpretation. But reason told him that the Senses 
 gave inaccurate reports ; and, in this instance, Reason showed 
 him how their report was contradictory, since the water was 
 black, yet the snow white. Here, then, is the whole theory 
 of knowledge exemplified : Sense asserting that snow is white ; 
 Reflection assertino- that snow beino; made from black water could 
 
 O <3 
 
 not be white. He had another illustration Take two liquids, 
 white and black, and pour the one into the other drop by drop : 
 the eye will be unable to discern the actual change as it is gradu 
 ally going on ; it will only discern it at certain marked intervals. 
 Thus did he separate himself at once from Xenophanes and 
 Heraclitus. From the former, because admitting Sense to be the 
 only criterion of things, the only source of knowledge, he could 
 not regard the X<tyo as the unfailing source of truth, but merely 
 as the reflective power, whereby the reports of sense were con 
 trolled. From the latter, because reflection convinced him that 
 the reports of the senses were subjectively true, but objectively 
 false.* (Heraclitus maintained that the reports of the senses were 
 alone certain.) Both Xenophanes and Heraclitus had principles 
 of absolute certitude ; the one proclaimed Reason, the other Sense, 
 to be that principle. Anaxagoras annihilated the one by showing 
 that the Reason was dependent on the senses for materials ; and 
 
 * Subjective and objective are now almost naturalized : it may not be su 
 perfluous, nevertheless, to explain them. The subject means the " Mind of 
 the Thinker" (Ego), the object means the "Thing thought of" (Non-Eyo). 
 In the above passage " the reports of the senses being subjectively true," 
 means that the senses truly inform us of their impressions but these im 
 pressions are not at all like the actual objects (as may be shown by the broken, 
 appearance of a stick, half of which is dipped in water), and therefore the 
 reports are " objectively false." 
 
ANAXAGORAS. Y5 
 
 he annihilated the other by showing that the materials were fal 
 lacious. 
 
 Having thus, not without considerable difficulty, brought his 
 various opinions on human knowledge under one system, let us 
 endeavor to do the same for his cosmology. The principle of his 
 system is thus announced : "Wrongly do the Greeks suppose that 
 aught begins or ceases to be ; for nothing comes into being or is 
 destroyed ; but all is an aggregation or secretion of pre-existent 
 things ; so that all becoming might more correctly be called be 
 coming-mixed, and all corruption becoming separate." What is 
 the thought here ? It is that instead of there being a Creation, 
 there was only an arrangement ; instead of one first element, there 
 was an infinite number of elements. These elements are the 
 celebrated homoeomericB : 
 
 " Ex aurique putat micis consistere posse 
 Aurum, et cle terris terrain concrescere parvis ; 
 Ignibus ex ignem, humorem ex humoribus esse ; 
 Csetera consimili fingit ratione putatque."* 
 
 This singular opinion which maintains that flesh is made of 
 molecules of elementary flesh, and bones of elementary bones, 
 and so forth, is intelligible when we remember his theory of 
 knowledge. The Sense discerns elementary differences in matter, 
 and reflection confirms the truth of this observation. If Nothing 
 can proceed from Nothing, all things can be only an arrangement 
 of existing things ; but when in this Arrangement certain things 
 are discovered to be radically distinguished from each other, gold 
 from blood for example, either the distinction observed by the 
 Senses is altogether false, or else the things distinguished must 
 be elements. But the first horn of the dilemma is avoided by 
 
 * Lucretius, i. 839. 
 
 " That gold from parts of the same nature rose, 
 That earths do earth, fires fire, airs air compose, 
 And so in all things else alike to those." CREECH. 
 
 There seems to be good reason to believe that not Anaxagoras, but Aristotle, 
 was the originator of the word homoeomerice. See Bitter, i. 286. 
 
76 ANAXAGORA.S. 
 
 the sensuous nature of all knowledge ; if the Senses deceive us 
 in this respect, and Reason does not indicate the deception, 
 then is knowledge all a delusion; therefore, unless we adopt 
 skepticism, we must abide by the testimony of the Senses, as to 
 the distinction of things. But, having granted the distinction, 
 we must grant that the things distinguished are elements ; if not, 
 whence the distinction ? Nothing can come of Nothing ; blood 
 can only become blood, gold can only become gold, mix them 
 how you will ; if blood can become bone, then does bone become 
 something out of nothing, for it was not bone before, and it is 
 bone now. But, as blood can only be blood, and bone only be 
 bone, whenever they are mingled it is a mingling of two ele 
 ments, homoeomerice. 
 
 In the beginning therefore there was the infinite composed of 
 homceomerice, or elementary seeds of infinite variety. So far 
 from The All being The One, as Parmeuides and Thales equally 
 taught, Anaxagoras proclaimed The All to be The Many. But 
 the mass of elements were as yet unmixed. What was to mix 
 them 1 What power caused them to become arranged in one 
 harmonious all-embracing system ? 
 
 This power Anaxagoras declared to be Intelligence (vouj), 
 the moving force of the Universe. He had, on the one hand, re 
 jected Fate, as an empty name ; on the other, he rejected Chance, 
 as being no more than the Cause unperceived by human rea 
 soning (<n}v T^TJV, a^Xov air lav avfywrr /vij Xo^Kfyt-w). This is 
 another remarkable glimpse of what modern philosophy was 
 to establish. Having thus disclaimed these two powers, so po 
 tent in early speculation, Fate and Chance, he had no other 
 course left than to proclaim Intelligence the Arranging Power.* 
 
 This seems to us, on the whole, the most remarkable specula 
 tion of all the pre-Socratic epoch ; and indeed is so very near the 
 philosophic precision of modern times, that it is with difficulty we 
 
 * We have his own words reported by Diogenes, who says that his work 
 opened thus : " Formerly all things were a confused mass ; afterwards, In 
 telligence coming, arranged them into worlds." 
 
ANAXAGORAS. 77 
 
 preserve its original simplicity. We will cite a portion of the 
 fragment preserved by Simplicius, wherein Intelligence is spok 
 en of: "Intelligence (vou^) is infinite, and autocratic; it is 
 mixed up with nothing, but exists alone in and for itself. Were 
 it otherwise, were it mixed up with any thing, it would partici 
 pate in the nature of all things ; for in all there is a part of all ; 
 and so that which was mixed with intelligence would prevent it 
 from exercising power over all things."* In this passage we 
 have an expression of the modern conception of the Deity acting 
 through invariable laws, but in no way mixed up with the mat 
 ter acted on. 
 
 Will not the foregoing remarks enable us to meet Aristotle s 
 objection to Anaxagoras, that "he uses Intelligence as a machine,! 
 in respect to the formation of the world ; so that, when he is 
 embarrassed how to explain the cause of this or that, he intro 
 duces Intelligence ; but in all other things it is any cause but 
 Intelligence which produces things ?" Now, surely this is a very 
 unfair criticism, and could only be valid against one who, like 
 Malebranche, saw God everywhere. Anaxagoras assigned to In 
 telligence the great Arrangement of the homceomerice ; but of 
 course he supposed that subordinate arrangements were carried 
 on by themselves. The Christian thinker some centuries back 
 believed that the Deity created and ordained all things ; never 
 theless when he burnt his finger r the cause of the burn he attrib 
 uted to fire, and not to God ; but when the thunder muttered in 
 the sky he attributed that to no cause but God. Is not this 
 similar to the conception formed by Anaxagoras ? What he can 
 explain, he does explain by natural causes ; whatever he is em 
 barrassed to explain, whatever he does not understand, he attrib- 
 
 * This passage perfectly accords with what Aristotle says, De A/rimd, i. 2, 
 and Metaph. i. 7. 
 
 t This is an allusion to the theatrical artifice of bringing down a God 
 from Olympus, to solve the difficulty of the denouement, the Dem ex 
 machind of Horace. We make this remark to caution the reader against 
 supposing that the objection is to a mechanical intelligence. 
 
78 ANAXAGOKAS. 
 
 utes to God. It is here we see the force of Anaxagoras s opinion 
 respecting Chance as an unascertained cause : what others called 
 the effect of Chance, he called the effect of the universal Intel 
 ligence. 
 
 On the same grounds we object to the reasoning of Plato. 
 Those who have read the Phcedo, and who has not read it in 
 some shape or other, either in the original diction, or in the dim 
 and misty version of some translator ? those who have read the 
 Phcedo, we say, will doubtless remember the passage in which 
 Socrates is made to express his poignant disappointment at the 
 doctrine of Anaxagoras, to which he had at first been so attract 
 ed. This passage has an air of authenticity. It expresses a real 
 disappointment, and the disappointment of Socrates, not merely 
 of Plato. We believe firmly that Socrates is here expressing his 
 own opinion ; and it is rarely that we can say this of opinions 
 promulgated by Plato under the august name of his master. 
 Here is the passage in the misty version of Thomas Taylor : we 
 make no alterations, otherwise we should hold ourselves respon 
 sible for the Avhole : 
 
 " But having once heard a person reading from a certain book, 
 composed as he said by Anaxagoras, when he came to that part 
 in which he says that intellect orders and is the cause of all 
 things, I was delighted with this cause, and thought that in a 
 certain respect it was an excellent thing for intellect to be the 
 cause of all ; and I considered if this was the case, disposing in 
 tellect would adorn all things, and place every thing in that 
 situation in which it would subsist in the best manner. If any 
 one therefore should be willing to discover the cause through 
 which every thing is generated or corrupted, or is, he ought to 
 discover how it may subsist in the best manner, or suffer, or per 
 form any thing else. In consequence of this, therefore, it is proper 
 that a man should consider nothing else, either about himself or 
 about others, except that which is the most excellent and the best ; 
 but it is necessary that he \vho knows this should also know that 
 which is subordinate, since there is one aad the same science of 
 
ANAXAGORAS. 79 
 
 both. But thus reasoning with myself, I rejoiced, thinking that 
 I had found a preceptor in Anaxagoras who would instruct me 
 in the causes of things agreeable to my own conceptions ; and 
 that he would inform me in the first place whether the earth is 
 flat or round, and afterwards explain the cause of its being so, ad 
 ducing for this purpose that which is better, and showing that it 
 is better for the earth to exist in this manner. And if he should 
 say that it is situated in the middle, that he would besides this 
 show that it was better for it to be in the middle and if he 
 should render all this apparent to me, I was so disposed as not 
 to require any other species of cause ; for I by no means thought, 
 after he had said that all these were orderly disposed by intel 
 lect, he would introduce any other cause for their subsistence ex 
 cept that which shows that it is better for them to exist in this 
 manner. Hence I thought that in rendering the cause common 
 to each particular and to all things, he would explain that which 
 is best for each, and is the common good of all. And indeed I 
 would not have exchanged these hopes for a mighty gain ! But 
 having obtained his books with prodigious eagerness, I read them 
 with great celerity, that I might with great celerity know that 
 which is best and that which is base. 
 
 " But from this admirable hope, my friend, I was forced away, 
 when in the course of my reading I saw him make no use of in 
 tellect, nor employ certain causes for the purpose of orderly dis 
 posing particulars, but assign air, ether, and water, and many 
 other things equally absurd, as the causes of things. And he 
 appeared to me to be affected in a manner similar to him who 
 should assert that all the actions of Socrates are produced by in 
 tellect ; and afterwards, endeavoring to relate the causes of each 
 particular action, should say that I now sit here because, in the 
 first place, my body is composed of bones and nerves, and that 
 the bones are solid and are separated by intervals from each 
 other ; but that the nerves, which are by nature capable of in 
 tension and remission, cover the bones together with the skin in 
 which they are contained. The bones therefore, being suspended 
 
80 ANAXAGOKAS. 
 
 from their joints, the nerves, by straining and relaxing them, 
 enable me to bend my limbs as at present ; and through this 
 cause I here sit in an inflected position. And again, should as 
 sign other such like causes of my now conversing with you, 
 namely, voice, and air, and hearing, and a thousand other partic 
 ulars, neglecting the true cause, that since it appeared to the 
 Athenians better to condemn me on this account, it also appeared 
 to me better and more just to sit here, and thus abiding, sustain 
 the punishment which they have ordained me ; for otherwise, by 
 the dog, as it appears to me, these bones and nerves would have 
 been carried long ago either into Megara or Boeotia through an 
 opinion of that which is best, if I had not thought it more just 
 and becoming to sustain the punishment ordered by my country, 
 whatever it might be, than to withdraw myself and run away. 
 But to call things of this kind causes is extremely absurd. In 
 deed, if any one should say that without possessing such things 
 as bones and nerves I could not act as I do, he would speak the 
 truth ; but to assert that I act as I do at present through these, 
 and that I operate with this intellect, and not from a choice of 
 what is best, would be an assertion full of extreme negligence and 
 sloth : for this would be the consequence of not being able to col 
 lect by division that the true cause of a thing is very different 
 from that without which a cause would not be a cause." 
 
 Now this reasoning we take to be an ignoratio elenchi. The 
 illustration made use of is nothing to the purpose, and would be 
 admitted by Anaxagoras as true, without in the least impugning 
 his argument. 
 
 The Intelligence, which Anaxagoras conceived, was in no wise 
 a moral Intelligence : it was simply the primum mobile, the all- 
 knowing and motive force by which the arrangement of the ele 
 ments was affected. Hence from a passage in Aristotle, some 
 have inferred that the vou was only a physical principle, the sole 
 office of which was to set matter in motion. This is an error 
 easy of explanation. Men are still so accustomed to conceive the 
 divine Intelligence as only a more perfect and exalted human 
 
ANAXAGOKAS. 81 
 
 Intelligence, that where they see no traces of the latter they are 
 prone to question the existence of the former. When Anaxago- 
 ras says that Nous was the creative principle, men instantly 
 figure to themselves a Nous similar to human intelligence. On 
 examination, they find that such an intelligence as they conceive 
 has no place in the doctrine, whereupon they declare that Intel 
 ligence has no place there ; the Nous, they aver, means no more 
 than Motion, and might have been called Motion. 
 
 But fortunately Simplicius has preserved a long passage from 
 the work of Anaxagoras ; we have already quoted a portion of 
 it, and shall now select one or two sentences in which the Nous, 
 as a cognitive power, is distinctly set forth ; and we quote these 
 the more readily because Ritter, to whom we are indebted for the 
 passage, has not translated it : " Intelligence is, of all things, 
 the subtlest and purest, and has entire knowledge of all. Every 
 thing which has a soul, whether great or small, is governed by 
 the Intelligence (vovg xparsr). Intelligence knows all things 
 (rrav-ra lyvw vouj), both those that are mixed and those that are 
 separated ; and the things which ought to be, and the things 
 which were, and those which now are, and those which will be ; 
 all are arranged by Intelligence (tfav-ra Jiexorfpifl s vouj*)." Here 
 the creative, or rather disposing, faculty is not more distinctly 
 expressed than the cognitive. The Nous both knows and acts : 
 this is its duplicate existence. A grand conception : one seldom 
 rivalled in ancient speculation ; one so far in advance of the epoch 
 as to be a puzzle to all critics. 
 
 The relation in which the system of Anaxagoras stands to 
 other systems may be briefly characterized. The Infinite Matter 
 of the lonians became in his hands the homceomerice. Instead of 
 one substance, such as Water, Air, or Fire, he saw the necessity 
 of admitting Many substances. At the same time, he carried out 
 
 * It would be needless after this to refer to the numerous expressions 
 of Aristotle in confirmation. The critical reader will do well to consult 
 Trenddenburg, Comment. Aristot. de Anim., p. 466 et seq. Plato, in speaking 
 of the vovs, adds Kal $vx> i, Craty., p. 400. 
 
 4* 
 
82 A.NAXAGORAS. 
 
 the Pythagorean and Eleatic principle of The One ; thus avoid 
 ing the dialectical thrusts of Zeno against the upholders of The 
 Many. Hegel and M. Cousin would call this eclecticism ; and 
 in one sense they would be correct ; but inasmuch as Anaxago- 
 ras was led to his doctrine by the development which the Ionian 
 and the Eleatic principles had taken, and was not led to it by 
 any eclectical method, we must protest against the application 
 of such a name. There was a truth dimly recognized by the 
 lonians, namely, that the material phenomena are all reducible 
 to some noumenon or noumena, some ctpx*!- What that Begin 
 ning was, they variously sought. Anaxagoras also sought it ; 
 and his doctrine of perception convinced him that it could not 
 be One principle, but Many ; hence his homceomerice. So far he 
 was an Ionian. But there was also a truth dimly seen by the 
 Eleatics, namely, that The Many could never be resolved into 
 One ; and as without One there could not be Many, and with 
 the Many only there could not be One ; in other words, as God 
 must be The One from whom the multiplicity of things is de 
 rived, the necessity of admitting The One as The All and the 
 Self-existent was proved. This reasoning was accepted by Anax 
 agoras. He saw that there were Many things ; he saw also the 
 necessity for The One. In so far he was an Eleatic. 
 
 Up to this point the two doctrines had been at variance : a 
 chasm of infinite depth yawned between them. Zeno s invention 
 of Dialectics was a result of this profound difference. It was 
 reserved for Anaxagoras to bridge over the chasm which could 
 not be filled up. He did so with consummate skill. He ac 
 cepted both doctrines, with some modifications, and proclaimed 
 the existence of the Infinite Intelligence (The One) who was the 
 Architect of the Infinite Matter (homoeomerice, the Many). By 
 this means he escaped each horn of the dilemma ; he escaped 
 that which gored the lonians, namely, as to ILOW and why the 
 Infinite Matter became fashioned into worlds and beings ; since 
 Matter by itself can only be Matter. He escaped that which 
 gored the Eleatics, as to how and why the Infinite One, who was 
 
EMPEDOCLES. 83 
 
 pure and unmixed, became the Infinite Many, impure and mixed ; 
 since one thing could never be more than one thing. It must 
 have some one thing on which to act, for it cannot act upon 
 itself. Anaxagoras escaped both by his dualistic theory of Mind 
 fashioning, and Matter fashioned. 
 
 A similar bridge was thrown by him over the deep chasm sepa 
 rating the Sensualists from the Rationalists, with respect to the 
 origin of knowledge. He admitted both Sense and Reason; 
 others had only admitted either Sense or Reason. 
 
 These two points entitle Anaxagoras to a very high rank in 
 the history of Philosophy ; and we regret to see that Aristotle 
 uniformly speaks disparagingly of him, but we believe that the 
 great Stagirite did not clearly apprehend the force of the doc 
 trine he was combating. 
 
 III. EMPEDOCLES. 
 
 We are forced to differ from all historians we have consulted, 
 except De Gerando, who hesitates about the matter, respecting 
 the place occupied by Empedocles. Brucker classes him among 
 the Pythagoreans; Ritter, amongst the Eleatics ; Zeller and 
 Hegel, as the precursor of the Atomists, who precede Anaxa 
 goras ; Renouvier, as the precursor of Anaxagoras ; Tennemann 
 placing Diogenes of Apollonia between Anaxagoras and Em 
 pedocles, but making Democritus precede them. When we 
 come to treat of the doctrines of Empedocles, we shall endeavor 
 to show the filiation of ideas from Anaxagoras. Meanwhile it is 
 necessary to examine the passage in Aristotle, on which very 
 contradictory opinions have been grounded. 
 
 In the 3d chapter of the 1st book of Aristotle s Metaphysics, 
 after a paragraph on the system of Empedocles, occurs this pass 
 age : * But Anaxagoras of Clazomense being superior to him 
 (Empedocles) in respect of age, but inferior to him in respect of 
 opinions, said that the number of principles was infinite." By 
 "superior" and "inferior" we preserve the antithesis of the origi- 
 
84: EMPEDOCLES. 
 
 nal; but it would be more intelligible to say, "older" and 
 " inferior" 
 
 There are two other interpretations of this passage. One of 
 them is that of M. Cousin (after Hegel), who believes that the 
 antithesis of Aristotle is meant to convey the fact of Anaxagoras, 
 although older in point of time, being more recent in point of 
 published doctrine than Empedocles, having written after him. 
 This is his translation : " Anaxagoras, qui naquit avant ce 
 dernier, mais qui ecrivit apres lui." 
 
 The second is that adopted by M. Renouvier from M. Ravaisson, 
 who interprets it as meaning that the doctrine of Anaxagoras, 
 though more ancient in point of publication, is more recent in 
 point of thought ; i. e. more developed philosophically, although 
 historically earlier. 
 
 Now we believe both these interpretations to be erroneous. 
 There is no ground for them except the antithesis of Aristotle ; 
 and the original of this disputed passage is, Avafa^o paj = 6 
 
 which is rendered by MM. Pierron and Zevort : " Anaxagore de 
 Clazomune, Paine d Empedocle, n etait pas arrive a un systcme 
 aussi plausible"* 
 
 This agrees with our version. We confess however that on a 
 first glance M. Cousin s version better preserves the force of 
 the antithesis <rrf /xsv TjXix/a tfporspoj rolg 5 J spyus vtfrepog. But 
 other reasons prevent a concurrence in this interpretation. MM. 
 Pierron and Zevort, in their note on the passage, remark : " Mais 
 les mots fc p/w, pyo, dans une opposition, out ordinairement une 
 signification vague, corame re, revera, chez les Latins, et, chez 
 nous, en fait, en realite" The force of the objection does not 
 strike us. If Anaxagoras was in fact, in reality, posterior to 
 Empedocles, we can only understand this in the sense M. Cousin 
 has understood Aristotle; and moreover, MM. Pierron and 
 Zevort here contradict their translation, which says that, in point 
 
 * La M(taphyslqiie cTAristote, i. 233. 
 
EMPEDOCLES. 85 
 
 of fact, the system of Anaxagoras was not so plausible as that of 
 Empedocles. 
 
 More weight must be laid on the meaning of Otfrspo^, which 
 certainly cannot be exclusively taken to mean posterior in point 
 of time. In the llth chapter of Aristotle s 5th book he treats 
 of all the significations of -rrporspoj and vtfrspog. One of these 
 significations is superiority and inferiority. In the sense of infe 
 riority 2tfpo is often used by the poets. Thus Sophocles : 
 
 T ii liiapbv #0o$, Kal yvvaiKos farepov ! 
 " O shameful character, below a woman !" 
 
 "Inferior" is the primitive meaning; in English we say, "second 
 to none," for " inferior to none." 
 
 This meaning of CoVspos, namely, of inferiority, is the one 
 always understood by the old commentators on the passage in 
 question; none of them understood a chronological posteriority. 
 IlpoVgpos indicates priority in point of time ; utfrgpoff inferiority in 
 point of merit. Thus Philoponus : " Prior quidem tempore, sed 
 posterior et mancus secundum opinionem" (fol. 2 a); and the 
 anonymous scholiast of the Vatican MS. : tf porspos youv <rw xp ^ 
 otXX utf-7cpo xa? JXXsiVwv xara <n?v (5o|av " first indeed in time, 
 but second and inferior in point of doctrine." 
 
 The only question which now remains to be answered in order 
 to establish the truth of the foregoing interpretation of u tfrspos, is 
 this : Did Aristotle regard the system of Anaxagoras as inferior 
 to that of Empedocles ? 
 
 This question we can answer distinctly in the affirmative. The 
 reader will remember our citation of the passage in which Aris 
 totle blames Anaxagoras for never employing his First Cause 
 (Intelligence) except upon emergencies. Aristotle continues 
 thus : " Empedocles employs his causes more abundantly, though 
 not indeed sufficiently, Kou EjxtfsJoxX^ gVi irXsov (xsv TOJTW 
 Xpvj<ra T?S aiVioij, ou fA-/} OUTS ixavw^. Met. i. 4. 
 
 Chronology is moreover in favor of our view. Anaxagoras 
 was born about the TOth Olympiad ; Empedocles, by general con- 
 
86 EMPEDOCLES. 
 
 sent, is said to have flourished in the 84th Olympiad ; this would 
 make Anaxagoras at least fifty-six years old at the time when Ern- 
 pedocles published his doctrine, after which age it is barely prob 
 able that Anaxagoras would have begun to write ; and even this 
 probability vanishes when we look upon the life of Anaxagoras, 
 who was teaching in Athens about the 76th or 77th Olympiad, 
 and who died at Lampsacus, in exile, in the 88th Olympiad, viz. 
 sixteen years after the epoch in which Empedocles is said to 
 have flourished. 
 
 Trusting that the above point was not unworthy of brief dis 
 cussion, we will now commence the narrative. 
 
 Empedocles was born at Agrigentum, in Sicily, and flourished 
 about the 84th Olympiad (B. c. 444). Agrigentum was at that 
 period at the height of its splendor, and was a formidable rival 
 to Syracuse. Empedocles, descended from a wealthy and illus 
 trious family, acquired a high reputation by his resolute espousal 
 of the democratic party. Much of his wealth is said to have 
 been spent in a singular but honorable manner : namely, in be 
 stowing dowries on poor girls, and marrying them to young men 
 of rank and consequence. Like most of the early philosophers, 
 he is supposed to have been a great traveller, and to have gath 
 ered in distant lands the wondrous store of knowledge which he 
 displayed. It was assumed that only in the far East could he have 
 learned the potent secrets of Medicine and Magic ; only from the 
 Egyptian Magi could he have learned the art of prophecy. 
 
 It is probable, however, that he did travel into Italy, and to 
 Athens. But in truth we can mention little of his personal his 
 tory that is not open to question. His name rivals that of Py 
 thagoras in the regions of fable. The same august majesty of 
 demeanor and the same marvellous power over nature are attrib 
 uted to both. Miracles were his pastimes. In prophecy, in 
 medicine, in power over the winds and rains, his wonders were 
 so numerous and so renowned, that when lie appeared at the 
 Olympic Games all eyes were reverentially fixed upon him. His 
 dress and demeanor accorded with his reputation. Haughty, 
 
EMPEDOCLES. 87 
 
 impassioned, and eminently disinterested in character, he refused 
 the government of Agrigentum when freely offered him by the 
 citizens; but his love of distinction showed itself in priestly gar- 
 merits, a golden girdle, the Delphic crown, and a numerous train 
 of attendants. He proclaimed himself to be a God whom men 
 and women reverently adored. But we must not take this liter 
 ally : he probably only " assumed by anticipation an honor 
 which he promised all soothsayers, priests, physicians, and 
 princes of the people." 
 
 Fable has also taken advantage of the mystery which overhangs 
 his death, to create out of it various stories of marvel. One re 
 lates that, after a sacred festival, he was drawn up to heaven in a 
 splendor of celestial effulgence. Another, and more popular one 
 is, that he threw himself headlong into the crater of Mount ^Etna, 
 in order that he might pass for a God, the cause of his death be 
 ing unknown ; but one of his brazen sandals, thrown out in an 
 eruption, revealed the secret. 
 
 A similar uncertainty exists as to his Teachers and his Writings. 
 Pythagoras, Parmenides, Xenophanes, and Anaxagoras have all 
 been positively named as his Teachers. Unless we understand 
 the word Teachers in a figurative sense, we must absolutely re 
 ject these statements. Diogenes Laertius, who reports them, does 
 so in his dullest manner, with an absence of criticism remarkable 
 even in him.* Considering that there was, at least, one hundred 
 and forty years between Pythagoras and Empedocles, we need no 
 further argument to disprove any connection between them. 
 
 Diogenes, on the authority of Aristotle (as he says), attributes 
 to Empedocles the invention of Rhetoric; and Quinctilian (iii. c. 1) 
 has repeated the statement. We have no longer the work of 
 Aristotle ; but, as Ritter says, the assertion must have arisen 
 from a misunderstanding, or have been said in jest by Aristotle, 
 because Empedocles was the teacher of Gorgias : most likely 
 
 * Diogenes is one of the stupidest of the stupid 19 ce of compilers. His 
 work is useful, because containing occasional extracts, but can rarely be re 
 lied on for any thing else. 
 
88 EMPEDOCLES. 
 
 from a misunderstanding, since Sextus Empiricus mentions Aris 
 totle as having said that Empedocles first incited, or gave an im 
 pulse to Rhetoric.* Aristotle, in his Rhetoric, declares that 
 Corax and Tisias were the first to publish a written Treatise on 
 Eloquence. We feel the less hesitation in rejecting the state 
 ment of Diogenes, because in the very passage which succeeds he 
 is guilty of a very gross misquotation of Aristotle, who, as he 
 says, " in his book of The Poets speaks of Empedocles as Homeric, 
 powerful in his eloquence, rich in metaphors, and other poetical 
 n>ures."f Now this work of Aristotle on the Poets is fortunately 
 extant, and it proclaims the very reverse of what Diogenes alleges. 
 Here is the passage : " Custom, indeed, connecting the poetry 
 or making with the metre, has denominated some elegiac poets, 
 others epic poets : thus distinguishing poets, not according to the 
 nature of their imitation, but according to that of their metre 
 only ; for even they who composed treatises of Medicine, or Natu 
 ral Philosophy in verse, are denominated Poets : yet Homer and 
 Empedocles have nothing in common except their metre the for 
 mer, therefore, justly merits the name of Poet ; the other should 
 rather be called a Physiologist than a Poet."J 
 
 It is, indeed, quite possible that Diogenes may have had before 
 him a book <ffspi <oir]TOJv, perhaps one of the many spurious 
 treatises current under Aristotle s name ; but it is not probable 
 that Aristotle would have expressed an opinion so contrary to the 
 one given in his authentic work. 
 
 The diversity of opinion, with respect to the position of Em 
 pedocles, indicated at the opening of this Chapter, is not without 
 significance. That men such as Ilegel, Hitter, Zeller, and Ten- 
 nemann should see reasons for different classification, cannot be 
 without importance to the Historian. Their arguments destroy 
 each other ; but it does not therefore follow that they all build 
 upon false grounds. Each view has a certain truth in it ; but, 
 not being the whole truth, it cannot prevail. The cause of the 
 
 * Upwrov KtKivrjKfvat. Adv. Mat. vii. 
 
 t Diog. Laert. lib. viii. c. ii. 3, p. 57. + De Poet. c. i. 
 
EMPEDOCLES. 89 
 
 difference seems to be this : Empedocles has something of the 
 Pythagorean, Eleatic, Heraclitic, and Anaxagorean systems in 
 his system ; so that each historian, detecting one of these ele 
 ments, and omitting to give due importance to the others, has 
 connected Empedocles with the system to which that one ele 
 ment belongs. Kilter and Zeller have, however, been aware of 
 some of the complex relations of the doctrine, but failed, we 
 think, in giving it its true position. 
 
 Kespecting human knowledge, Empedocles belongs partly to 
 the Eleatics. With them, he complained of the imperfection of 
 the Senses ; and looked for truth only in Reason, which is partly 
 human and partly divine : it is partly clouded by the senses. 
 The divine knowledge is opposed to sensuous knowledge ; for 
 men cannot approach the divine, neither can he seize it with the 
 hand nor the eye. Hence Empedocles conjoined the duty of 
 contemplating God in the mind. But he appears to have pro 
 claimed the existence of this divine knowledge without attempt 
 ing to determine its relation to human knowledge. In this re 
 spect he resembles rather Xenophanes than Parmenides.* 
 
 We have no clear testimony of his having studied the works 
 of Anaxagoras ; but, if we had, it might not be difficult to ex 
 plain his inferior theory of knowledge ; for, in truth, the theory 
 of Anaxagoras was too far in advance of the age to be rightly 
 apprehended. Empedocles, therefore, adhered to the Eleatic 
 theory. With Xenophanes, he bewailed the delusion of the 
 senses and experience. Listen to his lament : 
 
 "Swift-fated and conscious, how brief is life s pleasureless portion! 
 Like the wind-driven smoke, they are carried backwards and forwards, 
 Each trusting to naught save what his experience vouches, 
 On all sides distracted ; yet wishing to find out the whole truth, 
 In vain; neither by eye nor ear perceptible to man, 
 Nor to l>e grasped l>y mind: and thou, when thus thou hast wandered, 
 Wilt find that no further reaches the knowledge of mortals." 
 
 * Having quoted Aristotle s testimony of the sensuous nature of knowl 
 edge in the Empedoclean theory, we need only here refer to it ; adding that, 
 in this respect, Empedocles ranks with Parmenides rather than with Xeno 
 phanes. 
 
90 EMPEDOCLES. 
 
 These verses seem to indicate a skepticism of Reason as well 
 as of the Senses; but other passages show that he upheld the 
 integrity of Reason, which he thought was only prevented from 
 revealing the whole truth because it was imprisoned in the body. 
 Mundane existence was, in his system, the doom of such immor 
 tal souls as had been disgraced from Heaven. The Fall of Man 
 he thus distinctly enunciated : 
 
 "This is the law of Fate, of the Gods an olden enactment, 
 If with guilt or murder a Daemon* polluteth his members, 
 Thrice ten thousand years must he wander apart from the blessed. 
 Hence, doomed I stray, a fugitive from Gods and an outcast, 
 To raging strife submissive." 
 
 But he had some more philosophical ground to go upon when 
 he wished to prove the existence of Reason and of the Divine 
 Nature. He maintained that like could only be known by like : 
 through earth we learn the earth, through fire we learn fire, 
 through strife we learn strife, and through love we learn love. 
 If, therefore,! like could only be known by like, the Divine could 
 only be known by Divine Reason ; and, inasmuch as the Divine 
 is recognized by man, it is a proof that the Divine exists. Knowl 
 edge and Existence mutually imply each other. 
 
 Empedocles resembles Xenophanes also in his attacks on an 
 thropomorphism. God, he says, has neither head adjusted to 
 limbs, like human beings, nor legs, nor hands : 
 
 " He is, wholly and perfectly, mind ineffable, holy, 
 With rapid and swift-glancing thought pervading the whole world." 
 
 We may compare these verses with the line of Xenophanes 
 " Without labor he ruleth all things by reason and insight." 
 
 * An immortal soul. 
 
 f We are here thinking for Empedocles ; we have no other authority for 
 this statement, than that something of the kind is wanting to make out a 
 plausible explanation of what is only implied in the fragments extant. The 
 fragments tell us that he believed in Reason as the transcendent faculty ; 
 and also that Keason did in some way recognize the Divine. All we have 
 done is to supply the link wanting. 
 
EMPEDOCLES. 91 
 
 Thus far Empedocles belonged to the Eleatics. The traces of 
 Pythagoras are fewer ; for we cannot regard as such all those 
 analogies which the ingenuity of some critics has detected.* In 
 his life, and in his moral precepts, there is a strong resemblance 
 to Pythagoras ; but in his philosophy we see none beyond me 
 tempsychosis, and the consequent abstinence from animal food. 
 
 Heraclitus had said there was nothing but a perpetual flux of 
 things, that the whole world of phenomena was as a flowing river, 
 ever-changing yet apparently the same. Anaxagoras had also 
 said that there was no creation of elements, but only an arrange 
 ment. Empedocles was now to amalgamate these views. " Fools !" 
 he exclaims, 
 
 " Who think aught can begin to be which formerly was not, 
 Or, that aught which is, can perish and utterly decay. f 
 Another truth I now unfold : no natural birth 
 Is there of mortal things, nor death s destruction final ; 
 Nothing is there but a mingling, and then a separation of the mingled, 
 Which are called a birth and death by ignorant mortals. "J 
 
 So distinct a relationship as these verses manifest towards both 
 Heraclitus and Anaxagoras will account for the classification 
 adopted by Hegel, Zeller, and Renouvier ; at the same time it 
 gives greater strength to our opinion of Empedocles as the suc 
 cessor of these two. 
 
 The differences are, however, as great as the resemblances. 
 Having asserted that all things were but a mingling and a sepa 
 ration, he must have admitted the existence of certain primary 
 elements, which were the materials mingled. 
 
 Heraclitus had affirmed Fire to be both the principle and the 
 element; both the moving, mingling force, and the mingled 
 matter. Anaxagoras, with great logical consistency, affirmed 
 that the primary elements were homoeomerice, since nothing could 
 
 * See them noticed in Zeller, Philos. der Griechen, pp. 169-173 (1845). 
 
 t Compare Anaxagoras, as quoted above : " Wrongly do the Greeks sup 
 pose that aught begins or ceases to be." 
 
 \ Compare Anaxagoras: "So that all-becoming might more properly be 
 called becoming mixed, and all-corruption becoming separate." 
 
92 EMPEDOCLES. 
 
 proceed from nothing, and whatever was arranged must, there 
 fore, be an arrangement of primary elements. Empedocles affirm 
 ed that the primary elements were four, viz. Earth, Air, Fire, 
 and Water : out of these all other things proceed ; all things are 
 but the various minglings of these four. 
 
 Now, that this is an advance on both the preceding concep 
 tions will scarcely be denied ; it bears indubitable evidence of 
 being a later conception, and a modification of its antecedents. 
 Nevertheless, although superior as a physiological view, it has not 
 the logical consistency of the view maintained by Anaxagoras ; 
 for, as Empedocles taught that like can only be known by like, 
 i. e. that existence and knowledge were identical .and mutually 
 implicative, he ought to have maintained that whatever is recog 
 nized by the mind as distinct, must be distinct in csse. 
 
 With respect to the Formative Power, we see the traces of He- 
 raclitus and Anaxagoras in about the same proportion. Herac- 
 litus maintained that Fire was impelled by irresistible Desire to 
 transform, itself into some determinate existence. Anaxagoras 
 maintained that the infinite Intelligence was the great Architect 
 who arranged all the material elements, the Mind that controlled 
 and fashioned Matter. The great distinction between these two 
 systems is, that the Fire transforms itself, the Nous transforms 
 something which is radically different from itself. Both these 
 conceptions were amalgamated by Empedocles. He taught that 
 Love was the creative power. Wherever there is a mixture of 
 different elements, Love is exerted. 
 
 Here we see the Desire of Heraclitus sublimed into its highest 
 expression, and the Nous of Anaxagoras reduced to its moral ex 
 pression, Love. The difficulties of the Heraclitean doctrine, 
 namely, as to how Fire can ever become any thing different from 
 Fire, are avoided by the adoption of the Anaxagorean dualism ; 
 while the difficulties of the Anaxagorean doctrine, namely, as to 
 how the great Arranger was moved and incited to arrange the 
 primary elements, are in some measure avoided by the natural 
 desire of Love (Aphrodite). 
 
4 ^ . EMPEDOCLES. 93 
 
 But there was a difficulty still to be overcome. If Love was 
 the creator, that is, the Mingler, what caused separation ? To 
 explain this, he had recourse to Hate. As the perfect state of 
 supramundane existence was Harmony, the imperfect state of 
 mundane existence was Discord. Love was, therefore, the Form 
 ative Principle, and Hate the Destructive. Hence he said that 
 " All the members of God war together, one after the other." 
 
 This is but the phrase of Heraclitus, " Strife is the parent of all 
 things." It is nevertheless most probable that Empedocles re 
 garded Hate as only a mundane power, as only operating on the 
 theatre of the world, and nowise disturbing the abode of the 
 Gods.* For, inasmuch as man is a fallen and perverted God, 
 doomed to wander on the face of the earth, sky-aspiring, but 
 sense-clouded ; so may Hate be only perverted Love, struggling 
 through space. Does not this idea accord with w T hat we know 
 of his opinions ? His conception of God, that is, of the One, was 
 that of a " sphere in the bosom of harmony fixed, in calm rest, 
 gladly rejoicing." This quiescent sphere, which is Love, exists 
 above and around the moved World. Certain points are loosen 
 ed from the combination of the elements, but the unity estab 
 lished by Love continues. Ritter is convinced that " Hate has 
 only power over the smaller portion of existence, over that part 
 which, disconnecting itself from the whole, contaminates itself 
 with crime, and thereby devolves to the errors of mortals." 
 
 Our account of Empedocles will be found to vary considerably 
 from that in Aristotle ; but our excuse is furnished by the great 
 Stagirite himself, who is constantly telling us that Empedocles 
 gave no reasons for his opinions. Moreover, Aristotle makes 
 us aware that his own interpretation is open to question ; for he 
 says, that this interpretation can only be obtained by pushing 
 the premises of Empedocles to their legitimate conclusions ; a 
 process which destroys all historical integrity, for what thinker 
 does push his premises to their utmost limits ? 
 
 * An opinion subsequently put forth by Plato in the Phwdrus. 
 
94: DEMOCRITUS. 
 
 IV. DEMOCRITUS. 
 
 The laughing Philosopher, the traditional antithesis to Herac- 
 Jitus, was born at Abclera (the new settlement of the Teians after 
 their abandonment of Ionia), in the 80th Olympiad (B. c. 460). 
 His claim to the title of Laugher, o ^sXatf?vof, has been disputed, 
 and by moderns generally rejected. Perhaps the native stupidity 
 of his countrymen, who were renowned for abusing the privilege 
 of being stupid, afforded him incessant matter for laughter. 
 Perhaps he was by nature satirical, and thought ridicule the test 
 of truth. He was of a noble and wealthy family, so wealthy 
 that it entertained Xerxes at Abdera. Xerxes in recompense 
 left some of his Magi to instruct the young Democntus. Doubt 
 less it was their tales of the wonders of their native land, and 
 the deep unspeakable wisdom of their priests, which inspired him 
 with the passion for travel. " I, of all men," he says, " of my 
 day, have travelled over the greatest extent of country, exploring 
 the most distant lands ; most climates and regions have I visited, 
 and listened to the most experienced and wisest of men ; and 
 in the calculations of line-measuring no one hath surpassed me, 
 not even the Egyptians, amongst whom I sojourned five years." 
 In travel he spent his patrimony ; but he exchanged it for an 
 amount of knowledge which no one had previously equalled. 
 
 The Abderites, on his return, looked on him with vague won 
 der. The sun-burnt traveller brought with him knowledge which, 
 to them, must have appeared divine. lie exhibited a few samples 
 of his lore, foretold unexpected changes in the weather, and was 
 at once exalted to the summit of that power to which it is a 
 nation s pride to bow. He was offered political supremacy, but 
 wisely declined it. 
 
 It would be idle to detail here the various anecdotes which tra 
 dition hands down respecting him. They are mostly either im 
 possible or improbable. That, for instance, of his having put out 
 his eyes with a burning-glass, in order that he might be more 
 perfectly and undisturbedly acquainted with his reason, is in vio- 
 
DEMOCRITUS. 95 
 
 lent contradiction to his theory of the eye being one of the great 
 inlets to the soul. Tradition is less questionable in its account 
 of his having led a quiet, sober life, and of his dying at a very 
 advanced age. More we cannot credit. 
 
 Respecting his Philosophy there is some certain evidence ; but 
 it has been so variously interpreted, and is in many parts so ob 
 scure, that historians have been at a loss to give it its due posi 
 tion in relation to other systems. Reinhold, Brandis, Marbach, 
 and Hermann view him as an Ionian ; Buhle and Tennemann, 
 as an Eleatic ; Hegel, as the successor of Heraclitus, and the 
 predecessor of Anaxagoras ; Ritter, as a Sophist ; and Zeller, as 
 the precursor of Anaxagoras. Of all these attempts at classifica 
 tion, that by Ritter seems to me the worst. Because Democri- 
 tus has an occasional phrase implying great vanity and those 
 mentioned by Ritter seem to us to imply nothing of the kind 
 he is said to be a Sophist ! 
 
 Democritus is distinguished from the lonians by the denial of 
 all sensible quality to the primary elements ; from the Eleatics 
 by his affirmation of the existence of a multiplicity of elements ; 
 from Heraclitus on the same ground ; from Anaxagoras, as we 
 shall see presently ; and from Empedocles, by denying the Four 
 Elements, and the Formative Love. All these differences are 
 radical. The resemblances, such as they are, may have been co 
 incidences, or derived from one or two of the later thinkers : Par- 
 menides and Anaxagoras, for example. 
 
 What did Democritus teach ? This question we will endeavor 
 to answer somewhat differently from other historians ; but our 
 answer shall be wholly grounded on precise and certain data, 
 with no other originality than that of developing the system 
 from its central principles. 
 
 To commence with Knowledge, and with the passage of Aris 
 totle, universally accredited, though variously interpreted : " De 
 mocritus says, that either nothing is true, or what is true is not 
 evident to us. Universally in his system, the sensation consti 
 tutes the thought, and as at the same time it is but a change 
 
96 DEMOCRITUS. 
 
 [in the sentient being], the sensible phenomena (i. e. sensations) 
 are of necessity true."* This pregnant passage means, I think, 
 that sensation, inasmuch as it is sensation, must be true : that is, 
 true subjectively ; but sensation, inasmuch as it is sensation, can 
 not be true objectively. M. Renouvier thinks that Democritus 
 was the first to introduce this distinction ; but our readers will 
 remember that it was the distinction established by Anaxagoras. 
 Sextus Empiricus quotes the very words of Democritus : "The 
 sweet exists only inform, the bitter inform, the hot inform, the 
 cold in form, color in form ; but in causal reality (a.lrlj])\ 
 only atoms and space exist. The sensible things which are 
 supposed by opinion to exist have no real existence, but only 
 atoms and space exist."]; When he says that sweetness, heat, 
 color, etc., exist in form only, he means that they are sensible 
 images constantly emanating from things ; a notion we shall ex 
 plain presently. A little further on, Sextus reports the opinion, 
 that we only perceive that which falls in upon us according to 
 the disposition of our bodies ; all else is hidden from us. 
 
 Neither Condillac nor Destutt de Tracy has more distinctly 
 identified sensation and thought, than in the above passages. 
 But Democritus does so in the spirit of Kant rather than that of 
 Condillac; for, although with the latter he would say, " Penser, 
 c est sentir," yet he would with the former draw the distinction 
 between phenomenal and noumenal perception. 
 
 But did sensation constitute all knowledge ? Was there noth 
 ing to guide man but the reports of his senses ? Democritus 
 said there was Reflection.^ 
 
 This Reflection was not the source of absolute truth, but ful- 
 
 * *Hrot oidiv fivai aXrjOfs >} ^//?V y u5ij\ov. "OXwf Se <5ta TO 
 vrjaiv ntv rrjv aiaQiiaiv ravTrjv & ilvai aXXoiWtv, TO ^ainJ/uj/ov Kara rt]v aUcdrjmv f 
 avdy>K7)$ dXfjflfj civai. Metaph. iv. 5. 
 
 t Modern editors read trsfj, " in reality." "We are inclined however to pre 
 serve the old reading, as more antithetical to K5//0) . 
 
 t Adv. MatJiem. vii. 163. 
 
 Atovota: etymology, no less than psychology, justifies this translation. 
 
DEMOCRITUS. 97 
 
 filled a controlling office, and established certitude, as far as there 
 could be certitude in human knowledge. And the existence of 
 this Reflection was asserted very much in the style of the cele 
 brated addition to the aphorism, "Nothing is in the Mind which 
 was not previously in the Senses," when Leibnitz added, " except 
 the Mind itself." Democritus, aware that most of our concep 
 tions are derived through the senses, was also aware that many 
 of them were utterly independent, and in defiance of the Senses. 
 Thus the "infinitely small" and the "infinitely great" escape 
 Sense, but are affirmed by Reflection. So also the atoms which 
 his Reason told him were the primary elements of things, he 
 could never have known by Sense. 
 
 Thus far we have seen Democritus only as the inheritor 
 of Anaxagoras ; but the epoch we are now considering was dis 
 tinguished by the greater attention bestowed on the origin of 
 knowledge, and we may reasonably expect that Democritus had 
 devoted considerable thought to the subject, and had originated 
 some view of his own. 
 
 He was not content with the theory of Anaxagoras. There 
 were difficulties which remained unsolved by it ; which, indeed, 
 had never been appreciated. This was the grand problem Democ 
 ritus set himself to solve : How do we perceive external things ? 
 It is no answer to say that we perceive them by the senses. 
 This is no better an explanation than that of the occult quality 
 of opium, given by Moliere s physician : " L opium endormit parce 
 qu il a une vertu soporifique." The question arises How is it 
 that the senses perceive? 
 
 No one had asked this question ; to have asked it, was to form 
 an era in the history of Philosophy. Men began by reasoning 
 on the reports of the senses, unsuspicious of error ; when they 
 saw any thing, they concluded that what they saw existed, and 
 existed as they saw it. Afterwards came others who began to 
 question the accuracy of the senses. Lastly, came those who 
 denied that accuracy altogether, and pronounced the reports to 
 
98 DEMOCRITTJS. 
 
 be mere delusions. Thus the question forced itself on the mind 
 of Democritus In what manner could the senses perceive ex 
 ternal things ? Once settle the modus operand^ and then the 
 real efficacy of the senses may be estimated. 
 
 The hypothesis by which he attempted to explain perception 
 was both ingenious and bold ; and many centuries elapsed before 
 a better one was suggested. He supposed that all things were 
 constantly throwing off images of themselves (s /^wXa,) which, 
 after assimilating to themselves the surrounding air, enter the 
 soul by the pores of the sensitive organ. The eye, for example, 
 is composed of aqueous humors ; and water sees. But how does 
 water see ? It is diaphanous, and receives the image of what 
 ever is presented to it. 
 
 This is a very rude and material hypothesis ; but did not 
 philosophers, for centuries, believe that their senses received im 
 pressions of things ? and did they not suppose that images of 
 things were reflected in the mind ? This latter hypothesis 
 is, perhaps, less obviously fantastic and gratuitous ; but it is 
 also less tenable ; for how is it that the mind becomes a mirror 
 reflecting the images ? The hypothesis stands as much in need 
 of explanation as the phenomenon it pretends to explain. 
 
 The hypothesis of Democritus, once admitted, serves its pur 
 pose ; at least, to a considerable extent. Only the external 
 surface of a body is thrown off in the shape of an si JwXov or im 
 age, and even that only imperfectly and obscurely. The figure 
 thrown off is not a perfect image of the object throwing it off. 
 It is only an image of the external form, and is subject to varia 
 tions in its passage to the mind. This being the case, the strictly 
 phenomenal nature of all knowledge is accurately exhibited. The 
 idols or images, being themselves imperfect, our knowledge is 
 necessarily imperfect. 
 
 With this theory of knowledge how could he answer the 
 other, greater, question of Creation? It is said that he rejected 
 The One of the Eleatics, The four of Empedocles, and the Ho- 
 
DEMOCRITUS. 99 
 
 mceomerice of Anaxagoras, and declared Atoms, invisible and 
 intangible, to be the primary elements ; and that all things were 
 but modes of one of the triple arrangements, namely, configura 
 tion, combination, and position. The atom, being indivisible, is 
 necessarily one ; and, being one, is necessarily self-existent. By 
 this hypothesis, therefore, Democritus satisfied the demands of 
 those who declared that the self-existent must be One ; and 
 of those who declared that there were many things existing, and 
 that the One could never be more than the One, never become 
 the Manv. He amalgamated the Ionian and Eleatic schools in 
 
 */ O 
 
 his speculation, correcting both. He, doubtless, derived this 
 idea from the homoeomerice of Anaxagoras ; or, as those who place 
 Anaxagoras later than Democritus would say, originated this 
 idea. It becomes a question, therefore, which of these specula 
 tions bears the impress of greater maturity. On this question we 
 cannot hesitate to pronounce. The idea of homceomerice betrays 
 its more primitive nature in this it attributes positive qualities 
 to atoms, which qualities are not changed or affected by com 
 bination or arrangement. The idea of the atom divested of all 
 quality, and only assuming that quality as phenomenal when in 
 combination with other atoms, and changing its quality with 
 every change of combination, is indubitably a far more scientific 
 speculation ; it is also obviously later in point of development. 
 
 From the axiom that only " like can act upon like," Anaxag 
 oras formed his homceomerice. Democritus accepted the axiom, 
 but gave it a wider application. If only like can act upon like, 
 said he, then must all things be alike in esse ; and the only dif 
 ferences are those of phenomena, i. e. of manifestation ; these de 
 pend on combination and arrangement. 
 
 Atomism is homceomerianism stripped of qualities. It is there 
 fore the system of Anaxagoras greatly improved. 
 
 The Atomism of Democritus has not been sufficiently appre 
 ciated as a speculation. It is one of the profoundest yet reached 
 by human subtlety. Leibnitz, many centuries afterwards, was 
 
100 DEMOCRITUS. 
 
 led to a doctrine essentially similar; his celebrated "Monadolo- 
 gie" is but Atomism, with a new terminology. Leibnitz called 
 his Monad a force, which to him was the prima maleria. So 
 also Democritus denied that atoms had any weight ; they had 
 only force, and it was the impulsion given by superior force 
 which constituted weight. It is worthy of remark that not only 
 did these thinkers concur in their doctrine of atomism, but also, 
 as we have seen, in their doctrine of the origin of knowledge : a 
 coincidence which gives weight to the supposition that in both 
 minds one doctrine was dependent on the other. 
 
 From what has already been said, the reader may estimate 
 Hitter s assertion, that it would be in vain to seek for any pro- 
 founder view in the theory of Democritus than that common to all 
 mechanical physicists who sought to reduce every thing to math 
 ematical conceptions : an assertion as preposterous as that which 
 follows it, namely, that Democritus arrived at his atomic theory 
 in the same way as modern physicists, from a bias for the me 
 chanical consideration of Nature. Hitter here contradicts himself. 
 Having first declared that there was nothing in the Democritian 
 theory but what the lonians had previously discovered, he next 
 declares that this theory is the same as that of the modern atomic 
 theory. We are puzzled to which decision we shall award the 
 palm of historical misconception. The modern atomic theory is 
 the law of definite proportions ; the ancient theory is merely the 
 affirmation of indefinite combinations. Between these two con 
 ceptions there is precisely the difference between Positive Science 
 and Philosophy. Instead of being similar conceptions, they were 
 neither arrived at in the same way, nor have they the same sig 
 nification. 
 
 Attempts have been made, from certain expressions attributed 
 to Democritus, to deduce an Intelligence, somewhat similar to 
 that in the Anaxagorean doctrine, as the Formative Principle. 
 But the evidence is so small and so questionable, that we refrain 
 from pronouncing on it. Certain it is that he attributed the 
 
DEMOCEITUS. 101 
 
 formation of things to Destiny ; but whether that Destiny was 
 intelligent or not is uncertain. 
 
 In conclusion, we may observe that his system was an advance 
 on that of his predecessors. In the two great points of psychol 
 ogy and physics, which we have considered at length, it is im 
 possible to mistake a very decided progress, as well as the open 
 ing of a new line in each department. 
 
THIRD EPOCH. 
 
 INTELLECTUAL CRISIS. THE INSUFFICIENCY OF ALL AT 
 TEMPTS TOWARDS A SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF EX 
 ISTENCE, AS WELL AS THAT OF KNOWLEDGE, PRODUCES 
 THE SOPHISTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE SOPHISTS. 
 
 I. WHAT WERE THEY ? 
 
 THE Sophists are a much calumniated race. That they should 
 have been so formerly is not surprising ; that they should be so 
 still, is an evidence that historical criticism is yet in its infancy. 
 In raising our voices to defend them we are aware of the para 
 dox ; but looked at nearly, the paradox is greater on the side of 
 those who credit and repeat the traditional account. In truth, 
 we know of few charges so unanimous, yet so paradoxical, as that 
 brought against the Sophists.* It is as if mankind had consented 
 to judge of Socrates by the representation of him in The Clouds. 
 The caricature of Socrates by Aristophanes is quite as near the 
 
 * It is proper to state that the novel view of the position and character of 
 the Sophists advanced in this Chapter was published five years before the 
 admirable Chapter of Mr. Grote s History of Greece, wherein that erudite 
 and thoughtful writer brings his learning and sagacity to the most thorough 
 elucidation of the question it has yet received. In claiming priority in this 
 point of historical criticism, it is right for me to acknowledge that Mr. Grote 
 substantiates his view with overwhelming force of argument and citation; 
 and in revising the present Chapter, I have been much indebted to his 
 criticisms and citations. 
 
THE SOPHISTS. 103 
 
 truth as the caricature of the Sophists by Plato ;* with this dif 
 ference, that in the one case it was inspired by political, in the 
 other by speculative antipathy. 
 
 On the Sophists we have only the testimony of antagonists ; 
 and the history of mankind clearly proves that the enmities 
 which arise from difference of race and country are feeble com 
 pared with the enmities which arise from difference of creed : 
 the former may be lessened by contact and intercourse ; the lat 
 ter are only aggravated. Plato had every reason to dislike the 
 Sophists and their opinions ; he therefore lost no occasion of 
 ridiculing the one and misrepresenting the other. And it is 
 worthy of especial remembrance that this hostility was peculiarly 
 Platonic, and not Socratic ; for, as Mr. Grote reminds us, there is 
 no such marked antithesis between Socrates and the Sophists in 
 the biographical work of Xenophon. Plato, however, and those 
 who followed Plato, misrepresented the Sophists, as in all ages 
 antagonists have misrepresented each other. 
 
 The Sophists were wealthy ; the Sophists were powerful ; the 
 Sophists were dazzling, rhetorical, and not profound. Interrogate 
 human nature above all, the nature of philosophers and ask 
 what will be the sentiment entertained respecting these Sophists 
 by their rivals. Ask the solitary thinker what is his opinion of 
 the showy, powerful, but shallow rhetorician who usurps the at 
 tention of the world. The man of convictions has at all times a 
 superb contempt for the man of mere oratorical or dialectical dis 
 play. The thinker knows that the world is ruled by Thought ; 
 yet he sees Expression gaining the world s attention. He knows, 
 perhaps, that he has within him thoughts pregnant with human 
 welfare ; yet he sees the giddy multitude intoxicated with the 
 enthusiasm excited by some plausible fallacy, clothed in enchant 
 ing language. He sees through the fallacy, but cannot make 
 others as clear-sio-hted. His warning is unheeded ; his wisdom 
 
 O O 
 
 is spurned ; his ambition is frustrated : the popular Idol is carried 
 
 * See in particular that amusing dialogue, the Eutliydemus, which is quit<; 
 as exaggerated as Aristophanes. 
 
104 THE SOPHISTS. 
 
 onward in triumph. The neglected thinker would not be human 
 if lie bore this with equanimity. He does not. He is loud and 
 angry in lamenting the fate of a world that can so be led ; loud 
 and angry in his contempt of one who could so lead it. Should 
 he become the critic or historian of his age, what exactness ought 
 we to expect in his account of the popular idol ? 
 
 Somewhat of this kind was the relation in which the Sophists 
 and Philosophers stood to each other. 
 
 The Sophists were hated by some because they were powerful, 
 by others because shallow ; and were misrepresented by all. In 
 later times their antagonism to Socrates has brought them ill- 
 will ; and this ill-will was strengthened by the very prejudice of 
 the name. Could a Sophist be other than a cheat and a liar ? 
 As well ask, could a Devil be other than Evil ? In the name of 
 Sophist all odious qualities are implied, and this implication per 
 verts our judgment. Call the Sophists Professors of Rhetoric, 
 which is their truest designation, and then examine their history; 
 it will produce a very different impression. 
 
 Much discussion has been devoted to the meaning of the word 
 Sophist, and to the supposed condemnation it everywhere carried. 
 * A Sophist, in the genuine sense of the word, was a wise man, a 
 clever man, one who stood prominently before the public as dis 
 tinguished for intellect or talent of some kind. Thus Solon and 
 Pythagoras are both called Sophists ; Thamyras, the skilful bard, 
 is called a Sophist ; Socrates is so denominated, not merely by 
 Aristophanes, but by ^Eschines. Aristotle himself calls Avistip- 
 pus, and Xenophon calls Antisthenes, both of them disciples of 
 Socrates, by that name. Xenophon, in describing a collection of 
 instructive books, calls them the writings of the old poets and 
 Sophists. Plato is alluded to as a Sophist even by Isocrates; 
 Isocrates himself was harshly criticised as a Sophist, and defends 
 both himself and his profession. Lastly, Timon, who bitterly sat 
 irized all the philosophers, designated them all, including Plato 
 and Aristotle, by the general name of Sophists."* This proves 
 
 * Grote, viii. 480. 
 
THE SOPHISTS. 105 
 
 the vagueness with which the term was employed : a like dis 
 crepancy might be detected in the modern use of the word " met 
 aphysician," which is a term of honor or reproach, according to 
 the speaker. Zeller says that the specific name of Sophist at 
 first merely designated one who taught philosophy for p<iy. The 
 philosophy might be good or bad ; the characteristic designated 
 by the epithet Sophistical was its demand of money-fees. The 
 narrower meaning was given it by Plato and Aristotle.* It mat 
 ters little, however, what was the meaning attached to the name. 
 Even were it proved that " Sophist" was as injurious in those 
 days as " Socialist" in our own, it would no more prove that the 
 Sophists really taught the doctrines attributed to them, than the 
 mingled terror and detestation with which " Socialist doctrines" 
 are described in almost all modern journals, pamphlets, speeches, 
 and reviews, prove that the Socialists really teach what is there 
 imputed to them. 
 
 We said it was a paradox to maintain that the Sophists really 
 promulgated the opinions usually attributed to them ; and by 
 this we mean that not only are some of those opinions nothing 
 but caricatures of what was really maintained, but also that, in 
 our interpretation of the others, we grossly err, by a confusion of 
 Christian with Heathen views of morality. Moderns cannot help 
 regarding as fearfully immoral, ideas which by the Greeks were 
 regarded as moral, or at least as not disreputable. For instance : 
 the Greek orators are always careful to impress upon their au 
 dience, that in bringing a charge against any one they are actu 
 ated by the strongest personal motives ; that they have been in 
 jured by the accused ; that they have good honest hatred as a 
 motive for accusing him. Can any thing be more opposite to 
 Christian feeling ? A Christian accuser is just as anxious to ex 
 tricate himself from any charge of being influenced by personal 
 considerations, as the Greek was of making the contrary evident. 
 A Christian seeks to place his motive to the account of abstract 
 justice ; and his statement would be received with great suspicion 
 
 * Philosoplde der Griechen, erster Theil, 1856, p. 750. 
 
106 THE SOPHISTS. 
 
 were it known that a personal feeling prompted it. The reason 
 of this difference is, that the Christian Ethics do not countenance 
 vengeance ; the Greek Ethics not only countenanced vengeance, 
 but very much reprobated informers : consequently, whoever 
 made an accusation had to clear himself from the ignominy 
 of being an informer, and to do so he showed his personal 
 motives. 
 
 This example will prepare the reader to judge, without pre 
 cipitancy, the celebrated boast attributed to the Sophists, that 
 they could "make the worse appear the better reason." This 
 was said to be the grand aim of their endeavors. This was 
 called their avowed object. To teach this art, it is said, they 
 demanded enormous sums ; and to learn it enormous sums were 
 readily given, and given by many. 
 
 These assertions are severally false. We will take the last first. 
 It is not true that enormous sums were demanded. Isocrates af 
 firms that their gains were never very high, but had been mali 
 ciously exaggerated, and were very inferior to the gains of dra 
 matic actors. Plato, a less questionable authority on such a 
 point, makes Protagoras describe his system of demanding re 
 muneration : " I make no stipulation beforehand ; when a pupil 
 parts from me, I ask from him such a sum as I think the time 
 and the circumstances warrant ; and I add, that if he deems the 
 demand too great, he has only to make up his own mind what is 
 the amount of improvement which my company has procured to 
 him, and what sum he considers an equivalent for it. I am con 
 tent to accept the sum so named by himself, only requiring him 
 to go into a Temple and make oath that it is his sincere belief." 
 Plato objects to this, and to every other mode of " selling wis 
 dom;" but, as Mr. Grote remarks, "such is not the way in which 
 the corrupters of mankind go to work." 
 
 But let us waive the question of payment, to consider the 
 teaching paid for. The Sophists, it is said, and believed, boasted 
 that they could teach the art of making the worse appear the 
 better reason ; and in one sense this is true ; but understanding 
 
THE SOPHISTS. 107 
 
 this art as moderns have understood it, and thereby forming* our 
 notion of the Sophists, let us ask, Is it credible that such an art 
 should have been avowed, and, being avowed, should be rewarded, 
 in a civilized state ? Let us think, for an instant, of what are its 
 moral, or rather immoral, consequences. Let us reflect how 
 utterly it destroys all morality ; how it makes the very laws but 
 playthings for dialectical subtlety. Then let us ask whether, as 
 we understand it, any State could have allowed such open blas 
 phemy, such defiance of the very fundamental principle of hon 
 esty and integrity, such demolition of the social contract. 
 
 Could any State do this ? and was Athens that State ? We 
 ask the reader to realize for himself some notion of the Athenians 
 as citizens, not merely as statues ; to think of them as human 
 beings, full of human passions, not simply as architects, sculptors, 
 poets, and philosophers. Having done this, we ask him whether 
 he can believe that these Athenians would have listened to a 
 man proclaiming all morality a farce, and all law a quibble 
 proclaiming that for a sum of money he could instruct any one 
 how to make an unjust cause appear a just one ? Would not 
 such a proclamation be answered with a shout of derision, or of 
 execration, according to the belief in his sincerity ? Could any 
 charlatan, in the corruptest age, have escaped lapidation for such 
 effrontery ? Yet the Sophists were wealthy, by many greatly 
 admired, and were selected as ambassadors on very delicate mis 
 sions. They were men of splendid talents, of powerful connec 
 tions. Around them flocked the rich and noble youth of every 
 city they entered. They were the intellectual leaders of their 
 age. If they had been what their adversaries describe them, 
 Greece could only have been an earthly Pandemonium, where 
 Belial was Kino-. 
 
 3 
 
 To believe this is beyond our power. Indeed such a paradox 
 it would be frivolous to refute, had it not been maintained for 
 centuries. Some have endeavored to escape it by maintaining 
 that the Sophists were held in profound contempt; and certain 
 passages are adduced from Plato in proof thereof. But the fact 
 
108 THE SOPHISTS. 
 
 appears to us to be the reverse of this. The wealth and power 
 of the Sophists the very importance implied in Plato s constant 
 polemic against them prove that they were not objects of con 
 tempt. Objects of aversion they might be to one party : the 
 successful always are. Objects of contempt they might be, to 
 some sincere and profound thinkers. The question here, how 
 ever, is not one relating to individuals, but to the State. It is 
 not whether Plato despised Gorgias, but whether Athens allowed 
 him to teach the most unblushing and undisguised immorality. 
 There have been daring speculators in all times. There have 
 been men shameless and corrupt. But that there has been any 
 speculator so daring as to promulgate what he knew to be gross 
 ly immoral, and so shameless as to avow it, is in such contra 
 diction to our experience of human nature as at once to be re 
 jected.* 
 
 It is evident, therefore, that in teaching the art of "making 
 the worse appear the better reason," the Sophists were not guilty 
 of any thing held to be reprehensible ; however serious thinkers, 
 such as Plato and Aristotle, might detest the shallow philosophy 
 from which it sprang. 
 
 But if this art was not reprehensible, except to severe minds, 
 such as Plato and Aristotle, it is clear that it could not have 
 been the art which its antagonists and defamers have declared it 
 to be. If, as we have shown, universal human nature would have 
 rebelled against a teaching which was avowedly immoral, the 
 fact that the Sophists were not stoned, but were highly consider 
 ed and well paid, is proof that their teaching was either not what 
 we are told it was, or that such teaching was not considered im 
 moral by the Greeks. Both of these negatives will be found 
 true. The teaching of the Sophists was demonstrably not what 
 
 * We are told by Sextus that Protagoras was condemned to death by 
 the Athenians, because lie professed himself unable to say whether the 
 Gods existed, or what they were, owing to the insufficiency of knowledge. 
 Yet the Athenians are supposed to have tolerated the Sophists as they aro 
 understood by moderns ! 
 
THE SOPHISTS. 109 
 
 is usually attributed to them, and what they did teach was very 
 far from being considered as immoral. Let us consider both 
 these points. 
 
 In the first place, Mr. Grote has shown beyond dispute that the 
 Sophists had no doctrine in common ; they formed no sect or 
 school of thought, such as modern Germans indicate under the 
 name of Die Sophist ik. There never was a Sophistik. Each 
 teacher had his own doctrinal views, and was not more bound to 
 the opinions of the others than a modern Barrister is bound to 
 share the theology of the Bar, or than a modern teacher of Elo 
 cution is bound to vote <m the same side with all other profes 
 sors. No sooner is this fact apprehended, than the absurdity of 
 attributing to " the Sophists" opinions expressed by one Sophist, 
 and that too in a caricature by Plato, is at once apparent. More 
 over, the absurdity of talking of the " sophistical doctrine" be 
 comes apparent, and we are forced to speak only of the " sophis 
 tical art" reserving for any special animadversion the special 
 name of the offending sinner. 
 
 The Sophists taught the art of disputation. The litigious 
 quibbling nature of the Greeks was the soil on which an art like 
 that was made to flourish. Their excessive love of lawsuits is 
 familiar to all versed in Grecian history. The almost farcical 
 representation of a lawsuit given by ./Eschylus in his otherwise 
 awful drama, The Eumenides, shows with what keen and lively 
 interest the audience witnessed even the very details of litigation. 
 For such an appetite food would not Io.ng be wanting. Corax 
 and Tisias wrote precepts of the art of disputation, Protagoras 
 followed with dissertations on the most remarkable points of 
 law ; and Gorgias composed a set accusation and apology for 
 every case that could present itself. People, in short, were 
 taught to be their own advocates. 
 
 This was by no means an immoral art. If it might or did 
 lead to immorality, few Greeks would have quarrelled with an 
 art so necessary. " Without some power of persuading or con 
 futing, or defending himself against accusations, or, in case of 
 
110 THE SOPHISTS. 
 
 need, accusing others, no man could possibly hold an ascendant 
 position. He had probably not less need of this talent for private 
 informal conversations to satisfy his own political partisans, than 
 for addressing the public assembly formally convoked. Even 
 commanding an army or a fleet, without any laws of war or 
 habit of discipline, his power of keeping up the good-humor, 
 confidence, and prompt obedience of his men, depended not a lit 
 tle on his command of speech. Nor was it only to the leaders 
 in political life that such an accomplishment was indispensable. 
 In all democracies, and probably in several Governments which 
 were not democracies but oligarchies of an open character, the 
 courts of justice were more or less numerous, and the procedure 
 oral and public; in Athens especially the Dicastcries were both 
 very numerous and were paid for attendance. Every citizen had 
 to go before them in person, without being able to send a paid 
 advocate in his place, if he either required redress for wrong 
 offered to himself, or was accused of wrong by another. There 
 was no man therefore who might not be cast or condemned, or 
 fail in his own suit, even with right on his side, unless he pos 
 sessed some power of speech to unfold his case to the Dicasts, as 
 well as to confute the falsehoods and disentangle the sophistry 
 of an opponent. To meet such liabilities, from which no citizen, 
 rich or poor, was exempt, a certain training in speech became 
 not less essential than a certain training in arms."* Thus was 
 
 O 
 
 it that even quibbling ingenuity, " making the worse appear the 
 better reason," became a sort of virtue, because it was obtained 
 only by that mastery over argument which was the Athenian s 
 ambition and necessity. We can send a paid advocate to quibble 
 for us, and do not therefore need such argumentative subtletv. 
 But let us ask, are barristers pronounced the " corruptors of man 
 kind," and is their art called the art of " making the worse appear 
 the better reason," as if that, and that alone, were the purport of 
 all pleading? Yet, in defending a criminal, does not every bar- 
 
 * Grote, viii. 463-4. 
 
THE SOPHISTS. Ill 
 
 rister exert his energy, eloquence, subtlety, and knowledge " to 
 make the worse appear the better reason ?" Do we reprobate 
 Sergeant Talfourd or Sir Frederick Thesiger, if they succeed in 
 gaining their client s cause, although that cause be a bad one ? 
 On the contrary, the badness of the cause makes the greatness of 
 the triumph. 
 
 Now let us suppose Sergeant Talfourd to give lessons in foren 
 sic oratory ; suppose him to announce to the world, that for a 
 certain sum he would instruct any man in the whole art of ex 
 position and debate, of the interrogation of witnesses, of the tricks 
 and turning-points of the law, so that the learner might become 
 his own advocate : this would be contrary to legal etiquette ; 
 but would it be immoral ? Grave men might, perhaps, object 
 that Mr. Talfourd was offering to make men cheats and scamps, 
 by enabling them to make the worse appear the better reason. 
 But this is a consequence foreseen by grave men, not acknowl 
 edged by the teacher. It is doubtless true that owing to oratory, 
 ingenuity, and subtlety, a scamp s cause is sometimes gained ; 
 but it is also true that many an honest man s cause is gained, 
 and many a scamp frustrated, by the same means. If forensic 
 oratory docs sometimes make the worse appear the better reason, 
 it also makes the good appear in all its strength. The former is 
 a necessary evil, the latter is the very object of a court of justice. 
 "If," says Callicles, in defence of Gorgias, to Socrates, " any one 
 should charge you with some crime which you had not commit 
 ted, and carry you off to prison, you would gape and stare, and 
 would not know what to say ; and, when brought to trial, how 
 ever contemptible and weak your accuser might be, if he chose 
 to indict you capitally, you would perish. Can this be wisdom, 
 which, if it takes hold of a gifted man, destroys the excellence of 
 his nature, rendering him incapable of preserving himself and 
 others from the greatest dangers, enabling his enemies to plunder 
 him of all his property, and reducing him to the situation of 
 those who, by a sentence of the Court, have been deprived of all. 
 their rights ?" 
 
112 THE SOPHISTS. 
 
 If it be admitted that Sergeant Talfourd s instruction in foren 
 sic oratory would not be immoral, however unusual, we have 
 only to extend the sphere and include politics, and represent to 
 ourselves the democratic state of Athens, where demagogues 
 were ever on the alert, and we shall be fully persuaded that the 
 art of the Sophists was riot considered immoral ; and, as further 
 proof, we select the passage in Plato s Republic^ as coming from 
 an unexceptionable source. 
 
 Socrates, speaking of the mercenary teachers whom the people 
 call Sophists, says : " These Sophists teach them only the things 
 which the people themselves profess in assemblies ; yet this they 
 call wisdom. It is as if a man had observed the instincts and 
 appetites of a great and powerful beast, in what manner to 
 approach it, how or why it is ferocious or calm, what cries it 
 makes, what tones appease and what tones irritate it; after 
 having learnt all this, and calling it wisdom, commenced teach 
 ing it without any knowledge of what is good, just, shameful and 
 unjust among these instincts and appetites; but calling that 
 good which flatters the animal, and that bad which irritates it ; 
 because he knows not the difference between what is good in 
 itself and that which is only relatively good."* 
 
 There is the usual vein of caricature in this description (which 
 is paraphrased in the Quarterly Revieio,\ and there given as if 
 the undoubted and imcxaggerated doctrines of the Sophists) ; 
 but it very distinctly sets forth the fact that the Sophists did not 
 teach any thing contrary to public morals, however their art may 
 have offended abstract morality. Indeed the very fact of their 
 popularity would prove that they did but respond to a public 
 want ; and because they responded to this want they were paid 
 by the public in money. Plato constantly harps upon their be 
 ing mercenaries ; but he was wealthy, and could afford such sar 
 casms. The Greeks paid their Musicians, Painters, Sculptors, 
 Physicians, Poets, and Teachers in Schools ; why therefore 
 
 * Plato, Rtp. vi. 291. -f No. xlii. p. 283. 
 
THE SOPHISTS. 113 
 
 should they not pay their Philosophers ? Zeno of Elea was 
 paid ; so was Democritus ; but both of these have been some 
 times included amongst the Sophists. We see nothing what 
 ever more derogatory in the acceptance of money by Philoso 
 phers than by Poets; and we know how the latter stipulated 
 for handsome payment. 
 
 Having done our best to show that the " Sophistical art" 
 that alone which the Sophists had in common was not im 
 moral, or at any rate was not regarded as immoral by the Greeks, 
 we will now see how the case stands with respect to the old 
 accusation of their having corrupted the Athenian youth, and of 
 their doctrines being essentially corrupting. 
 
 That the Athenians did not consider the Sophists as corruptors 
 of youth is unequivocally shown in two facts : they did not im 
 peach the Sophists, and they did impeach Socrates. When 
 Anaxagoras and Protagoras " sapped the foundations of morality" 
 by expressing opinions contrary to the religion of Athens, they 
 were banished ; but who impeached Gorgias, or Ilippias, or 
 Prodicus 1 
 
 The art however may have been essentially corrupting, al 
 though to contemporaries it did not appear so. We believe it 
 was so, if it is to be made responsible for all the consequences 
 which can logically be deduced from it. But " logical conse 
 quences" are unjust standards. Men are not responsible for 
 what others may consider their doctrines "lead to." It was on 
 the ground of such remote deduction that Socrates was put to 
 death ; and on sucli grounds the Sophists have been the by 
 word of reproach. Mr. Grote grapples directly with the fact, 
 where he declares Athens at the close of the Peloponnesian war 
 was not more corrupt than Athens in the days of Miltiades and 
 Aristides ; and had it been more corrupt, we should demand 
 quite other evidence than that usually alleged, before believing 
 the corruption due to the Sophists. 
 
 Why then did Plato speak of the Sophists with so much 
 asperity? Why did he consider their teaching so dangerous? 
 
114 THE SOPHISTS. 
 
 Because he differed from them in toto. He hated them for the 
 same reason that Calvin hated Servetus; but having a more 
 generous nature than Calvin, his hatred of their doctrines did 
 not assume so disgraceful a form. If his allegations are to con 
 demn the Sophists, they must equally condemn all the public men 
 of that day. " Whoever will read either the Gorgias or the Re 
 public, will see in how sweeping and indiscriminate a manner he 
 passes the sentence of condemnation. Not only the Sophists 
 and all the Rhetors, but all the Musicians and either Dithy- 
 ranibic or Tragic Poets, all the Statesmen past as well as present, 
 not excepting even the great Pericles, receive from his hand 
 one common stamp of dishonor."* But so far is he from con 
 sidering the Sophists as peculiar corruptors of Athenian morality, 
 "that he distinctly protests against that supposition in a remark 
 able passage of the Republic. It is, he says, the whole people or 
 the society, with its established morality, intelligence, and tone 
 of sentiment, which is intrinsically vicious; the teachers of such 
 a society must be vicious also, otherwise their teaching would 
 not be received ; and even if their private teaching were ever so 
 good, its effect would be washed away, except in some few privi 
 leged natures, by overwhelming influences. ! 
 
 The truth is that, in as far as the Sophists taught any doctrine 
 at all, their doctrine was ethical ; and to suppose men teaching 
 immoral ethics, i. e. systems of morality known by them to be 
 immoral, is absurd. To clear up this point we must endeavor to 
 ascertain what that doctrine was. 
 
 Plato s account is on the face of it a caricature, since it is im 
 possible that any man should have seriously entertained such a 
 doctrine. What Protagoras and Gorgias thought is not given, 
 but only a misrepresentation of what they thought. Plato seizes 
 hold of one of their doctrines, and, interpreting it in his own 
 
 * Grote, viii. 537. 
 
 t Ibid. p. 59. The passage referred to is Hepul. vi. 492 (page 388, ed. 
 Bekker), and the Sophists are mentioned by name as the teachers of whom 
 it treats. 
 
THE SOPHISTS. 115 
 
 way, makes it lead to the most outrageous absurdity and im 
 morality. This is as if Berkeley s doctrine had been transmitted 
 to us by Beattie. Berkeley, it is well known, denied the exist 
 ence of the external world, resolving it into a simple world of 
 ideas. Beattie taunted him with not having followed out his 
 principles, and with not having walked over a precipice. This 
 was a gross misrepresentation ; an ignoratio elenchi j Beattie 
 misunderstood the argument, and drew conclusions from his 
 misunderstanding. Now suppose him to have written a dialogue 
 on the plan of those of Plato : suppose him making Berkeley 
 expound his argument in the way he (Beattie) interpreted it, 
 with a flavor of exaggeration for the sake of effect, and of ab 
 surdity for the sake of easy refutation : how would he have made 
 Berkeley speak ? Somewhat thus : " Yes, I maintain that there is 
 no such external existence as that which men vulgarly believe in. 
 There is no world of matter, but only a world of ideas. If I 
 were to walk over a precipice, I should receive no injury ; it is 
 only an ideal precipice." 
 
 This is the interpretation of a Beattie ; how true it is most 
 men know : it is, however, quite as true as Plato s interpretation 
 of the Sophists. From Berkeley s works we can convict Beattie. 
 Plato we can convict from experience of human nature : experi 
 ence tells us that no man, far less any set of men, could seriously, 
 publicly, and constantly broach doctrines thought to be subver 
 sive of all morality, without incurring the heaviest penalties. 
 To broach immoral doctrines with the faintest prospect of success, 
 a man must do so in the name of rigid Morality. To teach 
 immorality, and openly to avow that it is immoral, was, accord 
 ing to Plato, the office of the Sophists;* a statement which 
 carries with it its own contradiction. 
 
 * This passage in the Protagoras is often referred to as a proof of the 
 shamelessness of the Sophists, and sometimes of the ill-fuvor with which 
 they were regarded. It is to us only a proof of Plato s tendency to caricature. 
 
116 THE SOPHISTS. 
 
 II. PROTAGORAS. 
 
 Nothing can be more erroneous than to isolate the Sophists 
 from previous teachers, as if they were no direct product of the 
 speculative efforts which preceded them. They illustrate the 
 crisis at which philosophy had arrived. They took the negative, 
 as Socrates took the positive issue out of the dilemma. 
 
 Protagoras, the first who is said to have avowed himself a 
 Sophist, was born at Abdera, where Democritus first noticed him 
 as a porter, who showed great address in inventing the knot.* 
 The consequence was that Democritus gave him instructions in 
 Philosophy. The story is apocryphal, but indicates a connection 
 to have existed between the speculations of the two thinkers. 
 Let us suppose Protagoras to have accepted the doctrine of De 
 mocritus; with him to have rejected the unity of the Eleatics 
 and to have maintained the existence of the Many. With this 
 he also learned that thought is sensation, and that all knowledge 
 is therefore phenomenal. There were two theories in the Demo- 
 critean system, which he could not accept, viz. the Atomic and 
 Reflective. These two imply each other. Reflection is necessary 
 for the idea of Atoms ; and it is from the idea of Atoms not per 
 ceived by the sense, that the existence of Reflection is proved. 
 Protagoras rejected the Atoms, and could therefore reject Reflec 
 tion. He said that Thought was Sensation, and all knowledge 
 consequently individual. 
 
 Did not the place of his birth no less than the traditional story 
 lead one to suppose some connection with Democritus, we might 
 feel authorized to adopt certain expressions of Plato, and consider 
 Protagoras to have derived his doctrine from Ileraclitus. He 
 certainly resembles the last-named in the main results to which 
 his speculations led him. Be that as it may, the fact is unques- 
 
 * What the precise signification of ru>>? is we are unable to say. A porter s 
 knot, such as is now used, is the common interpretation. Perhaps Pro 
 tagoras had contrived a sort of wooden machine such as the glazier s use, 
 and which is used by the porters in Greece and Italy to this day. 
 
PKOTAGOEAS. 117 
 
 tionable, that he maintained the doctrine of Thought being iden 
 tical with and limited by Sensation. Now, this doctrine implies 
 that every thing is true relatively every sensation is a true sen 
 sation ; and, as there is nothing but sensation, knowledge is in 
 evitably fleeting and imperfect. In a melancholy mind, as in 
 that of Heraclitus, such a doctrine would deepen sadness, till it 
 produced despair. In minds of greater elasticity, in men of greater 
 confidence, such a doctrine would lead to an energetic skepticism. 
 In Protagoras it became the formula : " Man is the measure of 
 all things." 
 
 Sextus Empiricus gives the psychological doctrine of Protago 
 ras very explicitly ; and his account may be received without 
 suspicion. We translate a portion of it : 
 
 "Matter," says Protagoras, "is in a perpetual flux ;* whilst it 
 undergoes augmentations and losses, the senses also are modified, 
 according to the age and disposition of the body." He said, also, 
 that the reasons of all phenomena (appearances) resided in mat 
 ter as substrata (TOVJ Xoyouj TUVTWV TWV <povo|Jivwv vtfoxsTtfQai sv <r/f 
 8X77) ; so that matter, in itself, might be whatever it appeared to 
 each. But men have different perceptions at different times, ac 
 cording to the changes in the thing perceived. Whoever is in a 
 healthy state perceives things such as they appear to all others 
 in a healthy state, and vice versa. A similar course holds with 
 respect to different ages, as well as in sleeping and waking. Man 
 is therefore the criterion of that which exists ; all that is perceiv 
 ed by him exists, that which is perceived by no man does not 
 exist 1 ! 
 
 Now, conceive men conducted by what they thought irresisti 
 ble arguments to such a doctrine as the above, and then see how 
 naturally all the skepticism of the Sophists flows from it. The 
 difference between the Sophists and the Skeptics was this : they 
 
 * IV; v vXtjv pVff.Tfiv thai, an expression which, if not borrowed by Sextus 
 from Plato, would confirm the conjecture above respecting Heraclitus, as 
 the source of Protagoras s system. 
 
 f Ifypot. Pyrrhon. p. 44. 
 
118 THE SOPHISTS. 
 
 were both convinced of the insufficiency of all knowledge, but 
 the Skeptics contented themselves with the conviction, while 
 the Sophists, satisfied with the vanity of all endeavor to pene 
 trate the mysteries of the universe, began to consider their rela 
 tions to other men : they devoted themselves to politics and 
 rhetoric.* If there was no possibility of Truth, there only re 
 mained the possibility of Persuasion. If one opinion was as true 
 as another that is, if neither were true, it was nevertheless de 
 sirable, for the sake of Society, that certain opinions should pre 
 vail ; and, if Logic was powerless, Rhetoric was efficient. Hence 
 Protagoras is made to say, by Plato, that the wise man is the 
 physician of the soul : he cannot indeed induce truer thoughts 
 into the mind, since all thoughts are equally true ; but he can 
 induce healthier and more profitable thoughts. He can in the 
 same way heal Society, since by the power of oratory he can in 
 troduce good useful sentiments in the place of those base and 
 hurtful.f 
 
 This doctrine may be false ; but is it not a natural consequence 
 of the philosophy of the epoch ? It may be immoral ; but is it 
 necessarily the bold and shameless immorality attributed to the 
 Sophists ? To us it appears to be neither more nor less than the 
 result of a sense of the radical insufficiency of knowledge. Pro 
 tagoras had spent his youth in the study of philosophy ; he had 
 found that study vain and idle ; he had utterly rejected it, and 
 had turned his attention elsewhere. A man of practical ten 
 dencies, he wanted a practical result. Failing in this, he sought 
 another path, firmly impressed with the necessity of having 
 something more definite wherewith to enter the world of action. 
 Plato could see no nobler end in life than that of contemplating 
 Being, than that of familiarizing the mind with the eternal 
 Good, the Just, and the Beautiful, of which all goodness, jus 
 tice, and beautiful things were the images. With such a view 
 of life it was natural that he should despise the skepticism of the 
 
 * See Plato s definition of the sophistical art, Sophista, p. 146. 
 t Thewtetus, p. 228. 
 
PROTAGORAS. 119 
 
 Sophists. This skepticism is clearly set forth in the following 
 passage from the speech of Callicles, in Plato s Goryias : 
 
 u Philosophy is a graceful thing when it is moderately culti 
 vated in youth ; but, if any one occupies himself with it beyond 
 the proper age, it ruins him ; for, however great may be his nat 
 ural capacity, if he philosophizes too long he must of necessity be 
 inexperienced in all those things which one who would be great 
 and eminent must be experienced in. He must be unacquainted 
 with the laws of his country, and with the mode of influencing 
 other men in the intercourse of life, whether private or public, 
 and with the pleasures and passions of men ; in short, with hu 
 man characters and manners. And when such men are called 
 upon to act, whether on a private or public occasion, they expose 
 themselves to ridicule, just as politicians do when they come to 
 your conversation, and attempt to cope w r ith you in argument ; 
 for every man, as Euripides says, occupies hirnself with that in 
 which he finds himself superior ; that in which he is inferior he 
 avoids, and speaks ill of it, but praises what he excels in, think 
 ing that in doing so he is praising himself. The best thing, in 
 my opinion, is to partake of both. It is good to partake of phi 
 losophy by way of education, and it is not ungraceful in a young 
 man to philosophize. But, if he continues to do so when he 
 grows older, he becomes ridiculous, and I feel towards him as I 
 should towards a grown person who lisped and played at childish 
 plays. When I see an old man still continuing to philosophize, 
 I think he deserves to be flogged. However great his natural 
 talents, he is under the necessity of avoiding the assembly and 
 public places, where, as the poet says, men become eminent, and 
 to hide himself, and to pass his life whispering to two or three 
 striplings in a corner, but never speaking out any thing great, 
 and bold, and liberal." 
 
 That Protagoras, no less than Prodicus,* was a teacher of ex- 
 
 * Frodicus is especially excepted by Aristophanes in his sweeping con 
 demnation of the Sophists ; and, indeed, the author of the well-known para 
 ble, The Choice of Hercules, must command the respect even of antagonists. 
 
120 THE SOPHISTS. 
 
 cellent morality, if not of the highest abstract views of the Good, 
 is clearly made out, not only in Mr. Grote s work, but in that of 
 Zeller, where the Sophists are unfavorably treated on the whole,* 
 and is indeed supported by the testimony of Plato and Xenoplion. 
 The ethics of the Sophists may not have been of a very lofty 
 kind, but they were considered, even by enemies, to be adapted 
 to the exigencies of the day. They doubted the possibility of 
 Philosophy ; they were assured only of the advantage of Oratory. 
 In their visits to various cities, they could not fail to remark 
 the variety of laws and ordinances in the different States. 
 This variety impressed them with a conviction that there were no 
 such things as Plight and Wrong by nature, but only by conven 
 tion. This, therefore, became a fundamental precept with them. 
 It was but a corollary of their dogma respecting Truth. For 
 man there was no Eternal Right, because there "vvas no Eternal 
 Truth ; TO Sixaiov xou TO cuV^pov ou q/vtfsi ccXXo, vo/xoi : law was but 
 the law of each city. " That which appears just and honorable 
 to each city, is so for that city, as long as the opinion is enter 
 tained," says Protagoras in the T/iecetetus (p. 229). This denial 
 of abstract Truth and abstract Justice is easily pushed to absurd 
 and immoral consequences ; but we have no evidence that such 
 consequences were maintained by the Sophists. Plato often 
 judges them by such consequences ; but independently of the 
 want of any confidence in his representations as faithful, we can 
 often detect in Plato himself evidences of the exaggeration of his 
 general statements. Thus, he on various occasions makes the 
 Sophists maintain that Might is Right. Moderns, who always 
 accept him as positive testimony, have therefore unanimously re 
 peated this statement. Yet, it is obvious that they could not 
 have held this opinion except in a very qualified form. And, in 
 
 * See PJiilos. der Grieclien, i. 775. In one of his notes, Zeller alludes to 
 Steinhart s doubt respecting the authorship of the Myth, attributed by Plato 
 to Protagoras, as being " quite worthy of Plato himself. This is very char 
 acteristic of the ordinary tone of commentators, and we may well ask with 
 Zeller, " Aber warum soil er fur Protagoras zu gut seyn ? 
 
TROT AG OR AS. 121 
 
 the first Book of the Republic, Thrasymachus the Sophist is made 
 to explain his meaning; namely, that Justice is the law ordained 
 by the party which is strongest in the State. Thus, in a democ 
 racy the enactments of the people are the laws : these laws are 
 for their advantage ; therefore just. Now, in this admission, by 
 Plato, of a qualification of the abstract formula, " Might is Right," 
 we see evidence of that formula never having been promulgated 
 by the Sophists ; it was only an interpretation by Plato. What 
 they meant was this : All law is but convention : the convention 
 of each State is therefore just for it ; and, inasmuch as any such 
 convention must necessarily be ordained by the strongest party, 
 i. e. must be the will of the many, so we may see that justice is 
 but the advantage of the strongest. 
 
 The foregoing will, we trust, suffice to show that the tenets 
 attributed to them by Plato, are often caricatures, and admit of 
 very different explanation. Well might Gorgias exclaim, on 
 reading the Dialogue which bears his name, " I did not recognize 
 myself. The young man, however, has great talent for satire." 
 
 The Sophists were the natural production of the opinions of 
 the epoch. In them we see the first energetic protest against the 
 possibility of metaphysical science. This protest, however, must 
 not be confounded with the protest of Bacon must not be mis 
 taken for the germ of positive philosophy. It was the protest._of 
 baffled minds. The Philosophy of the day led to skepticism; 
 but with Skepticism no energetic man could remain contented. 
 Philosophy was therefore denounced, not because a surer, safer 
 path of inquiry had been discovered, but because Philosophy was 
 found to lead nowhither. The skepticism of the Sophists was a 
 skepticism with which no great speculative intellect could be 
 contented. Accordingly with Socrates Philosophy again re 
 asserted her empire. 
 
 6 
 
FOURTH EPOCH. 
 
 A NEW ERA OPENED BY THE INVENTION OF A NEW 
 METHOD. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 S O CE AXES. 
 
 I. THE LIFE OF SOCRATES. 
 
 WHILST the brilliant Sophists were reaping money and renown 
 by protesting against Philosophy, and teaching the word-jugglery 
 which they called Disputation and Oratory, there suddenly ap 
 peared amongst them a strange antagonist. He was a perfect 
 contrast to them. They had slighted Truth ; they had denied 
 her. He had made her his soul s mistress ; and, with patient 
 labor, with untiring energy, did his large wise soul toil after per 
 fect communion with her. They had deserted Truth for Money 
 and Renown. He had remained constant to her in poverty. 
 They professed to teach every thing. He only knew that he 
 knew nothing and denied that any thing could be taught. Yet 
 he believed he could be of service to his fellow-men ; not by 
 teaching, but by helping them to learn. His mission was to 
 examine the thoughts of others. This he humorously explained 
 by reference to his mother s profession, namely that of a midwife. 
 What she did for women in labor he could do for men pregnant 
 with ideas. He was an accoucheur of ideas. lie assisted ideas 
 in their birth, and, having brought them into light, he examined 
 them, to see if they were fit to live : if true, they were welcomed ; 
 
THE LIFE OF SOCRATES. 123 
 
 if false, destroyed. And for this assistance lie demanded no pe 
 cuniary recompense, but steadfastly refused every bribe of the 
 kind. 
 
 He was the declared questioner of all men who were renowned 
 for wisdom, or any intellectual eminence ; and they were some 
 what puzzled with their new antagonist. Who is he ? Socrates, 
 the son of Sophroniscus. What does he ? Converse. For what 
 purpose ? To expose error. 
 
 Some gorgeous Sophists, in their flowing robes, followed by 
 crowds of eager listeners, treated the poor and humbly-clad Soc 
 rates with ineffable contempt. He was rude and ungainly in 
 his movements; unlike all respectable citizens in his habits. 
 Barefoot, he wandered about the streets of Athens absorbed in 
 thought ; sometimes he stood still for hours, fixed in meditation. 
 Every day he strolled into the market-place, and disputed with 
 all who were willing. In appearance he resembled a Silenus. 
 His flattened nose, with wide and upturned nostrils, his project 
 ing eyeballs, his thick and sensual lips, his squab figure and un- ~" 
 wieldy bell) , were all points upon which ridicule might fasten. 
 Yet when this Silenus spoke there was a witchery in his tongue 
 which fascinated those whom his appearance had disgusted ; and 
 Alcibiades declared that he was forced to stop his ears and flee 
 away, that he might not sit down beside Socrates and " grow old 
 in listening to his talk." Let us hear Alcibiades describe him.* 
 
 " I will begin the praise of Socrates by comparing him to a cer 
 tain statue. Perhaps he will think that this statue is introduced 
 for the sake of ridicule ; but I assure you that it is necessary for 
 the illustration of truth. I assert, then, that Socrates is exactly 
 like those Silenuses that sit in the sculptor s shops, and which 
 are carved holding flutes or pipes, but which, when divided in 
 two, are found to contain withinside the images of the gods. I 
 assert that Socrates is like the Satyr Marsyas ; that your form 
 and appearance are like these Satyrs, I think that even you will 
 
 * Plato, Si/mposiuw; Shelley s translation. 
 
124 SOCRATES. 
 
 not venture to deny ; and how like you are to them in all other 
 things, now hear. Are you not scornful and petulant ? If you 
 deny this, I will bring witnesses. Are you not a piper, and far 
 more wonderful a one than he ? for Marsyas, and whoever now 
 pipes the music that he taught, that music which is of heaven, 
 and described as being taught by Marsyas, enchants men through 
 the power of the mouth ; for, if any musician, be he skilful or 
 not, awakens this music, it alone enables him to retain the minds 
 of men, and from the divinity of its nature makes evident those 
 who are in want of the Gods and initiation. You differ only 
 from Marsyas in this circumstance, that you effect without instru 
 ments, by mere words, all that he can do ; for, when we hear 
 Pericles, or any other accomplished orator, deliver a discourse, 
 no one, as it were, cares any thing about it. But when any one 
 hears you, or even your words related by another, though ever so 
 rude and unskilful a speaker, be that person a woman, man, or 
 child, we are struck and retained, as it were, by the discourse 
 clinging to our minds. 
 
 " If I was not afraid that I am a great deal too drunk, I would 
 confirm to you by an oath the strange effects which I assure you 
 I have suffered from his words, and suffer still ; for, when I hear 
 him speak, my heart leaps up far more than the hearts of those 
 who celebrate the Corybantic Mysteries ; my tears are poured 
 out as he talks a thing I have seen happen to many others be 
 sides myself. I have heard Pericles and other excellent orators, 
 and have been pleased with their discourses, but I suffered noth 
 ing of this kind ; nor was my soul ever on those occasions dis 
 turbed and filled with self-reproach, as if it were slavishly laid 
 prostrate. But this Marsyas here has often affected me in the 
 way I describe, until the life which I lead seemed hardly worth 
 living. Do not deny it, Socrates ; for I well know that if even 
 now I chose to listen to you, I could not resist, but should again 
 suffer the same effects ; for, my friends, he forces me to confess, 
 that while I myself am still in want of many things, I neglect 
 my own necessities, and attend to those of the Athenians. I stop 
 
THE LIFE OF SOCRATES. 125 
 
 my ears, therefore, as from the Sirens, and flee away as fast as 
 possible, that I may not sit clown beside him and grow old in 
 listening to his talk; for this man has reduced me to feel the 
 sentiment of shame, which I imagine no one would readily be 
 lieve was in me ; he alone inspires me with remorse and awe ; 
 for I feel in his presence my incapacity of refuting what he says, 
 or of refusing to do that which he directs ; but, when I depart 
 from him, the glory which the multitude confers overwhelms me. 
 I escape, therefore, and hide myself from him, and when I see 
 him I am overwhelmed with humiliation, because I have neglect 
 ed to do what I have confessed to him ought to be done ; and 
 often and often have I wished that he were no longer to be seen 
 among men. But, if that were to happen, I well know that I 
 should suffer far greater pain ; so that where I can turn, or what 
 I can do with this man, I know not. All this have I and many 
 others suffered from the pipings of this Satyr. 
 
 " And observe how like he is to what I said, and what a won 
 derful power he possesses. I know that there is not one of you 
 who is aware of the real nature of Socrates ; but since I have be 
 gun, I will make him plain to you. You observe how passion 
 ately Socrates affects the intimacy of those who are beautiful, 
 and how ignorant he professes himself to be ; appearances in 
 themselves excessively Silenic. This, my friends, is the external 
 form with which, like one of the sculptured Sileni, he has clothed 
 himself; for, if you open him, you will find within admirable 
 temperance and wisdom : for he cares not for mere beauty, but 
 despises more than any one can imagine all external possessions, 
 whether it be beauty, or wealth, or glory, or any other thing for 
 which the multitude felicitates the possessor. He esteems these 
 things, and us who honor them, as nothing, and lives among 
 men, making all the objects of their admiration the playthings of 
 his irony. But I know not if any one of you have ever seen the 
 divine images which are within, when he has been opened and 
 is serious. I have seen them, and they are so supremely beauti 
 ful, so golden, so divine and wonderful, that every thing which 
 
126 SOCRATES. 
 
 Socrates commands surely ought to be obeyed, even like the voice 
 of a God. 
 
 " Many other and most wonderful qualities might well be 
 praised in Socrates, but such as these might singly be attributed 
 to others. But that which is unparalleled in Socrates is, that he 
 is unlike, and above comparison with all other men, whether 
 those who have lived in ancient times, or those who exist now ; 
 for, it may be conjectured, that Brasidas and many others are 
 such as was Achilles. Pericles deserves comparison \vith Nestor 
 and Antenor ; and other excellent persons of various times may, 
 with probability, be drawn into comparison with each other. 
 But to such a singular man as this, both himself and his dis 
 courses are so uncommon, no one, should he seek, would find a 
 parallel among the present or the past generations of mankind ; 
 unless they should say that he resembled those with whom I 
 lately compared him ; for, assuredly, he and his discourses are 
 like nothing but the Sileni and the Satyrs. At first I forgot to 
 make you observe how like his discourses are to those Satyrs 
 when they are opened ; for, if any one will listen to the talk of 
 Socrates, it will appear to him at first extremely ridiculous ; the 
 phrases and expressions which he employs fold around his exte 
 rior the skin, as it were, of a rude and wanton Satyr. He is al 
 ways talking about brass-founders, and leather-cutters, and skin- 
 dressers ; and this is his perpetual custom, so that any dull and 
 unobservant person might easily laugh at his discourse. But, if 
 any one should see it opened, as it were, and get within the sense 
 of his words, he would then find that they alone of all that enters 
 into the mind of man to utter, had a profound and persuasive 
 meaning, and that they were most divine; and that they pre 
 sented to the mind innumerable images of every excellence, and 
 that they tended towards objects of the highest moment, or rather 
 towards all that he who seeks the possession of what is supremely 
 beautiful and good need regard as essential to the accomplish 
 ment of his ambition. 
 
 " These are the things, my friends, for which I praise Socrates." 
 
THE LIFE OF SOCRATES. 127 
 
 This Silenus was the most formidable antagonist that the Soph 
 ists had encountered ; but this is small praise for him who was 
 hereafter to become one of the most reverenced names in the 
 world s Pantheon who was to give a new impulse to the human 
 mind, and leave, as an inheritance to mankind, the grand exam 
 ple of an heroic life devoted to Truth and crowned with mar 
 tyrdom. 
 
 Every thing about Socrates is remarkable personal appear 
 ance, moral physiognomy, position, object, method, life and 
 death. Fortunately, his character and his tendencies have been 
 so clearly pictured in the works of Plato and Xenophon, that al 
 though the portrait may be flattered, we are sure of its resem 
 blance. 
 
 He was born B.C. 469, the son of Sophroniscus, a sculptor,* 
 and Phasnarete, a midwife. His parents, though poor, managed, 
 it is said, to give him the ordinary education. Besides which, 
 he learned his father s art ; whether he made any progress in it 
 we are unable to say : probably not, as he relinquished it early. 
 A group of Graces, which tradition attributed to the chisel of 
 Socrates, was exhibited for centuries among the art treasures of 
 the Acropolis ; but we have of course no means of determining 
 the authenticity of the relic. Diogenes Laertius tells us that 
 Crito, a wealthy Athenian, charmed with the manners of Soc 
 rates, is said to have withdrawn him from the shop, and to have 
 educated him. This. Crito afterwards became a reverential dis 
 ciple of the great genius he had discovered. 
 
 Considering that we have his own assertion as evidence of his 
 having early studied Physics, for which he had an astonishing 
 longing, and considering further that he so entirely relinquished 
 that study, even declaring it to be impious,f it is of little impor 
 tance to discuss, with German critics, whether he did or did not 
 
 * Dr. Wiggers says, that Timon the Sillograph calls Socrates, with a sneer, 
 Xido&os, "a stone-scraper." He forgets that At0o<5os was one of the names 
 for a sculptor, as Lucian informs us in the account of his early life. 
 
 t In Xenophon, "madness." Memorab., lib. i. c. 1. 
 
128 SOCRATES. 
 
 learn from Archelaus and Anaxagoras. That he learned oratory 
 from Prodicus* is not discountenanced by the passage in Xeno- 
 phon,f where he is made to say, " You despise me because you 
 have squandered money upon Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus, and 
 so many others, in return for their teaching ; whereas I am forced 
 to draw my philosophy from my own brain ;" for certainly, if 
 any one can claim originality, it is Socrates : his philosophy he 
 learned from no one. He struck into a new path. Instead of 
 trying to account for the existence of the universe, he was ever 
 craving, as Mr. Maurice well says, for a light to show him his 
 own path through it J 
 
 He did not commence teaching till about the middle of his 
 career. We have but few records of the events which filled up 
 the period between his first leaving his father and his first teach 
 ing. One of these was his marriage with Xanthippe, and the 
 domestic squabbles which ensued. She bore him three children. 
 The violence of her temper, and the equanimity with which he 
 submitted to it, are proverbial. She has become a type ; her 
 name is synonymous with Shrew. He gave a playful explana 
 tion of his choice by remarking, that "those who wish to become 
 skilled in horsemanship select the most spirited horses; after 
 being able to bridle those, they believe they can bridle all others. 
 Now, as it is my wish to live and converse with men, I married 
 this woman, being firmly convinced that in case I should be able 
 to endure her, I should be able to endure all others." 
 
 Before he gave himself up to teaching, he performed military 
 service in three battles, and distinguished himself in each. In 
 the first, the prize of bravery was awarded to him. He relin 
 quished his claim in favor of Alcibiades, whom it might encour 
 age to deserve such honor. Various anecdotes are related of him 
 during his campaigns. In spite of the severity of winter, when 
 the ice and snow were thick upon the ground, he went barefoot 
 
 * Plato, Meno, p. 96. t Convivium, i. &. 
 
 \ Maurice, Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, i. 113, 
 Xenophon, Convivium, iL 
 
THE LIFE OF SOCRATES. 129 
 
 and lightly clad. On one occasion he stood before the camp 
 for four-and-twenty hours on the same spot, wrapt in medi 
 tation. Plato has given us a beautiful description of Soc 
 rates during the campaign, which we quote in the translation 
 by Shelley : 
 
 "At one time we were fellow-soldiers, and had our mess to 
 gether in the camp before Potidaea. Socrates there overcame 
 not only me, but every one besides, in endurance of toils : when, 
 as happens in a campaign, we were reduced to few provisions, 
 there were none who could sustain hunger like Socrates: and, 
 when we had plenty, he alone seemed to enjoy our military fare. 
 He never drank much willingly ; but, when he was compelled, lie 
 conquered all even in that to which he was least accustomed, 
 and, what is most astonishing, no person ever saw Socrates drunk 
 either then or at any other time. In the depth of winter (and 
 the winters there are excessively rigid) he sustained calmly in 
 credible hardships : and, amongst other things, whilst the frost 
 was intolerably severe, and no one went out of their tents, or, if 
 they went out, wrapt themselves up carefully and put fleeces 
 under their feet, and bound their legs with hairy skins, Socrates 
 went out only with the same cloak on that he usually wore, and 
 walked barefoot upon the ice, more easily indeed than those who 
 had sandalled themselves so delicately : so that the soldiers 
 thought that he did it to mock their want of fortitude. It would 
 indeed be worth while to commemorate all that this brave man 
 did and endured in that expedition. 
 
 "In one instance he was seen early in the morning, standing 
 in one place, wrapt in meditation, and, as he seemed not to be 
 able to unravel the subject of his thoughts, lie still continued to 
 stand as inquiring and discussing within himself; and, when 
 noon came, the soldiers observed him, and said to one another, 
 Socrates has been standing there thinking, ever since the morn 
 ing. At last some lonians came to the spot, and, having supped, 
 as it was summer, bringing their blankets, they lay down to sleep 
 in the cool : the observed that Socrates continued to stand there 
 
130 SOCRATES. 
 
 the whole night until morning, and that, when the sun rose, he 
 saluted it with a prayer, and departed. 
 
 " I ought not to omit what Socrates is in battle ; for, in that 
 battle after which the Generals decreed to me the prize of cour 
 age, Socrates alone of all men was the savior of my life, stand 
 ing by me when I had fallen and was wounded, and preserving 
 both myself and my arms from the hands of the enemy. On 
 that occasion I entreated the Generals to decree the prize, as it 
 was most due, to him. And this, O Socrates, you cannot deny, 
 that when the Generals, wishing to conciliate a person of my 
 rank, desired to give me the prize, you were far more earnestly 
 desirous than the Generals, that this glory should be attributed, 
 not to yourself, but me. 
 
 " But to see Socrates when our army was defeated and scat 
 tered in flight at Delium, was a spectacle worthy to behold. On 
 that occasion I was among the cavalry, and he on foot, heavily 
 armed. After the total rout of our troops, he and Laches retreated 
 together : I came up by chance, and, seeing them, bade them be 
 of good cheer, for that I would not leave them. As I was on 
 horseback, and therefore less occupied by a regard of my own 
 situation, I could better observe, than at Potidaea, the beautiful 
 spectacle exhibited by Socrates on this emergency. How supe 
 rior was he to Laches in presence of mind and courage ! Your 
 representation of him on the stage, O Aristophanes, was not 
 wholly unlike his real self on this occasion ; for he walked and 
 darted his regards around with a majestic composure, looking 
 tranquilly both on his friends and enemies; so that it was evi 
 dent to every one, even from afar, that whoever should venture 
 to attack him would encounter a desperate resistance. He and 
 his companion thus departed in safety ; for those who are scat 
 tered in flight are pursued and killed, whilst men hesitate to 
 touch those who exhibit such a countenance as that of Socrates, 
 even in defeat." 
 
 We must cast a glance at his public career. His doctrine be 
 ing Ethical, there is great importance in seeing how far it was 
 
THE LIFE OF SOCRATES. 131 
 
 practical. He proclaimed the supremacy of Virtue over all other 
 rules of life ; he exhorted men to a brave and unflinching adhe 
 sion to Justice, as the only real happiness ; he declared that the 
 unjust alone are unhappy. Was he himself virtuous ? was he 
 happy ? The question is pertinent ; fortunately it can be an 
 swered. 
 
 His bravery as a soldier was surpassed by his bravery as a 
 Senator. He had that high moral courage which can brave not 
 only death, but opinion. lie presents an example, almost unique 
 in history, of a man who could defy a tyrant, and also defy a 
 tyrannical mob, an impetuous, imperious mob. The Thirty Ty 
 rants on one occasion summoned him, together with four others, 
 to the Tholus, the place in which the Prytanes took their meals. 
 He was there commanded to bring Leon of Salamis to Athens. 
 Leon had obtained the right of Athenian citizenship, but fearing 
 the rapacity of the tyrants, had retired to Salamis. To bring 
 back Leon, Socrates steadily refused. He says himself, that the 
 "Government, although it was so powerful, did not frighten me 
 into doing any thing unjust; but, when we came out of the Tho 
 lus, the four went to Salamis and took Leon, but I went away 
 home. And perhaps I should have suffered death on account of 
 this, if the Government had not soon been broken up." 
 
 On another occasion he braved the clamorous mob. He was 
 then a Senator, the only State office he ever held. The Athenian 
 Senate consisted of the Five Hundred who were elected from the 
 ten tribes. During a period of thirty-five or thirty-six days the 
 members of each tribe in turn had the presidency, and were call 
 ed Prytanes. Of the fifty Prytanes, ten had the presidency every 
 seven days ; each day one of these ten enjoyed the highest dig 
 nity, with the name of Espitdtes. He laid every thing before 
 the assembly of the people, put the question to the vote, examined 
 the votes, and, in short, conducted the whole business of the as 
 sembly. He enjoyed this power, however, only for a single day ; 
 for that day he was intrusted with the keys of the citadel and 
 the treasury of the republic. 
 
132 SOCEATES. 
 
 Socrates was Epistates on the day when the unjust sentence 
 was to be passed on the Admirals who had neglected to bury the 
 dead after the battle of Argimisae. To take care of the burial of 
 the dead was a sacred duty.* The shades of the unburied were 
 believed to wander restlessly for a hundred years on the banks 
 of the Styx. After the battle of Arginusa?, a violent storm arose, 
 which prevented the Admirals from obtaining the bodies of the 
 slain. In order to remedy this, they left behind them some infe 
 rior officers (Taxiarchs) to attend to the office. But the violence 
 of the storm rendered it impossible. The Admirals were tried. 
 They produced the evidence of the pilots to show that the tem 
 pest had rendered the burial impracticable ; besides which they 
 had left the Taxiarchs behind, so that the blame, if any, ought to 
 fall on the latter. This produced its natural effect on the people, 
 who would instantly have given an acquittal if put to the vote. 
 But the accusers managed to adjourn the assembly, pretending 
 that it was too dark to count the show of hands. In the mean 
 while the enemies of the Admirals did all they could to inflame 
 the minds of the people. The lamentations and mournful ap 
 pearance of the kinsmen of the slain, who had been hired for the 
 tragic scene, had a powerful influence on the assembly. The 
 votes were to be given on the general question, whether the Ad 
 mirals had done wrong in not taking up the bodies of the 
 dead ; and, if they should be condemned by the majority (so the 
 Senate ordained), they were to be put to death and their prop 
 erty confiscated. But to condemn all by one vote was contrary 
 to law. The Prytanes, with Socrates at their head, refused to 
 put the illegal question to the vote. The people became furious, 
 and loudly demanded that those who resisted their pleasure, 
 should themselves be brought to trial. The Prytanes wavered, 
 yielded. Socrates alone remained firm, defying the threats of 
 the mob. He stood there to administer justice. lie would not 
 administer injustice. In consequence of his refusal, the ques- 
 
 * The Antigone of Sophocles is founded on the sacredness of this duty. 
 
THE LIFE OF SOCRATES. 133 
 
 tion could not be put to the vote, and the assembly was again 
 adjourned. The next day a new Epistates and other presidents 
 succeeded, and the Admirals were condemned.* 
 
 It was impossible for Socrates to enter the market-place with 
 out at once becoming an object of attention. His ungainly fig 
 ure, his moral character, and his bewitching tongue, excited and 
 enchained curiosity. He became known to every citizen. Who 
 had not listened to him 1 Who had not enjoyed his inimitable 
 irony ? Who had not seen him demolish the arrogance and pre 
 tension of some reputed wise man ? Socrates must have been a 
 terrible antagonist to all people who believed that they were wise 
 because they could discourse fluently ; and these were not few. 
 He always declared that he knew nothing. When a man pro 
 fessed knowledge on any point, especially if admiring crowds 
 gave testimony to that profession, Socrates was sure to step up to 
 him, and, professing ignorance, entreat to be taught. Charmed 
 with so humble a listener, the teacher began. Interrogated, he 
 unsuspectingly assented to some very evident proposition ; a con 
 clusion from that, almost as evident, next received his assent ; 
 from that moment he was lost. With great power of logic, with 
 much ingenious subtlety, and sometimes with daring sophistica 
 tion, a web was formed from which he could not extricate himself. 
 His own admissions were proved to lead to monstrous conclu 
 sions ; these conclusions he repugned, but could not see where 
 the gist of his error lay. The laughter of all bystanders bespoke 
 his defeat. Before him was his adversary, imperturbably calm, 
 apparently innocent of all attempt at making him ridiculous. 
 Confused, but not confuted, he left the spot indignant with him 
 self, but more indignant with the subtlety of his adversary. 
 
 It was thus that Socrates became mistaken for a Sophist ; but 
 he was distinguished from the Sophists by his constant object. 
 Whilst they denied the possibility of truth, he only sought to 
 make truth evident, in the ironical, playful, and, sometimes, quib- 
 
 * Wiggers, pp. 51-55. 
 
134: SOCRATES. 
 
 bling manner in which he destroyed the arguments of opponents. 
 Truth was his object, even in his lightest moments. 
 
 This sort of disputation daily occurred in Athens ; and by it, 
 doubtless, Socrates acquired that notoriety which induced Aris 
 tophanes to select him as the Sophist hero of the comedy of The 
 Clouds. No one will doubt that to his adversaries he must have 
 been an exasperating opponent. No one was safe from his attack. 
 No one who presumed to know any thing could escape him. In 
 confirmation, let us quote the account Socrates gives of his pro 
 cedure, as reported by Plato in the Apology. Socrates there de 
 scribes his sensations on hearing that Apollo had declared him to 
 be the wisest of men. He could not understand this. Knowing 
 himself to be wise in nothing, yet not daring to think the words 
 of the god could be false, he w r as puzzled. " I went to one of 
 those who are esteemed to be wise, thinking that here, if any 
 where, I should prove the oracle to be wrong, and to be able to 
 say, Here is a man wiser than I. After examining this man 
 (I need not name him, but he was one of the politicians), and 
 conversing with him, it was my opinion that this man seemed to 
 many others, and especially to himself, to be wise, but was not 
 so. Thereupon I tried to convince him that he thought himself 
 wise, but was not. By this means I offended him and many of 
 the bystanders. When I went away, I said to myself, I am 
 wiser than this man ; for neither of us, it would seem, knows any 
 thing valuable : but he, not knowing, fancies he does know ; I, 
 as I really do not know, so I do not think I know. I seem, there 
 fore, to be in one small matter wiser than he. After this I went 
 to another still wiser than he, and came to the same result ; and 
 by this I affronted him too, and many others. I went on in the 
 same manner, perceiving with sorrow and fear that I was making 
 enemies ; but it seemed necessary to postpone all other considera 
 tions to the service of the god, and therefore to seek for the 
 meaning of the oracle by going to all who appeared to know any 
 thing. And, O Athenians, the impression made on me was this : 
 The persons of most reputation seemed to me nearly the most 
 
THE LIFE OF SOCRATES. 135 
 
 deficient of all ; other persons of much smaller account seemed 
 much more rational. 
 
 " When I had done with the politicians, 1 went to the poets, 
 tragic, dithyrambic, and others, thinking that I should surely find 
 myself less knowing than they. Taking up those of their poems 
 which appeared to me most labored, I asked them (that I might 
 at the same time learn something from them) what these poems 
 meant? I am ashamed, O Athenians, to say the truth, but I 
 must say it ; there was scarcely a person present who could not 
 have spoken better concerning their poems than they. I soon 
 found that what poets do, they accomplish not by wisdom, but 
 by a kind of natural turn, and an enthusiasm like that of proph 
 ets and those who utter oracles ; for these, too, speak many fine 
 things, but do not know one particle of what they speak. 
 
 " Lastly, I resorted to artificers ; for I was conscious that I my 
 self knew r , in a manner, nothing at all, but should find them 
 knowing many valuable things. And in this I was not mistaken ; 
 they knew things which I knew not, and were, so far, wiser than 
 I. But they appeared to me to fall into the same error as the 
 poets ; each, because he was skilled in his own art, insisted upon 
 being the wisest man in other and greater things ; and this 
 mistake of theirs overshadowed what they possessed of wisdom. 
 From this search, Athenians, the consequences to me have 
 been, on the one hand, many enmities, and of the most formi 
 dable kind, which have brought upon me many false imputa 
 tions ; but, on the other hand, the name and general repute of a 
 wise man." 
 
 Socrates, like Dr. Johnson, did not care for the country. " Sir," 
 said the Doctor, " when you have seen one green field, you have 
 seen all green fields : Sir, I like to look upon men. Let us walk 
 down Cheapside." In words of the same import does Socrates 
 address Phredrus, who accused him of being unacquainted even 
 with the neighborhood of Athens. " I am very anxious to learn ; 
 and from fields and trees I can learn nothing. I can only learn 
 from men in the city." And he was always to be found where 
 
136 SOCRATES. 
 
 men were assembled.* Ready to argue with every one, lie de 
 manded money from none. He gave no lectures : he only talked. 
 He wrote no books : he argued.f He cannot properly be said 
 to have had a school, since he did not even give a systematic ex 
 position of his doctrine. What has been called his school, must 
 be understood to refer to the many delighted admirers whose 
 custom it was to surround him whenever he appeared, to talk 
 with him as often as possible, and to accept his leading opinions. 
 " At what time Socrates relinquished his profession as a statu 
 ary we do not know ; but it is certain that all the middle and 
 later part of his life, at least, was devoted exclusively to the self- 
 imposed task of teaching; excluding all other business, public or 
 private, and to the neglect of all means of fortune. We can 
 hardly avoid speaking of him as a teacher, though he himself dis 
 claimed the appellation; his practice was to talk or converse. 
 Early in the morning he frequented the public walks, the gym 
 nasia for bodily training, and the schools where youths were re 
 ceiving instruction ; he was to be seen in the market-place at the 
 hour when it was most crowded, among the booths and tables 
 where goods were exposed for sale ; his whole day was usually 
 spent in this public manner. He talked with any one, young or 
 old, rich or poor, who sought to address him, and in the hearing 
 of all who stood by ; not only he never either asked or received 
 any reward, but he made no distinction of persons, never with 
 held his conversation from any one, and talked on the same gen 
 eral subjects with all. ... As it was engaging, curious, and 
 instructive to hear, certain persons made it their habit to attend 
 him in public, as companions and listeners. These men, a fluctu 
 ating body, were commonly known as his disciples and scholars ; 
 though neither he nor his personal friends ever employed the 
 
 * Xenophon, Memorab. \. 1. Kal sXtye //i ws TO noXii, TOIJ 6t (3ov\oxivois 
 f&v drovciv. 
 
 f We are, therefore, disposed to accept as historical, the language Plato 
 puts into his mouth respecting the inefficiency of books. Books, cannot be 
 interrogated, cannot answer ; therefore, cannot teach : we can oniy learn 
 from them that which we knew before. Phcedrus, p. 96. 
 
THE LIFE OF SOCKATES. 137 
 
 terms teacher and disciple to describe the relation between them. 
 Now no other person in Athens, nor in any other Grecian city, 
 appears ever to have manifested himself in this perpetual and in 
 discriminate manner, as a public talker for instruction. By the 
 peculiar mode of life which Socrates pursued, not only his con 
 versation reached the minds of a much wider circle, but he be 
 came more abundantly known as a person. AVhile acquiring a 
 few friends and admirers, and raising a certain intellectual interest 
 in others, he at the same time provoked a large number of per 
 sonal enemies. This was probably the reason why he was se 
 lected by Aristophanes and the other comic writers to be attacked 
 as a general representative of philosophical and rhetorical teach- 
 ing."* 
 
 Although Socrates was a knight-errant of philosophy, ever on 
 the alert to rescue some forlorn truth from the dungeons of pre 
 judice, and therefore was not scrupulous as to who or what his 
 adversary might be, yet his especial enemies were the Sophists. 
 He never neglected an opportunity of refuting them. He com 
 bated them with their own weapons, and on their own ground. 
 He knew all their tactics. He knew their strength and their 
 weakness. Like them he had studied Physics, in the specula 
 tions of the early thinkers ; and like them had seen that these 
 speculations led to no certainty. But he had not, like them, 
 made skepticism a refuge ; he had not proclaimed Truth to be a 
 Phantom, because he could not embrace her. No : defeated in 
 his endeavor to penetrate the mysteries of the world without, he 
 turned his attention to the world within. For Physics he sub 
 stituted Morals. The certitude which he failed to gain respect 
 ing the operations of nature, had not shaken his conviction of the 
 certitude of the moral truths which his conscience irresistibly 
 impressed upon his attention. The world of sense might be 
 fleeting and deceptive. The voice of conscience could not de 
 ceive. Turning his attention inwards, he discovered certain 
 
 * Grote, viii. 555. 
 
138 SOCKATES. 
 
 truths which admitted of no question. They were eternal, im 
 mutable, evident. These he opposed to the skepticism of the 
 Sophists: Moral certitude w r as the rock upon which his ship 
 wrecked soul was cast. There he could repose in safety. From 
 its heights he could survey the world, and his relation to it. 
 
 Thus was his life spent. In his old age he had to appear be 
 fore his judges to answer the accusations of Impiety and Immo 
 rality. He appeared, and w r as condemned. 
 
 When we think upon the character of this great man, whose 
 virtues, luminous in the distance, and surrounded with the halo 
 of imperishable glory, so impose on our imaginations, that they 
 seem as evident as they were exalted, we cannot hear of his trial 
 and condemnation without indignant disgust at the Athenians. 
 But, for the sake of humanity, let us be cautious ere we decide. 
 The Athenians were volatile, credulous, and cruel : all masses of 
 men are ; and they, perhaps, were eminently so. But it is too 
 much to suppose that they, or any people, would have condemned 
 Socrates had he appeared to them what he appears to us. Had 
 a tyrant committed such a deed, the people would have avenged 
 it. But Socrates was not to them what he appears to us. He 
 was offensive to them, and paid the penalty. 
 
 A great man cannot be understood by his contemporaries. 
 He can only be understood by his peers ; and his peers are few. 
 Posterity exalts a great man s fame by producing a number of 
 great men to appreciate him. The great man is also necessarily 
 a reformer in some shape or other. Every reformer has to com 
 bat with existing prejudices and deep-rooted passions. To cut 
 his own path, he must displace the rubbish which encumbers it. 
 He is therefore in opposition to his fellow-men, and attacks their 
 interests. Blinded by prejudice, by passion, and by interest, 
 men cannot see the excellence of him they oppose ; and hence 
 it is that, as Heine so admirably says, " wherever a great soul gives 
 utterance to his thoughts, there also is Golgotha." 
 
 Reformers are martyrs ; and Socrates was a reformer. Although, 
 therefore, his condemnation appears to us very unjust and very 
 
THE LIFE OF SOCRATES. 1.39 
 
 frightful, to the Athenians it was no more than the banishment of 
 Empedocles, or the condemnation of Protagoras. Pure as were 
 his intentions, his actions and opinions were offensive. He in 
 curred the hatred of party-spirit ; and by that hatred fell. We 
 recognize the purity of his intentions ; he does not oppose us. 
 We can pardon Avhat we believe to be his errors, because those 
 errors wage no war with our interests. Very differently were 
 the Athenians situated. To them he w r as offensive. He hated 
 injustice and folly of all kinds, and never lost an occasion of ex 
 posing them. A man who undertakes to be the critic of his age 
 cannot escape the critic s penalty. Socrates censured freely, 
 openly.* 
 
 But, perhaps, the most exasperating part of his behavior was 
 the undisguised contempt which lie uniformly expressed for the 
 readiness with which men assumed they had a capacity for gov 
 ernment. Only the wise, he said, were fit to govern, and they 
 were few. Government is a science, and a difficult science. It 
 is infinitely more difficult to govern a State than to govern the 
 helm of a ship. Yet, the same people who would not trust them 
 selves in a ship without an experienced pilot, not only trust them 
 selves in a State with an inexperienced ruler, but also endeavor 
 to become rulers themselves. This contempt was sufficient to 
 cause his condemnation ; but a bertter pretext was wanted, and 
 it was found in his impiety. His defenders, ancient and modern, 
 have declared that he was not guilty of impiety ; and Xenophon 
 " wonders " that the charge could have been credited for an in 
 stant. But we believe that the charge was as much merited as 
 in the case of the other philosophers against whom it was made.| 
 He gave new interpretations to the reigning dogmas ; and op- 
 
 * The masterly account of the trial of Socrates, given by Mr. Grote, should 
 be read and re-read by all interested in this subject. 
 
 t Sextos Empirious, speaking of the Socratic heresy, calls it J>? fxpav\i- 
 ^ovcavrd Oeiov. Adv. Math. ii. p. 69. Plato s dialogues of The Second Alcibi- 
 -ides and the Euthypliro are evidence enough of Socrates opposition to the 
 Mythology of his day. 
 
140 SOCRATES. 
 
 posing the mythological interpretations, he was chargeable with 
 impiety. 
 
 It has been remarked by an anonymous writer, that, in com 
 plying with the rites of his country, Socrates avoided her super 
 stitions. The rite of sacrifice, so simple and natural that it har 
 monizes with all and any religious truth, required to be guarded 
 against a great abuse, and against this he warned his countrymen. 
 
 " When, " says Xenophon, " he sacrificed, he feared not his of 
 fering would fail of acceptance in that he was poor ; but, giving 
 according to his ability, he doubted not but, in the sight of the 
 Gods, he equalled those men whose gifts and sacrifices overspread 
 the whole altar ; for Socrates always reckoned upon it as a most 
 indubitable truth, that the service paid the Deity by the pure 
 and pious soul was the most grateful service. 
 
 " When he prayed, his petition was only this, that the Gods 
 would give to him those things that were good. And this he did, 
 forasmuch as they alone knew what was good for man. But he 
 who should ask for gold or silver, or increase of dominion, acted 
 not, in his opinion, more wisely than one who should pray for 
 the opportunity to fight, or game, or any thing of the like na 
 ture ; the consequence whereof being altogether doubtful, might 
 turn, for aught he knew, not a little to his disadvantage."* 
 
 It was more difficult for tfie philosopher either innocently to 
 comply with, or safely to oppose, that part of the popular religion 
 which related to oracles and omens. Socrates appears to have 
 done what was possible, and what therefore was best ultimately, 
 towards correcting this great evil. 
 
 "He likewise asserted, that the science of divination was ne 
 cessary for all such as would govern successfully, either cities or 
 private families ; for, although he thought every one might choose 
 his own way of life, and afterwards, by his industry, excel there 
 in (whether architecture, mechanics, agriculture, superintending 
 the laborer, managing the finances, or practising the art of war), 
 
THE LIFE OF SOCRATES. 141 
 
 yet even here, the Gods, he would say, thought proper to reserve 
 to themselves, in all these things, the knowledge of that part of 
 of them which was of the most importance, since he who was 
 the most careful to cultivate his field, could not know of a cer 
 tainty who should reap the fruit of it. 
 
 "Socrates therefore esteemed all those as no other than mad 
 men who, excluding the Deity, referred the success of their de 
 signs to nothing higher than human prudence. He likewise 
 thought those not much better who had recourse to divination 
 on every occasion, as if a man was to consult the oracle whether 
 he should give the reins of his chariot into the hands of one ig 
 norant or well-versed in the art of driving, or place at the helm 
 of his ship a skilful or unskilful pilot. 
 
 " He also thought it a kind of impiety to importune the Gods 
 with our inquiries concerning things of which we may gain the 
 knowledge by number, weight, or measure ; it being, as it seemed 
 to him, incumbent on man to make himself acquainted with what 
 ever the Gods had placed within his power : as for such things 
 as were beyond his comprehension, for these he ought always to 
 apply to the oracle ; the Gods being ever ready to communicate 
 knowledge to those whose care had been to render them pro 
 pitious."* 9 
 
 The trial of Socrates belongs rather to the history of Greece 
 than to the history of Philosophy. It was a political trial. His 
 bearing during the whole period was worthy of him : calm, 
 grave, and touching ; somewhat haughty perhaps, but with the 
 haughtiness of a brave soul fighting for the truth. It increased 
 the admiration of his admirers, and exasperated his adversaries. 
 
 Plato, then a young man, was present at the trial, and has 
 preserved an admirable picture of it in his Apology. The clos 
 ing speech, made by Socrates, after sentence of death had been 
 pronounced, is supposed to be given with substantial accuracy 
 by Plato. We extract it : 
 
 * Memor&bilia^ i. 1. 
 
142 SOCRATES. 
 
 " It is for the sake of but a short span, O Athenians, that you 
 have incurred the imputation from those who wish to speak evil of 
 the city, of having put to death Socrates, a wise man (for those 
 who are inclined to reproach you will say that I am wise, even 
 if I am not). Had you waited a short time the thing would have 
 happened without your agency ; for you see my years ; I am far 
 advanced in life, and near to death. I address this not to all of 
 you, but to those who have voted for the capital sentence, and 
 this, too, I say to the same persons, Perhaps you think that I 
 have been condemned for want of skill in such modes of working 
 upon your minds, as I might have employed with success, if I 
 had thought it right to employ all means in order to escape from 
 condemnation. Far from it : I have been condemned, and not 
 from want of things to say, but from want of daring and shame- 
 lessness ; because I did not choose to say to you the things which 
 would have been pleasautest for you to hear, weeping, and lament 
 ing, and saying and doing other things which I affirm to be un 
 worthy of me ; as you are accustomed to see others do. But 
 neither did I then think fit to do or say any thing unworthy of a 
 freeman ; nor do I now repent of having thus defended myself. 
 I would far rather have made the one defence and die, than have 
 made the other and live. Neither in a court of justice, nor in 
 war, ought we to make it our object that, whatever happen, we 
 may escape death. In battle it is often evident that a man may 
 save his life by throwing away his arms and imploring mercy of 
 his pursuers ; and in all other dangers there are many contrivan 
 ces by which a person may get oft with life if he dare do or say 
 every thing. The difficulty, O Athenians, is not to escape from 
 death, but from guilt ; for guilt is swifter than death, and runs 
 faster. And now I, being old and slow of foot, have been over 
 taken by Death, the slower of the two ; but my accusers, who 
 are brisk and vehement, by wickedness, the swifter. We quit 
 this place : I have been sentenced by you to death ; but they, 
 having sentence passed upon them, by Truth, of guilt and in 
 justice. I submit to my punishment, and they to theirs. 
 
THE LIFE OF SOCRATES. 143 
 
 " But I wish, O men who have condemned me, to prophesy 
 to you what next is to come. I say, then, that, immediately 
 after my death, there will come upon you a far severer punish 
 ment than that which you have inflicted upon me ; for you have 
 done this, thinking by it to escape from being called to account 
 for your lives. But I affirm that the very reverse will happen to 
 you. There will be many to call you to account whom I have 
 hitherto restrained, and whom you saw not; and, being younger, 
 they will give you more annoyance, and you will be still more 
 provoked ; for, if you think by putting men to death to deter 
 others from reproaching you with living amiss, you think ill. 
 That mode of protecting yourselves is neither very possible nor 
 very noble : the noblest and the easiest too is not to cut off other 
 people, but so to order yourselves as to attain the greatest ex 
 cellence. 
 
 " Thus much I beg of you : When my sons grow up, punish 
 them, Athenians, by tormenting them as I tormented you, if 
 they shall seem to study riches, or any other ends, in preference 
 to virtue. And, if they are thought to be something, being real 
 ly nothing, reproach them, as I have reproached you, for not at 
 tending to what they ought, and fancying themselves something 
 when they are good for nothing. And, if you do this, both I 
 and my sons shall have received what is just at your hands. 
 
 " It is now time that we depart, I to die, you to live j but which 
 has the better destiny is unknown to all except the God" 
 
 This is very grand and impressive, and paints the character of 
 the man. Mayno animo et vultu carcerem intravit, says Seneca. 
 He consoled his weeping friends, and gently upbraided them for 
 their complaints at the injustice of the sentence. /.N"o man ever 
 faced death with greater calmness ; for no man ever welcomed it 
 with greater faith as a new birth to a higher state of being. 
 
 He would have been executed the next day, but it happened 
 that the next day was the first of the festival of the Delian Theo- 
 ria, during which no criminal could be put to death. This festi 
 val lasted thirty days. Socrates, though in chains and awaiting 
 
144 SOCRATES. 
 
 his end, spent the interval in cheerful conversation with his 
 friends, and in composing verses. "During this time," says 
 Xenophon, "he lived before the eyes of all his friends in the 
 same manner as in former days ; but now his past life was most 
 admired on account of his present calmness and cheerfulness of 
 mind." On the last day he held a conversation with his friends 
 on the immortality of the soul. This forms the subject of Plato s 
 Phcedo. The arguments in that dialogue are most probably 
 Plato s own ; and it is supposed that the dying speech of Cyrus, 
 in Xenophon s Cyropcedia, is a closer copy of the opinions of 
 Socrates. 
 
 Phsedo, describing the impression produced on him by the 
 sight of Socrates on this final day, says : " I did not feel the 
 pity which it was natural I should feel at the death of a friend : 
 on the contrary, he seemed to me perfectly happy as I gazed on 
 him and listened to him : so calm and dignified was his bearing. 
 And I thought that he only left this world under the protection 
 of the Gods, who destined him to a more than mortal felicity in 
 the next." He then details the conversation on the immortality 
 of the soul ; after which, he narrates the close of that glorious 
 life in language worthy of it. Even in the English version of 
 Taylor the beauty of the narrative stands manifestly out. 
 
 "When he had thus spoke, he rose, and went into a room, 
 that he might wash himself, and Crito followed him : but he 
 ordered us to wait for him. We waited, therefore, accordingly, 
 discoursing over, and reviewing among ourselves, what had been 
 said, and sometimes speaking about his death, how great a ca 
 lamity it would be to us; and sincerely thinking that we, like 
 those who are deprived of their father, should pass the rest of our 
 life in the condition of orphans. But, when he had washed him 
 self, his sons were brought to him (for he had two little ones, and 
 one considerably advanced in age), and the women belonging to 
 his family likewise came in to him : but when he had spoken to 
 them before Crito, and had left them such injunctions as he 
 thought proper, he ordered the boys and women to depart ; and 
 
THE LIFE OF SOCRATES. 145 
 
 he himself returned to us. Aud it was now near the setting of 
 the sun : for he had been absent for a long time in the bathing- 
 room. But, when he came in from washing, he sat down, and 
 did not speak much afterwards ; for, then, the servant of the 
 eleven magistrates came in, and, standing near him, I do not per 
 ceive that in you, Socrates (says he), which I have taken notice 
 of in others ; I mean that they are angry with me, and curse 
 me, when, being compelled by the magistrates, I announce to 
 them that they must drink the poison. But, on the contrary, I 
 have found you at the present time to be the most generous, 
 mild, and best of all the men who ever came into this place : and, 
 therefore, I am now well convinced that you are not angry with 
 me, but with the authors of your present condition. You know 
 those whom I allude to. Now, therefore (for you know what I 
 came to tell you), farewell ! and endeavor to bear this necessity 
 as easily as possible. And at the same time, bursting into tears, 
 and turning himself away, he departed. 
 
 " Then Crito gave the sign to the boy that stood near him. 
 And the boy departing, and, having staid for some time, came, 
 bringing with him the person that was to administer the poison, 
 and who brought it properly prepared in a cup. But, Socrates, 
 beholding the man, It s well, my friend (says he) ; but what is 
 proper to do with it? for you are knowing in these affairs. You 
 have nothing else to do (says he) but when you have drunk it to 
 walk about, till a heaviness takes place in your legs, and after 
 wards lie down : this is the manner in which you should act. 
 And, at the same time, he extended the cup to Socrates. But 
 Socrates received it from him, and, indeed, with great cheerful 
 ness ; neither trembling nor suffering any alteration for the 
 worse in his color or countenance, but, as he was accustomed to 
 do, beholding the man with a bull-like aspect. What say you 
 (says he) respecting this potion ? Is it lawful to make a libation 
 of it, or not ? We only bruise (says he), Socrates, as much as 
 we think sufficient for the purpose. I understand you (says he) ; 
 but it is certainly both lawful and proper to pray to the Gods, 
 
 7 
 
146 SOCRATES. 
 
 that my departure from hence thither may be attended with 
 prosperous fortune ; which I entreat them to grant may be the 
 case. And, at the same time ending his discourse, he drank the 
 poison with exceeding facility and alacrity. And thus far, indeed, 
 the greater part of us were tolerably well able to refrain from 
 weeping; but, when we saw him drinking, and that he had drunk 
 it, we could no longer restrain our tears. But from me, indeed, 
 notwithstanding the violence which I employed in checking 
 them, they flowed abundantly ; so that, covering myself with my 
 mantle, I deplored my misfortune. I did not, indeed, weep for 
 him, but for my own fortune, considering what an associate I 
 should be deprived of. But, Crito, who was not able to restrain 
 his tears, was compelled to rise before me. And Apollodorus, 
 who, during the whole time prior to this, had not ceased from 
 weeping, then wept aloud, and with great bitterness ; so that he 
 infected all who were present except Socrates. But Socrates, 
 upon seeing this, exclaimed : What are you doing, excellent 
 men ? For, indeed, I principally sent away the women, lest they 
 should produce a disturbance of this kind. For I have heard it 
 is proper to die attended with propitious ornens. Be quiet, there 
 fore, and summon fortitude to your assistance. But when we 
 heard this we blushed, and restrained our tears. But he, when 
 he found, during his walking, that his legs felt heavy, and had 
 told us so, laid himself down in a supine position. For the man 
 had ordered him to do so. And, at the same time, he who gave 
 hirn the poison, touching him at intervals, considered his feet 
 and legs. And, after he had vehemently pressed his foot, he 
 asked him if he felt it. But Socrates answered he did not. And, 
 after this, he again pressed his thighs : and, thus ascending with 
 his hand, he showed us that he was cold and stiff. And Soc 
 rates also touched himself, and said that when the poison reached 
 his heart he should then leave us. But now his lower belly was 
 almost cold; when, uncovering himself (for he was covered) he 
 said (which were his last words), Crito, we owe a cock to ^Escu- 
 lapius. Discharge this debt, therefore, for me, and don t neglect 
 
THE LIFE OF SOCRATES. 14:7 
 
 it. It shall be done (says Crito) ; but consider whether you have 
 any other commands. To this inquiry of Crito he made no re 
 ply ; but shortly after moved himself, and the man covered him. 
 And Socrates fixed his eyes. Which, when Crito perceived, he 
 closed his mouth and eyes. This was the end of our associate ; 
 a man, as it appears to me, the best of those whom we were ac 
 quainted with at that time ; and, besides this, the most prudent 
 and just." 
 
 Thus perished this great and good man, a martyr to Phi 
 losophy. His character we have endeavored to represent fairly, 
 though briefly. Let us now add the summing-up of Xen- 
 ophon, who loved him tenderly, and expressed his love grace 
 fully : 
 
 " As to myself, knowing him of a truth to be such a man as I 
 have described ; so pious towards the Gods, as never to undertake 
 any thing without first consulting them ; so just towards men, as 
 never to do any injury, even the very slightest, to any one, whilst 
 many and great were the benefits he conferred on all with whom 
 he had any dealings ; so temperate and chaste, as not to indulge 
 any appetite or inclination at the expense of whatever was modest 
 and becoming; so prudent, as never to err in judging of good 
 and evil, nor wanting the assistance of others to discriminate 
 rightly concerning them ; so able to discourse upon, and define 
 with the greatest accuracy, not only those points of which we 
 have been speaking, but likewise every other, and looking as it 
 were into the minds of men, discover the very moment for rep 
 rehending vice, or stimulating to the love of virtue : experien 
 cing, as I have done, all these excellencies in Socrates, I can 
 never cease considering him as the most virtuous and the most 
 
 G 
 
 happy of all mankind. But, if there is any one who is disposed 
 to think otherwise, let him go and compare Socrates with any 
 other, and afterwards let him determine."* 
 
 After ages have cherished the memory of his virtues and his 
 
 * Memorabilia.^ iv. 7. 
 
148 SOCKATES. 
 
 fate ; but without profiting much by his example, and without 
 learning tolerance from his story. 
 
 II. PHILOSOPHY OF SOCRATES. 
 
 Opinions vary so considerably respecting the philosophy of 
 Socrates, and materials whereby they can be tested are so scanty, 
 that any attempt at exposition must be made with diffidence. 
 The historian has to rely solely on his critical skill ; and on such 
 grounds, he will not, if prudent, be very confident. 
 
 Amongst the scattered materials from which an opinion may 
 be formed are, 1st. The very general tradition of Socrates having 
 produced a revolution in thought ; in consequence of which he 
 is by all regarded as the initiator of a new epoch ; and by some 
 as the founder of Greek Philosophy, properly so called. 2dly. 
 The express testimony of Aristotle, that he first made use of defi 
 nitions and proceeded by induction* These two positions 
 involve each other. If Socrates produced a revolution in phi 
 losophy, he could only have done so by a new Method. That 
 Method we see exhibited in the phrase of Aristotle, but it is 
 there only exhibited in a brief concentrated manner, and requires 
 to be elucidated. 
 
 Assuredly we may echo Mr. Grote s statement, that it requires 
 at the present day some mental effort to see any thing important 
 in the invention of notions so familiar as those of Genus Defi 
 nition Individual things as comprehended in a genus what 
 each thing is, and to what genus it belongs, etc. Nevertheless 
 four centuries before Christ these terms denoted mental processes 
 which few, if an\y but Socrates, had a distinct recognition of, in 
 the form of analytical consciousness. "The ideas of men 
 
 * "There are two things of which Socrates must justly be regarded as the 
 author, the Inductive Reasoning and Abstract Definitions, " TOVS 
 
 Kai TO bpi&vdai Ka06\ov f (Arist. Metaph. xiii. 4.) Xenophon has sev 
 eral indications of the inductive method : lie also says that Socrates always 
 proceeded from propositions best known to those less known, which is a 
 definition of Induction. 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF SOCRATES. 149 
 
 speakers as well as hearers, the productive minds as well as the 
 recipient multitude were associated together in groups, favora 
 ble rather to emotional results, or to poetical, rhetorical narra 
 tive, and descriptive effect, than to methodical generalization, to 
 scientific conception, or to proof either inductive or deductive. 
 That reflex act of attention which enables men to understand, 
 compare, and rectify their own mental process was only just be 
 ginning. It was a recent novelty on the part of the rhetorical 
 teachers to analyze the component parts of a public harangue, 
 and to propound some precepts for making men tolerable speak 
 ers. It may be doubted whether any one before Socrates ever 
 used the words Genus and Species (originally meaning Family 
 and Form), in the philosophical sense now exclusively appro 
 priated to them. Not one of those many names (called by logi 
 cians names of the second intention) which imply distinct atten 
 tion to various parts of the logical process, and enable us to 
 criticize it in detail, then existed. All of them grew out of the 
 schools of Plato, Aristotle, and the subsequent philosophers, so 
 that we can thus trace them in their beginning to the common 
 root and father, Socrates."* The novelty was very distasteful 
 to all who were not seduced by it. Men resent being forced to 
 rigor of speech and thought ; they call you " pedantic" if you 
 insist on their using terms with definite meanings ; they prefer 
 the loose flowing language of indefinite association which picks 
 up in its course a variety of heterogeneous meanings ; and are 
 irritated at any speaker who points out to them the inaccuracy 
 of their phrases. Aristotle says it was thought bad taste in his 
 day TJ ctxpj/SoXoyj a juuxpotfpStfsV : and Timon the Sillograph sar 
 castically calls Socrates one of the axpj/3o Xo^oi, as if precision of 
 language were a vice. 
 
 " The notions of Genus, subordinate genera, and individuals 
 as comprehended under them, were at that time newly brought 
 into clear consciousness in the human mind. The profusion of 
 
 * Grote, viii. 578. 
 
150 SOCRATES. 
 
 logical distribution employed in some of the dialogues of 
 seems partly traceable to his wish to familiarize his hearers with 
 that which was then a novelty, as well as to enlarge its develop 
 ment and diversify its mode of application." " We must always 
 consider the Method of Socrates in conjunction with the subjects 
 to which he applied it. ... On such questions as these What 
 is justice ? What is piety ? What is democracy ? What is 
 law ? every man fancied that he could give a confident opinion, 
 and even wondered that any other person should feel a diffi 
 culty. When Socrates, professing ignorance, put any such ques 
 tion, he found no difficulty in obtaining an answer, given off 
 hand and with very little reflection. The answer purported to 
 be the explanation or definition of a term, familiar indeed, but of 
 wide and comprehensive import, given by one who had never 
 before tried to render to himself an account of what it meant. 
 Having got this answer, Socrates put fresh questions, applying it 
 to specific cases, to which the respondent was compelled to give 
 answers inconsistent with the first; showing that the definition 
 was either too narrow or too wide, or defective in some essen 
 tial condition. The respondent then amended his answer ; but 
 this was a prelude to other questions, which could only be 
 answered in ways inconsistent with the amendment; and the 
 respondent, after many attempts to disentangle himself, Avas 
 obliged to plead guilty to the inconsistencies, with an admission 
 that he could make no satisfactory answer to the original query 
 which at first had appeared so easy and familiar. . . The discus 
 sion first raised by Socrates turns upon the meaning of some 
 large generic term. The queries whereby he follows it up bring 
 the answer given into collision with various particulars which it 
 ought not to comprehend, or with others which it ought to com 
 prehend, but does not. The inconsistencies into which the 
 hearer is betrayed in his various answers proclaim to him the 
 fact that he has not yet acquired any thing like a clear and full 
 conception of the common attribute which binds together the 
 various particulars embraced under some term which is ever 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF SOCRATES. 151 
 
 upon his lips. He is thus put upon the train of thought which 
 leads to a correction of the generalization, and lights him on to 
 that which Plato calls seeing the One in the Many, and the 
 Many in the One."* 
 
 Because Socrates employed Induction, it is frequently stated 
 that he anticipated Bacon s Inductive Method. Passages can 
 certainly be quoted in which Socrates and Bacon hold very simi 
 lar language ; and in some respects their reform was analogous ; 
 but the differences are more profound than the resemblances. 
 The aim and purpose of Socrates was confessedly to withdraw 
 the mind from contemplating the phenomena of nature, and to 
 fix it on its own phenomena : truth was to be sought by looking 
 inwards, not by looking outwards. The aim and purpose of Ba 
 con s philosophy was the reverse of this ; he exhorted men to the 
 observation and interpretation of nature, and energetically de 
 nounced all attempts to discover the operations of mind. If 
 Socrates pushed too far this contempt of physics, Bacon pushed 
 too far his contempt of psychology : the exaggeration was, in 
 each case, produced by the absurdities of contemporaries. 
 
 Not more decided is the contrast between their conceptions 
 of Induction. With Socrates it was little more than Inductio 
 per enumerationem simplicem, or "reasoning by analogy," the 
 mere collection of particular facts, a process which it was Ba 
 con s peculiar merit to have utterly destroyed. The whole force 
 of the Novum Organum may be said to be directed against this 
 erroneous method. The triviality of the method may indeed be 
 seen in the quibbles to which it furnishes support in Plato ; it 
 may be seen also in the argument used by Aristippus to justify 
 his living with Lai s the courtesan. "Do you think, Diogenes, 
 that there is any thing odd in inhabiting a house that oth 
 ers have inhabited before you? No. Or sailing in a ship in 
 which many men have sailed before you ? No. By parity of 
 reasoning, then, there is nothing odd in living with a woman 
 
 * Grote, viii. 583-8. 
 
152 SOCRATES. 
 
 whom many men have lived with before." This quibble is 
 a legitimate Socratic induction ; and it was made by a pupil of 
 Socrates. It is only a parody of the arguments by which it was 
 proved that to inflict injustice is more painful than to suffer it ; 
 one of the many startling dogmas attributed to Socrates. Who 
 ever supposes this Induction to be the Baconian Induction (which 
 is an interrogation of nature), has missed the sense of the Novum 
 Organum. Indeed, to suppose that such a conception as Ba 
 con s could have been originated so early in the history of 
 science, is radically to mistake the course of human development. 
 Mr. Grote has quoted several striking passages from Bacon,* 
 to show the parallel between the spirit and purpose of the Ba 
 conian and Socratic Methods ; and probably most readers will 
 agree with him when he says that Socrates " sought to test the 
 fundamental notions and generalizations respecting man and 
 society in the same spirit in which Bacon approached those of 
 Physics : he suspected the unconscious process of the growing 
 intellect, and desired to revise it, by comparison with particulars, 
 and from particulars, too, the most clear and certain, but which, 
 from being of vulgar occurrence, were least attended to. And 
 that which Socrates described in his language as the conceit of 
 knowledge without the reality is identical with what Bacon 
 designates as the primary notions the puerile observations- the 
 aberrations of the intellect left to itself." But in spite of this re 
 semblance the difference is profound, and it rises into unmistaka 
 ble distinctness when we consider the results in the philosophies 
 of the two ; the Socratic Method is seen developed in Plato and 
 Aristotle, the Baconian in Newton and Faraday ; and if, as was 
 stated in our Introduction, the adoption of the Method of gradu 
 ated Verification was not owing to a previous circumscription of 
 the aims of Philosophy, but, on the contrary, if this Method ne 
 cessarily led to the circumscription, it follows that systems so 
 metaphysical as those which came out of the Socratic teaching 
 
 * Vol. viii. p. G12. 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF SOCRATES. 153 
 
 must have been the produce of a very different Method from 
 that which led to modern science. 
 
 Conceit of knowledge, without the reality, was by Socrates 
 perpetually stigmatized as the most disgraceful of mental defects,* 
 and the whole effort of his terrible questioning the " cross-ex 
 amining Elenchus" w r as to make men aware of this conceit, to 
 prove to them that their knowledge was a sham, as Carlyle would 
 call it. Instead of the loose, heterogeneous conceptions with 
 which men deceived themselves and others into the belief of 
 knowledge, he insisted on the substitution of rigorous and dis 
 tinct conceptions. 
 
 How could this be done but by definitions ? To know the 
 essence of a thing you must consider it as distinct from every 
 thing else, you must define it ; by defining it you demarcate it 
 from what it is not, and so present the thing before you in its 
 essence. 
 
 It was a fundamental conviction with him that it is impossible 
 to start from one true thought, and be entangled in any contra 
 diction with another true thought ; knowledge derived from any 
 one point, and obtained by correct combination, cannot contra 
 dict that which has been obtained from any other point. He 
 believed that Reason was pregnant with Truths, and only needed 
 an accoucheur. An accoucheur he announced himself; his main 
 instruments were Definitions. By Definition he enabled tho 
 thinker to separate the particular thought he wished to express, 
 from the myriad of other thoughts which clouded it. By Defi 
 nition he enabled a man to contemplate the essence of a thing, 
 because he admitted nothing which was not essential into the 
 definition. 
 
 The radical mistake here is the confusion between Definitions 
 of Names and Definitions of Things. In the Definition of a Name 
 nothing more is applied than the meaning intended to be affixed; 
 
 Plato, Apologia, p. 29 (p. 114, ed. Bekker) : Kal TOVTO n-iSf OVK 
 ) fi ixovet&taTOS, h r v aicadai dtievai ft OIIK olfiev ; 
 
154 SOCRATES. 
 
 in the definition of a Thing there is, over and above this intended 
 meaning, the assertion of a corresponding fact which the definition 
 describes. 
 
 We have more than once commented on the natural tendency 
 of the early thinkers to mistake distinctions in words for distinc 
 tions in things. We have now to signalize, in the history of 
 speculation, the reduction of this tendency to a systematic for 
 mula. Names henceforth have the force of things.* A correct 
 Definition is held to be a true description of the Thing per se : 
 the explanation of terms as equivalent to the explanation of things, 
 and the exhibition of the nature of any thing in a definition as 
 equivalent to our actual analysis of it in a laboratory are the 
 central errors of the Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy. These 
 errors continue to flourish in all the metaphysical systems of the 
 present day. 
 
 When stated in a naked manner, the absurdity of this Method 
 is apparent ; but it may be so disguised as to look profoundly 
 philosophic. Hence the frequent use of such locutions as that 
 certain properties are " involved in the idea" of certain things ; 
 as if being involved in the idea, i. e. being included in the defini 
 tion, necessarily implied a correspondent objective existence ; as if 
 human conceptions were the faithful copies of external things. 
 The conceptions of men widely differ ; consequently different 
 properties are " involved" in these different conceptions ; but all 
 cannot be true, and the question arises, Which conception is 
 true ? To answer this question by any thing like a definition, is 
 to argue in a circle. A principle of certitude must be sought. 
 That principle, however, is still to seek. 
 
 The influence of the theory of definitions will be more dis 
 tinctly discernible as we proceed. It is the one grand character 
 istic of the Method Socrates originated. In it must be sought 
 the explanation of his views of Philosophy. 
 
 He has been almost taunted with never having promulgated 
 
 * See Plato s Cratylus, 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF SOCKATES. 155 
 
 any system of his own. ills rank in the history of philosophy 
 has been questioned, and has been supposed to be only that of a 
 moralist. A passage of Aristotle has been quoted as decisive on 
 this point: "The speculations of Socrates were only concerning 
 Ethics, and not at all concerning Nature in general" (r% oX-xj^ 
 yiKfsug). But this is not oil the passage: it continues thus: 
 "In these speculations he sought the Abstract (TO xadoXou), and 
 was the first who thought of giving definitions." Now in this 
 latter portion we believe there is contained a hint of something 
 more than the mere moralist a- hint of the metaphysician. On 
 turning to another part of Aristotle s treatise* we accordingly 
 find this hint more clearly brought out ; we find an express indi 
 cation of the metaphysician. The passage is as follows : " Socrates 
 concerned himself with ethical virtues, and he first sought the 
 abstract definitions of these. Before him Democritus had only 
 concerned himself with a part of Physics, and defined but the 
 Hot and the Cold. But Socrates, reasonably (suXoywj), sought 
 the Essence of Things, i. e. sought what exists." 
 
 Moreover, in another passage (lib. iii. c. 2) Aristotle reproaches 
 Aristippus for having rejected science, and concerned himself 
 solely with morals. This is surely negative evidence that Soc 
 rates was not to be blamed for the same opinion ; otherwise he 
 would have been also mentioned. 
 
 It was a natural mistake to suppose that Socrates was only a 
 Moralist, seeing that his principal topics were always Man and 
 Society, and never Physical speculations, which he deemed beyond 
 the reach of human intellect. If, however, Socrates had been 
 merely a Moralist, his place in the history of Philosophy would 
 not have been what it is ; no Plato, no Aristotle would have 
 called him master. He made a new epoch. The previous phi 
 losophers had directed their attention to external Nature, endeav 
 oring to explain its phenomena ; he gave up all such speculations, 
 and directed his attention solely to the nature of Knowledge. 
 
 * MetapJi. xiii. 4. 
 
156 SOCRATES. 
 
 Men speculated at random. They sought truth, but they only 
 built hypotheses, because they had not previously ascertained the 
 limits and conditions of inquiry. They attempted to form sciences 
 before having settled the conditions of Science. It was the pe 
 culiar merit of Socrates to have proposed, as the grand question 
 of philosophy, the nature and conditions of Science. 
 
 The reader may now begin to appreciate the importance of 
 Definitions in the Socratic Method, and may understand why 
 Socrates did not himself invent systems, but only a Method. He 
 likened himself to a Midwife, who, though unable to bring forth 
 children herself, assisted women in their labors. He believed 
 that in each man lay the germs of wisdom. He believed that 
 no science could be taught ; only drawn out. To borrow the 
 ideas of another was not to learn ; to guide one s self by the 
 judgment of another was blindness. The philosophers, who pre 
 tended to teach every thing, could teach nothing ; and their ig 
 norance was manifest in the very pretension. Each man must 
 conquer truth for himself, by rigid struggle with himself. He, 
 Socrates, was willing to assist any man when in the pains of 
 labor : he could do no more. 
 
 Such being the Method, we cannot wonder at his having at 
 tached himself to Ethical rather than to Physical speculations. 
 His philosophy was a realization of the inscription at Delphos 
 Know Thyself. It was in himself that he found the ground of 
 certitude which was to protect him against skepticism. It was 
 therefore moral science which he prized above all others. In 
 deed, we have great reason to believe that his energetic de 
 nouncement of Physical speculations, as reported by Xenophon, 
 was the natural, though exaggerated, conclusion to which he had 
 been hurried by a consideration of the manifold absurdities into 
 which they drew the mind, and the skepticism which they in 
 duced. There could be nothing but uncertainty on such subjects. 
 
 " I have not leisure for such things," he is made to say by Plato, 
 " and I will tell you the reason : I am not yet able, according to 
 the Delphic Inscription, to Know myself ; and it appears to me 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF SOCRATES. 157 
 
 very ridiculous, while ignorant of myself, to inquire into what I 
 am not concerned in."* That he did, however, at one period 
 occupy himself with them is clear from other sources, and is a 
 point in the comedy of the Clouds, where he is represented " air- 
 treading and speculating about the sun," dspo/3arw xaf tfspjqppovw 
 TOV ?]Xjov, and his disciples seeking things hidden underground 
 rot xara 7%. This has led many to suppose that Aristophanes 
 knew nothing whatever of Socrates, but only took him as an 
 available comic type of the Sophists, a supposition to which there 
 are several objections. Firstly, it is not usual in satirists to select 
 for their butt a person of whom they know nothing. Secondly, 
 Socrates, of all Athenians, was the most notorious, and most easily 
 to be acquainted with in a general way. Thirdly, he could not 
 be a type of the Sophists, in as far as related to physical specula 
 tions, since we well know the Sophists scouted physics. Fourth 
 ly, he did occupy himself with Physics early in his career ; and 
 probably did so when Aristophanes satirized him, although in 
 after-life he regarded such speculations as trivial. 
 
 It was quite possible that Aristophanes should have made no 
 such nice discrimination between the dialectical quibbling of Soc 
 rates and that of the Sophists, as would prevent him from repre 
 senting Socrates teaching "the art to make the worse appear the 
 better reason ;"f but it is scarcely credible that he should have 
 made so flagrant a mistake as to accuse Socrates of busying him 
 self with Physics, when everyone of the audience could answer that 
 Socrates never troubled himself at all about it. In our day Proud- 
 hon and Louis Blanc are often classed together as teachers of the 
 same Socialist doctrines ; or Strauss and Feuerbach as teachers 
 of the same theological doctrines ; but no satirist would laugh at 
 Louis Blanc for his astronomical speculations, or at Strauss for his 
 devotion to the Microscope. The Aristophanic evidence, there 
 fore, seems perfectly admissible as respects the physical specula 
 tions of Socrates at or about the time when the Clouds was pro- 
 
 * Phcedrus, p. 8. t Wule*, v. 112-15. 
 
158 SOCKATES. 
 
 duced. If they were afterwards relinquished, it was because they 
 led to no certainty. 
 
 That Philosophy, and not Morals, was really the aim of Socra 
 tes, is clear from his subordination of all morals to science. He 
 considers Virtue to be identical with Knowledge.* Only the wise 
 man, said he, can be brave, just, or temperate. Vice of every 
 kind is Ignorance ; and involuntary, because ignorant. If a man 
 is cowardly, it is because he does not rightly appreciate the im 
 portance of life and death. He thinks death an evil, and flees it. 
 If he were wise, he would know that death is a good thing, or, 
 at the worst, an indifferent one, and therefore would not shun it. 
 If a man is intemperate, it is because he is unable to estimate the 
 relative value of present pleasure and future pain. Ignorance mis 
 leads him. It is the nature of man to seek good and shun evil : 
 he would never seek evil, knowing it to be such ; if he seeks it, 
 he mistakes it for good : if he is intemperate, it is because he is 
 unwise. 
 
 Method was. his all-in-all. Nor is it impossible to trace the 
 origin of this conception in his mind. The Pythian oracle had 
 declared him to be the wisest of men. The assertion greatly 
 puzzled him, for he found on deep introspection that he knew 
 nothing ; all his fancied knowledge was that conceit of knowl 
 edge without the reality, which he saw puffing up other men ; 
 and his sole distinction was that he knew the depth of his own 
 
 * Qpovfjatis wero tivat irdaag TJ apcrdf. Aristot. Ethic. NicomacTl, vi. 13. 
 Plato, in the Jtfeno, makes him maintain that Virtue cannot be Science, can 
 not be taught. But this is not Socratic. " Whether Virtue can be taught 
 was a question much agitated in the time of Socrates, who appears to give 
 contradictory decisions on different occasions. Comp. Plat. Meno, pp. 96, 98, 
 with Protagoras, p. 361, in the latter of which passages he censures his own 
 inconsistency, in first denying that Virtue can be taught, and then maintain 
 ing that Virtue is Science. Ascending to Xenophon, Mem. i. 2, i9, Socrates 
 seems to have adopted the common-sense view that Virtue is partly matter 
 of teaching, partly of practice (ao-K^rdv), and partly of natural disposition. But 
 Xenophon was unconscious of the logical difficulty of reconciling this with 
 that identification of Virtue with Science or Wisdom which he elsewhere dis 
 tinctly attributes to his master." Thompson s Note to Butter s History of 
 Philosophy, \. 374. 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF SOCRATES. 159 
 
 ignorance, while they believed themselves to be knowing ; and it 
 was because he knew this that he understood the meaning of the 
 oracle. Thus much we have on his explicit authority. If we 
 now consider that his title of the " wisest " was owing to the 
 profound consciousness of the unreality of all which hitherto had 
 passed for wisdom (the proof of which was exposed by means of his 
 cross-examining Elenchus), we shall be able to understand how it 
 was he carne to make his Method in and for itself the great aim of 
 Philosophy, and how instead of desiring to make converts to any 
 system, or to gain acceptance for any special theories on physics 
 or ethics, he always and everywhere desired to awaken the cross- 
 examining spirit in the minds of his hearers, so that each in his 
 own turn might awaken it in others, because in this, and this 
 alone, consisted real Wisdom. Previous philosophies had shown 
 the futility of speculation ; certitude was nowhere to be had ; all 
 such theories were but the conceit of knowledge. The Method 
 which he taught was that by which alone man could become 
 wiser and better. 
 
 It is clear that the novelty of the Method so completely fasci 
 nated him, as to prevent his detecting the confusion he made be 
 tween end and means. And the reader may understand how 
 such a confusion might very naturally have maintained itself, if 
 he reflects how very analogous is the pursuit of purely mathe 
 matical science by hundreds who care nothing for the applica 
 tions of mathematics. Lying at the base of all physical science 
 is a great and complex science of Quantity, the one indispen 
 sable Instrument by means of which Knowledge becomes Science 
 (for Science is only quantitative knowledge) ; but so vast and so 
 complex is this Instrument, that numerous intellects are constant 
 ly engaged in studying and perfecting it, never once withdrawn 
 from it by any attempt at application. In a similar way Socrates, 
 and for the most part Plato likewise, cared exclusively for Method ; 
 perfecting the Instrument of search, rather than seeking. 
 
 Although Socrates was not the first to teach the doctrine of 
 the immortality of the soul, he was the first to give it a philo- 
 
160 SOCRATES. 
 
 sophical basis. Nor can \ve read without admiration the argu 
 ments by which he anticipated writers on Natural Theology, by 
 pointing out the evidences of a beneficent Providence. Listen 
 to Xenophon : 
 
 " I will now relate the manner in which I once heard Socra 
 tes discoursing with Aristodemus, surnamed the Little, concern 
 ing the Deity ; for observing that he neither prayed nor sacrificed 
 to the Gods, but, on the contrary, ridiculed and laughed at those 
 who did, he said to him : 
 
 " Tell me, Aristodemus, is there any man whom you admire 
 on account of his merit? . Aristodemus having answered Many, 
 Name some of them, I pray you. I admire, said Aristodemus, 
 Homer for his Epic poetry, Melanippides for his dithyrambics, 
 Sophocles for tragedy, Polycletus for statuary, and Zeuxis for 
 painting. 
 
 " But which seems to you most worthy of admiration, Aristo 
 demus ? the artist who forms images void of motion and in 
 telligence, or one who hath the skill to produce animals that are 
 endued not only with activity, but understanding ? The latter, 
 there can be no doubt, replied Aristodemus, provided the produc 
 tion was not the effect of chance, but of wisdom and contrivance. 
 But since there are many things, some of which we can easily 
 see the use of, while we cannot say of others to what purpose 
 they were produced, which of these, Aristodemus, do you suppose 
 the work of wisdom ? It should seem the most reasonable to 
 affirm it of those whose fitness and utility are so evidently ap 
 parent. 
 
 "But it is evidently apparent that He who at the beginning- 
 made man, endued him with senses because they were good for 
 him ; eyes, wherewith to behold whatever was visible ; and ears, 
 to hear whatever was to be heard ; for say, Aristodemus, to what 
 purpose should odors be prepared, if the sense of smelling had 
 been denied ? or why the distinctions of bitter and sweet, of savory 
 and unsavory, unless a palate had been likewise given, convenient 
 ly placed, to arbitrate between them and declare the difference ? 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF SOCRATES. 161 
 
 Is not that Providence, Aristodemus, in a most eminent manner 
 conspicuous, which, because the eye of man is so delicate in its 
 contexture, hath therefore prepared eyelids like doors, whereby 
 to secure it, which extend of themselves whenever it is needful, 
 and again close when sleep approaches ? Are not these eyelids 
 provided as it were with a fence on the edge of them, to keep off 
 the wind and guard the eye ? Even the eyebrow itself is not 
 without its office, but, as a penthouse, is prepared to turn off the 
 sweat, which, falling from the forehead, might enter and annoy 
 that no less tender than astonishing part of us. Is it not to be 
 admired that the ears should take in sounds of every sort, and yet 
 are not too much filled by them ? That the fore-teeth of the an 
 imal should be formed in such a manner as is evidently best 
 suited for the cutting of its food, as those on the side for grinding 
 it to pieces ? That the mouth, through which this food is con 
 veyed, should be placed so near the nose and eyes as to prevent 
 the passing unnoticed whatever is unfit for nourishment ; while 
 Nature, on the contrary, hath set at a distance and concealed 
 from the senses all that might disgust or any way offend them ? 
 And canst thou still doubt, Aristodemus, whether a disposition 
 of parts like this should be the work of chance, or of wisdom and 
 contrivance ? I have no longer any doubt, replied Aristodemus ; 
 and, indeed, the more I consider it, the more evident it appears 
 to me that man must be the masterpiece of some great artificer ; 
 carrying along with it infinite marks of the love and favor of Him 
 who hath thus formed it. 
 
 " And what thinkest thou, Aristodemus, of that desire in the 
 individual which leads to the continuance of the species ? Of 
 that tenderness and affection in the female towards her young, 
 so necessary for its preservation ? Of that unremitted love of 
 life, and dread of dissolution, which take such strong possession 
 of us from the moment we begin to be ? I think of them, ans 
 wered Aristodemus, as so many regular operations of the same 
 great and wise Artist^ deliberately determining to preserve what 
 he hath made. 
 
162 SOCRATES. 
 
 "But, farther (unless thou desirest to ask me questions), seeing, 
 Aristodemus, thou thyself art conscious of reason and intelligence, 
 supposest thou there is no intelligence elsewhere ? Thou know- 
 est thy body to be a small part of that wide extended earth 
 which thou everywhere beholdest : the moisture contained in it, 
 thou also knowest to be a small portion of that mighty mass of 
 waters, whereof seas themselves are but a part, while the rest of 
 the elements contribute out of their abundance to thy formation. 
 It is the soul then alone, that intellectual part of us, which is 
 come to thee by some lucky chance, from I know not where. 
 If so be there is indeed no intelligence elsewhere: and we must 
 be forced to confess, that this stupendous universe, with all the 
 various bodies contained therein, equally amazing, whether we 
 consider their magnitude or number, whatever their use, what 
 ever their order, all have been produced, not by intelligence, 
 but by chance ! It is with difficulty that I can suppose other 
 wise, returned Aristodemus; for I behold none of those Gods 
 whom you speak of as making and governing all things ; where 
 as I see the artists when at their work here among us. Neither 
 yet seest thou thy soul, Aristodemus, which, however most as 
 suredly governs thy body ; although it may well seem, by thy 
 manner of talking, that it is chance, and not reason, which gov 
 erns thce. 
 
 " I do not despise the Gods, said Aristodemus : on the con 
 trary, I conceive so highly of their excellence, as to suppose they 
 stand in no need either of me or of my services. Thou mistakes! 
 the matter, Aristodemus ; the greater magnificence they have 
 shown in their care of thee, so much the more honor and service 
 thou owest them. Be assured, said Aristodemus, if I once could 
 be persuaded the Gods take care of man, I should want no moni 
 tor to remind me of my duty. And canst thou doubt, Aristo 
 demus, if the Gods take care of man ? Hath not the glorious 
 privilege of walking upright been alone bestowed on him, whereby 
 he may with the better advantage survey what is around him, 
 contemplate with more ease those splendid objects which are 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF SOCRATES. 163 
 
 above, and avoid the numerous ills and inconveniences which 
 would otherwise befall him ? Other animals indeed they have 
 provided with feet, by which they may remove from one place 
 to another; but to man they have also given hands, with which 
 he can form many things for his use, and make himself happier 
 than creatures of any other kind. A tongue hath been bestowed 
 on every other animal ; but what animal, except man, hath the 
 power of forming words with it, whereby to explain his thoughts, 
 and make them intelligible to others? 
 
 " But it is not with respect to the body alone that the Gods 
 have shown themselves thus bountiful to man. Their most ex 
 cellent gift is that soul they have infused into him, which so far 
 surpasses what is elsewhere to be found ; for by what animal, 
 except man, is even the existence of those Gods discovered, who 
 have produced and still uphold, in such regular order, this beau 
 tiful and stupendous frame of the universe ? What other species 
 of creature is to be found that can serve, that can adore them ? 
 What other animal is able, like man, to provide against the as 
 saults of heat and cold, of thirst and hunger ? that can lay up 
 remedies for the time of sickness, and improve the strength nature 
 has given by a well-proportioned exercise ? that can receive like 
 him information or instruction ; or so happily keep in memory 
 what he hath seen, and heard, and learnt ? These things being 
 so, who seeth not that man is, as it w r ere, a God in the midst of 
 this visible creation ? so far doth he surpass, whether in the en 
 dowments of soul or body, all animals whatsoever that have been 
 produced therein ; for if the body of the ox had been joined to 
 the mind of man, the acuteness of the latter would have stood 
 him in small stead, while unable to execute the well-designed 
 plan ; nor would the human form have been of more use to the 
 brute, so long as it remained destitute of understanding ! But in 
 thee, Aristodemus, hath been joined to a wonderful soul a body 
 no less wonderful ; and sayest thou, after this, the Gods take no 
 thought for me? What wouldst thou then more to convince 
 thee of their care ? 
 
164 SOCRATES. 
 
 " I would they should send and inform me, said Aristodemus, 
 what things I ought or ought not to do, in like manner as thou 
 sayest they frequently do to thee. And what then, Aristodemus ? 
 supposest thou, that when the Gods give out some oracle to all 
 the Athenians they mean it not for thee ? If by their prodigies 
 they declare aloud to all Greece, to all mankind, the things 
 which shall befall them, are they dumb to thee alone ? And art 
 thou the only person whom they have placed beyond their care ? 
 Believest thou they would have wrought into the mind of man a 
 persuasion of their being able to make him happy or miserable, 
 if so be they had no such power ? or would not even man him 
 self, long ere this, have seen through the gross delusion ? How 
 is it, Aristodemus, thou rememberest or remarkest not, that the 
 kingdoms and commonwealths most renowned as well for their 
 wisdom as antiquity, are those whose piety and devotion hath 
 been the most observable ? and that even man himself is never 
 so well disposed to serve the Deity as in that part of life when 
 reason bears the greatest sway, and his judgment is supposed in 
 its full strength and maturity ? Consider, my Aristodemus, that 
 the soul which resides in thy body can govern it at pleasure ; 
 w r hy then may not the soul of the universe, which pervades and 
 animates every part of it, govern it in like manner ? If thine 
 eye hath the power to take in many objects, and these placed at 
 no small distance from it, marvel not if the eye of the Deity can 
 at one glance comprehend the whole. And as thou perceivest it 
 not beyond thy ability to extend thy care, at the same time, to 
 the concerns of Athens^ Egypt, Sicily, why thinkest thou, my 
 Aristodemus, that the Providence of God may not easily extend 
 itself through the whole universe ? 
 
 " As therefore, among men, we make best trial of the affection 
 and gratitude of our neighbor by showing him kindness, and dis 
 cover his wisdom by consulting him in his- distress, do thou in 
 like manner behave towards the Gods ; and if thou wouldst ex 
 perience what thei? wisdom and what their love, render thyself 
 deserving the communication of some of those divine secrets 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF SOCKATES. 165 
 
 which may not be penetrated by man, and are imparted to those 
 alone who consult, who adore, who obey the Deity. Then shalt 
 thou, my Aristodemus, understand there is a Being whose eye 
 pierceth throughout all nature, and whose ear is open to every 
 sound ; extended to all places, extending through all time ; and 
 whose bounty and care can know no other bound than those 
 fixed by his own creation. 
 
 " By this discourse, and others of the like nature, Socrates 
 taught his friends that they were not only to forbear whatever 
 was impious, unjust, or unbecoming before man ; but even when 
 alone they ought to have a regard to all their actions, since the 
 Gods have their eyes continually upon us, and none of our de 
 signs can be concealed from them."* 
 
 To this passage we must add another equally deserving of at 
 tention : 
 
 " Even among all those deities who so liberally bestow on us 
 good things, not one of them maketh himself an object of our 
 sight. And He who raised this whole universe, and still upholds 
 the mighty frame, who perfected every part of it in beauty and 
 in goodness, suffering none of these parts to decay through age, 
 but renewing them daily with unfading vigor, whereby they are 
 able to execute whatever he ordains with that readiness and pre 
 cision which surpass man s imagination ; even He, the supreme 
 God, who performeth all these wonders, still holds himself invisi 
 ble, and it is only in his works that we are capable of admiring 
 him. For consider, my Euthydemus, the sun, which seemeth as 
 it were set forth to the view of all men, yet suffereth not itself 
 to be too curiously examined ; punishing those with blindness 
 who too rashly venture so to do ; and those ministers of the Gods, 
 whom they employ to execute their bidding, remain to us invisi 
 ble ; for though the thunderbolt is shot from on high, and break- 
 eth in pieces whatever it fmdeth in its way, yet no one seeth it 
 when it falls, when it strikes, or when it retires ; neither are the 
 
 * Memorabilia^ i. 4. 
 
166 SOCRATES. 
 
 winds discoverable to our sight, though we plainly behold the 
 ravages they everywhere make, and with ease perceive what 
 time they are rising. And if there be any thing in man, my 
 Euthydemus, partaking of the divine nature, it must surely be 
 the soul which governs and directs him ; yet no one considers 
 this as an object of his sight. Learn, therefore, not to despise 
 those things which you cannot see ; judge of the greatness of 
 the power by the effects which are produced, and reverence the 
 Deity."* 
 
 In conclusion, we must notice the vexed question of the Demon 
 of Socrates. The notion most generally current is that he be 
 lieved himself accompanied by a Daemon, or Good Angel, who 
 whispered counsels in his ear, and forewarned him on critical oc 
 casions. This has been adduced as evidence of his " supersti 
 tion ;" and one writer to be sure he is a Frenchman makes it 
 a text to prove that Socrates was mad.f Olympiodorus said that 
 the Daemon only meant Conscience, an explanation which, while 
 it effaces the peculiar characteristics of the conception, is at the 
 same time totally inapplicable to those cases when the " Daemonic 
 voice" spoke to Socrates concerning the affairs of his friends, as 
 we read in Plato s Thcages. By other writers the Dasmon has 
 been considered as purely allegorical. 
 
 The first point necessary to be distinctly understood is, that 
 Socrates believed in no special Da3mon at all ; and to translate 
 Plutarch s treatise into De Gcnio Socratis, and hence to speak of 
 le demon de Socrate, is gross misconception. Nowhere does 
 Socrates, in Plato or Xenophon, speak of a genius or demon, but 
 always of a daemonic something (ro dou^wiw, Oajaoviov <n), or of a 
 sign, a voice, a divine sign, a divine voice ,| The second point 
 
 * Memorabilia, iv. 3. 
 
 t Lelut, Du Demon de Socrate, 1S3C. A new edition of this work appeared 
 in 1856, and excited a " sensation." 
 
 I See passages cited in Zeller, ii. 28 (1846). Mr. Thompson in his note to 
 Butler, i. 375, says : " Clemens Alexandrinus in one passage conjectures that 
 the Satp6viov of Socrates may have been a familiar genius. Strom, v. p. 592. 
 This conjecture becomes an assertion in Lactantius (lust. D. ii. 14) who con- 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF SOCRATES. 167 
 
 necessary to be remembered is, that this " divine voice" was only 
 an occasional manifestation, and exercised only a restraining in 
 fluence. On the great critical occasions of his life, if the voice 
 warned him against any step he was about to take, he unhesi 
 tatingly obeyed it ; if the voice was unheard, he concluded that 
 his proposed step was agreeable to the Gods. Thus, when on 
 his trial, he refused to prepare any defence, because when he was 
 about to begin it the voice restrained him, whereupon he resign 
 ed himself to the trial, convinced that if it were the pleasure of 
 the Gods that he should die, he ought in no wise to struggle if 
 it were their pleasure that he should be set free, defence on his 
 part was needless. 
 
 This is his own explicit statement ; and surely in a Christian 
 country abounding in examples of persons believing in direct 
 intimations from above, there can be little difficulty in cred 
 iting such a statement. .Socrates was a profoundly religious 
 man ; he was moreover, as we learn from Aristotle, a man of 
 that bilious melancholic temperament* which has in all times 
 been observed in persons of unusual religious fervor, such as is 
 implied in those momentary exaltations of the mind which are 
 mistaken for divine visits ; and when the rush of thought came 
 upon him with strange warning voices, he believed it was the 
 Gods who spoke directly to him. Unless we conceive Socrates 
 as a profoundly religious man, we shall misconceive the whole 
 spirit of his life and teaching. In many respects he was a fanatic, 
 but only in the noble sense of the word : a man, like Carlyle, 
 intolerant, vehement, " possessed" by his ideas, but, like Carlyle, 
 preserved from all the worst consequences of such intolerance 
 and possession by an immense humor and a tender heart. His 
 
 verts the dc&monium into dcemon. Apuleius, it is true, had already led the 
 way to this error in his treatise De Deo Socratis. It is adopted without 
 scruple by Augustine and other Christian writers ; and, as might have been 
 expected, by Ficinus and the earlier moderns, as Stanley and Dacier, in 
 whose writings the damoni-um appears full-fledged as " an attendant spirit" 
 or " good angel." 
 
 * Qvaiv /uAayx ^""; 1 ) Aristotle, Problem. 80. 
 
168 SOCRATES. 
 
 Saturnine melancholy was relieved by laughter, which softened 
 and humanized a spirit otherwise not less vehement than that of 
 a Dominic or a Calvin. ( Thus strengthened and thus softened, 
 Socrates stands out as the grandest figure in the world s Pan 
 theon : the bravest, truest, simplest, wisest of mankind. 
 
FIFTH EPOCH. 
 
 PARTIAL ADOPTION OF THE SOCRATIC METHOD. 
 
 I. THE MEGARIC SCHOOL. EUCLID. 
 
 " SEVERAL philosophers," says Cicero, " drew from the con 
 versations of Socrates very different results ; and, according as 
 each adopted views which harmonized with his own, they in 
 their turn became heads of philosophical schools all differing 
 amongst each other." It is one of the peculiarities of a philo 
 sophical Method, to adapt itself indiscriminately to all sorts of 
 systems. A scientific Method is confined to one : if various and 
 opposing systems spring from it, they spring from an erroneous 
 or imperfect application of it. 
 
 We must not be surprised therefore to find many contradict 
 ory systems claiming the parentage of Socrates. But we must 
 be on our guard against supposing that this adaptation to various 
 systems is a proof of the excellence of the Socratic Method. It 
 is only a proof of its vagueness. It may be accepted as a sign 
 of the great influence exercised upon succeeding philosophers ; 
 it is no sign that the influence was in the right direction. 
 
 As we said, Socrates had no school; he taught no system. 
 He exhibited a Method ; and this Method his hearers severally 
 applied. Around him were men of various ages, various tempera 
 ments, and various opinions. He discoursed with each upon his 
 own subject: with Xenophon on politics; with Theages or 
 Thesetetus on science ; with Antisthenes on morals ; with Ion on 
 poetry. Some were convinced by him ; others were merely re 
 futed. The difference between the two is great. Of those who 
 
 8 
 
170 THE MEGARIC SCHOOL. 
 
 were convinced, the so-called Socratic Schools were formed; 
 those who were only refuted became his enemies. But, of 
 the former, some were naturally only more or less convinced ; 
 that is, were willing to adopt his opinions on some subjects, but 
 remained stubborn on others. These are the imperfect Socratists. 
 Amongst the latter was Euclid of Megara. 
 
 EUCLID, who must not be confounded with the great Mathe 
 matician, was born at Megara ; date probably between 450 and 
 440 B. c. He had early imbibed a great love of philosophy, and 
 had diligently studied the writings of Parmcnides and the other 
 Eleatics. From Zeno he acquired great facility in dialectics ; 
 and this continued to be his chief excellence even, after his ac 
 quaintance with Socrates, who reproved him for it as sophistical. 
 
 His delight in listening to Socrates was so great that he fre 
 quently exposed his life to do so. A decree was passed, in con 
 sequence of the enmity existing between Athens and Megara, 
 that any inhabitant of Megara found in Athens should forfeit his 
 life ; Euclid, however, braved the penalty. lie frequently came 
 to Athens at night, disguised as a female. The distance was 
 twenty miles. At the end of his journey he was recompensed 
 by the fascinating conversation of Socrates ; and he returned to 
 meditate on the results of their arguments. 
 
 Brucker s supposition that a rupture was caused between them 
 in consequence of Socrates having reproved Euclid s disputatious 
 tendency, is wholly without foundation, and seems contradicted 
 by the notorious fact that when, on the death of Socrates, Plato 
 and the majority of the disciples retired to Megara, in fear of 
 some popular outbreak of the Athenians, who were in a state of 
 rage against all the philosopher s friends, Euclid received them 
 well. Bound by the same ties of friendship towards the illustri 
 ous martyr, and sharing some of his opinions, the Socratists made 
 some stay in Megara. Differences however arose, as they will 
 amongst all communities of the kind. Plato and some others 
 returned to Athens, as soon as the state of the public mind ad 
 mitted their doing so with safety. The rest remained with Euclid. 
 
EUCLID. 171 
 
 "The character of the Megaric doctrine," says Hitter, "so far 
 as it is possible to fix it in the defective state of our information, 
 may be briefly given as the Eleatic view enlarged by the So 
 cratic conviction of the moral obligation, and the laws of scientific 
 thought." 
 
 We confess our inability to comprehend this. In Euclid we 
 have no hint of " moral obligation ;" in Socrates we fail to de 
 tect the " laws of scientific thought." If by the former Hitter 
 means, that Euclid gave an Ethical and Socratic meaning to the 
 Eleatic doctrine, he is correct ; if by the latter he means, that 
 Euclid adopted the Socratic Method of Induction and Definitions, 
 he is hopelessly wrong; and, if this is not what he means by 
 " laws of scientific thought," we are at a loss to understand him. 
 
 Euclid agreed with the Eleatics in maintaining that there was 
 but One unalterable Being, to be known by Reason only. This 
 One Being was not simply The One ; neither was it simply In 
 telligence ; it was The Good. This One Being received various 
 names according to its various aspects : thus it was sometimes 
 Wisdom (cpp6vri<fis) ; sometimes God (6s6s) ; at others Reason 
 (vous) ; and so forth. This One Good (sv TO a^a$ov) is the only 
 Being that really exists j every thing opposed to it has nothing 
 but a phenomenal, transitory existence. 
 
 Such is the outline of his doctrine, as presented by Diogenes 
 Laertius. In it the reader will have no difficulty in detecting 
 both the Eleatic and Socratic elements. The conception of God 
 as TO dyafiov the Good is purely Socratic ; and the denial of 
 any existence to things opposed to the Good is an explanation of 
 that passage in Plato s Republic, where Socrates declares God 
 not to be the author of all things, but only of such as are good.* 
 
 The Megaric doctrine is therefore the Eleatic doctrine, with 
 an Ethical tendency borrowed from Socrates, who taught that 
 virtue was not any partial cultivation of the human mind, but 
 constitutes the true and entire essence of the rational man, and 
 
 * M>; irdvTuv airtov rbv Qevv, aXAu rCJv ayaQ&v. ii. 100. 
 
172 THE MEGARIC SCHOOL. 
 
 indeed of the whole universe. The identification of Virtue with 
 Wisdom is also Socratic. 
 
 With respect to Euclid s dialectics there is one point, often 
 alluded to, variously interpreted, and which is in direct opposi 
 tion to the Method of Socrates. In refuting his adversaries he 
 did not attack the premises, but the conclusion.* This is cer 
 tainly not the manner of Socrates, who always managed to draw 
 new conclusions from old premises, and who, as Xenophon says, 
 proceeded from the generally known to the less known. As if 
 to mark this distinction more completely, we are told that Euclid 
 rejected the analogical mode of reasoning (<rov &a tfapa/SoXyjs 
 Xo^ov). If, said he, the things compared are alike, it is better to 
 confine the attention to that originally in question ; if the things 
 compared are unlike, there must be error in the conclusion. 
 This precept strikes into the weakness of Socrates method of 
 induction ; which was a species of analogical reasoning not of 
 the highest order. 
 
 In dialectics therefore we see Euclid following out the Eleatic 
 tendency, and carrying forward the speculations of Zeno. It 
 was this portion of his doctrine that his immediate followers, 
 Eubulides, Diodorus, and Alexinus, undertook to carry out. The 
 Socratic element was further developed by Stilpo. 
 
 "The majority of the later members of the Megaric School," 
 says Ritter, "are famous either for the refutation of opposite doc 
 trines, or for the invention and application of certain fallacies ; 
 on which account they were occasionally called Eristici and Dia- 
 lectici. Still it may be presumed that they did not employ 
 these fallacies for the purposes of delusion, but of instructing 
 rash and hasty thinkers, and exemplifying the superficial vanity 
 of common opinion. At all events, it is certain that they were 
 mainly occupied with the forms of thought, more perhaps with a 
 
 * Diog. Laert. ii. 107. This is paraphrased by EnficlJ into the following 
 contradictory statement : " lie judged that legitimate argumentation con 
 sists in deducing fair conclusions from acknowledged premises." Hist, of 
 Phil i. 199. 
 
ARISTIPPUS. 173 
 
 view to the discovery of particular rules, than to the foundation 
 of a scientific system or method." 
 
 II. THE CYRENAIC SCHOOL. ARISTIPPUS. 
 
 Among the " imperfect Socratists" we must rank Aristippus, 
 the founder of the Cyrenaic School, which borrowed its name 
 from the birthplace of its founder Gyrene, in Africa. 
 
 Aristippus was descended from wealthy and distinguished pa 
 rents, and was consequently thrown into the vortex of luxurious 
 debauchery which then characterized the colony of Minyse. He 
 came over to Greece to attend the Olympic games : there he 
 heard so much of the wisdom of Socrates that he determined on 
 listening to his enchanting discourse. He made Socrates an offer 
 of a large sum of money, which, as usual, was declined. The 
 great Talker did not accept money ; but he willingly admitted 
 Aristippus among the number of his disciples. It is commonly 
 asserted that the pupil did not agree well with his master, and 
 that his fondness for pleasure was offensive to Socrates. There 
 is no good authority for such an assertion. He remained with 
 Socrates until the execution of the latter ; and there was no bond 
 on either side to have prevented their separation as soon as they 
 disagreed. The impression seems to have originated in the dis 
 cussion reported by Xenophon,* wherein Aristippus expresses 
 his political indifference, and Socrates, by an exaggerated exten 
 sion of logic, endeavors to prove his views to be absurd. But 
 this is simply a divergence of opinion, such as must have existed 
 between Socrates and many of his followers. It merely shows 
 that Aristippus thought for himself. Socrates with such men as 
 Aristippus and Alcibiades reminds one of Dr. Johnson with the 
 " young bloods" Topham Beauclerk and Bennet Lang-ton : he 
 was wise enough and tolerant enough not to allow his virtue to 
 be scandalized by their love of pleasure. 
 
 From Athens he went to ^Egina, where he met with Lai s, the 
 
 * Memorabilia, ii. 1. 
 
174 THE CYRENAIC SCHOOL. 
 
 world-renowned courtesan, whom he accompanied to Corinth. 
 On his way from Corinth to Asia he was shipwrecked on the 
 island of Rhodes. On the sea-coast he discovered a geometrical 
 diagram, and exclaimed, " Take courage ; I see here the footsteps 
 of men." On arriving at the principal town, he managed to 
 procure for himself and friends a hospitable reception. lie used 
 to say, " Send two men amongst strangers, and you will see the 
 advantage of the philosopher." 
 Aristippus was one of those 
 
 " Children of the Sun, whose blood is fire;" 
 
 but to strong sensual passions he united a calm regulative intel 
 lect. Prone to luxury, he avoided excess. Easy and careless in 
 ordinary affairs, he had great dominion over his desires. Pleas 
 ure was his grand object in life ; but he knew how to temper 
 enjoyment with moderation. In disposition he was easy and 
 yielding, a " fellow of infinite mirth," a philosopher whose brow 
 w r as never "sicklied o er with the pale cast of thought." He 
 had none of that dignity which mistakes a stiff neck for healthy 
 virtue. He had no sternness. Gay, brilliant, careless, and en 
 joying, he became the ornament and delight of the Court of 
 Dionysius; that Court already illustrious by the splendid genius 
 of Plato and the rigid abstinence of Diogenes. The grave de 
 portment of Plato and the savage virtue of Diogenes had less 
 charm for the Tyrant than the easy gayety of Aristippus, W 7 hose 
 very vices were elegant. His ready wit was often put to the 
 test. On one occasion three hetcerce were presented for him to 
 make a choice : he took them all three, observing that it had 
 been fatal even to Paris to make a choice. On another occasion, 
 in a dispute with vEschines, who was becoming violent, he said : 
 "Let us give over. We have quarrelled, it is true; but I, as 
 your senior, have a right to claim the precedency in the reconcil 
 iation."* In his old-age he appears to have returned to Cyrene, 
 and there opened his school. 
 
 * Several of his repartees are recorded by Laertius. We add the best of 
 
AKISTIPPUS. 175 
 
 His philosophy, as Hegel remarks, takes its color from his per 
 sonality. So individual is it, that we should have passed it over 
 entirely, had it not been a precursor of Epicureanism. Its rela 
 tion to Socrates is also important. 
 
 In the only passage in which, as far as we know, Aristotle* 
 mentions Aristippus, he speaks of him as a Sophist. What does 
 this mean ? Was he one of the professed Sophists ? No. It 
 means, we believe, that he shared the opinion of the Sophists re 
 specting the uncertainty of Science. That he did share this 
 opinion is evident from Sextus Empiricus,j who details his rea 
 sons : such as, that external objects make different impressions 
 on different senses ; the names which we impose on these objects 
 express our sensations, but do not express the things ; there is 
 no criterium of truth; each judges according to his impressions; 
 none judge correctly. 
 
 In so far he was a Sophist ; but, as the disciple of Socrates, 
 he learned that the criterium of truth must be sought within. 
 He dismissed with contempt all physical speculations, as subjects 
 beyond human comprehension, and concentrated his researches 
 upon the moral constitution of man. 
 
 In so far he was a Socratist. But, although he took his main 
 direction from Socrates, yet his own individuality quickly turned 
 him into by-paths which his master would have shunned. His 
 was not a scientific intellect. Logical deduction, which w y as 
 the rigorous process of his master, suited neither his views nor 
 his disposition. He was averse from abstract speculations. His 
 
 them: Scinus, the treasurer of Dionysius, a man of low character but im 
 mense wealth, once showed Aristippus over his house. While he was expa 
 tiating on the splendor of every part, even to the floors, the philosopher spat 
 in his face. Scinus was furious. "Pardon me," exclaimed Aristippus, 
 " there was no other place where I could have spat with decency." One 
 day, in interceding with the Tyrant for a friend, he threw himself on his 
 knees. Being reproached for such want of dignity, he answered, " Is it my 
 fault if Dionysius has his ears in his feet?" One day he asked the Tyrant 
 for some money. Dionysius made him own that a philosopher had no need 
 of money. "Give, give," replied Aristippus, "and we will settle the ques 
 tion at once." Dionysius gave. " Now," said the philosopher, " I have no 
 need of money." * Metaph. iii. 2. t Adv. Math. vii. 173. 
 
176 THE CYKENAIC SCHOOL. 
 
 tendency was directly towards the concrete. Hence, while Soc 
 rates was preaching about The Good, Aristippus wished to spe 
 cify what it was ; and resolved it into Pleasure. It was the pith 
 and kernel of Socrates Ethical system, that Happiness was the 
 aim and desire of all men the motor of all action ; men only 
 erred because of erroneous notions of what constituted Happi 
 ness. Thus the wise man alone knew that to endure an injury 
 was better than to inflict it; he alone knew that immoderate 
 gratification of the senses, being followed by misery, did not 
 constitute Happiness, but the contrary. Aristippus thought this 
 too vague. He not only reduced this general idea to a more 
 specific one. namely, Pleasure ; he endeavored to show how 
 truth had its only criterium in the sensation of pleasure or of 
 pain. Of that which is without us we can know nothing truly ; 
 we only know through our senses, and our senses deceive us 
 with respect to objects. But our senses do not deceive us with 
 respect to our sensations. We may not perceive things truly ; 
 but it is true that we perceive. We may doubt respecting ex 
 ternal objects; we cannot doubt respecting our sensations. 
 Amongst those sensations we naturally seek the repetition of 
 such as are pleasurable, and shun those that are painful. 
 
 Pleasure, then, as the only positive good, and as the only pos 
 itive test of what was good, he declared to be the end of life ; 
 but, inasmuch as for constant pleasure the soul must preserve its 
 dominion over desires, this pleasure was only another form of the 
 Socratic temperance. It is distinguished from the Socratic con 
 ception of Pleasure, however, in being positive, and not merely 
 the gratification of a want. In the Pkcedo, Socrates, on being 
 released from his chains, reflects upon the intimate connection 
 of pleasure, and pain; and calls the absence of pain^ pleasure. 
 Aristippus, on the contrary, taught that pleasure is not the mere 
 removal of pain : they are both positive emotions ; non-pleasure 
 and non-pain are not emotions, but as it were the sleep of the soul.* 
 
 * Diog. Laert. ii. 89. 
 
ANTISTHENES. 177 
 
 In the application of this doctrine to ethics, Aristippus be 
 trays both his Sophistic and Socratic education. With the 
 Sophists he regarded pleasure and pain as the proper criteria of 
 actions; no action being in itself either good or bad, but only 
 such according to convention. AVith Socrates, however, he re 
 garded the advantages acquired by injustice to be trifling; 
 whereas the evils and apprehensions of punishment are consid 
 erable ; and pleasure was the result, not of individual prosperity 
 alone, but of the welfare of the whole State. 
 
 In reviewing the philosophy, such as it was, of Aristippus, we 
 cannot fail to be struck with the manifest influence of Socrates ; 
 although his method was not followed, we see the ethical ten 
 dency predominating. In the Megaric School the abstract idea 
 of The Good (TO dyaQov) of Socrates, was grounded on the Eleatic 
 conception of The One. In the Cyrenaic, the abstract concep 
 tion was reduced to the concrete, Pleasure ; and this became 
 the only ground of certitude, and morals the only science. In 
 the Cynic School we shall see a still further development in this 
 direction. 
 
 III. THE CYNICS. ANTISTHENES AND DIOGENES. 
 
 Cynicism is an imposing blasphemy. It imposed on antiquity ; 
 it has imposed on many modern imaginations by the energy of 
 its self-denials ; but it is a " blasphemy against the divine beauty 
 of life," blasphemy against the divinity of man. To lead the 
 life of a Dog is not the vocation of Man. 
 
 Nevertheless there were some points both in the characters 
 and doctrines of the founders of this School which may justly 
 claim the admiration of mankind. Their contemporaries re 
 garded them with feelings mingled with awe. We at least may 
 pay a tribute to their energy. 
 
 Antisthenes was born at Athens, of a Phrygian mother. In 
 early life he distinguished himself at the battle of Tauagra. 
 After this he studied under Gorgias, the Sophist, and established 
 a school for himself; but, captivated by the practical wisdom of 
 
ITS THE CYNICS. 
 
 Socrates, lie ceased to teach, and became once more a pupil ; 
 nay more, he persuaded all his pupils to come with him to 
 Socrates, and there learn true wisdom. This is genuine mod 
 esty, such as philosophers have rarely exhibited. He was then 
 somewhat advanced in life ; his opinions on many points were 
 too deeply rooted to be exchanged for others ; but the tendency 
 of the Socratic philosophy towards Ethics, and the character of 
 that system as leading to the moral perfection of man, seemed 
 entirely to captivate him. It will be remembered that Socrates 
 did not teach positive doctrines ; he enabled each earnest thinker 
 to evolve a doctrine for himself. All Socrates did, was to give 
 an impulsion in a certain direction, and to furnish a certain 
 Method. His real disciples accepted the Method ; his imperfect 
 disciples only accepted the impulsion. Antisthenes was of the 
 latter. Accordingly his system was essentially personal. He 
 was stern, and his doctrine was rigid ; he was proud, and his 
 doctrine was haughty ; he was cold, and his doctrine was un- 
 syrnpathizing and self-isolating ; he was brave, and his doctrine 
 was a battle. The effeminacy of the luxurious he despised ; the 
 baseness of courtiers and flatterers he hated. He worshipped 
 Virtue; but it was Virtue sometimes ferocious and unbending. 
 
 Even whilst with Socrates he displayed his contempt of ordi 
 nary usages, and his pride in differing from other men. He 
 used to appear in a threadbare cloak, with ostentatious poverty. 
 Socrates saw through it all, and exclaimed, " I see your vanity, 
 Autisthenes, peering through holes in your cloak !" How dif 
 ferent was this from Socrates! He, too, had inured himself to 
 poverty, to heat, and to cold, in order that he might bear the 
 chances of fortune; but he made no virtue of being ragged, 
 hungry, and cold. Antisthenes thought he could only preserve 
 his virtue by becoming a savage. He wore no garment except a 
 coarse cloak ; allowed his beard to grow ; carried a wallet and a 
 staff; and renounced all diet but the simplest. His manners 
 corresponded to his appearance. Stern, reproachful, and bitter 
 in his language ; careless and indecent in his gestures. His con- 
 
DIOGENES. 179 
 
 tempt of all sensual enjoyment was expressed in his saying, " I 
 would rather be mad than sensual !"* 
 
 On the death of Socrates he formed a school, and chose for 
 his place of meeting a public place in that quarter of Athens 
 called the Cynosarges, from which some say the sect of Cynics 
 derives its name ; others derive it from the snarling propensities 
 of the founder, who was frequently called " The Dog." As he 
 grew old, his gloomy temper became morose : he became so in 
 supportable that all his scholars left him, except Diogenes of 
 Sinope, who was with him at his death. In his last agony, 
 Dioa-enes asked him whether he needed a friend. " Will a friend 
 
 i3 
 
 release me from this pain ?" he replied. Diogenes gave him a 
 dagger, saying, "This will." "I wish to be freed from pain, 
 not from life," was the reply. 
 
 The contempt he uniformly expressed for mankind may be 
 read in two of his sayings. Being asked, what was the peculiar 
 advantage to be derived from philosophy^ he answered, " It en 
 ables me to keep company with mysel" Being told that he 
 was greatly praised by many, " Have I done any thing wrong, 
 then, that I am praised ?" he asked.f 
 
 DIOGENES of Sinope is generally remembered as the represen 
 tative of Cynicism ; probably because more anecdotes of his life 
 have descended to us. He was the son of a .banker at Sinope, 
 who was convicted of debasing the coin ; an affair in which the 
 son was also supposed to have been implicated. Diogenes fled 
 to Athens. From the heights of splendor and extravagance, he 
 found himself reduced to squalid poverty. The magnificence of 
 poverty, which Antisthenes proclaimed^ attracted him. Poor, 
 
 * It is thus we would interpret Diog. Laert. vi. 3 : Mavcirjv //aAAov 7| 
 fjffQciriv. Eitter gives this version: " I had rather go mad than experience 
 pleasure ;" which is an outrageous sentiment. 
 
 t Dr. Enfield, who generally manages to introduce some blunder into 
 every page, has spoiled this repartee, by giving it as a reply to the praise of 
 a bad man. Yet the language of Diogenes Laertius is very explicit.; 
 ce enaKivovffi (vi. 8). 
 
 \ See .the Banquet of Xenophoa. 
 
180 THE CYNICS. 
 
 he was ready to embrace the philosophy of poverty ; an outcast, 
 he was ready to isolate himself from society ; branded with dis 
 grace, he was ready to shelter himself under a philosophy which 
 branded all society. Having in his own person experienced how 
 little wealth and luxury can do for the happiness of man, he was 
 the more inclined to try the converse; having experienced how 
 wealth prompts to vice, and how desires generate desires, he was 
 willing to try the efficacy of poverty and virtue. He went to 
 Antisthenes ; was refused. He continued to offer himself to 
 the Cynic as a scholar ; the Cynic raised his knotty staff, and 
 threatened to strike him if he did not depart. " Strike !" re 
 plied Diogenes; "you will not find a stick hard enough to con 
 quer my perseverance." Antisthenes, overcome, accepted him 
 as a pupil. 
 
 To live a life of virtue was henceforward his sole aim. That 
 virtue was Cynicism. It consisted in the complete renunciation 
 of all luxury the subjugation of all sensual desires. It was a 
 war carried on by the Mind against the Body. As with the 
 Ascetics of a later day, the basis of a pure life was thought to be 
 the annihilation of the Body ; the nearer any one approached to 
 such a suicide, the nearer he was to the ideal of virtue. The 
 Body was vile, filthy, degraded, and degrading; it was the curse 
 of man ; it was the clog upon the free development of Mind ; it 
 was wrestled with, hated, and despised. This beautiful Body, 
 so richly endowed for enjoyment, was regarded as the " sink of 
 all iniquity." 
 
 Accordingly, Diogenes limited his desires to necessities. He 
 ate little ; and what he ate was of the coarsest. He tried to 
 live upon raw meat and unboiled vegetables, but failed. His 
 dress consisted solely of a cloak : when he asked Antisthenes for 
 a shirt, he was told to fold his cloak in two ; he did so. A wal 
 let and a huge stick completed his accoutrements. Seeing a 
 little boy drinking water out of his scooped hand, he threw 
 away his cup, declaring it superfluous. He slept under the 
 marble porticoes of the buildings, or in his celebrated Tub, 
 
DIOGENES. 181 
 
 which was his place of residence. He took his meals in public. 
 In public he performed all those actions which decency has con 
 demned to privacy. Decency of every kind he studiously out 
 raged. It was a part of his system to do so. Every thing, not 
 in itself improper, ought, he said, to be performed publicly. 
 Besides, he was wont to annoy people with indecent gestures ; 
 had he a philosophical reason for that also ? 
 
 Doubts have been expressed respecting his Tub, which, it is 
 thought, was only an occasional residence, and used by him as 
 expressive of his contempt for luxury. We incline, however, to 
 the tradition. It is in keeping with all we know of the man; 
 and that a Tub could suffice for a domicile we may guess from 
 Aristophanes.* 
 
 It is not difficult to imagine the effect created by the Cynics 
 in the gay, luxurious city of Athens. There the climate, no less 
 than the prevailing manners, incited every one to enjoyment. 
 The Cynics told them that enjoyment was unworthy of men ; 
 that there were higher and purer things for man to seek. To 
 the polished elegance of Athenian manners the Cynics opposed 
 the most brutal coarseness they could assume. To the friendly 
 flatteries of conversation they opposed the bitterest pungencies 
 of malevolent frankness. They despised all men ; and told 
 them so. 
 
 Now, although we cannot but regard Cynicism as a very pre 
 posterous doctrine as a feeble solution of the great problem of 
 morals, and not a very amiable feebleness we admit that it re 
 quired some great qualities in its upholders. It required a great 
 rude energy ; a fanatical logicality of mind ; a power over self, 
 narrow it may be, but still a power. These qualities are not 
 common qualities, and therefore they command respect. Any 
 deviation from the beaten path implies a certain resolution ; a 
 steady and consistent deviation implies force. All men respect 
 
 * Knights, 793 : the people are there spoken of as having been forced to 
 live, during the war, in "pigeon-holes and corners of turrets:" yvnapiois xal 
 Tvpyi6lots ; unless, indeed, this is purely a metaphorical expression. 
 
182 THE CYNICS. 
 
 force. The power of subjugating ordinary desires to one remote 
 but calculated end, always impresses men with a sense of unusual 
 power. Few are aware that to regulate desires is more difficult 
 than to subjugate them requires greater power of mind, greater 
 will, greater constancy. Yet every one knows that abstinence is 
 easier than temperance : on the same principle, it is easier to be 
 a Cynic than a wise and virtuous Epicurean. 
 
 That which prevents our feeling the respect for the Cynics 
 which the ancients seem to have felt, and which, indeed, some 
 portions of the Cynical doctrine would otherwise induce us to 
 feel, is the studious and uncalled-for outrages on common decen 
 cy and humanity which Diogenes, especially, perpetrated. All 
 the anecdotes that have come down to us seem to reveal a snarl 
 ing and malevolent spirit, worshipping Virtue only because it 
 was opposed to the vices of contemporaries; taking a pride in 
 poverty and simplicity only because others sought wealth and 
 luxury. It may be well to raise an earnest protest against the 
 vices of one s age; but it is not well to bring virtue into discredit 
 by the manner of the protest. Doubtless the Athenians needed 
 reproof and reformation, and some exaggeration on the opposite 
 side might have been allowed to the reformers. But Diogenes 
 was so feeble in doctrine, so brutal in manner, that we doubt 
 whether the debauchery of the first profligate in that profligate 
 city were more reprehensible than the debauchery of pride which 
 disgraced the Cynic. The whole character of the man is exhib 
 ited in one anecdote. Plato had given a splendid entertainment 
 to some friends. Diogenes entered, unbidden, and stamping on 
 the rich carpets, said, " Thus I trample on the pride of Plato ;" 
 whereupon Plato admirably replied, "With greater pride, O 
 Diogenes." 
 
 Diogenes, doubtless, practised great abstinence. He made a 
 virtue of his necessity ; and, being poor, resolved to be ostenta 
 tiously poor. The ostentation being novel, was mistaken for 
 something greater than it was; being in contradiction to the 
 universal tendency of his contemporaries, it was supposed to 
 
DIOGENES. 183 
 
 spring from higher motives. There are men who bear poverty 
 meekly ; there are men who look upon wealth without envy, 
 certain that wealth does not give happiness; there are men 
 whose souls are so fixed on higher things as utterly to disregard 
 the pomps and shows of the world ; but none of these despise 
 wealth, they disregard it ; none of these display their feelings, 
 they are content to act upon them. The virtue which is loud, 
 noisy, ostentatious, and self-affirmative, looks very like an obtru 
 sive egoism. And this was the virtue of the Cynics. Pretend 
 ing to reform mankind, it began by blaspheming humanity ; 
 pretending to correct the effeminacies of the age, it studiously 
 outraged all the decencies of life. Eluding the real difficulty of 
 the problem, it pretended to solve it by unabashed insolence. 
 
 In his old age Diogenes was taken captive by pirates, who 
 carried him to Crete, and exposed him for sale as a slave. On 
 being asked what he could do, he replied, " Govern men : sell 
 me, therefore, to one who wants a master." Xeniades, a wealthy 
 Corinthian, struck with this reply, purchased him, and, on re 
 turning to Corinth, gave him his liberty and consigned his chil 
 dren to his education. The children were taught to be Cynics, 
 much to their own satisfaction. It was during this period that 
 his world-renowned interview with Alexander took place. The 
 prince, surprised at not seeing Diogenes joining the crowd of his 
 flatterers, went to see him. He found the Cynic sitting in his 
 tub, basking in the sun. "I am Alexander the Great," said he. 
 " I am Diogenes the Cynic," was the reply. Alexander then 
 asked him if there was any thing he could do for him. "Yes, 
 stand aside from between me and the sun." Surprised at such 
 indifference to princely favor an indifference so strikingly con 
 trasted with every thing he could hitherto have witnessed he 
 exclaimed, "Were I not Alexander, I would be Diogenes !" One 
 day, being brought before the King, and being asked who he 
 was, Diogenes replied, " A spy on your cupidity ;" language, the 
 boldness of which must have gained him universal admiration, 
 because implying great singularity as well as force of character. 
 
184: THE CYNICS. 
 
 Singularity and Insolence may be regarded as his grand char 
 acteristics. Both of these are exemplified in the anecdote of his 
 lighting a lamp in the daytime, and peering about the streets as 
 if earnestly seeking something: being asked what he sought, he 
 replied, " A Man." The point of this story is lost in the usual 
 version, which makes him seek " an honest man." The words 
 in Laertius are simply, oivdpuifov ^rjrw "I seek a man." Diog 
 enes did not seek honesty ; he wanted to find a Man, in whom 
 honesty would be included with many other qualities. It was 
 his constant reproach to his contemporaries, that they had no 
 manhood. He said he had never seen men ; at Sparta he had 
 seen children ; at Athens, women. One day he called out, 
 "Approach, all men!" When some approached, he beat them 
 back with his club, saying, " I called for men ; ye are excre 
 ments." 
 
 Thus he lived till his ninetieth year, bitter, brutal, ostenta 
 tious, and abstemious ; disgracing the title of " The Dog" (for a 
 dog has affection, gratitude, sympathy, and caressing manners), 
 yet growling over his unenvied virtue as a cur growls over his 
 meatless bone, forever snarling and snapping without occasion ; 
 an object of universal attention, and from many quarters, of un 
 feigned admiration. One day his friends went to see him. On 
 arriving at the portico under which he was wont to sleep, they 
 found him still lying on the ground wrapped in his cloak. He 
 seemed to sleep. They pushed aside the folds of his cloak : he 
 was dead.* 
 
 The Doctrine of the Cynics may be briefly expounded. Antis- 
 thenes, as the disciple of Gorgias, was imbued with the sophistical 
 principles respecting Science ; principles which his acquaintance 
 with Socrates did not alter. He maintained that Science was 
 impossible. He utterly rejected the Socratic notion of Defini- 
 
 * It was thought that he had committed suicide by holding his breath, a 
 physical impossibility. Other versions of the cause of his death were cur 
 rent in antiquity ; one of them seems consistent with his character ; it makes 
 him die in consequence of devouring a neat s foot raw. 
 
THE CYNICS. 185 
 
 tions. He said that a Definition was nothing but a series of 
 words (Xoyov jxaxpov, " a long discourse") ; for which Aristotle 
 calls him an ignoramus.* To the Socratic notion of a Defini 
 tion, as including the essence of a thing, he opposed the Sophistic 
 notion of a Definition, as expressing a purely subjective relation. 
 You can only express qualities, not essences 5 you can call a 
 thing silver, but you cannot say in what it consists. Your defi 
 nition is only verbal : hence the first step in education should be 
 the study of words.f 
 
 What was the consequence of this skepticism ? The conse 
 quence was, that the Cynics answered arguments by facts. 
 When some one was arguing in support of Zeno of Elea s notion 
 respecting the impossibility of movement, Diogenes rose and 
 \valked. Definitions might prove that there was no motion ; 
 but definitions were only verbal, and could be answered by facts. 
 
 This refuge found in common-sense against the assaults of 
 logic, enabled the Cynics to shape a doctrine of morals which 
 had some certain basis. As they answered arguments by facts, 
 so they made actions take the place of precepts. Instead of 
 speculating about virtue, they endeavored to be virtuous. Soc 
 rates had brought philosophy from the clouds ; the Cynics 
 endeavored to bring it into daily practice. Their personal dispo 
 sitions gave the peculiar coloring to their doctrine, as that of 
 Aristippus had done to the Cyrenaic. 
 
 * Arai<5e*ro?. Metapli. viii. 3. 
 
 t Arrian, Epictet., Diss. i. 17, quoted in Eitter and Prcller, Hist. Philos. 
 Groico- Romance exfont-ium locis contexta (Hamburg, 1838). p. 174. 
 
SIXTH EPOCH. 
 
 COMPLETE ADOPTION AND APPLICATION OF THE SOCRATIC 
 METHOD. PLATO. 
 
 I. LIFE OF PLATO. 
 
 PERHAPS of all ancient writers, Plato s name is the best known. 
 Homer himself is unknown to many who have some dim notion 
 of Plato as the originator of the so-called Platonic love. There 
 is a great and wide-spread interest about the Grecian sage. The 
 young and romantic have strange, romantic ideas of him. " The 
 general reader," especially if a dabbler in fashionable philosophy, 
 or rather in the philosophy current in fashionable novels, has a 
 very exalted notion of him as the " great Idealist." The theo 
 logical reader regards him with affection, as the stout and elo 
 quent upholder of the doctrine of the immateriality and immor 
 tality of the soul. The literary critic often regards him as the 
 type of metaphysical eloquence, and classes with him every 
 vapory, mystical, metaphorical writer of " poetical philosophy." 
 
 Now, except that of the theologian, these notions, derived at 
 second-hand, are all false. It would be idle to inquire how such 
 extravagant opinions came into circulation. Enough for us that 
 they are false. Plato was any thing but " dreamy ;" any thing 
 but "an Idealist," as that phrase is usually understood. He was 
 an inveterate dialectician, a severe and abstract thinker, and a 
 great quibbler. His metaphysics are of a nature to frighten 
 away all but the most determined students, so abstract and so 
 subtle are they. His morals and politics, so far from having any 
 romantic tinge, are the ne plus ultra of logical severity ; hard, 
 
LIFE OF PLATO. 187 
 
 uncompromising, and above humanity. In a word, Plato the 
 man was almost completely absorbed in Plato the Dialecti 
 cian : he had learned to look upon human passion as a dis 
 ease, and human pleasure as a frivolity. The only thing worth 
 living for was truth. Dialectics was the noblest exercise of hu 
 manity. 
 
 Even the notions respecting his style are erroneous. It is not 
 the " poetical" metaphorical style usually asserted. It has un 
 mistakable beauties, but not the beauties popularly attributed 
 to it. Its immense power is dramatic power. The best dia 
 logues are inimitable scenes of comedy. Character, banter, 
 irony, and animation are there, but scarcely any imagery, and 
 that seldom beautiful.* His object was to refute or to convince ; 
 his illustrations are therefore homely. When fit occasion arrives 
 he can be eloquent and familiar. He clothes some myths in 
 language of splendid beauty ; and there are many felicitous 
 passages scattered through the dreary waste of dialectical quib 
 bling and obscurity. These passages have been quoted by vari 
 ous writers; hence readers have supposed that Plato always 
 wrote in such strains. But very fine passages are also to be 
 found in Aristotle, who is nevertheless a repulsive writer on the 
 whole. 
 
 In truth, Plato is a very difficult, and, as far as regards matter, 
 somewhat tedious writer ; this is the reason of his being so little 
 read : for we must not be deceived by the many editions. He is 
 often mentioned and often quoted at second-hand ; but he is 
 rarely read, except by professed scholars and critics. Men of 
 culture usually attack a dialogue or two out of curiosity. Their 
 curiosity seldom inspirits them to further progress. The difficul- 
 
 " Even upon abstract subjects, whether moral, metaphysical, or mathe 
 matical, the language of Plato is clear as the running stream ; and in sim 
 plicity and sweetness vies with the humble violet which perfumes the vale." 
 Dr. Enfield, Hist, of Phil. ii. 221. Whenever you meet with such trash as 
 this, be dubious that the writer of it ever read Plato. Aristotle capitally 
 describes Plato s style as "a middle species of diction between verse and 
 prose." It has rhythm rather than imagery. 
 
188 LIFE OF PLATO. 
 
 ty of mastering the ideas, and their unsatisfactory nature when 
 mastered, are barriers to any general acquaintance with Plato. 
 But those who persevere believe themselves repaid ; the journey 
 has been difficult, but it was worth performing. 
 
 Aristocles, surnamed Plato (the broad-browed),* the son of 
 Ariston and Perictione, was born at Athens or JEgina, 01. 87.3, 
 on the 7th Thargelion (about the middle of May, B. c. 430). 
 His childhood and youth consequently synchronize with the 
 Peloponnesian war, the most active and brilliant period of Gre 
 cian thought and action. His lineage was illustrious : on the 
 maternal side he was connected with Solon. 
 
 So great a name could not escape becoming the nucleus of 
 many fables, and we find the later historians gravely repeating 
 various miraculous events connected with him. He was said to 
 be the child of Apollo, his mother a virgin. Ariston, though 
 betrothed to Perictione, delayed his marriage because Apollo 
 had appeared to him in a dream, and told him that she was with 
 child. 
 
 Plato s education was excellent; and in gymnastics he was 
 sufficiently skilled to contend at the Pythian and Isthmian games. 
 Like a true Greek, he attached extreme importance to gymnas 
 tics, as doing for the body what dialectics did for the mind ; and, 
 like a true Greek, he did not suffer these corporeal exercises to 
 absorb all his time and attention : poetry, music, and rhetoric 
 were assiduously cultivated, and with some success. He wrote 
 an epic poem, besides some tragedies, dithyrambics, lyrics, and 
 epigrams. The epic he is said to have burned in a fit of despair 
 on comparing it with Homer. The tragedies he burned on be- 
 
 * Some writers incline to the opinion that "Plato" was the epithet of 
 broad-browed; others of broad-shouldered ; others, again, that it was ex 
 pressive of the breadth of his style. This last is absurd. The author of the 
 article Plato in the Penny Cyclopaedia pronounces all the above explanations 
 to be "idle, as the name of Plato was of common occurrence among the 
 Athenians of that time." But surely Aristocles was not endowed with this 
 surname of Plato without cause ? Unless he derived the name from a rela 
 tion, he must have derived it from one of the above causes. 
 
LIFE OF PLATO. 189 
 
 coming acquainted with Socrates. The epigrams have been par 
 tially preserved. One of them is very beautiful : 
 
 icra9pt7s, darfip f/^oY ride ycvoifiTjv 
 Ovpavbg, aj roAAoTj Sp/jtaatp t"s at fiXtnii). 
 
 " Thou gazest on the stars, my Life ! Ah ! gladly would I be 
 Yon starry skies, with thousand eyes, that I might gaze on thee !" 
 
 His studies of poetry were mingled with those of philosophy, 
 which he must have cultivated early ; for we know that he was 
 only twenty when he first went to Socrates, and we also know 
 that he had been taught by Cratylus before he knew Socrates. 
 Early he must have felt 
 
 " A presence that disturbed him with the joy 
 Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean, and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: 
 A motion and a spirit that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
 And rolls through all things." 
 
 A deep and meditative spirit led him to question Nature in 
 her secret haunts. The sombre philosophy of Heraclitus suited 
 well with his melancholy youth. Skepticism, which was the 
 fever of that age, had seized on Plato as on all the rest. This 
 skepticism, together with an imperious craving for belief which 
 struggled with the skepticism, found breathing-room in the doc 
 trines of Socrates ; and the young scholar learned that without 
 impugning the justice of his doubts, he could escape them by 
 seeking Truth elsewhere. 
 
 He remained with Socrates ten years, and was separated from 
 him only by death. He attended his beloved master during the 
 trial ; undertook to plead his cause ; indeed, began a speech 
 which the violence of the judges would not allow him to con 
 tinue ; and pressed his master to accept a sum of money suffi 
 cient to purchase his life. 
 
 On the death of Socrates he went to Megara to visit Euclid, 
 as we mentioned before. From thence he proceeded to Cyrene, 
 
190 LIFE OF PLATO. 
 
 where he was instructed in mathematics by Theodoras, whom 
 he had known in Athens, if we may credit the Thecetetus, where 
 Theodoras is represented discoursing with Socrates. From Cy- 
 rene he went to Egypt, in company, it is said, with Euripides. 
 There is very little authority for this visit, and that Euripides 
 was his companion is not very probable, because Euripides had 
 been dead some years. The influence of Egypt on Plato has 
 certainly been exaggerated. There is no trace, in his works, of 
 Egyptian research. "All he tells us of Egypt indicates at most 
 a very scanty acquaintance with the subject ; and although he 
 praises the industry of the priests, his estimate of their scientific 
 attainments is far from favorable."* 
 
 In these travels the broad-browed meditative man greatly en 
 larged the Socratic doctrine, and indeed introduced antagonistic 
 elements. But he strictly preserved the Socratic Method. 
 " Whilst studious youth," says Valerius Maximus, " were crowd 
 ing to Athens from every quarter in search of Plato for their 
 master, that philosopher was wandering along the winding banks 
 of the Nile, or the vast plains of a barbarous country, himself a 
 disciple to the old men of Egypt." 
 
 He returned at last, and eager scholars flocked around him. 
 With a mind richly stored by foreign travel and constant medi 
 tation, he began to emulate his beloved master, and devote him 
 self to teaching. Like Socrates, he taught gratuitously. The 
 Academia, a public garden in the neighborhood of Athens, was 
 the favorite resort of Plato, and gave its name to the school 
 which he founded. This garden was planted with lofty plane- 
 trees, and adorned with temples and statues; a gentle stream 
 rolled through it, with 
 
 " A sound as of a hidden brook 
 In the leafy month of June, 
 "Which to the sleeping woods all night 
 Singeth a quiet tune." 
 
 It was a delicious retreat, " for contemplation framed." The 
 * Kitter, ii. 147. 
 
LIFE OF PLATO. 191 
 
 longing thoughts of posterity have often hovered round it as the 
 centre of myriad associations. Poets have sung of it. Philoso 
 phers have sighed for it. 
 
 " See there the olive grove of Academe, 
 Plato s retirement, where the Attic bird 
 Thrills her thick-warbled notes the summer long." 
 
 In such a spot, where the sound 
 
 " Of bees industrious murmur oft invites 
 To studious musing," 
 
 one would imagine none but the Graces could enter; and coup 
 ling this with the poetical beauties of Plato s Dialogues, people 
 have supposed that the lessons in the Academy were magnifi 
 cent outbursts of eloquence and imagery upon philosophical 
 subjects. 
 
 Nothing can be further from the truth. The lectures were 
 hard exercises of the thinking faculty, and demanded great power 
 of continued abstraction. Whatever graces might have adorned 
 Plato s compositions, his lectures were not literary, but dialectical 
 exercises. 
 
 Hitter thinks differently. " His school was less a school of 
 hardy deeds for all, than of polished culture for the higher 
 classes, who had no other object than to enhance the enjoyment 
 of their privileges and wealth." Does this mean that Plato did 
 not teach Stoicism ? If so, it is a truism ; if not, a falsism ; since 
 what has Dialectics to do with " hardy deeds ?" We are then 
 informed that it was " a school of polished culture for the higher 
 classes :" a mere assertion, and a questionable one. The " higher 
 classes" principally frequented the Sophists ; besides, Plato s lec 
 tures were gratuitous, and every free citizen might attend them, 
 on certain conditions. There were no aristocratical exclusives 
 in Athens ; there were no " polished circles," with a culture dif 
 fering from that of the other free citizens. When Hitter says 
 that their object was " to enhance the enjoyment of their privi 
 leges and wealth," we are at a loss to conceive his meaning, be 
 cause we do not see how they were to do this by listening to 
 
192 LIFE OF PLATO. 
 
 speculations on essences and archetypal Ideas ; the more so as 
 Ritter himself tells us Plato s views of justice and honor were 
 " wholly impracticable in the corrupt state of the Athenian con 
 stitution ; and all empirical knowledge, such as is indispensable 
 to a politician, was in his view contemptible."* 
 
 Whatever their purpose, the Lectures were severe trials to the 
 capacities of students ; and their purely argumentative nature 
 may have originated the story respecting the inscription over the 
 door of his Academy, "Let none but Geometricians enter here ;" 
 a story which is very widely circulated, although wholly with 
 out good evidence.f The story is in direct contradiction to Plato s 
 views of Geometry, which he excludes from Philosophy, because 
 it assumes its axioms without proof, and because it occupies a 
 middle position between Opinion and Philosophy, more accurate 
 than the one, but less certain than the othei .J; 
 
 In his fortieth year Plato made his first visit to Sicily. It was 
 then he became acquainted with Dionysius L, the Tyrant of 
 Syracuse, Dion, his brother-in-law, and Dionysius II. With 
 Dionysius I. he soon came to a rupture, owing to his political 
 opinions; and he so offended the Tyrant, that his life was 
 threatened. Dion, however, interceded for him ; and the Tyrant 
 
 * Some countenance seems given to the ordinary notion of Plato s Lec 
 tures by the tradition that even some women attended them. "VVe confess 
 this statement is to us suspicious, especially as it is also said that one woman 
 disguised herself in man s clothes. Disguise, then, was necessary. The 
 fact, however, if correct, would only show the high cultivation of the hetcera 
 (for such the women must have been) ; and when we think of such women 
 as Aspasia, we see no reason for supposing they could not follow the ab- 
 strusest lectures. 
 
 t Mr. Thompson says the only authorities for the inscription are Philo- 
 ponus, in his Commentary on Aristotle, De Anima, and a verse in the 
 Chiliads of Tzetzes. See Notes to Butler s Lectures, ii. 79. 
 
 I have been unable to recover a passage in the Republic where Plato 
 expresses himself as in the text, but I found this, which approximates to 
 it, although not the passage I had in my mind. See Repub. vi. towards 
 the end, beginning, Mavddvw, t^r/, K.T.A. . . . and ending, tudvotav Sf KAr?v 
 ftoi SoKtts ri) TUV yew/ trptKwi/ rt Kai ri\v TUV TOIOVTWV tv, aAX oi vovv, wj 
 pcra|u TI 5<5|7S re Knl vov rr\v tiidvoiav ovcav. 
 
LIFE OF PLATO. 193 
 
 spared his life, but commissioned Poll is, the Spartan Ambassa 
 dor, in whose ship .Plato was to return, to sell him as a slave. 
 He was sold accordingly. Anniceris of Gyrene bought him, and 
 immediately set him free. On his return to Athens, Dionysius 
 wrote, hoping that he would not speak ill of him. Plato con 
 temptuously replied, that he had not "leisure to think of Diony 
 sius." 
 
 Plato s second visit to Syracuse was after the death of Diony 
 sius I., arid with the hope of obtaining from Dionysius II. the 
 establishment of a colony according to laws framed by himself. 
 The colony was promised ; but never granted. Plato incurred 
 the Tyrant s suspicions of having been concerned in Dion s con 
 spiracy ; but he was allowed to return home in peace. 
 
 He paid a third visit ; and this time solely to endeavor to rec 
 oncile Dionysius with his uncle Dion. Finding his efforts fruit 
 less, and perhaps dangerous, he returned. 
 
 Iii the calm retirement of the Academy, Plato passed the re 
 mainder of his days. Lecturing and writing were his chief 
 occupations. The composition of those dialogues which have 
 been the admiration of posterity, was the cheering solace of his 
 life, especially of his declining years. He died at the advanced 
 age of eighty- three. 
 
 Plato was intensely melancholy. That great broad brow, 
 which gave him his surname, was wrinkled and sombre. Those 
 brawny shoulders were bent with thought, as only those of 
 thinkers are bent. A smile was the utmost that ever played 
 over his lips ; he never laughed. " As sad as Plato," became a 
 phrase with the comic dramatists. He had many admirers ; 
 scarcely any friends. 
 
 In Plato, the thinker predominated over the man. That great 
 expansive intellect had so fixed itself upon the absorbing ques 
 tions of philosophy, that it had scarcely any sympathy left for 
 other matters. Hence his constant reprobation of Poets. Many 
 suppose that the banishment of poets from his Republic was but 
 an insincere extension of his logical principles, and that he really 
 
194: LIFE OF PLATO. 
 
 loved poetry too well to condemn it. Plato s opposition to poets 
 was however both deep and constant. lie had a feeling not un- 
 allied to contempt for them, because he saw in them some resem 
 blance to the Sophists, in their indifference to truth, and prefer 
 ence for the arts of expression. The only poetry Plato ever 
 praises is moral poetry, which is versified philosophy. His soul 
 panted for Truth. Poets, at the best, he held to be inspired 
 madmen, unconscious of what fell from their lips. Let the reader 
 open the Ion (it has been translated by Shelley) ; he will then 
 perceive the cause of poets being banished from the Republic. 
 Plato had a repugnance to poetry, partly because it was the dan 
 gerous rival of philosophy, partly because he had a contempt for 
 pleasure.* It is true that he frequently quotes Homer, and, to 
 wards the close of the Republic, some misgivings of having 
 harshly treated the favorite of his youth, escape him ; but he 
 quickly withdraws them, and owns that Truth alone should be 
 man s object. 
 
 There is something unpleasant in Plato s character, which 
 finds its echo in his works. He was a great, but not an amiable 
 man ; his works are great, but lamentably deficient. His ethics 
 are the ethics of a logician, not of a large-souled man, familiar 
 with and sympathizing with the complexities of life ; they are 
 suited only to an impossible state of humanity. 
 
 In bringing forward this view of Plato s character, we shall 
 doubtless shock many preconceptions. The Plato we have drawn, 
 if not so romantic as that usually drawn, is the only one which 
 seem to us consonant with what the ancient writers transmit. 
 Let no one object to our assertion of his constant melancholy, 
 on the ground of the comic talent displayed in his Dialogues. 
 The comic writers are not the gayest men ; even Moliere, whose 
 humor is so genial, overflowing, and apparently spontaneous, was 
 one of the austerest. Comedy often springs from the deepest 
 melancholy, as if in sudden rebound. Moreover, in Plato s 
 
 * Com p. Fhilebus, p. 131. 
 
195 
 
 comedy there is almost always some under-current of bitterness : 
 it is Irony, not Joyousness. 
 
 II. PLATO S WRITINGS : THEIR CHARACTER, OBJECT, AND 
 AUTHENTICITY. 
 
 Before attempting an exposition of Plato s doctrines, it may be 
 useful to say something respecting the character and authenticity 
 of his Dialogues. Modern criticism, which spares nothing, has 
 not left them untouched. Dialogues, the authenticity of which 
 had never been questioned in antiquity, have been rejected by 
 modern critics upon arbitrary grounds. 
 
 We cannot enter here into the details; we have no space; and, 
 had we space, we might be excused from combating the individ 
 ual positions, when we refuse to accept as valid the fundamental 
 assumptions on which they repose. Internal evidence is gener 
 ally deceptive ; but the sort of internal evidence supposed to be 
 afforded by comparative inferiority in artistic execution, is never 
 free from great suspicion. Some of Plato s dialogues not being 
 found equal to the exalted idea which his great works have led 
 men to entertain, are forthwith declared to be spurious. But 
 what writer is at all times equal to the highest of his own nights ? 
 What author has produced nothing but chefs-d oeuvre ? Are 
 there not times when the most brilliant men are dull, when the 
 richest style is meagre, when the compactest style is loose ? The 
 same subjects will not always call forth the same excellence ; 
 how unlikely then that various subjects should be treated with 
 uniform power ! The Theages could hardly equal the Thecetetus ; 
 the Euthydemus must be inferior to the Gorgias. No one thinks 
 of disputing Shakspeare s claim to the Merry Wives of Windsor, 
 because it is immeasurably inferior to Twelfth Night, which, in 
 its turn, is inferior to Othello. 
 
 Besides the dialogues rejected on account of inferior art, there 
 are others rejected on account of immature or contradictory opin 
 ions. But this ground is as untenable as the former. No one 
 has yet been able to settle definitively what was Plato s philos- 
 
196 
 
 ophy ; yet opinions are said to be unworthy of that unsettled 
 philosophy ! A preconceived notion of Plato s having been a 
 pure Socratist, has led to the rejection of whatever seemed con 
 tradictory to Socratic views. But there is abundant evidence to 
 show that Plato was not a mere exponent of Socratic opinions. 
 Moreover, in a long life a man s opinions undergo many modifi 
 cations ; and Plato was no exception to the rule. He contra 
 dicts himself constantly. He does so in works the authenticity 
 of which no one has questioned ; and we are not to be surprised 
 if we find him doing so in others. 
 
 It is somewhat amusing to observe the confidence of modern 
 criticism on this point.* An Ast, or a Socher, or a Schleier- 
 macher, rejects, on the most fallacious assumptions, the authen 
 ticity of dialogues quoted by Aristotle as the works of his master, 
 Plato. Now really, to suppose that Aristotle could be mistaken 
 on such a matter is a great extension of the conjectural privilege; 
 but to make this supposition on no better ground than that 
 of internal evidence, derived from inferiority of execution, or 
 variation in opinion in the works themselves, seems truly pre 
 posterous. 
 
 The ancients themselves admitted the Epinomis, the Eryxias, 
 the Axiochus, and the Second Alcibiades, to be spurious. The 
 JZpistles are also now generally regarded as forgeries. With 
 these exceptions, we really see no reason for rejecting any of the 
 dialogues. The Theages and the Hippias Major are certainly as 
 much in Plato s manner as Measure for Measure is in Shak- 
 speare s ; indeed, the Hippias seems to us a remarkably happy 
 specimen of his dramatic talent. 
 
 But whether all the Dialogues were the production of Plato 
 or not, they equally serve the purpose of this history, since no one 
 
 * " According as the deification has directed itself to this or that aspect 
 of his character, the opinions raised as. to the genuineness or falsity of 
 his works have fluctuated ; so that we might safely say, the more his writ 
 ings have been examined, the more has the decision of their authenticity 
 
19T 
 
 denies them to be Platonic. We may therefore leave this ques 
 tion, and proceed to others. 
 
 Do the Dialogues contain the real opinions of Plato ? This 
 question has three motives. 1st. Plato himself never speaks in 
 propria persona, unless indeed the Athenian in the Laws be ac 
 cepted as representing him ; a supposition in which we are in 
 clined to concur. 2dly. From certain passages in the Phcednis 
 and the Epistles, it would appear that Plato had a contempt for 
 written opinions, as inefficient for instruction. 3dly. On the tes 
 timony of a phrase in Aristotle, it is supposed that Plato, like 
 Pythagoras, had exoteric and esoteric opinions ; the former be 
 ing, of course, those set forth in his Dialogues. 
 
 We will endeavor to answer these doubts. The first is of very 
 little importance ; the second of greater; the last of very great im 
 portance. That Plato adopts the dramatic form, and preserves 
 it, is true ; but this form, which quite baffles us with Shakspeare, 
 baffles us with no one else. It is easy to divine the opinions of 
 Aristophanes, Moliere, or Schiller. It is still more easy to divine 
 the opinions of Plato, because, unlike the dramatists, he selects 
 his dialogues solely with a view to the illustration of his opinions. 
 Besides, it is reasonable to suppose that " Socrates," in the Dia 
 logues, represents Platonic opinions seen through the manner of 
 Socrates. And, whatever the variations may be with respect to 
 subordinate points, we find but one Method in all the Dialogues, 
 but one conception of science ; in a word, we find an unmistak 
 able tendency, which we pronounce to be Platonic. 
 
 Respecting his opinion on the insufficiency of books to convey 
 instruction, we may first quote what " Socrates " says on the sub 
 ject in the Phcedrus : 
 
 " Writing is something like painting ; the creatures of the lat 
 ter art look very like living beings ; but, if you ask them a ques 
 tion, they preserve a solemn silence. Written discourses do the 
 same : you would fancy, by what they say, that they had some 
 sense in them ; but, if you wish to learn, and therefore interro 
 gate them, they have only their first answer to return to all ques- 
 
198 
 
 tions. And when the discourse is once written, it passes from 
 hand to hand, among all sorts of persons, those who can under 
 stand it, and those who cannot. It is not able to tell its story 
 to those only to whom it is suitable ; and, when it is unjustly 
 criticised, it always needs its author to assist it, for it cannot de 
 fend itself. There is another sort of discourse, which is far better 
 and more potent than this. What is it ? That which is written 
 scientifically in the learner s mind. This is capable of defending 
 itself, and it can speak itself, or be silent, as it sees fit. You 
 mean the real and living discourse of the person who understands 
 the subject ; of which discourse the written one may be called 
 the picture ? Precisely. Now, think you that a sensible hus 
 bandman would take seed which he valued, and wishing to pro 
 duce a harvest, would seriously, after the summer had begun, 
 scatter it in the gardens of Adonis,* for the pleasure of seeing it 
 spring up and look green in a week ? Or do you not rather 
 think that he might indeed do this for sport and amusement ; 
 but, when his purpose was serious, would employ the art of agri 
 culture, and, sowing the seed at the proper time, be content to 
 gather in his harvest in the eighth month ? The last, undoubt 
 edly. And do you think that he who possesses the knowledge 
 of what is just, and noble, and good, will deal less prudently with 
 his seeds than the husbandman with his ? Certainly not. He 
 will not, then, set about sowing them with a pen and a black 
 liquid ; or (to drop the metaphor) scattering these truths by means 
 of discourses, which cannot defend themselves against attack, and 
 which are incapable of adequately expounding the truth. No 
 doubt he will, for the sake of sport, occasionally scatter some of 
 the seeds in this manner, and will thus treasure up memoranda 
 for himself, in case he should fall into the forgetfuluess of old 
 age, and for all others who follow in the same track ; and he will 
 be pleased when he sees the blade growing up green."| 
 
 Now, this remarkable passage is clearly biographical. It is the 
 
 * " The gardens of Adonis," a periphrasis for mignonette-boxes, 
 t Phccdrus, p. 93. 
 
199 
 
 justification of Socrates philosophical career. But it must not 
 be too rigorously applied to Plato, whose voluminous writings 
 contradict it ; nor must we suppose that those writings were de 
 signed only for amusement, or as memoranda for his pupils. The 
 main idea of this passage is one which few persons would feel 
 disposed to question. We are all aware that books labor under 
 very serious deficiencies; they cannot replace oral instruction. 
 The frequent misapprehensions of an author s meaning would in a 
 great measure be obviated if we had him by our side to interro 
 gate him. And oral instruction has the further advantage of not 
 allowing the reader s mind to be so passive as it is with a book : 
 the teacher by his questions excites the activity of the .pupil. All 
 this may reasonably be conceded as Plato s opinion, without at 
 all affecting the serious purpose of his writings. Plato thought 
 that conversation was more instructive than reading ; but he knew 
 that reading was also instructive, and he wrote : to obviate as 
 much as possible the necessary inconveniences of written dis 
 course, he threw all his works into the form of dialogue. Hence 
 the endless repetitions, divisions, and illustrations of positions al 
 most self-evident. The reader is fatigued by them ; but, like 
 Addison s tediousness, they have a " design " in them : that de 
 sign is, by imitating conversation, to leave no position unexplain 
 ed. As a book cannot be interrogated, Plato makes the book 
 anticipate interrogations. The very pains he takes to be tedious, 
 the very minuteness of his details, is sufficient to rescue his works 
 from the imputation of being mere amusements. He was too 
 great an artist to have sacrificed his art to any thing but his con 
 victions. That he did sacrifice the general effect to his scru 
 pulous dialectics, no one can doubt ; and we believe that he did 
 so for the sake of deeply impressing on the reader s mind the 
 real force of his Method. Had the critics recognized Plato s 
 real drift, we believe they would have spared much of their cen 
 sure, and hesitated before pronouncing against the genuineness 
 of certain dialogues. 
 
 Connected with Plato s expressions respecting the imperfection 
 
200 
 
 of written works, there is the passage in Aristotle, referring to 
 the aypcupa (Jo ^-aTa, or " unwritten opinions," which is supposed 
 to indicate an esoteric doctrine. If Aristotle s words do bear 
 that meaning, then is the opinion consistent and valid, which 
 regards the exoteric works the Dialogues as mere divertise- 
 ments. Let us examine it. 
 
 Aristotle says that Plato, in the Timceus, maintained space 
 and matter to be the same, but that, in what are called the un 
 written opinions (sv rofc XS^OJXSVQIJ cfypa<poj o^Aa<J j), he consid 
 ered space and place (TOV TOTTOV xa; v <r^v p^wpav) to be the same.* 
 From such a passage it is surely somewhat gratuitous to conclude 
 that Plato had an esoteric doctrine. The co^poupa tfoyfAcwa proba 
 bly meant his lectures, or, as Ritter suggests, notes taken from the 
 lectures by his scholars. At any rate, there is no ground for 
 supposing them to have been esoterical opinions ; the more so as 
 Aristotle, his most illustrious pupil, never speaks of any such dis 
 tinct doctrine, but draws his statements of Plato s views from 
 published works. 
 
 We are convinced that the Dialogues contain the real opinions 
 of Plato, in as far as Plato ventured to express them. We make 
 this reservation because it is pretty generally known that in the 
 Socratic philosophy individual opinions were not of so much im 
 portance as Method. It would perhaps be better to say, therefore, 
 that the Dialogues exhibit Plato s real Method and tendencies. 
 Certain it is that the Method and tendencies can only rightly be 
 appreciated after a survey of all the Dialogues. The ancients, 
 we are told by Sextus Empiricus,f were divided amongst them- 
 
 * Phys. iv. c. 2, p. 53. Eitter, who refers to but does not cite tlie passage, 
 gives us to understand that, in these unwritten opinions, " much was explain 
 ed differently, or, at least, more definitely than in the Dialogues." But no such 
 conclusion can be drawn from Aristotle. There is no greater difference al 
 luded to in the passage than may frequently be found between one dialogue 
 and another. If the written (published) opinions differ, surely those unwrit 
 ten may be allowed also to differ from the written ? If the Republic differs 
 from the Timceus^ surely the "unwritten opinion" may differ from the 
 Timceu-s. 
 
 t Pyrrhon. Hypot. i. p. 44. 
 
201 
 
 selves as to whether Plato was a skeptic or a dogmatist. Nor 
 was the dispute irrational : for, as some of the Dialogues are ex 
 pository and dogmatical, and others are mere exercises of the 
 dialectical method mere contests in which nothing is definitive 
 ly settled any one having studied only one class of these Dia 
 logues would think Plato either a skeptic or a dogmatist, accord 
 ing to the nature of those which he had read. Thus Cicero, an 
 ardent admirer, says, " Plato affirms nothing ; but, after produc 
 ing many arguments, and examining a question on every side, 
 leaves it undetermined." This is true of such dialogues as the 
 Thecetetus, or the Hippias Major ; but untrue of the Phcedo, 
 Timceus, Laws, etc. 
 
 This leads us to a consideration of the various attempts at 
 classifying the Dialogues. That some sort of classification should 
 be adopted is admitted by all ; but no two persons seem to agree 
 as to the precise arrangement. Any attempt at chronological ar 
 rangement must inevitably fail. Certain dialogues can be sat 
 isfactorily shown to have been written subsequently to some 
 others ; but any regular succession is beyond our ingenuity. "We 
 may be pretty sure that the Pkcedrus was the earliest,* or one of 
 the earliest, and the Laws the latest. We may be sure that the 
 Republic was earlier than the Laws, because the latter is a ma- 
 turer view of politics. But when the Republic was written baffles 
 conjecture. It is usually placed with the Timceus and the Laivs ; 
 that is to say, with the last products of its author. But we de 
 mur to this on several accounts. The differences of style and of 
 ideas observable in the Republic and the Laws, imply considera 
 ble distance between the periods of composition. Besides, a man 
 not writing for his bread does not so soon resume a subject which 
 he has already treated with great fulness. Plato had uttered 
 his opinions in the Republic. He must have waited till new ideas 
 were developed, before he could be tempted again to write ; for 
 
 * See on this point Mr. Thompson s note to Butlers Lectures on Hist, of 
 Ancient PhU. ii. p. 44. 
 
 9* 
 
202 
 
 observe, both these dialogues are expository and dogmatical : 
 they express Plato s opinions ; they are not merely dialectical ex 
 ercises. 
 
 It strikes us also that there is but one safe principle to be ap 
 plied to the testing of such points. Whenever two works ex 
 hibit variations of opinion, we should examine the nature of the 
 variations and ask, which of the two opinions is the later in de 
 velopment which must have been the earlier ? 
 
 Let us take an example. In the Republic (iii. p. 123) he at 
 tempts to prove that no one can excel in two arts; that the 
 comic poet cannot be the same as the tragic, the same actor can 
 not act in tragedy and comedy with success. In the Amatores 
 (p. 289) he has the same idea, though there only mentioned 
 briefly.* In the Symposium, however, Plato s opinion is directly 
 the reverse ; for, in a celebrated passage, he makes Socrates con 
 vince Agathon that the tragic and comic poet are the same per 
 son. Now, it is not difficult to decide which is the earlier opin 
 ion : in the Republic it, is the logical consequence of his premises; 
 but in the Symposium that opinion is corrected by experience, 
 for in the poets of his own day Plato found both tragedy and 
 comedy united ; and as Socrates is made to convince Agathon, 
 we may conclude that the former opinion was not uncommon, 
 and that Plato here makes a retractation. No one will deny 
 that the former opinion is superficial. The distinction between 
 tragedy and comedy is such that it seems to imply a distinct na 
 ture to attain excellence in each. But Euripides, Shakspeare, 
 Racine, Cervantes, Calderon, and many others, confute this 
 seeming by their dramas. 
 
 Perhaps a still more conclusive example is that of the " crea- 
 
 * According to Hitter s principle, this would prove the Republic to be later 
 than the Amatores. He maintains, and with plausibility, that, when a sub 
 ject which has been developed in one dialogue is briefly assumed in another, 
 the latter is subsequent in composition. (Eitter, vol. ii. p. 183.) Yet, on 
 this principle the Phcedo is earlier than the Phcudrus, inasmuch as the doc 
 trine of reminiscence is developed in the former and alluded to in the latter. 
 
203 
 
 tion of Ideas," so expressly stated in the Republic, and the " eter 
 nity and uncreated nature of Ideas," as expressly stated in the 
 Timceus. So radical a difference in the most important position 
 of his philosophy, would at once separate the epochs at which 
 the two dialogues were composed. And to this may be added 
 the difference in artistic treatment between the Republic and the 
 Timceus. The former, although expository, has much of the vi 
 vacity and dramatic vigor of the early dialogues. The Timceus 
 and the Laws have scarcely a trace of art. 
 
 Ritter has well observed that "the excellence of the Platonic 
 dialogues, as pieces of art, is twofold : the rare imitative powers 
 exhibited in the dialogue, and the acuteness with which philo 
 sophical matters are dialectically treated. No one will deny 
 that these two qualities have only an outward connection, and 
 consequently that they cannot advance equally. With the phi 
 losopher the latter is manifestly the more important, whereas the 
 former is of secondary importance. The degree of perfection 
 therefore in any dialogue, as such, affords at most a very uncer 
 tain means for the determination of its date ; whereas the great 
 est weight ought to be laid on the dialectical skill." In propor 
 tion as the dialectical skill became mature, it is natural to sup 
 pose that the dramatic imitation was less cared for. In propor 
 tion as Plato became settled in his convictions he became anxious 
 solely for their clear exposition. He began life with a love of 
 poetry ; but this he soon abandoned for philosophy. 
 
 The whole inquiry may seem idle ; but until something like a 
 positive arrangement of his works can be made, there will be no 
 end to the misconceptions of his opinions ; for it is preposterous 
 to cite passages in support of a doctrine, before having ascer 
 tained the date of the work whence the passages are drawn. 
 Yet this is the way critics and historians draw up an imaginary 
 outline of Plato s philosophy, and squabble amongst each other 
 as to who is right. When it is said that Plato held such or such 
 an opinion, it should be distinctly understood at what period of 
 his career he held it ; because, in so long a career, and with so 
 
204 
 
 many changes of opinion, it is necessary to be precise. For our 
 own part we can scarcely name a single opinion held by him 
 throughout his works. Even the Socratic idea of Virtue being 
 identical with Knowledge, consequently of Vice being Ignorance, 
 and therefore involuntary even this idea he learned in his old- 
 age to repudiate, as we see in the Laws (book v. p. 385), where 
 he calls incontinence, no less than ignorance (vj Si 1 dju-ecduxv ?} bi> 
 dxpotTEiav), the causes of vice. In the same sense (book iv. p. 
 138), after speaking of anger and pleasure as causes of error, he 
 says, " There is a third cause of our faults, and that is ignorance" 
 (TP/TOV a^vojav TWV afjuxp<rx]fjKx<rwv a/Viav). So that here he places 
 ignorance only as a third cause ; and by so doing destroys the 
 whole Socratic argument respecting the identity of Virtue and 
 knowledge.* 
 
 This being the case, it will readily be acknowledged, that to 
 make up a doctrine from passages culled here and there, must 
 inevitably lead into error. A consistent doctrine cannot be made 
 out. Indeed it is questionable whether Plato ever elaborated 
 one. Like Socrates, he occupied himself with Method rather 
 than with results ; like Socrates, he had doubts respecting the 
 certainty of knowledge on the higher subjects of thought ; like 
 Socrates, he sought Truth, without professing to have found her. 
 
 As a chronological arrangement has been impossible, a philo 
 sophical arrangement has frequently been attempted. The most 
 celebrated is that of Schleiermacher, who divides the Dialogues 
 into three classes : " 1st. Elementary dialogues, or those which 
 contain the germs of all that follows, of logic as the instrument 
 of philosophy, and of ideas as its proper object ; consequently, 
 of the possibility of the conditions of knowledge : these are the 
 Phcedrus, Lysis, Protagoras, Laches, Charmides, Euthyphro, 
 
 * The Meno is a further confirmation. In it virtue is shown to be unsus 
 ceptible of being taught; ergo, it is not Knowledge. This would make the 
 Meno one of the latest works. Neither of these contradictions has, to our 
 knowledge, been noticed before. It was our intention to insert a Chapter on 
 the self-contradictions of Plato, but the space such a Chapter must have oc 
 cupied, would have been utterly beyond our limits. 
 
PLATO S WRITINGS. 205 
 
 and Parmenides ; to which he subjoins, as an appendix, the 
 Apologia, Crito, Ion, Hippias Minor, Hipparchus, Minos, and 
 Alcibiades II. 2d. Progressive dialogues, which treat of the 
 distinction between philosophical and common knowledge in 
 their united application to the two proposed and real sciences, 
 Ethics and Physics : these are the Gorgias, Thecetetus, Meno, 
 Euthydemus, Cratylus, Sophistes, Politicus, Symposium, Phccdo, 
 and Philebus ; with an appendix containing the Theages, Ama- 
 torcs, Alcibiades I., Menexemus, Hippias Major, and Clitophon. 
 3d. Constructive dialogues, in which the practical is completely 
 united with the speculative ; these are the Republic, Timceus, 
 Critias, with an appendix containing the Laws and the Epis 
 tles?* There is considerable ingenuity in this ; and it has been 
 adopted by Bekker in his edition. It has however been much 
 criticised, as every such attempt must necessarily be. Van 
 Heusde, in his charming work,f has suggested another. He pro 
 poses three classes : 1, those wherein the subject-matter relates 
 to the Beautiful ; 2, those wherein it relates to the True ; 3, 
 those wherein it relates to the Practical. Of the first are those 
 concerning Love, Beauty, and the Soul. Of the second, those 
 concerning Dialectics, Ideas, Method ; in which Truth and the 
 means of attaining it are sought. Of the third, those concerning 
 justice; i. e. morals and politics. These three classes represent 
 the three phases of the philosophical mind : the desire for Truth, 
 the appreciation of Truth, and the realization of it, in an applica 
 tion to human life. 
 
 There is one great objection to this classification, namely, the 
 impossibility of properly arranging the Dialogues under the sep 
 arate heads. The Phcedrus, which Van Heusde believes devoted 
 to Love and Beauty, Schleiermacher has clearly shown to be de 
 voted to Dialectics. So of the rest : Plato mixes up in one dia 
 logue very opposite subjects. Van Heusde is also under the er- 
 
 * Penny Cyclopaedia, Art. Plato, p. 236. 
 t Initia Philosophic Platonicce, i. p. 72. 
 
206 
 
 roneous conviction of Plato s having been only a Socratist till lie 
 went to Megara, where he became imbued with the Eleatic doc 
 trines ; and that it was in his maturer age that he became ac 
 quainted with the Pythagorean philosophy. 
 
 It may be presumptuous to suggest a new classification, yet it 
 is difficult to resist the temptation. It seems to us that the Dia 
 logues may reasonably be divided into the two classes named by 
 Sextus Empiricus : Dogmatic and Agonistic, or Expository and 
 Polemical. The advantage of this division is its clearness and 
 practicability. There will always be something arbitrary in the 
 endeavor to classify the dialogues according to their subject- 
 matter, because they are almost all occupied with more than one 
 subject. Thus the Republic would certainly be classed under 
 the head of Ethics ; yet it contains very important discussions 
 on the nature of human knowledge, and on the theory of Ideas ; 
 and these discussions ought properly to be classed under the 
 head of Metaphysics. Again, the Pliazdrus is more than half 
 occupied with discourses about Love ; but the real subject of the 
 work is Dialectics. 
 
 In the division we propose, such inconveniences are avoided. 
 It is easy to see which dialogues are polemical and which are 
 expository. The Hippias Major and the Timceus may stand as 
 representatives of each class. In the former no attempt is made 
 to settle the question raised. Socrates contents himself with re 
 futing every position of his antagonist. In the Timceus there is 
 no polemic of any sort : all is calmly expository. 
 
 A further subdivision might also be made of the agonistic 
 dialogues, into such as are purely polemical and such as by 
 means of polemics enforce ideas. Sometimes Plato only de 
 stroys ; at other times the destruction is a clearance of the 
 ground, which opens to us a vista of the truth : of this kind is 
 the Thecetetus. 
 
 We are however firmly persuaded that one distinct purpose 
 runs through all the Dialogues, whatever may be their varieties 
 of form or of opinion ; one great and fruitful purpose which may 
 
PLATO S METHOD. 207 
 
 rightly be called the philosophy of Plato, and which we will now 
 attempt to exhibit. 
 
 III. PLATO S METHOD. 
 
 By some, Plato is regarded as the mere literary exponent of 
 the Socratic doctrines; by others, as the real founder of a new 
 epoch and of a new philosophy. Both of these views appear to 
 us questionable ; but on the subject of Plato, errors are so numer 
 ous, and we had almost said so inevitable, that no one who 
 rightly appreciates the difficulty of ascertaining the truth, will 
 be disposed to dogmatize. Although we claim the right of en 
 forcing our opinions a right purchased with no contemptible 
 amount of labor in the inquiry we would be distinctly under 
 stood to place no very great confidence in their validity. After 
 this preface, we trust, we may speak openly without incurring 
 the charge of dogmatism, when simply recording the results of 
 study.* 
 
 Plato we hold to be neither a simple Socratist, nor the creator 
 of a new philosophy. He was the inheritor of all the wisdom of 
 his age. He fully seized the importance of the Socratic Method ; 
 he adopted it, enlarged it. But he also saw the importance of 
 those ideas which his predecessors had so laboriously excogitated; 
 he adopted and enlarged the leading features of the Pythagore 
 ans and the Eleatics, of Anaxagoras and Heraclitus. With vast 
 learning and a puissant Method, he created an influence which is 
 not yet totally extinct. But his philosophy was critical, not dog 
 matical. He enlarged, ameliorated the views of others, intro 
 ducing little that was new into the philosophy of his age. He 
 was the culminating point of Greek philosophy. In his works 
 
 * It has been a principle with us throughout, to abstain from all un 
 necessary references. The absence of such references renders it the more 
 needful for us to state that, previous to writing this Section, we renewed 
 our acquaintance with Plato by carefully reading all his works, with the ex 
 ception of two of the minor ones. (Since the first edition of this work a 
 complete translation of Plato has appeared, so that the English reader has 
 now the means of testing the validity of our conclusions.) 
 
208 
 
 all the various and conflicting tendencies of preceding eras were 
 collected under one Method. 
 
 That Method was doubtless the Method of Socrates, with some 
 modifications, or rather with some enlargement. Schleierrnacher, 
 in a profound and luminous essay on the Worth of Socrates as a 
 Philosopher,* looks upon the service rendered to Philosophy by 
 Socrates as consisting less in the truths arrived at, than in the 
 mode in which truth should be sought. Alluding to this view, 
 John Mill has said, " This appears to us to be, with some modi 
 fications, applicable likewise to Plato. No doubt the disciple 
 pushed his mere inquiries and S2^eculations over a more extended 
 surface, and to a much greater depth below the surface, than 
 there is any reason to believe the master did. But, though he 
 continually starts most original and valuable ideas, it is seldom 
 that these, when they relate to the results of inquiry, are stated 
 with an air of conviction, as if they amounted to fixed opinions. 
 But, when the topic under consideration is the proper mode of 
 philosophizing either the moral spirit in which truth should be 
 sought, or the intellectual processes and methods by which it is 
 to be attained ; or when the subject-matter is not any particular 
 scientific principle, but knowledge in the abstract, the differences 
 between knowledge and ignorance, and between knowledge and 
 mere opinion then the views inculcated are definite and consist 
 ent, are always the same, and are put forth with the appearance 
 of earnest and matured belief. Even in treating of other subjects, 
 and even when the opinions advanced have the least semblance 
 of being seriously entertained, the discourse itself has generally a 
 very strong tendency to illustrate the conception, which does 
 seem to be really entertained, of the nature of some part or other 
 of the process of philosophizing. The inference we would draw 
 is, that on the science of the Investigation of Science, the theory 
 of the pursuit of truth, Plato had not only satisfied himself that 
 
 * Translated by Bishop Thirlwall, in the Philological Museum, and re 
 printed in the English version of Dr. Wigger s Life of Socrates. 
 
PLATO S METHOD. 209 
 
 his predecessors were in error, and how, but had also adopted 
 definite views of his own ; while on all or most other subjects he 
 contented himself with confuting the absurdities of others, point 
 ing out the proper course for inquiry, and the spirit in which it 
 should be conducted, and throwing out a variety of ideas of his 
 own, of the value of which he was not quite certain, and which 
 he left to the appreciation of any subsequent inquirer competent 
 to sit in judgment upon them." 
 
 We have here to examine what that Method was which Plato 
 constantly pursued. Socrates, as we have shown, relied upon 
 the Inductive or Analogical Reasoning, and on Definitions, as 
 the two principles of investigation. The incompleteness of these 
 principles we have already pointed out ; and Plato himself found 
 it necessary to enlarge them. 
 
 Definitions form the basis of all Philosophy. To know a thing 
 you must also know what it is not. In ascertaining the real De 
 finition, Socrates employed his accoucheur s art (TS ^V?] ^CUSUTJXTJ), 
 and proceeded inductively. Plato also used these arts ; but he 
 added to them the more efficient processes of Analysis and Syn 
 thesis, of generalization and classification.* 
 
 Analysis, which was first insisted on by Plato as a philosophic 
 process, is the decomposition of the whole into its separate parts ; 
 whereby, after examining those parts attentively, the idea of the 
 whole is correctly ascertained. To use Platonic language, Anal 
 ysis is seeing the One in the Many. Thus, if the subject be 
 Virtue, the general term Virtue must first be decomposed into 
 all its parts, i. e. into all the Virtues; and from a thorough 
 examination of the Virtues a clear idea of Virtue may be at- 
 tained.f 
 
 Definitions were to Plato what general or abstract ideas were 
 to later metaphysicians. The individual thing was held to be 
 transitory and phenomenal, the abstract idea was eternal. Only 
 
 * Consult Van Heusde, Littia Philosophy Platonicce, ii. parts ii. 97, 98. 
 t A good example of his mode of conducting an inquiry may be seen 
 in tlie Gorgiasi 
 
210 
 
 concerning the latter could philosophy occupy itself. But Soc 
 rates, although insisting on proper Definitions, had no conception 
 of the classification of those Definitions which must constitute 
 philosophy. Plato, therefore, by the introduction of this process, 
 shifted philosophy from the ground of inquiries into man and 
 society to that of Dialectics. What was Dialectics ? It was the 
 art of discoursing, i. e. the art of thinking, i. e. logic. Plato uses 
 the word Dialectics, because with him Thinking was a silent dis 
 course of the soul, and differed from speech only in being silent. 
 In this conception of Philosophy as Dialectics, Plato absorbed 
 the conversational method of Socrates, but gave it a new direc 
 tion. 
 
 How erroneous the notion is which supposes that Plato s merit 
 was exclusively literary, may be gathered from the above brief 
 outline of his Method. He was pre-eminently a severe Dialecti 
 cian. This is his leading peculiarity ; but he has clothed his 
 method in such attractive forms that the means have been mis 
 taken for the end. His great dogma, like that of his master, 
 Socrates, was the necessity of an untiring investigation into gen 
 eral terms (or abstract ideas). He did not look on life with the 
 temporary interest of a passing inhabitant of the world. He 
 looked on it as an immortal soul longing to be released from its 
 earthly prison, and striving to catch by anticipation some faint 
 glimpses of that region of eternal Truth where it would some day 
 rest. The fleeting phenomena of this world he knew were noth 
 ing more ; but he was too wise to overlook them. Fleeting and 
 imperfect as they were, they were the indications of that eternal 
 Truth for which he longed, footmarks on the perilous journey, 
 and guides unto the wished-for goal. Long before him wise and 
 meditative men perceived that sense-knowledge would only be 
 knowledge of phenomena; that every thing men call Existence 
 was but a perpetual flux a something which, always becoming, 
 never was ; that the reports which our senses made of these 
 things partook of the same fleeting and uncertain character. 
 He could not, therefore, put his trust in them ; he could not 
 
211 
 
 believe that Time was any thing more than the wavering image 
 of Eternity. 
 
 But he was not a Skeptic. These transitory phenomena 
 were not true existences; but they were images of true ex 
 istences. Interrogate them ; classify them ; discover what qual 
 ities they have in common ; discover that which is invariable, 
 necessary, amidst all that is variable, contingent ; discover The 
 One in The Many, and you have penetrated the secret of Ex 
 istence.* 
 
 Now in reducing this Platonic language to a modern formula, 
 what is the thought ? The thought is simply this : Things exist 
 as classes and as individuals. These classes are but species of 
 higher classes ; e. g. men are individuals of the class Man, and 
 Man is a species of the class Animal. But Philosophy, which is 
 deductive, has nothing to do with individuals ; it is occupied 
 solely with classes. General Terms, or abstract ideas, are there 
 fore the materials with which Philosophy works. 
 
 These General Terms, Plato said, stood for the only real Exist 
 ences, the only objects of Philosophy. And as far as expression 
 is concerned, he would seem to be in perfect accordance with 
 modern thinkers. But we must be cautious how we mistake 
 these coincidences of expression for coincidences of doctrine. 
 Plato s philosophy was an inarticulate utterance, curious to the 
 historian, but valueless as a solution of the problem. 
 
 We are here led to the origin of the world-famous dispute of 
 Realism and Nominalism, which may be summed up in a sen 
 tence. The Realists maintain, that every General Term (or Ab 
 stract idea), such as Man, Virtue, etc., has a real and independ 
 ent existence, quite irrespective of any concrete individual deter 
 mination, such as Smith, Benevolence, etc. The Nominalists, on 
 the contrary, maintain, that all General Terms are but the crea- 
 
 * To refer the reader to particular passages wherein this doctrine is ex 
 pressed, or implied, would be endless : it runs through all his works, and 
 is the only constant doctrine to be found there. Perhaps the easiest passage 
 where it may be read is Philebus, p. 233-6. 
 
212 
 
 tions of the mind, designating no distinct entities, being merely 
 used as marks of aggregate conceptions. 
 
 In Realism, Plato separated himself from his master Socrates. 
 On this point we have the indubitable, but hitherto little noticed, 
 testimony of Aristotle, who, after speaking of the Socratic 
 Method of Induction and Definition, says : " But Socrates gave 
 neither to General Terms nor to Definitions a distinct existence."* 
 This is plain enough. Aristotle, in continuation, obviously speaks 
 of Plato : " Those who succeeded him gave to these General 
 Terms a separate existence, and called them Ideas" 
 
 Thus we are introduced to Plato s famous Ideal theory ; which, 
 although confused and contradictory enough in detail, as is the 
 case with all his special opinions, is clear enough in its general 
 tendency. 
 
 IV. PLATO S IDEAL THEORY. 
 
 The word Idea has undergone more changes than almost any 
 word in philosophy ; and nothing can well be more opposed to 
 the modern sense of the word than the sense affixed to it by 
 Plato. If we were to say, that Ideas were tantamount to the 
 Substantial Forms of the schoolmen, we should run the risk of 
 endeavoring to enlighten an obscurity by an obscurity no less 
 opaque. If we were to say, that the Ideas were tantamount to 
 Universal, the same objection might be raised. If we were to 
 say, that the Ideas were General Terms or Abstract Ideas, we 
 should mislead every Nominalist into the belief that Plato was 
 an " Idealist ;" otherwise the last explanation would be pertinent. 
 
 It will be better, however, to describe first, and to define after 
 wards. Plato, according to Aristotle, gave to General Terms a 
 distinct existence, and called them Ideas. He became a Realist ; 
 
 * Met. xiii. 4, AAA 6 niv w*par7f T % Ka06\ov ov x^piara tiroici, ov&i rous 
 bpicpovs. The wording of this may appear strange. Many have supposed 
 universals to exist separately ; but how a separate existence could be given 
 to Definitions may puzzle the stoutest Realist. "VVe believe the difficulty 
 vanishes, if we remember that the Platonic Definitions and Universals were 
 the same things; Aristotle s phrase is, however, ambiguous. 
 
213 
 
 and asserted, that there was the Abstract Man no less than the 
 Concrete Men ; the latter were Men only in as far as they par 
 ticipated in the Ideal Man. ISTo one will dispute that we have a 
 conception of a genus that we do conceive and reason about 
 Man quite independently of Smith or Brown, Peter or Paul. If 
 we have such a conception, whence did we derive it ? Our ex 
 perience has only been of the Smiths and Browns, the Peters 
 and Pauls ; we have only known men. Our senses tell us noth 
 ing of Man. Individual objects only give individual knowledge. 
 A number of stones placed before us will afford us no knowledge, 
 will not enable us to say, These are stones ; unless we have pre 
 viously learned what is the nature of Stone. So, also, we must 
 know the nature of Man, before we can know that Jones and 
 Brown are Men. We do know Man, and we know Men ; but 
 our knowledge of the former is distinct from that of the latter, 
 and must have a distinct source ; so, at least, thought the Real- 
 ists. What is that source ? Reflection, not sense. 
 
 The Realists finding The One in The Many, in other words, 
 finding certain characteristics common to all Men, and not only 
 common to them but necessary to their being Men, abstracted 
 these general characteristics from the particular accidents of 
 individual men, and out of these characteristics made what they 
 called Universals (what we call genera). These Universals ex 
 isted per se. They are not only conceptions of the mind ; they 
 are entities; and our perceptions of them are formed in the 
 same manner as our perceptions of other things. 
 
 Greek Philosophy, no less than Greek Art, was eminently Ob 
 jective. Now what is the objective tendency, but the tendency 
 to transform our conceptions into perceptions to project our 
 ideas out of us, and then to look at them as images, or as enti 
 ties ? Let then the conception of genera be rendered objective, 
 and the Realist doctrine is explained. Our conceptions were held 
 by Realism to be perceptions of existing Things ; these Plato 
 called Ideas, which he maintained to be the only real existences ; 
 they were the noumena of which all individual things were the 
 
214 
 
 phenomena. If then we define the Platonic "Idea," to be a 
 " Noumenon," or " Substantial Form," we shall not be far wrong : 
 and most of the disputes respecting the real meaning of the term 
 will be set aside ; for example, fitter s wavering account of the 
 word in which he is at a loss to say whether Idea means the 
 universal, or whether it does not also mean the individual. 
 That Plato usually designates a General Term by the word Idea, 
 there can be no doubt ; there can be no doubt also that he some 
 times designates the essence of some individual thing an Idea, as 
 in the Republic, where he speaks of the Idea of a Table from 
 which all other Tables were formed. There is no contradiction 
 in this : a general form is as necessary for Tables as for Men : 
 this Idea, therefore, equally partakes of generality, even where 
 exemplified by particular things. 
 
 We must now endeavor to indicate the position occupied by 
 Ideas in the Platonic cosmology. To Socrates Plato was in 
 debted for his Method ; yet not wholly indebted, seeing that he 
 enlarged the conception transmitted to him. To Pythagoras he 
 was indebted for his theory of Ideas ; yet not wholly indebted, 
 seeing that he modified it and rendered it more plausible. What 
 he did for Method we have seen : let us now see how he trans 
 formed the Pythagorean doctrine. 
 
 Aristotle, in a memorable passage, says; "Plato followed 
 Socrates respecting definitions, but, accustomed as he was to in 
 quiries into universals (dia. <ro ^rrtfau tfspi TOJV xa^oXou), he sup 
 posed that definitions should be those of intettigiUes (i. e. nou- 
 mena), rather than of sensibles (i. e. phenomena) : for it is impos 
 sible to give a general definition to sensible objects, which are 
 always changing. Those Intelligible Essences he called Ideas ; 
 adding that sensible objects were different from Ideas, and re 
 ceived from them their names ; for it is in consequence of their 
 participation (xara, jxs ^^jv) in Ideas, that all objects of the same 
 genus receive the same name as the Ideas. He introduced the 
 word participation. The Pythagoreans say, that Things are 
 
215 
 
 the copies of Numbers. Plato says, the participation ; he only 
 changes the name."* 
 
 With due submission, we venture to question the assertion of 
 Aristotle in the last sentence. Plato did more than change a 
 name. The conception alone of Ideas, as generical types, is a 
 great advance on the conception of Numbers. But Plato did 
 not stop here. He ventured on an explanation of the nature and 
 the degree of that participation of sensible objects in Ideas. 
 And Aristotle himself, in another place, points out a fundamen 
 tal distinction. "Plato thought that sensible Things no less 
 than their causes were Numbers ; but the causes are IntelligiUes 
 (L e. Ideas), and other things Sensibles"\ Surely this is some 
 thing more than the invention of a name ! It gives a new char 
 acter to the theory ; it renders it at once more clear, and more 
 applicable. 
 
 The greatest difficulty felt in the Ideal theory is that of parti 
 cipation. How, and in how far, does this participation take 
 place ? A question which Plato did not, and could not, solve. 
 All that he could answer was, that human knowledge is necessa 
 rily imperfect, that sensation troubles the intellectual eye, and 
 only when the soul is free from the hindrances of the body shall 
 we be able to discern things in all the ineffable splendor of truth. 
 But, although our knowledge is imperfect, it is not false. Rea 
 son enables us to catch some glimpses of the truth, and we must 
 endeavor to gain more. Whatever is the object of the soul s 
 thought, purely as such, is real and true. The problem is to 
 separate these glimpses of the truth from the prejudices and 
 errors of mere opinion. 
 
 In this doctrine, opinion is concerned only with Appearances 
 (phenomena) ; philosophy, with Existence. Our sensation, judg 
 ments, opinions, have only reference to rot ^J^VGJXSVO, ; our philo 
 sophic conceptions have reference to ra 6 vra. The whole matter 
 
 * Metapli. i. 6. f Ib. i. 7, AAAaroiK /ui/ VOTJTOVS amouj, ro<5rouj(5f aladijrovs. 
 
216 
 
 is comprised in Plato s answer to Diogenes, who thought he de 
 molished the theory of Ideas by exclaiming, "I see indeed a 
 table ; but I see no Idea of a table." Plato replied, " Because 
 you see with your eyes, and not with your reason." Hence at 
 the close of the oth Book of his Republic, he says that those 
 only are to be called Philosophers who devote themselves to the 
 contemplation of TO o v, i. e. Existence. 
 
 The phenomena which constitute what we perceive of the 
 world (i. e. the world of sense) are but the resemblances of matter 
 to Ideas. In other words, Ideas are the Forms of which ma 
 terial Things are copies; the noumcna, of which all that we 
 perceive are the Appearances (phenomena). But we must not 
 suppose these copies to be exact ; they do not at all participate 
 in the nature of their models ; they do not even represent them, 
 otherwise than in a superficial manner. Or perhaps it would be 
 more correct to say, that Ideas do not resemble Things ; the man 
 does not resemble his portrait, although the portrait may be a 
 tolerable resemblance of him ; a resemblance of his aspect, not of 
 his nature. If, then, the Ideas as they exist realized in Nature, 
 do not accurately resemble the Ideas as they exist per se i. e. 
 if the phenomena are not exact copies of the noumena how are 
 we ever to attain a knowledge of Ideas and of Truth ? This 
 question plunges us into the midst of his psychology, which we 
 must first explain before the whole conception of the Ideal theo 
 ry can be made consistent. 
 
 V. PLATO S PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 After the dreary dialectics of the two preceding Sections, it is 
 some refreshment to be able to open this Section with a myth, 
 and that perhaps the most fascinating of all Plato s myths. 
 
 In the Phwdrus Socrates very justly declares his inability to 
 explain the real nature of the soul. But though he cannot ex 
 hibit it, he can show what it resembles. Unable to give a de 
 monstration, he can paint a picture ; and that picture he paints 
 as follows : 
 
217 
 
 " We may compare it to a chariot, with a pair of winged horses 
 and a driver. In the souls of the Gods, the horses and the driv 
 ers are entirely good : in other souls only partially so, one of the 
 horses excellent, the other vicious. The business, therefore, of the 
 driver is extremely difficult and troublesome. 
 
 "Let us now attempt to show how some living beings came 
 to be spoken of as mortal, and others as immortal. All souls are 
 employed in taking care of the things which are inanimate ; and 
 travel about the whole of heaven in various forms. Now, when the 
 soul is perfect, and has wings, it is carried aloft, and helps to ad 
 minister the entire universe ; but the soul which loses its wings, 
 drops down till it catches hold of something solid, in which it 
 takes up its residence ; and, having a dwelling of clay, which 
 seems to be self-moving on account of the soul which is in it, the 
 two together are called an animal, and mortal. The phrase im 
 mortal animal arises not from any correct understanding, but 
 from a fiction : never having seen, nor being able to comprehend, 
 a deity, men conceived an immortal being, having a body as well 
 as a soul, united together for all eternity. Let these things, 
 then, be as it pleases God ; but let us next state from what cause 
 a soul becomes unfledged. 
 
 " It is the nature of wings to lift up heavy bodies towards the 
 habitation of the Gods ; and, of all things which belong to the 
 body, wings are that which most partakes of the divine. The 
 divine includes the beautiful, the wise, the good, and every thing 
 of that nature. By these the wings of the soul are nourished 
 and increased ; by the contraries of these, they are destroyed. 
 
 "Jupiter, and the other Gods, divided into certain bands, 
 travel about in their winged chariots, ordering and attending to 
 all things, each according to his appointed function ; and all who 
 will, and who can, follow them. When they go to take their 
 repasts, they journey towards the summit of the vault of heaven. 
 The chariots of the Gods, being in exact equilibrium, and there 
 fore easily guided, perform this journey easily, but all others with 
 difficulty ; for one of the two horses, being of inferior nature, 
 
 10 
 
218 
 
 when he has not been exceedingly well trained by the driver, 
 weighs down the vehicle, and impels it towards the earth. 
 
 " The souls which are called immortal (viz. the Gods), when 
 they reach the summit, go through, and, standing upon the con 
 vex outside of heaven, are carried round and round by its revo 
 lution, and see the things which lie beyond the heavens. No 
 poet has ever celebrated these supercelestial things, nor ever will 
 celebrate them, as they deserve. This region is the seat of Ex 
 istence itself: Real Existence, colorless, figureless, and intangible 
 Existence, which is visible only to Mind, the charioteer of the 
 soul, and which forms the subject of Real Knowledge. The 
 minds of the Gods, which are fed by pure knowledge, and all 
 other thoroughly well-ordered minds, contemplate for a time this 
 universe of Being per se, and are delighted and nourished by 
 the contemplation, until the revolution of the heavens brings them 
 back again to the same point. In this circumvolution, they con 
 template Justice itself, Temperance itself, and Knowledge ; not 
 that knowledge which has a generation or a beginning, not that 
 which exists in a subject which is any of what we term beings, 
 but that Knowledge which exists in Being in general ; in that 
 which really Is. After thus contemplating all real existences, 
 and being nourished thereby, these souls again sink into the in 
 terior of the heavens, and repose. 
 
 " Such is the life of the Gods. Of other souls, those which best 
 follow the Gods, and most resemble them, barely succeed in lifting 
 the, head of the charioteer into the parts beyond the heavens, 
 and, being carried round by the circumvolution, are enabled 
 with difficulty to contemplate this universe of Self-Existence. 
 Others, being encumbered by the horses, sometimes rising and 
 sometimes sinking, are enabled to see some Existences only. The 
 remainder only struggle to elevate themselves, and, by the un- 
 skilfulness of their drivers, coming continually into collision, are 
 lamed, or break their wings, and, after much labor, go away with 
 out accomplishing their purpose, and return to feed upon mere 
 opinion. 
 
219 
 
 "The motive of this great anxiety to view the supercelestial 
 plain of Truth is that the proper food of the soul is derived from 
 thence, and, in particular, the wings, by which the soul is made 
 light and carried aloft, are nourished upon it. Now it is an in 
 violable law that any soul which, placing itself in the train of 
 the Gods, and journeying along with them, obtains a sight of any 
 of these self-existent Realities, remains exempt from all harm 
 until the next circumvolution, and, if it can contrive to effect 
 this every time, is forever safe and uninjured. But if, being un 
 able to elevate itself to the necessary height, it altogether fails of 
 seeing these realities, and, being weighed down by vice and ob 
 livion, loses its wings and falls to the earth, it enters into and ani 
 mates some Body. It never enters, at the first generation, into 
 the body of a brute animal ; but that which has seen most en 
 ters into the body of a person who will become a lover of wis 
 dom, or a lover of beauty, or a person addicted to music, or to 
 love; the next in rank, into that of a monarch who reigns ac 
 cording to law, or a warrior, or a man of talents for command ; 
 the third, into a person qualified to administer the State, and 
 manage his family affairs, or carry on a gainful occupation ; 
 the fourth into a person fond of hard labor and bodily exer 
 cises, or skilled in the prevention and curing of bodily diseases ; 
 the fifth, into a prophet, or a teacher of religious ceremonies ; 
 the sixth, into a poet, or a person addicted to any other of the 
 imitative arts ; the seventh, into a husbandman or an artificer ; 
 the eighth, into a sophist, or a courtier of the people ; the ninth, 
 into a despot and usurper. And, in all these different fortunes, 
 they who conduct themselves justly will obtain next time a more 
 eligible lot; they who conduct themselves unjustly a worse. The 
 soul never returns to its pristine state in less than ten thousand 
 years, for its wings do not grow in a shorter time ; except only 
 the soul of one who philosophizes with sincerity or who loves 
 with philosophy. Such souls, after three periods of one thousand 
 years, if they choose thrice in succession this kind of life, recover 
 their wings in the three thousandth year, and depart. The other 
 
220 
 
 souls, at the termination of their first life, are judged, and, hav 
 ing received their sentence, are either sent for punishment into 
 the places of execution under the earth, or are elevated to a place 
 in heaven, in which they are rewarded according to the life which 
 they led while here. In either case they are called back on the 
 thousandth year, to choose or draw lots for a new life. Then a 
 human soul often passes into the body of a beast, and that of a 
 beast, if it has ever been human, passes again into the body of a 
 man ; for a soul which has never seen the Truth at all cannot en 
 ter into the human form, it being necessary that man should be 
 able to apprehend many things according to kinds, which kinds 
 are composed of many perceptions combined by reason into one. 
 Now, this mode of apprehending is neither more nor less than 
 the recollecting of those things which the soul formerly saw when 
 it journeyed along with the Gods, and, disregarding what we 
 now call beings, applied itself to the apprehension of Real Be 
 ing. It is for this reason that the soul of the philosopher is re- 
 fledged in a shorter period than others ; for, it constantly, to the 
 best of its power, occupies itself in trying to recollect those things 
 which the Gods contemplated, and by the contemplation of 
 which they are Gods ; by which means being lifted out of, and 
 above, human cares and interests, he is, by the vulgar, considered 
 as mad, while in reality he is inspired." 
 
 This is unquestionably the poetry of philosophy, and it is from 
 such passages that the popular opinion respecting Plato has been 
 formed ; but they represent only a small portion of the real 
 thinker. Towards the close the reader will have remarked that 
 the famous doctrine of reminiscence is implied. This doctrine 
 may be seen fully developed in the Phcedo ; it seems to have been 
 a fundamental one. The difficulties of conceiving the possibility 
 of any knowledge other than the sense-knowledge, which the So 
 phists had successfully proved to lead to skepticism, must early 
 have troubled Plato s mind. If we know nothing but what our 
 senses teach us, then is all knowledge trivial. Those who admit 
 the imperfection of the senses and fall back upon Reason, beg 
 
PLATO S PSYCHOLOGY. 221 
 
 the question. How do we know that Reason is correct ? How 
 can we be assured that Reason is not subject to some such inevi 
 table imperfection as that to which sense is subject ? 
 
 Here the ever-recurring problem of human knowledge pre 
 sents itself. Plato was taught by Socrates that beyond the world 
 of Sense, there was the world of eternal Truth ; that men who 
 differed greatly respecting individual things did not differ respect 
 ing universals ; that there was a common fund of Truth, from 
 which all human souls drew their share. Agreeing with his 
 master that there were certain principles about which there 
 could be no dispute, he wished to know how he came by those 
 principles. 
 
 All who have examined the nature of our knowledge, are aware 
 that it is partly made up of direct impressions received by the 
 senses, and partly of ideas which never were, at least in their 
 ideal state, perceived by the senses. It is this latter part which 
 has agitated the schools. On the one side, men have declared it 
 to be wholly independent of the senses to be the pure action of 
 the soul. In its simplest form, this doctrine may be called the 
 doctrine of Innate Ideas. On the other side, men have as vigor 
 ously argued that, although all our ideas were not absolutely 
 derived from the senses in a direct manner, yet they were all so 
 derived in an indirect manner : thus, we have never seen a mer 
 maid ; but we have seen both a fish and a woman, and to com 
 bine these two impressions is all that the mind does in conceiving 
 a mermaid. This doctrine is pushed to its limits in the eigh 
 teenth-century philosophy, which says, Penser, Jest sentir: thought 
 is a transformed sensation. 
 
 Plato, in adopting the former view, rendered it more cogent 
 than most of his successors ; for is it not somewhat gratuitous to 
 say, we are born with such and such ideas ? It is different from 
 saying we are born with certain faculties : that would be admis 
 sible. But, to be driven into a corner, and on being asked, 
 whence came those ideas ? to answer, they are innate, is a pure 
 petitio principii. What proof have you that they are in- 
 
222 
 
 nate ? Merely the proof that you cannot otherwise account for 
 them ? 
 
 Plato was more consistent. He said The Soul is and ever was 
 immortal. In its anterior states of existence it had accurate con 
 ceptions of the eternal Truth. It was face to face with Existence. 
 Now, having descended upon earth, having passed into a body, 
 and, being subject to the hindrances of that bodily imprisonment, 
 it is no longer face to face with Existence : it can see Existence 
 only through the ever-changing flux of material phenomena. 
 The world is only becoming, never is. The Soul would apprehend 
 only the becoming, had it not some recollection of its anterior 
 state had it not in some sort the power of tracing the unvary 
 ing Idea under the varying phenomena. When, for example, we 
 see a stone, all that our senses convey is the appearance of that 
 stone : but, as the stone is large or small, the soul apprehends 
 the Idea of Greatness ; and this apprehension is a reminiscence 
 of the world of Ideas, awakened by the sensation. So when we 
 see or hear of a benevolent action, besides the fact, our Soul ap 
 prehends the Idea of Goodness. And all our recollection of Ideas 
 is performed in the same way. It is as if in our youth we had 
 listened to some mighty orator whose printed speech we are read 
 ing in old age. That printed page, how poor and faint a copy 
 of that thrilling eloquence ! how we miss the speaker s piercing, 
 vibrating tones, his flashing eye, his flashing face! And yet that 
 printed page in some dim way recalls those tones, recalls that 
 face, and stirs us somewhat as we then were stirred. Long years 
 and many avocations have somewhat effaced the impression he 
 first made, but the printed words serve faintly to recall it. Thus 
 it is with our immortal Souls. They have sojourned in that 
 celestial region where the voice of Truth rings clearly, where the 
 aspect of Truth is unveiled, undimmed. They are now sojourn 
 ing in this fleeting, flowing river of life, stung with resistless 
 longings for the skies, and solaced only by the reminiscences of 
 that former state which these fleeting, broken, incoherent images 
 of Ideas awaken in them. 
 
PLATO S PSYCHOLOGY. 223 
 
 It is a mistake to suppose this a mere poetical conception. 
 Plato never sacrifices logic to poetry. If he sometimes calls 
 poetry to his aid, it is only to express by it those ideas which 
 logic cannot grasp, ideas which are beyond demonstration ; but 
 he never indulges in mere fancies. Instead therefore of saying 
 that Reason was occupied with innate ideas, he consistently said 
 that every thing which the senses did not furnish was a reminis 
 cence of the world of Ideas. 
 
 We are now in a condition to answer the question with which 
 the last Section was closed, How to ascertain the Truth, if 
 Phenomena are not exact copies of Noumena ? The sensation 
 awakens recollection, and the recollection is of Truth ; the soul 
 is confronted with the Many by means of Sense, and by means 
 of Reason it detects the One in the Many ; i. e. the particular 
 things perceived by Sense awaken the recollection of Universals 
 or Ideas. But this recollection of Truth is always more or less 
 imperfect. Absolute Truth is for the Gods alone. No man is 
 without some of the divine spark. Philosophers alone have any 
 large share ; and they might increase it by a proper method. 
 
 The philosophy of Plato has two distinct branches, somewhat 
 resembling what we found in Parmenides. The universe is di 
 vided into two parts : the celestial region of Ideas, and the 
 mundane region of material phenomena. These answer very 
 well to the modern conception of Heaven and Earth. As the 
 phenomena of matter are but copies of Ideas (not, as some sup 
 pose, their bodily realization), there arises a question : How do 
 Ideas become Matter ? In other words : How do Things partici 
 pate in Ideas ? We have mooted the question in the former 
 Section, where we said that it admitted of no satisfactory solu 
 tion ; nor does it ; and we must not be surprised to find Plato 
 giving, at different times, two very different explanations. These 
 two explanations are too curious to be overlooked. In. the Re 
 public, he says that God, instead of perpetually creating individ 
 ual things, created a distinct type (Idea) for each thing. From 
 this type all other things of the class are made. Thus, God made 
 
224: 
 
 the Idea of a bed : according to this type, any carpenter may 
 now fashion as many beds as he likes, in the same way as an 
 artist may imitate in his paintings the types already created, but 
 cannot himself create any thing new. The argument, as an 
 illustration of Plato s Method, may be given here : 
 
 "Shall we proceed according to our usual Method? That 
 Method, as you know, is the embracing under one general Idea 
 the multiplicity of things which exist separately, but have the 
 same name. You comprehend ? 
 
 " Perfectly. 
 
 " Let us take any thing you like. For instance, there is a 
 multiplicity of beds and tables ? 
 
 " Certainly. 
 
 " But these two kinds are comprised, one under the Idea of a 
 bed, and the other under the Idea of a table ? 
 
 " Without doubt. 
 
 " And we say that the carpenter who makes one of these arti 
 cles, makes the bed or the table according to the Idea he has of 
 each. For he does not make the Idea itself. That is impossible? 
 
 " Truly, that is impossible. 
 
 " Well, now, what name shall we bestow on the workman 
 whom I am now going to name ? 
 
 " What workman ? 
 
 " Him who makes what all the other workmen make sepa 
 rately. 
 
 " You speak of a powerful man ! 
 
 " Patience ; you will admire him still more. This workmen 
 has not only the talent of making all the works of art, but also 
 all the works of nature ; plants, animals, every thing else ; in a 
 word, himself.* He makes the Heaven, the Earth, the Gods ; 
 every thing in Heaven, Earth, or Hell. 
 
 * Td Tt a\\a KOI Iavr6v. "VVc are inclined to regard this passage as cor 
 rupt, the self-creation of God being certainly no Platonic notion ; at least 
 not countenanced by any other passage in any other work. The scholiast 
 makes no comment on it. 
 
225 
 
 " You speak of a wonderful workman, truly ! 
 
 "You seem to doubt me ? But, tell me, do you think there is 
 no such workman ; or, do you think that in one sense any one 
 could do all this, but in another no one could ? Could you not 
 yourself succeed in a certain way ? 
 
 " In what way ? 
 
 " It is not difficult ; it is often done, and in a short time. Take 
 a mirror, and turn it round on all sides : in an instant you will 
 have made the sun and stars, the earth, yourself, the animals and 
 plants, works of art, and all we mentioned. 
 
 "Yes, the images, the appearances, but not the real things. 
 
 " Very well ; you comprehend my opinion. The painter is a 
 workman of this class, is he not ? 
 
 " Certainly. 
 
 " You will tell me that he makes nothing real, although he 
 makes a bed in a certain way ? 
 
 " Yes ; but it is only an appearance, an image. 
 
 " And the carpenter, did you not allow that the bed which he 
 made was not the Idea which we call the essence of the bed, the 
 real bed, but only a certain bed ? 
 
 "I said so, indeed. 
 
 " If, then, he does not make the Idea of the bed, he makes 
 nothing real, but only something which represents that which 
 really exists. And, if any one maintain that the carpenter s work 
 has a real existence he will be in error."* 
 
 In the Timceus, perhaps the most purely expository of all his 
 works, and unquestionably one of the latest, Plato takes a totally 
 different view of the creation of the world. God is there said, 
 not to create types (Ideas) ; but these types having existed from 
 all eternity, God in fashioning Chaos fashioned it after the model 
 of these Ideas. lu this view there is no participation in the na 
 ture of Ideas, but only a participation in their form. 
 
 Whichever hypothesis he adopted (and Plato did not much 
 
 * Rep-tib. x. 467-8-, ed. Bekker. 
 10* 
 
226 
 
 care for either), this conception of Heaven and Earth as two dif 
 ferent regions, is completed by the conception of the double na 
 ture of the soul ; or rather, of two souls : one Rational and the 
 other Sensitive. These two souls are closely connected, as the 
 two regions of Ideas and Phenomena are connected. Neither of 
 them is superfluous ; neither of them, in a human sense, suffi 
 cient : they complete each other. The Sensitive soul awakens 
 the reminiscences of the Rational soul ; and the Rational soul, 
 by detecting the One in the Many, preserves Man from the skep 
 ticism inevitably resulting from mere sense-knowledge. 
 
 Thus did Plato resume in himself all the conflicting tendencies 
 of his age ; thus did he accept each portion of the truth supposed 
 to be discovered by his predecessors, and reconcile these portions 
 in one general tendency. In that vast system, all skepticism and 
 all faith found acceptance : the skepticism was corrected, the faith 
 was propped up by more solid arguments. He admitted, with 
 the skeptics, the imperfection of all sense-knowledge ; but, though 
 imperfect, he declared it not worthless : it is no more like the 
 Truth than phenomena are like Ideas ; but, as phenomena are in 
 some sort modelled after Ideas, and do, therefore, in some dim 
 way, represent Ideas, so does sense-knowledge lead the patient 
 thinker to something like the Truth : it awakens in him remi 
 niscence of the Truth. As Ritter says, "He shows, in detail, 
 that in the world of sense there is no perfect likeness, but that 
 an object which at one time appears like, is at another thought 
 to be unlike, and is, therefore, defective in completeness of re 
 semblance, and has at most but a tendency thereto. The same 
 is the case with the Beautiful, the Good, the Just, the Holy, and 
 with all that really is j in the sensible world there is nothing 
 exactly resembling them, neither similar nor dissimilar; all, 
 however, that possesses any degree of correspondence with these 
 true species of being is perceived by us through the senses, and 
 thereby reminds us of what truly is. From this it is clear that 
 he had previously seen it somewhere, or been conscious of it, 
 and, as this could not have been in the present, it must have 
 
227 
 
 been in some earlier state of existence. In this respect there is 
 a close connection between this doctrine and the view of sensible 
 objects, which represents them as mere copies or resemblances of 
 the super-sensible truth ; for, even in perception, a feeling arises 
 upon the mind, that all we see or hear is very far from reaching 
 to a likeness to that which is the true being and the absolutely 
 like ; but that, striving to attain, it falls short of perfect resem 
 blance ; and consequently, the impressions of the sense are mere 
 tokens of the eternal ideas, whose similitude they bear, and of 
 which they are copies." 
 
 VI. SUMMARY OF PLATO S DIALECTICS. 
 
 Having exhibited Plato s conceptions of Method, of Ideas, and 
 of the Soul, it will now be convenient to take a brief review of 
 them, to exhibit their position in the general doctrine. 
 
 Dialectics was the base of the Platonic doctrine. Indeed, 
 Plato believed in no other Science ; Dialectics and Philosophy 
 were synonymous. For Dialectics (or Logic) to be synonymous 
 with Philosophy, the theory of Ideas was necessary. Dialectics 
 is the science of general propositions, of general terms, of univer- 
 sals. To become the science it must necessarily be occupied with 
 more important things. Ideas are these important things ; for 
 Ideas are at once the only real Existences, and General Terms. 
 Whoso discoursed about General Terms discoursed about Exist 
 ence ; and deeper than that, no science could hope to penetrate. 
 Plato, whose opinions can scarcely ever be accepted as final, is 
 both explicit and constant in his conception of Dialectics as the 
 science. To determine the real nature of science, he devotes an 
 entire dialogue : the Thecctetus. That remarkable work is pure 
 ly critical ; it refutes the opinions of adversaries, in such a way 
 as to leave no doubt as to Plato s own opinion. All attempts to 
 constitute science either upon perception (cuefd^tfis) or upon opin 
 ion (o|<x) he refutes in an irresistible manner. Perception can 
 only be of objects which have no stability, which have no real 
 Existence. Opinion, though it be correct, is unable to constitute 
 
228 
 
 science ; for there are two sorts of opinion, false and true ; and 
 to distinguish the true from the false would require a science 
 which knew the Truth. It follows, as a necessary consequence, 
 that Ideas, which are the real immutable elements of science, 
 must be known in themselves, and that science consists in seek 
 ing the order of development of these Ideas ; that is to say, in 
 Dialectics. 
 
 Owing to the Ideal theory, Dialectics was necessarily the sci 
 ence ; that is, the science of Being. The distinction between his 
 Dialectics and the Logic of his successors is very marked. While 
 he spoke of Dialectics as the art of methodical classification of 
 genera, the art of speaking upon general notions, he did not 
 confine it to subjective truth ; for he believed this subjective 
 truth to be only a reflex of the objective reality : he believed 
 that abstract ideas were images of real existences. Dialectics 
 was therefore not only the " art of thinking," but the science of 
 immutable being. 
 
 In the twofold aspect of Creation there was this division of 
 knowledge : 
 
 PERCEPTION. 
 
 Matter, phe-nomena, TO, yiyv6f*a= Sensation = Opinion. 
 
 DIALECTICS. 
 
 Existence, Ideas, <ra ovra= Abstract Ideas = Science. 
 
 In the everchanging flux of Becoming, which was the object 
 of Perception, there were traces of the immutable Being, which 
 was the object of science. This distinction may be applied to 
 Plato s own manifold works. We may say of them that the 
 opinions on psychology, physics, ethics, and politics are con 
 stantly changing, uncertain ; but amidst aJl these various opin 
 ions there reigns one constant Method,. He never wavers as to 
 Dialectics. We may therefore fully understand the importance 
 bestowed on Dialectics ; and we may also clearly see what is 
 meant by identifying his Philosophy with Dialectics. 
 
 The basis of the Platonic doctrine therefore is Dialectics ; the 
 
PLATO S THEOLOGY AND COSMOLOGY. 229 
 
 subject-matter of Dialectics consists of Ideas ; and the Method 
 consists of Definitions, Analysis, and Induction. 
 
 VII. PLATO S THEOLOGY AND COSMOLOGY. 
 
 Hitherto we have been occupied solely with the general doc 
 trine ; we have now to descend to particulars. But, as so often 
 remarked, particular doctrines have scarcely any stability in the 
 Platonic writings ; what is advanced to-day is refuted to-morrow ; 
 accordingly, critics and historians have squabbled about these 
 wavering opinions, as if agreement were possible. One declares 
 Plato held one opinion ; and cites his passages in proof. An 
 other thinks his predecessor a blockhead ; and cites other pas 
 sages wholly destructive of the opinion Plato is said to have 
 maintained. A third comes, and, stringing passages from one 
 dialogue to passages from another, interprets the whole in his 
 own way. A consistent Theological doctrine will not therefore 
 be expected from us : we can only reproduce some of the Pla 
 tonic notions, those especially which have influenced later thinkers. 
 
 In the same way as Plato sought to detect the One amidst the 
 Multiplicity of material phenomena, and, having detected it, de 
 clared it to be the real essence of matter, so also did he seek to 
 detect the One amidst the Multiplicity of Ideas, and, having de 
 tected it, declared it to be God. What Ideas were to Phenom 
 ena, God was to Ideas : the last result of generalization. God 
 was thus the One Being comprising within himself all other Be 
 ings, the ev XOLI -rroXXa, the Cause of all things, celestial and ter 
 restrial. God was the supreme Idea. Whatever view we take 
 of the Platonic cosmology whether God created Ideas, or 
 whether he only fashioned unformed matter after the model of 
 Ideas we are equally led to the conviction, that God represent 
 ed the supreme Idea of all Existence; the great Intelligence, 
 source of all other Intelligences ; the Sun whose light illumined 
 creation. God is perfect, ever the same, without envy, wishing 
 nothing but good : for, although a clear knowledge of God is 
 impossible to mortals, an approximation to that knowledge is 
 
230 
 
 possible : we cannot know what he is, we can only know what 
 he is like. He must be good, because self-sufficing; and the 
 world is good, because he made it. Why did he make it ? God 
 made the world because he was free from envy, and wished that 
 all things should resemble him as much as possible ; he there 
 fore persuaded Necessity to become stable, harmonious, and fash 
 ioned according to Excellence. Yes, persuaded is Plato s word ; 
 for there were two eternal Principles, Intelligence and Necessity, 
 and from the mixture of these the world was made ; but Intelli 
 gence persuaded Necessity to be fashioned according to Excel 
 lence.* He arranged chaos into Beauty. But, as there is 
 nothing beautiful but Intelligence, and as there is no Intelligence 
 without a Soul, he placed a Soul into the body of the World, 
 and made the World an animal. 
 
 Plato s proof of the world being an animal is too curious a 
 specimen of his analogical reasoning to be passed over. There is 
 warmth in the human being ; there is warmth also in the world : 
 the human being is composed of various elements, and is there 
 fore called a body ; the world is also composed of various ele 
 ments, and is therefore a body ; and, as our bodies have souls, 
 the body of the world must have a soul ; and that soul stands in 
 the same relation to our souls, as the warmth of the world stands 
 to our warmth.f Having thus demonstrated the world to be an 
 animal, it was but natural he should conceive that animal as re 
 sembling its creator, and human beings as resembling the uni 
 versal animal, TO ifoiv wov. As soon as the World, that image 
 of the eternal Gods, as soon as that vast Animal began to move, 
 live, and think, God looked upon his work, and was glad.J; 
 
 But although God in his goodness would have made nothing 
 
 * Me/iiy/ifvf? yiip ovv f) Toij&c TOV Kdir^ov yivtcig f dvdyKtj<; r Kat vov ffvardaeus 
 fyevvftOr], vov6i dvdyKTjs ap^vroj ru> irtiQt.iv avrriv rtDv yiyvoptvuv TU jrAtlara iirt 
 TO /JfArjorov aytiv. Timceus, p. 56. 
 t Philebus, pp. 170-1. 
 
 J ii{ Si Ktvrjdlv ai)Tb KOI ^uv Ifev6rjae TWV di J/wv QtS>v ytyovoj aya\na b ytv- 
 7rar/;p, {jydaBrj re Kit t.v(j>pavQe.\<; CTI <5i) paXXov tfpotov npos TO 
 atv dnepydoaodat. Timceus, p. 36. 
 
PLATO S THEOLOGY AND COSMOLOGY. 231 
 
 evil, he could not prevent the existence of it. Various disputes 
 have been warmly carried on by scholars, respecting the nature 
 of this Evil which Plato was forced to admit. Some have con 
 ceived it nothing less than the Manichsean doctrine. Thus much 
 we may say : the notion of an antagonist principle is inseparable 
 from every religious formula : as God can only be Good, and as 
 Evil does certainly exist, it must exist independently of him ; it 
 must be eternal. Plato cut the matter very short by his logical 
 principle, that since there was a Good, there must necessarily 
 be the contrary of Good, namely, Evil. If Evil exists, how does 
 it exist, and where ? It cannot find place in the celestial region 
 of Ideas. It must therefore necessarily dwell in the terrestrial 
 region of phenomena : its home is the world ; it is banished 
 from heaven. And is not this logical? "What is the world of 
 Phenomena but an imperfect copy of the world of Ideas, and 
 how can the imperfect be the purely Good? When Ideas are 
 " realized," as the Pantheists would say, when Ideas, pure immu 
 table essences, are clothed in material forms, or when matter is 
 fashioned after the model of those Ideas, what can result but im 
 perfections ? The Ideas are not in this world : they are only in 
 a state of becoming, ovrug oWa, not ^jyvojut-sva. Phenomena are 
 in their very nature imperfect : they are perpetually striving to 
 exist as realities. In their constitution there is something of the 
 divine : an image of the Idea, and some participation in it; but 
 more of the primeval chaos. 
 
 Those, therefore, who say that Plato thought that " Evil was 
 inherent in matter," though expressing themselves loosely, ex 
 press themselves on the whole correctly. Matter was the great 
 Necessity which Intelligence fashioned. Because it was Neces 
 sity and unintelligent, it was Evil, for Intelligence alone can be 
 good.* 
 
 * In the Laws, x. pp. 201-2, he curiously distinguished the vovs from the 
 ^*-Xf> in this manner. The i//i>x>? (vital principle) is the self-moving principle ; 
 but, inasmuch as it is sometimes moved to bad as well as to good (rwv rt aya- 
 6uv alriav tii ai ipvxnv ica) T&V KOKWV), it was necessary to have some other 
 
232 PLATO S THEOLOGY AND COSMOLOGY. 
 
 Now, as this world of phenomena is the region where Evil 
 dwells, we must use our utmost endeavors to escape from it. 
 And how escape? By suicide? No. By leading the life of 
 the Gods ; and every Platonist knows that the life of the Gods 
 consists in the eternal contemplation of Truth, of Ideas. Thus, as 
 on every side, are we forced to encounter Dialectics as the sole 
 salvation for man. 
 
 From the above explanation of the nature of Evil, it will be 
 seen that there is no contradiction in Plato s saying, that the 
 quantity of Evil in this life exceeded that of the Good ; it exceeds 
 it in the proportion that phenomena exceed noumena, that 
 matter exceeds Ideas. 
 
 But although Evil be a necessary part of the world, it is in 
 constant struggle with Good. What is this but the struggle of 
 Becoming ? And man is endowed with Free Will and Intelli 
 gence : he may therefore choose between Good and Evil.* And 
 according to his choice will his future life be regulated. Me 
 tempsychosis was a doctrine Plato borrowed from Pythagoras ; 
 and in that doctrine he could find arguments for the enforce 
 ment of a sage and virtuous life, which no other afforded at that 
 epoch. 
 
 We have said nothing of the arguments whereby Plato proves 
 the existence of God ; for we have been forced to pass over many 
 details : but we cannot close this chapter without alluding to an 
 argument often used in modern times, and seldom suspected to 
 have had so ancient an upholder, God is proved to exist, by 
 the very feeling of affinity to his nature which stirs within our 
 souls. 
 
 Such opinions as those above set down were certainly ex 
 pressed by Plato at different times : but we again warn the 
 
 principle which should determine its direction. He therefore makes voCj 
 (intelligence) the principle which determines the soul (whether the soul of 
 the world or of man,. it is the same) to good ; and avoia (ignorance want of 
 nous) which determines it to evil 
 * Laws, x. p. 217. 
 
THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE GOOD. 233 
 
 reader against supposing them to have been his constant views. 
 They are taken from works written at wide intervals, and bearing 
 considerable difference of opinion ; and in those very works there 
 are occasional glimpses of an appalling doctrine, namely, that 
 man is but the plaything of God, who alternately governs and 
 forsakes the world. The first clause of this sentence seems de 
 rived from Heraclitus, who said, " that making worlds was the 
 sport of Demiurgos." Plato s words are these : avdpwtfov 8s deou 
 Ti wccj^viov sTvai (xsjuni^avTjfASvov : and this is said to be man s great 
 est excellence.* The second clause is formally expressed by 
 Plato thus : " God," he says, " alternately governs and forsakes 
 the world ; when he governs it, things go on well : it is the age 
 of gold ; when he forsakes it, the world suddenly turns round in 
 a contrary orbit, a fearful crisis takes place, all things are dis 
 ordered, mundane existence is totally disarranged, and only after 
 some time do things settle clown to a sort of order, though of a 
 very imperfect kind."f 
 
 VIII. PLATO S VIEW OF THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE GOOD. 
 
 So much has been written and talked in modern times of TO 
 xaXov, " the Beautiful," as conceived by Plato, and this by per 
 sons who never read a line of his works, that w must devote a 
 few sentences to it. 
 
 The bond which unites the human to the divine is Love. And 
 Love is the longing of the Soul for Beauty ; the inextinguishable 
 desire which like feels for like, which the divinity within us feels 
 for the divinity revealed to us in Beauty. This is the celebrated 
 Platonic Love, which, from having originally meant a com 
 munion of two souls, and that in a rigidly dialectical sense, has 
 been degraded to the expression of maudlin sentiment between 
 the sexes. Platonic love meant ideal sympathy ; it now means 
 the love of a sentimental young gentleman for a woman he can 
 not or will not marry. 
 
 * Laws, vii. p. 32. t Politicus, p. 280. 
 
THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE GOOD. 
 
 But what is Beauty ? Not the mere flattery of the senses. It 
 does not consist in harmonious outlines and resplendent colors : 
 these are but the indications of it. Beauty is Truth. It is the 
 radiant image of that which was most splendid in the world of 
 Ideas. Listen to Plato s description of it in the Phcedrus : 
 "For, as we have already said, every human soul has actually 
 seen the Real Existences, or it would not have come into a 
 human shape. But it is not easy for all of them to call to mind 
 what they then saw ; those, especially, which saw that region 
 for a short time only, and those which, having fallen to the earth, 
 were so unfortunate as to be turned to injustice, and consequent 
 oblivion of the sacred things which were seen by them in their 
 prior state. Few, therefore, remain who are adequate to the re 
 collection of those things. These few, when they see here any 
 image or resemblance of the things which are there, receive a 
 shock like a thunderbolt, and are in a manner taken out of them 
 selves j but, from deficiency of comprehension, they know not 
 what it is which so affects them. Now, the likenesses which 
 exist there of Justice and Temperance, and the other things 
 which the soul honors, do not possess any splendor ; and a few 
 persons only, with great difficulty, by the aid of dull, blunt, ma 
 terial organs, perceive the terrestrial likenesses of those qualities, 
 and recognize them. But Beauty was not only most splendid 
 when it was seen by us forming part of the heavenly possession 
 or choir, but here also the likeness of it comes to us through the 
 most acute and clear of our senses, that of sight, and with a 
 splendor which no other of the terrestrial images of superceles- 
 tial Existences possess. They, then, who are not fresh from 
 heaven, or who have been corrupted, are not vehemently im 
 pelled towards that Beauty which is aloft when they see that 
 upon earth which is called by its name ; they do not, therefore, 
 venerate and worship it, but give themselves up to physical 
 pleasure after the manner of a quadruped. But they who are 
 fresh from those divine objects of contemplation, and who have 
 formerly contemplated them much, when they see a godlike 
 
THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE GOOD. 235 
 
 countenance or form, in which celestial beauty is imaged and 
 well imitated, are first struck with a holy awe, and then, ap 
 proaching, venerate this beautiful object as a god, and, if they 
 were not afraid of the reputation of too raving a madness, would 
 erect altars, and perform sacrifices to it. 
 
 "And the warmth and genial influence derived from the at 
 mosphere which beauty generates around itself, entering through 
 the eyes, softens and liquefies the inveterate induration, which 
 coats and covers up the parts in the vicinity of the wings, and 
 prevents them from growing. This being melted, the wings be 
 gin to germinate and increase, and this, like the growing of the 
 teeth, produces an itching and irritation which disturbs the 
 whole frame of the soul. When, therefore, by the contempla 
 tion of the beautiful object, the induration is softened and the 
 wings begin to shoot, the soul is relieved from its pain and 
 rejoices; but when that object is absent, the liquefied sub 
 stance hardens again, and closes up the young shoots of the 
 wings, which consequently boil up and throb, and throw the 
 soul into a state of turbulence and rage, and will neither 
 allow it to sleep nor remain at rest, until it can again see 
 the beautiful object, and be relieved. For this reason it never 
 willingly leaves that object, but for its sake deserts parents, 
 and brothers, and friends, and neglects its patrimony, and de 
 spises all established usages on which it valued itself before. 
 And this affection is Love." 
 
 The reader is doubtless by this time familiar enough with the 
 Platonic philosophy to appreciate this passage. He W 7 ill see the 
 dialectical meaning of this poetical myth. He will comprehend, 
 also, that the Platonic Love is naturally more appropriate between 
 two men, master and pupil, than between the two sexes ; because 
 it is then purer, and less disturbed by other feelings. 
 
 Beauty is the most vivid image of Truth : it is divinity in its 
 most perceptible form. But what is the Good ? The Good, TO 
 a/ct^ov, is God, but God considered in the abstract. Truth, 
 Beauty, Justice, are all aspects of the Deity ; Goodness is his 
 
236 
 
 nature. The Good is therefore incapable of being perceived ; it 
 can only be known in reflection. In the same manner as the 
 sun is the cause of sight, and also the cause of the objects of 
 sight growing and being produced, so also the Good is the cause 
 of science, and the cause of being to whatever is the object of 
 science : and, as the sun itself is not sight, nor the object of sight, 
 but presides over both ; so also the Good is not science, nor the 
 object of science, but is superior to both, for they are not the 
 Good, but goodly. 
 
 IX. PLATO S ETHICS. 
 
 Plato was a Socratist. Hitherto, however, we have seen him 
 following his master only in his Method. The speculations oil 
 Ideas, Reminiscence, Metempsychosis, God, etc., were things he 
 did not learn from Socrates, although the Socratic Method led 
 him to these conceptions. We have before seen that Socrates 
 occupied himself almost exclusively with Ethical topics ; and it 
 is in Ethics, therefore, that we may expect to find Plato resem 
 bling him. 
 
 Plato s ethical opinions are logical rather than ethical ; that 
 is to say, they are deductions from certain abstract logical prem 
 ises, not from investigations into human nature. Thus, when 
 "engaged with the discussion of particular sciences, he resolves 
 them into the science of Good ; when engaged with the partic 
 ular virtues, he resolves them into the virtue of Science."* Every 
 where the Good and the True are convertible terms, and Virtue 
 is the same as Science. There is, moreover, considerable contra 
 diction in his various works on this, as on other points. In one 
 dialogue (Timceus) he advocates Free Will ; in another (Hippias 
 3/mor), Fatalism. Sometimes vice is involuntary, at other 
 times voluntary : sometimes, indeed generally, vice is nothing 
 but ignorance ; elsewhere, as we have shown, vice is said to be 
 partly ignorance and partly incontinence. Virtue is said to be 
 
 * Archer Butler, Lectures^ ii. 61. 
 
237 
 
 Science; yet Knowledge alone does not constitute Happiness, 
 nor can Virtue be taught. 
 
 Although, therefore, many passages may be quoted in which 
 morals are worthily spoken of, we cannot but regard as chimeri 
 cal any attempt to deduce from them an ethical system. All 
 that can safely be relied on is general views ; such, for instance, 
 as his subordination of Ethics to Dialectics. As M. De Gerando 
 well observes, " he did not found his ethics on a principle of 
 obligation, on the definition of duty, but on the tendency to per 
 fection." 
 
 In Plato s Ethics the passions are entirely set aside ; they are 
 regarded as disturbances in the moral economy. Virtue is pure 
 ly a matter of intelligence ; and the intellect has therefore not 
 only a regulative office, but the supreme direction of all action.* 
 Now, as Chamfort admirably said, " the Philosopher who would 
 set aside the passions, resembles a Chemist who would extinguish 
 his fire." We are all aware that it is very common " to know 
 the right, and yet the wrong pursue ;" that the passions not only 
 disturb the regulative action of Reason, but positively triumph 
 over it ; and that morals are our mores, our habits, as much as 
 our beliefs. 
 
 The Ethics of Plato might suit the inhabitants of another 
 world ; they are useless to the inhabitants of this. His Politics 
 are his Ethics applied to the State, and labor under the same 
 errors. But his Utopian Government, the Republic, has had too 
 much celebrity for us to neglect it. 
 
 The Republic is unquestionably one of the most interesting of 
 his works; and so slow has been the progress of social science, 
 compared with every other science, that many of the views Plato 
 has there put forth are still entertained by very serious thinkers ; 
 
 * We cannot interrupt our exposition with any examples ; they are too 
 numerous. But we may remind the student of that passage in the Gorgias 
 respecting the misery of the unjust man, in which Plato endeavors to prove 
 that he who does an injury suffers more than he who endures it. 
 
238 
 
 whereas his views on morals seldom, his views on physics never 
 find a defender. 
 
 The weakness of man is the cause why States are formed. As 
 he cannot suffice to himself, he must live in society. This society 
 should be an image of man himself. The faculties which belong 
 to him must find a proper field of activity in society ; and this 
 vast union of intellects should form but one intelligence. Thus 
 
 O 
 
 man s virtues are, 1. (ppo vujo is, wisdom ; 2. avfysi a, fortitude ; 3. 
 rfw^porfuvK], temperance ; 4. ^xaiorfuvrj, justice. The State, there 
 fore must have its Rulers, the philosophers, who will represent 
 wisdom ; its Soldiers, who will represent fortitude ; its Craftsmen 
 and burghers, who will represent temperance. Justice is a qual 
 ity which must be shared by all classes, as lying at the root of 
 all virtuous action. 
 
 In wisdom and justice we have the alpha and omega of Plato s 
 doctrine : justice is wisdom in act. The office of the Rulers is 
 therefore to ordain such laws as will eventually prevent all in 
 justice in the State. Their first care will be to instil into the 
 minds of the citizens just notions respecting the Deity. All those 
 who attribute to the Deity the passions and imperfections of men 
 must be banished : hence the famous banishment of the poets, 
 of which so much has been said. This law, pushed to its rigor 
 ous conclusions, is the law of fanaticism. Whatever the Rulers 
 believed respecting Religion, was to be the Religion of the State. 
 Strange that a pupil of Socrates should have advocated a law, 
 the operation of which caused his master s condemnation ! But 
 there are other causes for the banishment of the poets besides 
 their fictions respecting the Gods. They enervate the soul by 
 pictures of immoderate desires; they give imitations of the vices 
 and follies of men ; they overstep the limits of that moderation 
 which alone can balance the soul. Even the musicians are to 
 be banished ; those at least who are plaintive and harmonious. 
 Only the Dorian and the Phrygian music can be admitted ; the 
 one impetuous and warlike, the other calm. 
 
 There is a germ of Stoicism in Plato, and that germ is here 
 
239 
 
 seen developed. A measured equability of mind was his ideal 
 of human happiness, and any thing which interfered with it was 
 denounced. Poetry and music interfered with this equability, 
 and so did conjugal love. As the State could not subsist with 
 out children, children must be begotten. But parents are fool 
 ishly fond ; they are avaricious for their children ; ambitious for 
 them. Husbands are also foolishly fond. To prevent these dis 
 turbances of good order, Plato ordains community of wives, and 
 interdicts parentage. Women are to be chosen for marriage as 
 brood-mares are chosen. The violent women to be assorted to 
 the mild men ; the mild to be assorted to violent men. But the 
 children belong to the State. They are, therefore, to be con 
 signed to the State Nurses, who will superintend their early edu 
 cation. Because children manifest different capacities, Plato 
 thought with St. Simon, that each citizen should be ranked ac 
 cording to his capacity, the State would undertake to decide to 
 which class the young man should belong. But, if domestic life 
 is thus at a blow sacrificed to the public good, do not imagine 
 that women will lose their occupations. No : women must share 
 with men the toils of war and agriculture. The female dog guards 
 sheep as well as the male ; why should not the women guard 
 the State ?* And, as some few women manifest a capacity for 
 philosophy, those few will share with men the government. 
 With community of wives and children, it is natural that com 
 munity of property should be joined. Property is the great dis 
 turber of social life ; it engenders crimes and luxuries which are 
 scarcely better than crimes. Property, therefore, must be abol 
 ished. The State alone has riches. 
 
 In one word, the Family, no less than the individual, is sacri 
 ficed to the State ; the State itself being an Abstraction. Like 
 the Utopists of modern days, Plato has developed an a priori 
 theory of what the State should be, and by this theory all human 
 feelings are to be neglected ; instead of developing a theory a 
 
 * This is Plato s own illustration. 
 
240 
 
 posteriori, i. e. from an investigation into the nature of human 
 wants and feelings. 
 
 By thus reducing the Republic to its theoretical formula, we 
 are doubtless viewing it in its most unfavorable light. Its value, 
 and its interest, do not consist in its political ideas, but in its 
 collateral suggestions on education, religion, and morals. But 
 these are beside our present purpose.* 
 
 Willingly would we discourse upon this remarkable book at 
 greater length ; but, although we have only touched on a few 
 points connected with Plato, we have already exhausted the space 
 we could afford, and must close here this imperfect account of 
 one of the greatest minds of antiquity. If we have assigned him 
 his due position in the history of human development if we 
 have in some sort presented the reader with a clue, whereby he 
 may traverse the labyrinth of that celebrated but much misrep 
 resented writer if we have succeeded in conveying some im 
 pression of the man, more consonant with truth than that usually 
 accredited, we have performed our task. 
 
 * In the Laws, many of the political and social notions are modified | but 
 the general theory is the same. 
 
SEVENTH EPOCH. 
 
 PHILOSOPHY AGAIN REDUCED TO A SYSTEM : CLOSE OF THE 
 SOCR ATIC MO VEMENT. ARISTOTLE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 ARISTOTLE. 
 
 I. LIFE OF ARISTOTLE. 
 
 WHEN Plato was leaving Athens for the journey into Sicily, 
 of which we have spoken, and which occupied him three years 
 or more, Aristotle appeared in that active city, a restless youth 
 of seventeen ; rich both in money and in knowledge, eager, im 
 petuous, truth-loving, and insatiable in his thirst for philosophy. 
 Tidings of the wondrous men who made that city illustrious, and 
 whose fame still sheds a halo round its ruins, had reached him 
 in his native land ; tidings of the great thinkers and the crowded 
 schools had lured him, though so young, to Athens. 
 
 Aristotle was born at Stagira, a colony in Thrace, Olympiad 
 99 (B. c. 384.) His father, Nicomachus, was an eminent physi 
 cian, who had written several works on medicine and natural 
 history, so that Aristotle s love of such subjects may be called 
 hereditary. And this hereditary love so conspicuous in the mar 
 vellous results of the two treatises on the History of Animals 
 and the Parts of Animals works which modern science is daily 
 enabling us to appreciate better may have been fostered by the 
 opportunities Stagira offered him in his boyhood. It was a town 
 on the western side of the Strymonic Gulf, just where the general 
 
 11 
 
24:2 ARISTOTLE. 
 
 line of coast takes a southerly direction. Immediately south, a 
 promontory ran out towards the east, effectually screening the 
 town and its little harbor Capros (formed by the island of the 
 same name), from the violence of the squalls coming up the 
 JEgean. " In the terraced windings too, by which the visitor 
 climbs through the orange groves of Sorento, he may without 
 any great violence imagine the narrow and steep paths by which 
 an ancient historian and chorographer describes those who crossed 
 the mountains out of Macedonia, as descending into the valley of 
 Arethusa, where was seen the tomb of Euripides and the town of 
 Stagira."* 
 
 Aristotle, losing his parents at an early age, was consigned to 
 the care of a certain Proxenus, who had him instructed in all the 
 physical knowledge of the time. Proxenus died, and Aristotle 
 then fulfilled his desire of seeing Athens. 
 
 During the three years of Plato s absence Aristotle was not 
 idle. He prepared himself to be a worthy pupil. His wealth 
 enabled him to purchase those costly luxuries, Books there was 
 no cheap Literature in those days and in them he studied the 
 speculations of the early thinkers, with a zeal and intelligence of 
 which his own writings bear ample evidence. There were also 
 some friends and followers of Socrates and Plato still at Athens : 
 men who had listened to the entrancing conversation of the " old 
 man eloquent," who could still remember with a smile his keen 
 and playful irony ; and others who were acquainted with some 
 of the deep thoughts brooding in the melancholy soul of Plato. 
 These Aristotle eagerly questioned, and from them prepared him 
 self to receive the lessons of his future teacher. 
 
 Plato returned. His school was opened, and Aristotle joined 
 the crowd of his disciples, amongst whom the penetrating glance 
 of the master soon detected the immortal pupil. Plato saw that 
 the impetuous youth needed the curb ; but there was promise of 
 greatness in that very need. His restless activity was charac- 
 
 * Blakesley s Life of Aristotle, p. 12. 
 
LIFE OF ARISTOTLE. 243 
 
 terized by Plato in an epithet : " Aristotle is the Mind of my 
 school." 
 
 Aristotle continued to listen to Plato for seventeen years ; that 
 is, till the death of the latter. But he did not confine himself to 
 the Platonic Philosophy : nor did he entirely agree with it. And 
 from this disagreement has arisen the vulgar notion of a personal 
 disagreement between Master and Pupil : a notion, to be sure, 
 propped up with pretended anecdotes, and refuted by others 
 equally authentic. Much has been written on this quarrel, and 
 on what people call Aristotle s ingratitude. We place no reli 
 ance on it. The same thing was said of Plato with respect to 
 Socrates ; and we have excellent reasons for treating that as cal 
 umny. In his writings Aristotle doubtless combats the opinion 
 of Plato ; but he always mentions him with respect, sometimes 
 with tenderness. If that be ingratitude, it is such as all pupils 
 have manifested who have not been slavish followers.* 
 
 It was a wise thought of Macedonian Philip to give his son 
 Alexander such a preceptor as Aristotle. For four years was the 
 illustrious pupil instructed by the illustrious master in poetry, 
 rhetoric, and philosophy ; and, when Alexander departed on his 
 Indian expedition, a scholar of Aristotle s, one Calisthenes, attend 
 ed him.f Both from Philip and from Alexander, the Stagirite 
 received munificent assistance in all his undertakings : especially 
 in the collection of natural curiosities, which were selected from 
 captured provinces, to form the materials of the History of Ani 
 mals. 
 
 "The conqueror is said, in Athenseus, to have presented his 
 master with the sum of eight hundred talents (about two hun 
 dred thousand pounds sterling) to meet the expenses of his His 
 tory of Animals, and, enormous as the sum is, it is only in pro- 
 
 * The question is discussed with ability by Mr. Blakesley in his Life of 
 Aristotle, pp. 24-28. See also Stahr s article on Aristotle in the Dictionary 
 of Greek and Roman Biography. 
 
 t The story that Aristotle himself accompanied Alexander is now univer 
 sally discredited. 
 
244 ARISTOTLE. 
 
 portion to the accounts we have of the vast wealth acquired by 
 the plunder of the Persian treasures. Pliny also relates that 
 some thousands of men were placed at his disposal for the pur 
 pose of procuring zoological specimens, which served as materi 
 als for this celebrated treatise."* However he acquired his 
 materials, it is becoming daily more evident that his work was 
 based on direct knowledge, on actual inspection and dissection, 
 not, as in Pliny s case, on what others reported. Several of the 
 most astonishing discoveries of modern naturalists are found to 
 have been distinctly known to Aristotle ; and even on such subtle 
 questions as the affinities of animals, we are sometimes forced to 
 come round to his classification. "Thus, in the end," says Pro 
 fessor Forbes, in summing up his discussion on the classification 
 of Acalephs, " we revert curiously enough to the views of the 
 affinities of these Animals proposed by Aristotle, who plainly in 
 cluded under the designation of axccX-/)*^, both Actinia and Me 
 dusa : not from any vague guess, or in compliance with the popu 
 lar recognition of their resemblance, but from a careful study of 
 their structure and habits, as the varied notices preserved to us 
 in the first, fourth, and fifth, eighth, and ninth books of the His 
 tory of Animals prove beyond question."! 
 
 After a long interval Aristotle returned to Athens and opened 
 a school in the Lyceum : a school which eclipsed all the others 
 both in numbers and importance. It is curiously illustrative of 
 his restless vivacious temperament that he could not stand still 
 and lecture, but delivered his opinions whilst walking up and 
 down the shady paths of the Lyceum, attended by his eager fol 
 lowers. Hence his disciples were called the "Walking Philoso 
 phers Peripatetics. 
 
 Mr. Blakesley thinks that it was Aristotle s delicate health 
 which, combined with the wish to economize time, induced him 
 
 * Blakesley, p. 68. 
 
 t Forbes, Monograph of the Naked- Eyed Medusa. , p. 88. On the subject of 
 Aristotle s zoological knowledge generally, see Meyer, Aristotelis Thierkunde, 
 1855, and De Blainville, Ilistoire des Sciences dc V Organisation, 1S45. 
 
LIFE OF AKISTOTLE. 245 
 
 to lecture while walking. Diogenes Laertius attributes its origin 
 to a regard for the health of his pupil, Alexander. The point is 
 unimportant ; enough for us to know that he did lecture while 
 walking to and fro along the shady paths of the Lyceum. Pro 
 tagoras, as Mr. Blakesley reminds us, is represented by Plato as 
 teaching in the same way ; although not perhaps so systemati 
 cally as Aristotle. 
 
 His lectures were of two kinds, scientific and popular acroa- 
 matic or acroatic, and exoteric. The former were for the more ad 
 vanced students, and those who were capable of pursuing scientific 
 subjects : he delivered these in the morning. The latter were after 
 noon lectures to a much larger class, and treated of popular sub 
 jects rhetoric, politics, and sophistics. Much learning and in 
 genuity has been thrown away in the endeavor to determine the 
 precise nature of these two kinds of instruction ; but we cannot 
 here discuss it. Those who conclude that the distinction between 
 the esoteric and exoteric was a distinction of doctrine seem to us 
 in error ; the distinction was, as above stated, purely that of sub 
 ject-matter. Dialectics and Poetics are not addressed to the 
 same hearers. 
 
 He spent a long laborious life in the pursuit of knowledge, and 
 wrote an incredible number of works, about a fourth of which 
 it is calculated are extant; the division, arrangement, and au 
 thenticity of which has long been a pet subject of contention 
 among scholars; but, as no agreement has yet been effected, 
 we should have to swell our pages with arguments rather than 
 results. 
 
 The influence these works, spurious as well as genuine, have 
 exercised on European culture, is incalculable, and we shall here 
 after have to speak of the tyranny of this influence. Nor was 
 it alone over European culture they exercised a despotic sway. 
 " Translated in the fifth century of the Christian era into the 
 Syriac language by the Nestorians who fled into Persia, and from 
 Syriac into Arabic four hundred years later, his writings furnish 
 ed the Mohammedan conquerors of the East with a germ of sci- 
 
246 ARISTOTLE. 
 
 ence which, but for the effect of their religious and political in 
 stitutions, might have shot up into as tall a tree as it did produce 
 in the west; while his logical works, in the Latin translation 
 which Boethius, the last of the Romans, bequeathed as a lega 
 cy to posterity, formed the basis of that extraordinary phenome 
 non, the Philosophy of the Schoolmen. An empire like this, 
 extending over nearly twenty centuries of time, sometimes more, 
 sometimes less despotically, but always with great force, recog 
 nized in Bagdad and in Cordova, in Egypt and in Britain, and 
 leaving abundant traces of itself in the language and modes 
 of thought of every European nation, is assuredly without a par 
 allel."* 
 
 II. ARISTOTLE S METHOD. 
 
 Plato and Aristotle may be said to contain all the speculative 
 philosophy of Greece : whoso knows them, knows all that Greece 
 had to teach. It is not our plan to draw comparisons between 
 the greatness of two great men, otherwise these two would fur 
 nish a happy subject. We have endeavored to point out in what 
 way Plato advanced the Philosophy of his age. We have now 
 to do the same by Aristotle. 
 
 Aristotle was the most learned man of antiquity, but this learn- 
 v ing did not enervate the vigor of his mind. He studiously 
 sought, both in books and in external nature, for materials where 
 with to build a doctrine. Before laying down his own views he 
 always examines the views of his predecessors with tedious mi 
 nuteness ; and his own opinions often seem brought out in his 
 criticisms rather than dogmatically affirmed. Hence some have 
 declared his Method to be the historical Method ; a misconcep 
 tion not to be wondered at when we consider the abundance of 
 historical detail, and the absence of any express definition of his 
 Method in his writings. 
 
 Unlike Plato, Aristotle never mentions the nature of his Meth- 
 
 * Blakesley, p. i. 
 
247 
 
 od ; but he has one, and we must detect it. We may expect to 
 find it somewhat resembling that of his master, with some modi 
 fications of his own. Plato, as Van Ileusde, in the Initia Pla- 
 tonicce remarks, stands a middle point between Socrates and Aris 
 totle. The Method of Socrates was one of Investigation ; that 
 of Aristotle was one of Demonstration. The Definition and In 
 duction of Socrates were powerful, but vague ; the syllogism of 
 Aristotle rendered them powerful and precise. Plato, as it were, 
 fills up the gap between these two thinkers ; by the addition of 
 Analysis and Classification he reduced the Socratic Method to a 
 more systematic form, and gave it precision. Where Plato left 
 it, Aristotle took it up ; and, by still further modifications, all 
 of which had but one aim, i. e. greater precision, he gave it a 
 solidity which enabled it to endure for centuries. 
 
 Wherein did Plato and Aristotle fundamentally differ? Un 
 til the time of Hegel the general explanation of this difference was 
 briefly to this effect : Plato is an Idealist, Aristotle a Materialist ; 
 the one a Rationalist, the other an Empiric : one trusting solely 
 to Reason, the other solely to Experience. This explanation He 
 gel refuted by showing, that although Aristotle laid more stress 
 upon experience than did Plato, yet he also expressly taught that 
 Reason alone could form science.* 
 
 Let us, then, try if we can penetrate the real difference. And 
 to do so, we must first ask, What was the fundamental position 
 of the Platonic doctrine ? That question admits of but one an 
 swer. The root of Plato s philosophy is the theory of Ideas, 
 whereby Dialectics became science. If here Aristotle be found to 
 agree with his master, there can be no fundamental difference 
 between them; if here he be found to differ, we may be able to 
 deduce from it all other differences. 
 
 Aristotle radically opposed the Ideal theory ; and the greater 
 part -of his criticisms of Plato are criticisms of that theory. He 
 does not deny to Ideas a subjective existence : on the contrary, 
 
 * Hegel, GcscMekU dr Pldlos. ii. 311 sq* 
 
248 ARISTOTLE. 
 
 he makes them the materials of science ; but he is completely op 
 posed to their objective existence, calling it an empty and poeti 
 cal metaphor. He says, that on the supposition of Ideas being 
 Existences and Models, there would be several Models for the 
 same Thing ; since the same thing may be classed under several 
 heads. Thus, Socrates may be classed under the Ideas of Soc 
 rates, of Man, of Animal, and of Biped ; or Philosopher, General, 
 and Statesman. The " stout Stagirite " not only perceived the 
 logical error of the Ideal theory, but also saw how the error origi 
 nated. He profoundly remarked, that Ideas are nothing but 
 productions of the Reason, separating, by a logical abstraction, 
 the particular objects from those relations which are common to 
 them all. He saw that Plato had mistaken a subjective distinc 
 tion for an objective one ; had mistaken a relation, which the 
 understanding perceived between two objects, for the evidence of 
 a separate existence. The partisans of the theory of Ideas, Aris 
 totle likens to those who, having to enumerate the exact number 
 of things, commence by increasing the number, as a way of sim 
 plifying the calculation. In this caustic illustration we may see 
 the nature of his objection to the Platonic doctrine. What, in 
 deed, was the Ideal theory, but a multiplication of the number of 
 Existences ? Men had before imagined that things were great, 
 and heavy, and black or brown. Plato separated the qualities 
 of greatness, weight, and color, aud made these qualities new ex 
 istences. 
 
 Having disproved the notion of Ideas being Existences, in 
 other words, of General Terms being any thing more than the 
 expressions of the Relations of individual things, Aristotle was 
 driven to maintain that the Individual Things alone existed. But, 
 if only individuals exist, only by sensation can they be known ; 
 and, if we know them by sensation, how is the universal. TO 
 xodoXou, ever known how do we get abstract ideas ? This ques 
 tion was the more pertinent because science could only be a sci 
 ence of the Universal, or, as we moderns say, a science of general 
 truths ; now inasmuch as Aristotle agreed with Plato in main- 
 
249 
 
 taining that sense cannot furnish us with science,* which is always 
 founded on general truths (Universals), it was needful for him to 
 show how we could gain scientific knowledge. 
 
 Plato s solution of the problem has already been exhibited; it 
 was the ingenious doctrine of the soul s reminiscence of a former 
 apprehension of truth, awakened by those traces of Ideas which 
 sensation discovered in Things. This solution did not satisfy 
 Aristotle. He, too, was aware that reminiscence was indispensa 
 ble; but by it he meant reminiscence of previous experience, 
 not of an anterior state of existence in the world of Ideas. By 
 sensation we perceive particular things ; by induction we perceive 
 the general in the particular. Sensation is the basis of all knowl 
 edge : but we have another faculty besides that of sensation ; we 
 have Memory. Having perceived many things, we remember 
 our sensations, and by that remembrance we are enabled to dis 
 cern wherein things resemble and wherein they differ ; and this 
 Memory then becomes an art whereby a general conception is 
 formed : this art is Induction. The natural method of investi 
 gation, he says, is to collect all the facts or particulars, and after 
 wards deduce from these the general causes of all things and 
 their actions.f This is accomplished by Induction, which he 
 aptly calls the pathway from particulars to generals s^ayuyrt 
 dy TJ ct<ro TOJV xa$s xa0Va stfi rot xa$6Xou ! qpo$o.J Man alone has 
 this art. The distinction between brutes and men is, that the 
 former, although they have Memory, have no Experience ; that 
 is to say, have not the art which converts Memory into Experi 
 ence the art of Induction. Man is the reasoning animal. 
 
 That Aristotle meant Induction by the art of which he speaks 
 as furnished by experience, may be proved by one luminous 
 passage of the Metaphysics. "Art commences when, from a 
 great number of Experiences, one general conception is formed 
 
 * Analyt. Post. i. 81. 
 t Ibid. ; comp. also Hist. Animal, i. 6. 
 
 \ Topic, i. 10. comp. what Coleridge says on Method as a path of Transit, 
 Discourse on Method affixed to Encydop. Metropolitans. 
 
 11* 
 
250 ARISTOTLE S METHOD. 
 
 which will embrace all similar cases.* And, lest there should 
 be any misunderstanding of his definition, he proceeds to illus 
 trate it. " Thus, if you know that a certain remedy has cured 
 Callias of a certain disease, and that the same remedy has pro 
 duced the same effect on Socrates, and on several other persons, 
 that is Experience ; but to know that a certain remedy will cure 
 all persons attacked with that disease is Art : for Experience is 
 the knowledge of individual things (<rwv xads xaoVa) ; Art is that 
 of Universals (rwv xa$oXou)." 
 
 The commencement of Positive Science the awakening to an 
 appreciation of the nature and processes of Science lies in that 
 passage. In the Socratic conception of Induction we saw little 
 more than Analogical Reasoning; but in this Aristotelian con 
 ception we see the Collection of Instances, and the generalization 
 from those Instances which Science claims as part of its Method. 
 Nor was this a random guess of the old Stagirite s : it was the 
 logical deduction from his premises respecting knowledge. Hear 
 him again : " Experience furnishes the principles of every science. 
 Thus Astronomy is grounded on observation ; for, if we were pro 
 perly to observe the celestial phenomena, we might demonstrate 
 the laivs which regulate them. The same applies to other sci 
 ences. If we omit nothing that observation can afford us respect 
 ing phenomena, we could easily furnish the demonstration of all 
 that admits of being demonstrated, and illustrate that which is 
 not susceptible of demonstration."! And, in another place, when 
 abandoned in his investigation by phenomena, he will not hazard 
 an assertion. " We must wait," he says, " for further phenomena, 
 since phenomena are more to be trusted than the conclusion of 
 reason." 
 
 Looked at in a general way, the Aristotelian Method seems to 
 be the Method of positive Science ; but on closer meditation we 
 shall detect their germinal difference to be the omission in Aris- 
 
 TivtTat < Ti%vri orav IK Trow 
 jtepi TUIV bpoluiv iiTroA^i^jj, Met. i. 1. 
 t Analyt. Prior, i. 30. 
 
251 
 
 totle of the principle, so much insisted on in the Introduction to 
 this History, namely, the rigorous Verification of each inductive 
 step. The value of the truth expressed by a syllogism does not 
 consist solely in its accurate distribution, but also in the accuracy 
 of its major premise : we may form unexceptionable Syllogisms 
 which shall be absurdly erroneous, as when we say, All black 
 birds are crows; This bird is black: frgo, This bird is a crow. 
 In the physical and metaphysical speculations of the ancients, 
 we are constantly meeting with syllogisms as perfect as this, 
 and as absurd ; because the ancients generally threw their in 
 genuity into logical deduction, and scarcely ever into preliminary 
 verification. When Aristotle therefore lays down as a canon the 
 necessity of ascertaining generals from an examination of partic 
 ulars, his canon, admirable indeed, needs to be accompanied by 
 a distinct recognition of the equal necessity of verification. Con 
 trasted with the Platonic Method, Aristotle s is seen to great ad 
 vantage. Plato, believing that the stimulus awakened by a single 
 idea would enable a man to arrive at the knowledge of all ideas, 
 in consequence of the necessary connection supposed to exist be 
 tween them, could very well dispense with Induction. But Aris 
 totle maintained that the completeness of knowledge is only ob 
 tainable through completeness of experience ; every single idea is 
 awakened in us by a separate sensation, and only on a compari 
 son of like and unlike in phenomena are differences perceived. 
 He complains of Plato very justly, for neglecting details in haste 
 to judge of universals. 
 
 Aristotle had, therefore, a novel and profound conception of 
 scientific Method ; but because he did not and, indeed, in that 
 age could not confine himself to Experience and the generaliza 
 tions of Experience, he could not effectually carry out his own 
 scheme. His conception was just ; but the application of such a 
 Method could have led him only a short way, because there was 
 not sufficient Experience then accumulated, from which to gener 
 alize with any effect. Hence his speculations are not always 
 carried on upon the Method which he himself laid down. Im- 
 
252 
 
 patient at the insufficiency of facts, he jumps to a conclusion. 
 Eager, as all men are, to solve the problems which present them 
 selves, he solved them a priori. He applied his syllogism before 
 he had verified the exactitude of his premises. 
 
 The distinction between Aristotle and Plato is, that while both 
 admitted that science could only be formed from Universals, <ra 
 xa^oXou, Aristotle contended that such Universals had purely a 
 .subjective existence, i. e. that they were nothing more than the 
 inductions derived from particular facts. He, therefore, made 
 Experience the basis of all Science, and Reason the Architect. 
 Plato made Reason the basis. The tendency of the one was to 
 direct man to the observation and interrogation of Nature ; that 
 of the other was to direct nTan to the contemplation of Ideas. 
 
 The distinction between Aristotle and Bacon is, that while 
 they both insist upon the observation and generalization of facts, 
 as alone capable of furnishing correct ideas, Aristotle believed 
 that he could observe those primary facts of Existence and Cause, 
 which Bacon wisely declared beyond the human ken. While 
 both insisted on the necessity of experience, while both saw that 
 the science of the " general" must be framed from the inductions 
 of the particular, they differed profoundly as to the nature of that 
 "general." Bacon endeavored in particular facts to trace the 
 general laws ; Aristotle endeavored in particular facts to trace 
 the general ideas. 
 
 To understand this, we must cast a glance at Aristotle s Logic. 
 
 III. ARISTOTLE S LOGIC. 
 
 It is often remarked, that Aristotle s use of the word Dialectics 
 differs from Plato s use of it. Indeed, with Plato, dialectics was 
 the science of Being with Aristotle, it was no more than the in 
 strument of Thought. But it is highly necessary that we should 
 clearly understand the position occupied by Logic in the Aristo 
 telian philosophy; the more so as after-ages prized the Logic 
 above all his other works. 
 
 Logic is the science of Affirmation ; Affirmation is the active 
 
253 
 
 operation of the Mind on that which sensation has presented to 
 it; in other words, Affirmation is Thought. Affirmations may 
 be true or false : there can be no falsehood in Sensation. If you 
 
 ^ have a sensation of an object, it must be a true sensation; but 
 you may affirm something false of it. Every single thought is 
 
 \ true, but when you connect two thoughts together, that is, when 
 you affirm something of another thing, you may affirm that which 
 is false. Every thing, therefore, that you think about may be re 
 duced to a Proposition ; in fact, thoughts are a series of Proposi 
 tions. To understand the whole nature of Propositions to un 
 derstand the whole Art of Thinking is the province of Logic. 
 
 By a very natural confusion, Aristotle, thus convinced of the 
 importance of language, was led to maintain that truth or false 
 hood did not depend upon things, but upon words, or rather up 
 on combinations of words upon Propositions. Logic, therefore, 
 to him, as to Plato, though in a different way, became the real 
 Organon of Science. But, as John Mill remarks, " the distinc 
 tion between real and nominal definitions, between definitions of 
 words and what are called definitions of things, though conform 
 able to the ideas of most Aristotelian logicians, cannot, as it ap 
 pears to us, be maintained. We apprehend that no definition 
 is ever intended to explain and unfold the nature of the thing. 
 It is some confirmation of our opinion that none of those writers 
 who have thought that there were definitions of things have ever 
 succeeded in discovering any criterion by which the definition of 
 a thing can be distinguished from any other proposition relating 
 to that thing. The definition, they say, unfolds the nature of the 
 thing : but no definition can unfold its whole nature ; and every 
 proposition in which any quality whatever is predicated of the 
 thing unfolds some part of its nature. The true state of the case 
 we take to be this : All definitions are of names, and of names 
 only ; but, in some definitions, it is clearly apparent that nothing 
 is intended except to explain the meaning of the word ; while, in 
 others, besides explaining the meaning of the word, it is intended 
 to be implied that there exists a thing corresponding to the 
 
254 
 
 word. Whether this be or be not implied in any given case, 
 cannot be collected from the mere form of expression. A cen 
 taur is an animal with the upper parts of a man and the lower 
 parts of a horse, and a triangle is a rectilineal figure with three 
 sides, are, in form, expressions precisely similar; although, in the 
 former, it is not implied that any thing conformable to the term 
 really exists, while in the latter it is ; as may be seen by substi 
 tuting, in both definitions, the word means for is. In the first 
 expression, a centaur means an animal, etc., the sense would 
 remain unchanged : in the second, a triangle means, etc., the 
 meaning would be altered, since it would be obviously impossible 
 to deduce any of the truths of geometry from a proposition ex 
 pressive only of the manner in which we intend to employ a par 
 ticular sign. 
 
 " There are, therefore, expressions commonly passing for defi 
 nitions which include in themselves more than the mere explana 
 tion of the meaning of a term. But it is not correct to call an 
 expression of this sort a peculiar kind of definition. Its difference 
 from the other kind consists in this, that it is not a definition, but 
 a definition and something more. The definition given above of 
 a triangle, obviously comprises not one, but two propositions, per 
 fectly distinguishable. The one is, There may exist a figure 
 bounded by three straight lines ; the other, * and this figure may 
 be termed a triangle. The former of these propositions is not 
 a definition at all ; the latter is a mere nominal definition or ex 
 planation of the use and application of a term. The first is 
 susceptible of truth or falsehood, and may therefore be made 
 the foundation of a train of reasoning. The latter can nei 
 ther be true nor false ; the only character it is susceptible of, is 
 that of conformity or disconformity to the ordinary usage of lan 
 guage. 
 
 " There is a real distinction, then, between definitions of names 
 and what are erroneously called definitions of things ; but it is 
 that the latter, along with the meaning of a name, covertly as 
 serts a matter of fact. This covert assertion is not a definition, 
 
ARISTOTLE S LOGIC. 255 
 
 but a postulate. The definition is a mere identical proposition, 
 which gives information only about the use of language, and 
 from which no conclusions respecting matters of fact can pos 
 sibly be drawn. The accompanying postulate, on the other 
 hand, affirms a fact which may lead to consequences of every 
 degree of importance. It affirms the real existence of things 
 possessing the combination of attributes set forth in the defini 
 tion ; and this, if true, may be foundation sufficient to build a 
 whole fabric of scientific truth."* 
 
 This profound and luminous distinction was not seen by 
 Aristotle, and his whole system was vitiated in consequence of 
 the oversight. He thought that Logic was not only the Instru 
 ment of Thought, but, as such, the Instrument of investigating 
 Causes. In his Logic the first place was occupied by the cele 
 brated Categories. They are ten in number, and are as follows : 
 
 Ovffia Substance. 
 
 Tl6<Tov Quantity. 
 
 Tloiov Quality. 
 
 ripdf ri Relation. 
 
 Hoitlv Action. 
 
 Udffxttv Passion. 
 
 Uov The where. 
 
 riore The when. 
 
 Kuadai Position in space. 
 
 v E%ii> Possession. 
 
 These Categories, or, as the Latin writers say, Predicaments, 
 were intended to be an enumeration of those classes or genera, 
 under some of which every thing was to be reduced. They 
 were held to be the most universal expressions for the various 
 relations of things; they could not further be analyzed, but 
 remained the fundamental definitions of things. It is, however, 
 as has been remarked,! a mere catalogue of the distinctions 
 rudely marked out by the language of familiar life, with little or 
 no attempt to penetrate, by philosophic analysis, to the rationale 
 even of those common distinctions. Such an analysis, however 
 
 * System of Logic, i. 195-7. t Mill s System of Logic, i. 60. 
 
256 
 
 superficially conducted, would have shown the enumeration to 
 be both redundant and defective. Some objects are omitted, 
 and others repeated several times under different heads. It is 
 like a division of animals into men, quadrupeds, horses, asses, 
 and ponies. 
 
 The remark is just, and would have been admitted as just by 
 Aristotle himself, since he does not pretend the classification is 
 complete, but confesses that the same object may, under dif 
 ferent categories, be at once a quality and a relation. But Aris 
 totle does not usually ascribe much importance to this enumera 
 tion of the most general notions ; so that we may regard it as 
 nothing more than an attempt to exhibit in a clear light the 
 signification of words taken absolutely, in order to show how 
 truth and falsehood consist in the right or wrong combination of 
 these elements.* 
 
 However imperfect this attempt at classification may be, it 
 was held to be a satisfactory attempt for many centuries ; nor 
 was any one bold enough to venture on another until Kant, who, 
 as we shall see, had quite a different object. We have not here 
 to criticise it, but to exhibit its historical position. The idea of 
 examining the forms of thought could scarcely have originated 
 earlier. Previous speculators had occupied themselves with in 
 quiries into the origin and nature of knowledge : Aristotle saw 
 that it was time to inquire into the necessary forms of thought. 
 To do this, to analyze the various processes of the mind, and to 
 exhibit the "art of thinking" in all its details, is the object of 
 his Logic. 
 
 Some had declared sense-knowledge to be deceitful ; others 
 had declared that sense-knowledge was perfectly faithful, as far 
 as it went, but that it was incapable of penetrating beneath 
 phenomena. Skepticism was assuming a menacing attitude. 
 Aristotle, in his way, endeavored to meet it, and he met it 
 
 * Ritter, iii. 66, where also will be found the authorities for the previous 
 sentence. 
 
ARISTOTLE S LOGIC. 2 57 
 
 thus : It is true that the knowledge derived from our senses is 
 not always correct ; true also that our senses are to be trusted, 
 as far as they go. A sensation, as a sensation, is true ; but any 
 affirmation you may make about that sensation may be either 
 true or false, according to the affirmation. If an oar dipped in 
 the water appears to you to be broken, the sensation you have 
 is accurate enough ; you have that sensation. But if, on the 
 strength of that sensation, you affirm that the oar is broken, your 
 affirmation is false. Error lies not in false sensation, but in false 
 affirmation. 
 
 Like Plato, he held it to be indispensable to understand words 
 x if we are to understand thoughts ; a position which, as we saw 
 in the teaching of Socrates, was both novel and at the time im 
 portant, because it called attention to the extreme laxity of lan 
 guage under which men disguised the laxity of their reasoning. 
 A word, he said, is in itself indifferent ; it is neither true nor 
 false : truth or falsehood must result from a combination of words 
 into a proposition. No thought can be erroneous ; error is only 
 possible to propositions. 
 
 Hence the necessity of Logic, which is the science of affirma 
 tions ; it is in the Enunciate Proposition, a^o^avrjxoj Xoyo, that 
 we must seek truth or falsehood. This proposition is subdivided 
 into Affirmative and Negative Propositions, which are mutually 
 opposed, and give rise to Contradiction so soon as they are as 
 serted in the same sense of one and the same thing : e. g. " It 
 is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be." 
 
 The principle of Contradiction he declares to be the deepest 
 of all ; for on it all Demonstration is founded. Because, how 
 ever, he confounded truth of Language with truth of Thought, 
 and supposed that Thought was always the correlate of Fact, he 
 fell into the mistake of maintaining truth of Language, or Pro 
 positions, to be identical with truth of Being. He did not re 
 cognize the fact that we can frame Propositions which shall be 
 based on the principle of Contradiction, and which shall never 
 theless be false. 
 
258 
 
 Having erected Propositions, or the affirmative and negative 
 combinations of Language, into such an exalted position, it be 
 came necessary to attend more closely to names, and thus we 
 get the Predicables, a five-fold division of general Names, not 
 grounded, as usual, upon a difference in their meaning, that is, 
 in the attribute which they cownote, but upon a difference in the 
 kind of class which they denote. We may predicate of a thing 
 five different varieties of class-name : 
 
 Tivos a Genus. 
 
 EWo? a Species. 
 
 Aia<f>opd a Difference. 
 
 "IStov a Property. 
 
 Su/*/?/?>7K(5ff an Accident. 
 
 " It is to be remarked of these distinctions that they express 
 not what the predicate is in its own meaning, but what relation 
 it bears to the subject on which it happens on the particular 
 occasion to be predicated. There are not some names which are 
 exclusively general and others which are exclusively species or 
 differentiae ; but the same name is referred to one or another 
 Predicable, according to the subject of which it is predicated 
 on the particular occasion. Animal, for instance, is a genus 
 with respect to Man or John ; a species with respect to sub 
 stance or Being. The words genus, species, etc., are therefore 
 relative terms ; they are names applied to certain predicates, to 
 express the relation between them and some given subject : a 
 relation grounded, not upon what the predicate cownotes, but 
 upon the class which it denotes, and upon the place which in 
 some given classification that class occupies relatively to the par 
 ticular subject."* 
 
 Induction and Syllogism are the two great instruments of his 
 Logic. All knowledge must rest upon some antecedent con 
 viction ; and both in Induction and Syllogism we see how this 
 takes place. Induction sets out, from particulars already known, 
 
 * Mill, System of Logic, i. 162. 
 
259 
 
 to arrive at a conclusion ; Syllogism sets out, from some general 
 principle, to arrive at particulars.* There is this remarkable dis 
 tinction, however, established by him between the two, namely, 
 that the general principle from which the syllogism proceeds is 
 better known in itself and in its own nature, while the particulars 
 from which Induction proceeds are better known to us.f How 
 came he by this surprising distinction? Thus: the particulars 
 of Induction are derived from Sense, and are more liable on that 
 account to error ; whereas the general principle of the Syllogism 
 is known in itself, is further removed from the fallacies of sense, 
 and is xara TOV Xoyov yvwpi/xw<rpov. Do we not always doubt 
 whether we have rightly understood any thing until we have 
 demonstrated that it follows by necessity from some general 
 principle ? And does not this lead to the conviction that the 
 Syllogism is the proper form of all science ? Moreover, as 
 the Syllogism proceeds from the general, the general must 
 be better known than the particular, since the particular is 
 proved by it. 
 
 Aristotle here lands us on a jagged reef of paradox : that 
 which is better known to us is of less value than that which is 
 known in itself. Sensations are less trustworthy than ideas. The 
 particulars are sensibles, but in and for themselves they are noth 
 ing; they exist only in relation to us. Nevertheless we are 
 forced to make them our point of departure. We begin with 
 sensuous knowledge to reach ideal knowledge. In this manner 
 we proceed from the world of experience to that higher world of 
 cognition. 
 
 The various investigations into the nature of Propositions 
 which Aristotle prosecuted, were necessary to form the basis of 
 his theory of reasoning, i. e. the Syllogism. He defined the Syl 
 logism to be an enunciation in which certain Propositions being 
 laid down, a necessary conclusion is drawn, distinct from the 
 
 * Analyt. Post. i. 1. 
 
 t <I>u<7i JJLIV ovv irp6rtpos xal yvcopf^/wrepoc & Sid TOV pfaov (ruAXoywr^dj, f/fnv 3 
 tvapyf-cTcpos 6 did TQS fTraywyjyf, Analyt, Prior, ii. 24, 
 
260 
 
 Propositions and without employing any idea not contained in 
 the Propositions. Thus : 
 
 All bad men are miserable ; 
 Every tyrant is a bad man : 
 
 ergo 
 All tyrants are miserable. 
 
 His examination of the sixteen forms of the Syllogism exhibits 
 great ingenuity, and, as a dialectical exercise, was doubtless suffi 
 cient ; but it must not detain us here. The theory of the Syl 
 logism is succeeded by the theory of Demonstration. If all 
 knowledge owes its existence to anterior knowledge, what is this 
 anterior knowledge ? It is the major proposition of a Syllogism. 
 The conclusion is but the application of the general to the par 
 ticular. Thus, if we know that Tyrants are miserable, we know 
 it because we know that All bad men are miserable ; and the 
 middle term tells us that Tyrants are bad men. To know, is to 
 be aware of the cause ; to demonstrate, is to give the Syllogism 
 which expresses the knowledge we have. It is therefore neces 
 sary that every scientific Syllogism should repose upon principles 
 that are true, primitive, more evident in themselves than the 
 conclusion, and anterior to the conclusion. These undemonstra- 
 ble principles are Axioms, Hypotheses, etc., according as they 
 are self-evident, or as they presuppose some affirmation or nega 
 tion ; they are Definitions when they limit themselves to an ex 
 planation of the essence of the thing defined, without affirming 
 any thing respecting its existence. 
 
 The proper subjects of demonstration are those universal attri 
 butes of particular things which make them what they are, and 
 which may be predicated of them. It is one thing to know that 
 a thing is so ; another thing to know why it is so : hence the 
 two orders of demonstrations, the TOU on, " the demonstration of 
 the cause from a consideration of the effect," and the TOU (S joVi, 
 " the demonstration of the effect from the presence of the cause." 
 
 We close this exposition of the leading points of Aristotle s 
 Logic with his own somewhat touching words, as he concludes 
 
ARISTOTLE S METAPHYSICS. 261 
 
 his work : " We have had no works of predecessors to assist us 
 in this attempt to construct a science of Reasoning ; our own 
 labors have done it all. If, therefore, the work appears to you 
 not too inferior to the works on other sciences which have been 
 formed with the assistance of successive laborers in the same de 
 partment, you will show some indulgence for the imperfections 
 of our work, and some gratitude for the discoveries it contains." 
 
 IV. ARISTOTLE S METAPHYSICS. 
 
 The problem which the early thinkers had set themselves to 
 solve was that of the First Cause. Aristotle maintained that 
 there were Four Causes, not one, and each of these must be taken 
 into consideration. The four Causes were as follows : I. The 
 Material Cause, the Essence, TO <n ^v sfvai, the Invariable Exist 
 ence, which philosophers so variously sought. Perhaps " Es 
 sence 1 is the best translation of the phrase. II. The Substantial 
 Cause, utfoxsi /jisvov, the " Substance" of the Schoolmen. III. The 
 Efficient Cause, app^ T?J xivrfisus, " the Principle of Motion." 
 IV. The Final Cause, <ro ou sWxa xa? rdyado v, "the Purpose and 
 End." These Causes were all recognized separately by the early 
 speculators, but no one had recognized them as connected, and 
 as all necessary. 
 
 Aristotle is right in his criticism on his predecessors ; but his 
 own theory is extremely vicious. It makes speculation subordi 
 nate to logical distinctions ; it makes the Categories the great 
 instrument of investigation ; and it creates that spirit of useless 
 and quibbling distinction which was the characteristic vice of the 
 schoolmen, who were almost all fervent Aristotelians. In one 
 word, the nearer Aristotle approached to systematic precision, 
 the wider he wandered from sound principles of inquiry. And 
 this because of his fundamental error in supposing that Logic 
 was an Organon, i. e. that subjective distinctions must accord with 
 objective distinctions. In consequence of which, instead of inter 
 rogating Nature he interrogated his own mind. 
 
 This may seem at variance with his notion of the necessity of 
 
262 
 
 sense-experience, and at variance with bis Method ; but, as we 
 before observed, the rigorous application of his Method was bare 
 ly possible ; and, however excellent as a precept, it was so vague 
 as to be almost inevitably vitiated in practice. The process of 
 vitiation was this : Experience was necessary, as affording the 
 materials for Reason to work with. Any reasoning not founded 
 on a knowledge of phenomena must be false ; but here was Aris 
 totle s mistake : it by no means follows, that all reasoning found 
 ed on a knowledge of phenomena will be true. He thought that 
 Experience could not deceive. But, to make his Method perfect, 
 he should have laid down the rules for testing that Experience 
 for "interrogating" Nature for discriminating what was per 
 tinent to the question in hand for establishing a proper " ex- 
 perimentum crucis" Thus " facts," as they are called, are notori 
 ously valuable in proportion only to the value of the verification to 
 which they have been submitted. People talk of " facts" as if 
 facts were to produce irresistible convictions ; W 7 hereas facts are 
 susceptible of very various explanations, and, in the history of 
 science, we find the facts constant, but the theories changing : 
 that is to say, Nature has preserved one uniform course, her ordi 
 nary operations are open to all men s inspection, and men have 
 endeavored to explain these operations in an endless variety of 
 ways. Now, from a want of a proper knowledge of the condi 
 tions of scientific inquiry, Aristotle s Method became fruitless. 
 The facts collected were vitiated by a false theory : his sense- 
 experience was wrongly interpreted. 
 
 It is time, however, to give his solution of the great metaphy 
 sical problem of Existence. Matter, he said, exists in a threefold 
 form. It is, I. Substance, perceptible by the senses, which is 
 finite and perishable. This Substance is either the abstract sub 
 stance, or the substance connected with form, siSo$. II. The 
 higher Substance, which, though perceived by the sense, is im 
 perishable ; such as are the heavenly bodies. Here the active 
 principle (Jvspysia, actus) steps in, which, in so far as it contains 
 that which is to be produced, is understanding (voyj). That 
 
which it contains is the purpose (TO ou e vsxa), which purpose is 
 realized in the act. Here we have the two extremes of poten 
 tiality and agency, matter and thought. The celebrated ente- 
 lechie is the relation between these two extremes, it is the point 
 of transition between <$jva/jii and ^vs p^sja, and is accordingly the 
 Cause of Motion, or Efficient Cause, and represents the Soul. III. 
 The third form of Substance is that in which the three forms of 
 power, efficient cause, and effect are united : the Absolute Sub 
 stance : eternal, unmoved : God himself. God, as the Absolute 
 Unmoved Eternal Substance, is Thought. The Universe is a 
 thought in the Mind of God ; it is " God passing into activity, 
 but not exhausted in the Act." Existence, then, is Thought: it 
 is the activity of the Divine Reason. In Man the thought of the 
 Divine Reason completes itself, so as to become self-conscious. 
 By it Man recognizes in the objective world his own nature 
 again ; for thought is the thinking of thought fc 
 
 If we were occupied in this History with the particular opin 
 ions of Philosophers, rather than with their Methods and histori 
 cal position in the development of speculation, we should dwell 
 at some length on Aristotle s distinction between the primary 
 and secondary qualities of bodies, which, according to Sir Wil 
 liam Hamilton, he was the first to establish,* as also on the doc 
 trine of Substantial Forms, which Hamilton says he did not 
 teach (it was the Arabian commentators who misinterpreted 
 Aristotle on this point) ; nor should we omit the claim to the 
 discovery of the doctrine of Association of Ideas, which Hamilton 
 has set up for him, with a vast array of Aristotelian erudition, 
 proving indeed that Aristotle did recognize the facts of Associa 
 tion, but by no means proving that he recognized Association as 
 the grand law of intellectual action. Our limits forbid such dis 
 cursive wanderings from the purpose of this work, and we are 
 forced to leave untouched the very points which in our opinion 
 
 * Hamilton s fieid, p. 826. 
 
264: 
 
 constitute the pre-eminence of Aristotle. In a history of Science 
 greater justice could be done to his encyclopaedic knowledge and 
 marvellous power of systematization.* Here we have but to con 
 sider him as the philosopher who, resuming in himself all the 
 results of ancient speculation, so elaborated them into a co-ordi 
 nate system, that for twenty centuries he held the world a slave. 
 Plato was a great speculative genius, and a writer unap- 
 proached in the art of imaginary conversations having a po 
 lemical purpose ; and in most literary minds he will ever remain 
 a greater figure than his pupil, Aristotle. But while I concede 
 Plato s immeasurable superiority as a writer, I conceive his in 
 feriority as a thinker to be no less marked. Aristotle seems to 
 me to have been the greatest intellect of antiquity, an intellect 
 at once comprehensive and subtle, patient, receptive, and original. 
 He wrote on Politics, and the treatise, even in the imperfect state 
 in which it has reached us, is still in many respects one of the 
 best works on the subject. He wrote on Poetry, and the few 
 detached passages which survive are full of valuable details. He 
 wrote on Natural History, and his observations are still valuable, 
 his reflections still suggestive. He wrote on Logic, and for many 
 centuries no one could suggest any improvement. " Aristotle," 
 says Hegel, " penetrated into the whole universe of things, and 
 subjected to the comprehension its scattered wealth ; and the 
 greatest number of the philosophical sciences owe to him their 
 separation and commencement. While in this manner science 
 separates itself into a series of definitions, the Aristotelian phi 
 losophy at the same time contains the most profound speculative 
 ideas. He is more comprehensive and speculative than any one 
 else." While, therefore, the majority will prefer Plato, who, in 
 spite of his difficulties, is much easier to read than Aristotle, yet 
 all must venerate the latter as a grand intellectual phenomenon, 
 to which scarcely any parallel can be suggested. 
 
 * Should I ever be enabled to complete a long projected plan, of writing, 
 as a companion to the present work, a Biographical History of Science, I will 
 endeavor to present Aristotle in this light. 
 
265 
 
 His vast learning, his singular acuteness, the wide range of his 
 investigations, and the astonishing number and the excellence of 
 his works, will always make him a formidable rival to his more 
 fascinating master. " A student passing from the works of Plato," 
 it has been well said, " to those of Aristotle, is struck first of all 
 with the entire absence of that dramatic form and that dramatic 
 feeling with which he has been familiar. The living human 
 beings with whom he has conversed have passed away. Protag 
 oras, and Prodicus, and Hippias are no longer lounging upon 
 their couches in the midst of groups of admiring pupils ; we 
 have no walks along the walls of the city ; no readings beside 
 the Ilissus ; no lively symposia, giving occasion to high dis 
 courses about love ; no Critias recalling the stories he had heard 
 in the days of his youth, before he became a tyrant of ancient 
 and glorious republics ; above all, no Socrates forming a centre 
 to these various groups, while yet he stands out clear and dis 
 tinct in his individual character, showing that the most subtle of 
 dialecticians may be the most thoroughly humorous and humane 
 of men. Some little sorrow for the loss of those clear and beau 
 tiful pictures will perhaps be felt by every one ; but by far the 
 greater portion of readers will believe, that they have an ample 
 compensation in the precision and philosophical dignity of the 
 treatise, for the richness and variety of the dialogue. To hear 
 solemn disquisitions solemnly treated ; to hear opinions calmly 
 discussed without the interruptions of personalities ; above all, to 
 have a profound and considerate judge, able and not unwilling 
 to pronounce a positive decision upon the evidence before him ; 
 this they think a great advantage, and this and far more than 
 this they expect, not wrongly, to find in Aristotle."* 
 
 * Maurice, Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy. 
 12 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 SUMMAKY OF THE SOCRATIC MOVEMENT. 
 
 FOR the sake of historical clearness we may here place a few 
 words respecting the position of the Socratic Movement (as we 
 may call the period from the Sophists down to Aristotle) in the 
 history of Speculation. 
 
 What Socrates himself effected we have already seen. He 
 appeared during the reign of utter skepticism. The various 
 tentatives of the early thinkers had all ended in a skepticism, 
 which was turned to dexterous use by the Sophists. Socrates 
 banished this skepticism by the invention of a new Method. He 
 withdrew men from the metaphysical speculations about Nature, 
 which had led them into the inextricable confusion of doubt. 
 He bade them look inward. He created Moral Philosophy. 
 The Cyrenaics and the Cynics attempted to carry out this ten 
 dency ; but, as they did so in a one-sided manner, their endeavor 
 was only partially successful. 
 
 Plato, the youngest and most remarkable of the disciples of 
 Socrates, accepted the Method, but applied it more universally. 
 Nevertheless Ethics formed the most important of his specula 
 tions. Physics were only subordinate and illustrative of Ethics. 
 The Truth the God-like existence which he forever besought 
 men to contemplate, that they might share it, had always an 
 Ethical object : it was sought by man for his own perfection. 
 How to live in a manner resembling the Gods was the funda 
 mental problem which he set himself to solve. But there was a 
 germ of scientific speculation in his philosophy, and this germ 
 was developed by his pupil, Aristotle. 
 
 The difference between Socrates and Aristotle is immense : 
 Plato, however, fills up the interval. In Plato, we see the tran- 
 
SUMMARY OF THE SOCRATIC MOVEMENT. 267 
 
 sition-point of development, both in Method and in Doctrine. 
 Metaphysical speculations are intimately connected with those of 
 Ethics. In Aristotle, Ethics only form one branch of philosophy: 
 Metaphysics and Physics usurp the larger share of his attention. 
 
 One result of Aristotle s labors was precisely this : he brought 
 Philosophy round again to that condition from which Socrates 
 had wrested it; he opened the world again to speculation. 
 
 Was then the advent of Socrates nullified ? No. The Socratic 
 Epoch conferred the double benefit on humanity of having first 
 brought to light the importance of Ethical Philosophy, and of 
 having substituted a new and incomparably better Method for 
 that pursued by the early speculators. That Method sufficed for 
 several centuries. 
 
 In Aristotle s systematization of the Socratic Method, and, 
 above all, in his bringing Physics and Metaphysics again into 
 the region of Inquiry, he paved the way for a new epoch, the 
 epoch of Skepticism ; not the unmethodical Skepticism of help 
 less baffled guessers, like that which preceded Socrates, but the 
 methodical and dogmatic exposure of the vanity of philosophy. 
 
EIGHTH EPOCH. 
 
 SECOND CRISIS OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY : THE SKEPTICS, EPI 
 CUREANS, STOICS, AND THE NEW ACADEMY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 THE SKEPTICS. 
 
 I. PYRRHO. 
 
 IN the curious train which accompanied the expedition of 
 Alexander into India, there was a serious, reflective man, who 
 followed him with purely philosophical interest : that man was 
 Pyrrho, the founder of the Skeptical philosophy. Conversing 
 with the Gymnosophists of India, he must have been struck 
 with their devout faith in doctrines so unusual to him ; and this 
 spectacle of a race of wise and studious men believing a strange 
 \ creed, and acting upon their belief, may have led him to reflect 
 on the nature of belief. He had already, by the philosophy of 
 Democritus, been led to question the origin of knowledge : he 
 had learned to doubt ; and now this doubt became irresistible. 
 
 On his return to Elis he became remarked for the practical 
 philosophy which he inculcated, and the simplicity of his life. 
 The profound and absolute skepticism with which he regarded 
 all speculative doctrines, had the same effect upon him as upon 
 Socrates : it made him insist wholly on moral doctrines. He 
 was resigned and tranquil, accepting life as he found it, and 
 guiding himself by the general precepts of common-sense. Soc 
 rates, on the contrary, was uneasy, restless, perpetually ques- 
 
THE SKEPTICS. 269 
 
 tioning himself and others, despising metaphysical speculations, 
 but eager for truth. Pyrrho, dissatisfied with all the attempts 
 of his predecessors to solve the great problems they had set to 
 themselves, declared the problems insoluble. Socrates was also 
 dissatisfied; he too declared that he knew nothing; but his 
 
 \ doubt was an active, eager, questioning doubt, used as a stimulus 
 to investigation, not as a final result of all investigation. The 
 doubt of Pyrrho was a reprobation of all philosophy ; the doubt 
 of Socrates was the opening through which a new philosophy 
 was to be established. Their lives accorded with their doctrines. 
 Pyrrho, the grand Priest of Elis, lived and died in happiness, 
 peace, and universal esteem.* Socrates lived in perpetual war 
 fare, was always misunderstood, was ridiculed as a sophist, and 
 perished as a blasphemer. 
 
 The precise doctrines of Pyrrho it is now hopeless to attempt 
 to recover. Even in antiquity they were so mixed up with those 
 of his followers, that it was found impossible to separate them. 
 We are forced, therefore, to speak of the skeptical doctrines as 
 they are collected and systematized by that acute and admirable 
 writer, Sextus Empiricus. 
 
 The stronghold of Skepticism is impregnable. It is this : 
 
 ^ There is no Criterium of Truth. After Plato had developed his 
 Ideal Theory, Aristotle crushed it by proving it to be purely 
 subjective. But then the theory of Demonstration, which Aris 
 totle placed in its stead, was not that equally subjective ? What 
 was this boasted Logic, but the systematic arrangement of Ideas 
 obtained originally through Sense? According to Aristotle, 
 knowledge could only be a knowledge of phenomena ; although 
 he too wished to make out a science of Causes. And what are 
 Phenomena? Phenomena are the Appearances of things. But 
 where exists the Criterium of the truth of these Appearances ? 
 
 * All the stories about him which pretend to illustrate the effects of his 
 skepticism in real life are too trivial for refutation, being obviously the 
 invention of those who thought Pyrrho ought to have been consistent in 
 absurdity. 
 
270 THE SKEPTICS. 
 
 How are we to ascertain the exactitude of the accordance of 
 these Appearances with the Things of which they are Appear 
 ances ? We know full well that Things appear differently to 
 us at different times; appear differently to different individuals ; 
 appear differently to different animals. Are any of these Ap 
 pearances true ? If so, which are ? and how do you know which 
 are true ? 
 
 Moreover, reflect on this : We have five senses, each of which 
 reveals to us a different quality in the object. Thus an Apple is 
 presented to us : we see it, smell it, feel it, taste it, hear it bit 
 ten ; and the sight, smell, feeling, taste, and sound, are five dif 
 ferent Appearances five different Aspects under which we per 
 ceive the Thing. If we had three Senses more, the Thing would 
 have three qualities more ; it would present three more Appear 
 ances : if we had three Senses less, the Thing would have but 
 three qualities less. Are these qualities wholly and entirely de 
 pendent upon our Senses, or do they really appertain to the 
 Thing ? And do they all appertain to it, or only some of them ? 
 The differences of the impressions made on different people seem 
 to prove that the qualities of things are dependent on the Senses. 
 These differences at any rate show that things do not present 
 one uniform series of Appearances. 
 
 All we can say with truth is, that Things appear to us in such 
 and such a manner. That we have Sensations is true ; but we 
 cannot say that our Sensations are true images of the Things. 
 That the Apple we have is brilliant, round, odorous, and sweet, 
 may be very true, if we mean that it appears such to our senses; 
 but, to keener or duller vision, scent, tact, and taste, it may be 
 dull, rugged, offensive, and insipid. 
 
 Amidst this confusion of sensuous impressions, Philosophers 
 pretend to distinguish the true from the false ; they assert that 
 Reason is the Criterium of Truth : Reason distinguishes. Plato 
 and Aristotle are herein agreed. Very well, reply the Skeptics, 
 Reason is your Criterium. But what proof have you that this 
 Criterium itself distinguishes truly ? You must not return to 
 
THE SKEPTICS. 271 
 
 Sense : that has been already given up ; you must rely upon 
 Reason ; and we ask you what proof have you that your Reason 
 never errs ? what proof have you that it is ever correct ? A Cri- 
 terium is wanted for your Criteriura ; and so on ad infinitum. 
 
 The Skeptics maintain, and justly, that because our knowledge 
 is only the knowledge of Phenomena, and not at all of Noumena, 
 because we only know Things as they appear to us, not as 
 they really are, all attempt to penetrate the mystery of Exist 
 ence must be vain ; for the attempt can only be made on appear 
 ances. But, although absolute Truth is not attainable by man, 
 although there cannot be a science of Being, there can be a 
 science of Appearances. The Phenomena, they admit, are true 
 as Phenomena. What we have to do is therefore to observe and 
 classify Phenomena; to trace in them the resemblances of coex 
 istence and succession, to trace the connections of cause and 
 effect ; and, having done this, we shall have founded a Science 
 of Appearances adequate to our wants. 
 
 But the age in which the Skeptics lived was not ripe for such 
 a conception : accordingly, having proved the impossibility of a 
 science of Being, they supposed that they had established the 
 impossibility of all Science, and had destroyed all grounds of 
 certitude. It is worthy of remark that modern Skeptics have 
 added nothing which is not implied in the principles of the Pyr- 
 rhonists.- The arguments by which Hume thought he destroyed 
 all the grounds of certitude are differently stated from those of 
 Pyrrho, but not differently founded ; and they may be answered 
 in the same way. 
 
 The Skeptics had only a negative doctrine ; consequently, only 
 a negative influence. They corrected the tendency of the mind 
 towards accepting in conclusions as adequate expressions of the 
 facts they served to moderate the impetuosity of the specula 
 tive spirit ; they showed that the pretended Philosophy of the 
 day was not so firmly fixed as its professors supposed. It is curi 
 ous, indeed, to have witnessed the gigantic efforts of a Socrates, 
 a Plato, and an Aristotle, towards the reconstruction of Philos- 
 
272 THE SKEPTICS. 
 
 ophy, which the Sophists had brought to ruins a reconstruction, 
 too, on different ground and then to witness the hand of the 
 iconoclast smiting down that image, to witness the pitiless logic 
 of the Skeptic undermining that laboriously- constructed edifice, 
 leaving nothing in its place but another heap of ruins, like that 
 from which the edifice was built; for, not only did the Skeptics 
 refute the notion that a knowledge of Appearances could ever 
 become a knowledge of Existence, not only did they exhibit the 
 fallacious nature of sensation, and the want of certitude in the 
 affirmations of Reason, they also attacked and destroyed the main 
 positions of that Method which was to supply the ground of cer 
 titude ; they attacked Induction and Definitions. 
 
 Of Induction, Sextus, in one brief, pregnant chapter, writes 
 thus : " Induction is the conclusion of the Universal from indi 
 vidual things. But this Induction can only be correct in as far 
 as all the individual things agree with the Universal. This uni 
 versality must therefore be verified before the Induction can be 
 made : a single case to the contrary would destroy the truth of 
 the Induction."* 
 
 "We will illustrate this by an example. The whiteness of swans 
 shall be the Induction. Swans are said to be white because all 
 the individual swans we may have seen are white. Here the 
 Universal (whiteness) seems induced from the particulars ; and it 
 is true in as far as all particular swans are white. But there are 
 a few black swans; one of these particular black swans is suffi 
 cient to destroy the former Induction. If, therefore, says Sextus, 
 you are not able to verify the agreement of the universal with 
 every particular, i. e. if you are not able to prove that there is no 
 swan not black, you are unable to draw a certain and accurate 
 Induction. That you cannot make this verification is obvious. 
 
 In the next chapter Sextus examines Definitions. lie pro 
 nounces them perfectly useless. If we know the thing we define, 
 
 * Pyrrhon. Hypot. vol. ii. c. xv. p. 94. The edition we use is the Paris folio 
 of 1521, the first of the Greek text. 
 
THE SKEPTICS. 273 
 
 we do not comprehend it because of the definition, but we im 
 pose on it the definition because we know it ; and if we are 
 ignorant of the thing we would define, it is impossible to de 
 fine it. 
 
 Although the Skeptics destroyed the dogmatism of their pre 
 decessors, they did not substitute any dogmatism of their own 
 in its place. The nature of their skepticism is happily charac 
 terized by Sextus in his comparison of them with Democritus 
 and Protagoras. Democritus had insisted on the uncertainty of 
 sense-knowledge ; but he concluded therefrom that objects had 
 no qualities at all resembling those known to, us through sensa 
 tion. The Skeptics contented themselves with pointing out the 
 uncertainty, but did not pronounce decisively whether the quali 
 ties existed objectively or not. 
 
 Protagoras also insisted on the uncertainty, and declared man 
 to be the measure of truth. He supposed that there was a con 
 stant relation between the transformations of matter and those of 
 sensation ; but these suppositions he affirmed dogmatically ; to 
 the Skeptic they are uncertain. 
 
 This general incertitude often betrayed the Skeptics into ludi 
 crous dilemmas, of which many specimens have been preserved. 
 Thus they said, " We assert nothing no, not even that we assert 
 nothing." But if the reader wishes to see this distinction be 
 tween a thing seeming and a thing being, ridiculed with a truly 
 comic gusto, he should turn to Moliere s Maria ge Force, act i. 
 sc. 8. Such follies form no portion of our subject, and we leave 
 them with some pleasure to direct our attention to more worthy 
 efforts of human ingenuity. 
 
 12* 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 THE EPICUKEANS. 
 
 I. EPICURUS. 
 
 THE Epicureans are condemned in their names. We before 
 noticed how the meaning attached to the name of Sophist inad 
 vertently gives a bias to every judgment of the Sophist School, 
 and renders it extremely difficult to conceive the members of that 
 School otherwise than as shameless rogues. Equally difficult is 
 it to shake off the influence of association with respect to the 
 Epicureans ; although historians are now pretty well agreed in 
 believing Epicurus to have been a man of pure and virtuous life, 
 and one whose doctrines were moderate and really inculcating 
 abstemiousness. 
 
 Epicurus was born Ol. 109 (B. c. 342), at Samos, according to 
 some; at Gargettus, in the vicinity of Athens, according to 
 others. His parents were poor, his father a teacher of grammar. 
 At a very early age, he tells us, his philosophical career began : 
 so early as his thirteenth year. But we must not misunderstand 
 this statement. He dates his career from those first questionings 
 which occupy and perplex most young minds, especially those of 
 any superior capacity. He doubtless refers to that period when, 
 boy-like, he puzzled his teacher with a question beyond that 
 teacher s power. Hearing the verse of Hesiod wherein all things 
 are said to arise from Chaos, Epicurus asked, " And whence came 
 Chaos ?" 
 
 " Whence came Chaos ?" Is not this the sort of question to 
 occupy the active mind of a boy ? Is it not by such questions 
 that we are all led into philosophy ? To philosophy he was re- 
 
EPICURUS. 275 
 
 ferred for an explanation. The writings of Democritus fell in his 
 way, and were eagerly studied ; the writings of others followed ; 
 and, his vocation being fixed, he sought instruction from many 
 masters. But from all these masters he could gain no solid con 
 victions. They gave him hints; they could not give him Truth; 
 and working upon the materials they furnished, he produced a 
 system of his own, by which we presume he justified his claim 
 to being self-taught. 
 
 His early years were agitated and unsettled. He visited 
 Athens at eighteen, but remained there only one year. He then 
 passed to Colophon, Mitylene, and Lampsacus. He returned to 
 Athens in his six-and-thirtieth year, and there opened a school, 
 over which he presided till his death, 01. 127 (B. c. 272). 
 
 The place he chose for his school was the famous Garden, a 
 spot pleasantly typical of his doctrine. The Platonists had their 
 Academic Grove ; the Aristotelians walked along the Lyceum ; 
 the Cynics growled in the Cynosarges ; the Stoics occupied the 
 Porch ; and the Epicureans had their Garden. 
 
 Here, in the tranquil Garden, in the society of his friends, he 
 passed a peaceful life of speculation and enjoyment. The friend 
 ship which existed amongst them is well known. In a time of 
 general scarcity and famine they contributed to each other s sup 
 port, showing that the Pythagorean notion of community of 
 goods was unnecessary amongst friends, who could confide in 
 each other. At the entrance of the Garden they placed this in 
 scription : " The hospitable keeper of this mansion, where you 
 will find pleasure the jiighest good, will present you liberally 
 with barley-cakes and water fresh from the spring. The gardens 
 will not provoke your appetite by artificial dainties, but satisfy 
 it with natural supplies. Will you not be well entertained ?" 
 
 The Garden has often been called a sty ; and the name of 
 Epicurean has become the designation of a sensualist. But, in 
 spite of his numerous assailants, the character of Epicurus has 
 been rescued from contempt, both by ancient and by modern 
 critics. Diogenes Laertius, who gives some of the accusations 
 
276 THE EPICUREANS. 
 
 in detail, easily refutes them by an appeal to facts ; and the 
 modern writers have been at no loss to discover the motive of 
 the ancient calumnies, which mostly proceeded from the Stoics. 
 A doctrine like that of Epicurus would, at all times, lend itself 
 to gross misrepresentation ; but in an epoch like that in which it 
 appeared, and contrasted with a doctrine so fiercely opposed to 
 it as the doctrine of the Stoics, we cannot wonder if the bitter 
 ness of opposition translated itself into bitter calumny. It is one 
 of the commonest results of speculative differences to make us 
 attribute to our opponent s opinions the consequences which we 
 deduce from them, as if they were indubitably the consequences 
 he deduces for himself. Our opinions are conducive to sound 
 morality ; of that we are convinced ; and being so convinced, it 
 is natural for us to believe that contrary opinions must be im 
 moral. Our opponent holds contrary, ergo immoral opinions ; 
 and we proclaim his immorality as an unquestionable fact. In 
 this, however, there is a slight forgetfulness, namely, that our 
 opponent occupies exactly similar ground, and what we think of 
 him, he thinks of us. 
 
 The Stoics had an ineffable contempt for the weakness and 
 effeminacy of the Epicureans. The Epicureans had an ineffable 
 contempt for the spasmodic rigidity and unnatural exaggeration 
 of the Stoics. They libelled each other ; but the libels against 
 the Epicureans have met with more general credit than those 
 against the Stoics, from the more imposing character of the lat 
 ter, both in their actions and doctrines. 
 
 Epicurus is said to have been the most voluminous of all Greek 
 Philosophers, except Chrysippus ; and although none of these 
 works are extant, yet so many fragments are preserved here and 
 there, and there is such ample testimony as to his opinions, that 
 there are few writers of whose doctrine we can speak with greater 
 certainty ; the more so as it does not in itself present any diffi 
 culties of comprehension. 
 
 Nothing can be more unlike Plato and Aristotle than Epicu 
 rus ; and this difference may be characterized at the outset by 
 
EPICURUS. 277 
 
 their fundamental difference in the conception of Philosophy, 
 which Epicurus regarded as the Art of Life, and not the Art of 
 Truth. Philosophy, he said, was the power (Ivsp^sia) by which 
 Reason conducted man to happiness. The investigations of Phi 
 losophy he despised : they were not only uncertain, but contrib 
 uted nothing towards happiness ; and of course Logic, the instru 
 ment of Philosophy, found no favor in his sight. His system 
 was, therefore, only another form of Skepticism, consequent on 
 his dissatisfaction with previous systems. Socrates had taught 
 men to regard their own nature as the great object of investiga 
 tion ; but man does not interrogate his own nature out of simple 
 curiosity, or for simple erudition : he studies his nature in order 
 that he may improve it ; he learns the extent of his capacities in 
 order that he may properly direct them. The aim, therefore, of 
 all such inquiries must be Happiness. And what constitutes 
 Happiness ? Upon this point systems differ : all profess to teach 
 the road to Happiness, and all point out divergent roads. There 
 can be little dispute as to what is Happiness, but infinite disputes 
 as to the way of securing it.* In the Cyrenaic and Cynic 
 Schools we saw this question leading to very opposite results ; 
 and the battle we are now to see renewed on similar ground be 
 tween the Epicureans and the Stoics. 
 
 Epicurus, like Aristippus, declared that Pleasure constituted 
 Happiness; all animals instinctively pursue it, and as instinc 
 tively avoid Pain. Man should do deliberately that which ani 
 mals do instinctively. Every Pleasure is in itself good ; but, in 
 comparison with another, it may become an evil. The Philoso 
 pher differs from the common man in this : That while they 
 both seek Pleasure, the former knows how to forego certain en 
 joyments which will cause pain and vexation hereafter ; whereas, 
 the common man seeks only the immediate enjoyment. The 
 
 * At a meeting of Socialists in London, to discuss in a friendly way the 
 means of reforming the world, M. Pierre Leronx rose and addressed his 
 brethren thus: "Nous voulona arriver au Paradis, n" 1 est-ce pas f n 1 est-ce 
 pas ? Eh lien ! il ne s agit que fly arriver ! Voild /" 
 
278 THE EPICUREANS. 
 
 Philosopher s art enables him to foresee what will be the result 
 of his acts ; and, so foreseeing, he will not only avoid those en 
 joyments which occasion grief, but know how to endure those 
 pains from which surpassing pleasure will result. 
 
 True happiness, then, is not the enjoyment of the moment, 
 but the enjoyment of the whole life. We must not seek to in 
 tensify, but to equalize ; not debauchery to-day and satiety to 
 morrow, but equable enjoyment all the year round. No life can 
 be pleasant except a virtuous life ; and the pleasures of the body, 
 although not to be despised, are insignificant when compared 
 with those of the soul. The former are but momentary; the 
 latter embrace both the past and future. Hence the golden rule 
 of Temperance. Epicurus not only insisted on the necessity 
 of moderation for continued enjoyment, he also slighted, and 
 somew r hat scorned, all exquisite indulgences. He fed moderately 
 and plainly. Without interdicting luxuries, he saw that Pleasure 
 was purer and more enduring if luxuries were dispensed with. 
 This is the ground upon which Cynics and Stoics built their 
 own exaggerated systems. They also saw that simplicity was 
 preferable to luxury ; but they pushed their notion too far. Con- 
 tentedness with a little, Epicurus regarded as a great good ; and 
 he said, wealth consisted not in having great possessions, but in 
 having small wants. He did not limit man to the fewest possi 
 ble enjoyments : on the contrary, he wished him in all ways to 
 multiply them ; but he wished him to be able to live upon little, 
 both as a preventive against ill fortune, and as an enhancement 
 of rare enjoyments. The man who lives plainly has no fear of 
 poverty, and is better able to enjoy exquisite pleasures. 
 
 Virtue rests upon Free Will and Reason, which are insepara 
 ble : since, without Free Will our Reason would be passive, and 
 without Reason our Free Will would be blind. Every thing, 
 therefore, in human actions which is virtuous or vicious depends 
 on man s knowing and willing. Philosophical education consists 
 in accustoming the Mind to judge accuratety, and the Will to 
 choose manfully. 
 
EPICURUS. 279 
 
 From this slight outline of his Ethical doctrine may be seen 
 how readily it furnished arguments both to assailants and to de 
 fenders. We may also notice its vagueness and elasticity, which 
 would enable many minds to adapt it to their virtues or to their 
 vices. The luxurious would see in it only an exhortation to their 
 own vices ; the temperate would see in it a scientific exposition of 
 temperance. 
 
 Epicureanism, in leading man to a correct appreciation of the 
 moral end of his existence, in showing him how to be truly happy, 
 has to combat with many obstructions which hide from him the 
 real road of life. These obstructions are his illusions, his preju 
 dices, his errors, his ignorance. This ignorance is of two kinds : 
 first, ignorance of the laws of the external world, which creates 
 absurd superstitions, and troubles the soul with false fears and 
 false hopes ; hence the necessity of some knowledge of Physics. 
 The second kind of ignorance is that of the nature of man ; 
 hence the necessity of the Epicurean Logic called Canonic, which 
 is a collection of rules respecting human reason and its applica 
 tion. 
 
 The Epicurean psychology and physics were derived from the 
 Democritean. The atoms of which the universe is formed are 
 supposed to be constantly throwing off some of their parts, 
 atfoppoai : and these, in contact with the senses, produce sensa 
 tion, aitfd>)0 i. But Epicurus did not maintain that these ottfoppocu 
 were images of the atoms ; he believed them to have a certain 
 resemblance to their atoms, but was unable to point out where, 
 and in how far this resemblance exists. Every sensation must 
 be true as a sensation ; and, as such, it can neither be proved nor 
 contradicted ; it is aXo^o^. The sensations of the insane and 
 the dreaming are also true ; and, although there is a difference 
 between their sensations and those of sane and waking men, yet 
 Epicurus confessed himself unable to determine in what the dif 
 ference consists. Sensations, however, do not alone constitute 
 knowledge ; man has also the faculty of conception, TrpoXi^ij, 
 which arises from the repeated iteration of sensation : it is recol- 
 
280 THE EPICUREANS. 
 
 lection of various sensations ; or, as Aristotle would say, the gen 
 eral idea gathered from particular sensations. It is from these 
 conceptions that the general ideas, ooi, are formed, and it is in 
 these general ideas that error resides. A sensation may be con 
 sidered either in relation to its object or in relation to him who 
 experiences it ; in the latter case it is agreeable or disagreeable, 
 and renders the sentiments, <rdt cra^Tj, the basis of all morality. 
 
 With such a basis, we may readily anticipate the nature of 
 the superstructure. If agreeable and disagreeable sensations are 
 the origin of all moral phenomena, there can be no other moral 
 rule than to seek the agreeable and to avoid the disagreeable ; 
 and whatever is pleasant becomes the great object of existence. 
 
 The Physics of Epicurus are so similar to the Physics of De- 
 mocritus that we need not occupy our space with them.* 
 
 On reviewing the whole doctrine of Epicurus, we find in it 
 that skepticism which the imperfect Philosophy of the day ne 
 cessarily brought to many minds, in many different shapes ; and 
 the consequence of that skepticism was the effort to find a refuge 
 in Morals, and the attempt to construct Ethics on a philosophic 
 basis. The attempt failed because the basis was not broad enough ; 
 but the attempt itself is worthy of notice, as characteristic of the 
 whole Socratic movement ; for, although the Socratic Method was 
 an attempt at reconstructing Philosophy, yet that reconstruction 
 itself was only attempted with a view to morals. Socrates was 
 the first to bring Philosophy down from the clouds ; he was the 
 first to make it the basis of Morality, and in one shape or other 
 all his followers and all the schools that issued from them, kept 
 this view present to their minds. The Epicureans are therefore 
 to be regarded as men who ventured on a solution of the great 
 problem, and failed because they only saw a part of the truth. 
 
 * They are expounded by Lucretius, who claims a rebellious originality 
 for Epicurus which history cannot endorse. I. 67, sqq. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 THE STOICS. 
 
 I. ZENO. 
 
 THE Stoics were a large sect, and of its members so many have 
 been celebrated, that a separate work would be needed to chron 
 icle them all. From Zeno, the founder, down to Brutus and 
 Marcus Antoninus, the sect embraces many Greek and Roman 
 worthies, and not a few solemn mountebanks. Some of these we 
 would willingly introduce ; but we are forced to confine ourselves 
 to one type, and the one we select is Zeno. 
 
 He was born at Citium, a small city in the island of Cyprus, 
 of Phoenician origin, but inhabited by Greeks. The date of his 
 birth is uncertain. His father was a merchant, in which trade 
 he himself engaged, until his father, after a voyage to Athens, 
 brought home some works of Socratic Philosophers ; these Zeno 
 studied with eagerness and rapture, and determined his vocation. 
 
 When about thirty, he undertook a voyage, both of interest 
 and pleasure, to Athens, the great mart both for trade and phi 
 losophy. Shipwrecked on the coast, he lost the whole of his 
 valuable cargo of Phoenician purple ; and, thus reduced to pov 
 erty, he willingly embraced the doctrine of the Cynics, whose 
 ostentatious display of poverty had captivated many minds. 
 
 There is an anecdote of his having one day read Xenophon s 
 Memorabilia, in a bookseller s shop, with such delight that he 
 asked where such men were to be met with. At that moment 
 Crates the Cynic passed by : the bookseller pointed him out to 
 Zeno, and bade him follow Crates. He did so ; and he became 
 a disciple. But he could not long remain a disciple. The gross 
 
282 THE STOICS. 
 
 manners of the Cynics, so far removed from true simplicity, and 
 their speculative incapacity, soon caused him to seek a master 
 elsewhere. Stilpo, of Megara, became his next instructor 5 and 
 from him he learned the art of disputation, which he subsequent 
 ly practised with such success. 
 
 But the Megaric doctrine was too meagre for him. He was 
 glad to learn from Stilpo ; but there were things which Stilpo 
 could not teach. He turned, therefore, to the expositors of Pla 
 to Xenocrates and Polemo. In the philosophy of Plato there 
 is, as before remarked, a germ of Stoicism ; but there is also 
 much that contradicts Stoicism, and so, we presume, Zeno grew 
 discontented with that also. 
 
 After twenty years of laborious study in these various schools, 
 he opened one for himself, wherein to teach the result of all 
 these inquiries. The spot chosen was the Stoa, or Porch, which 
 had once been the resort of the Poets, and was decorated with 
 the pictures of Polygnotus. From this Stoa the school derived 
 its name. 
 
 As a man, Zeno appears deserving of the highest respect. 
 Although sharing the doctrines of the Cynics, he did not share 
 their grossness, their insolence, or their affectation. In person he 
 was tall and slender ; and although of a weakly constitution, he 
 lived to a great age, being rigidly abstemious, feeding mainly 
 upon figs, bread, and honey. His brow was furrowed with 
 thought ; and this gave a tinge of severity to his aspect, which 
 accorded with the austerity of his doctrines. So honored and 
 respected was he by the Athenians, that they intrusted to him 
 the keys of the citadel ; and when he died they erected to his 
 memory a statue of brass. His death is thus recorded : In his 
 ninety -eighth year, as he was stepping out of his school, he fell 
 and broke his finger. He was so affected at the consciousness of 
 his infirmity, that, striking the earth, he exclaimed, " Why am I 
 thus importuned ? Earth, I obey thy summons !" He went home 
 and strangled himself. 
 
 In the history of humanity there are periods when society 
 
ZENO. 283 
 
 seems fast dissolving ; when ancient creeds have lost their ma 
 jesty, and new creeds want disciples ; when the onlooker sees the 
 fabric tottering, beneath which his fellow-men are crowded either 
 in sullen despair or in blaspheming levity, and, seeing this, he 
 feels that there is safety still possible, if men will but be bold ; 
 he raises a voice of warning, and a voice of exhortation ; he 
 bids them behold their peril and tremble, behold their salvation 
 and resolve. He preaches to them a doctrine they have been 
 unused to hear, or, hearing it, unused to heed ; and by the 
 mere force of his own intense conviction he gathers round him 
 some believers who are saved. If the social anarchy be not too 
 widely spread, he saves his country by directing its energies 
 in a new channel ; if the country s doom is sealed, he makes a 
 gallant effort, though a vain one, and " leaves a spotless name to 
 after-times." 
 
 Such a man was Zeno. Greece was fallen ; but hope still re 
 mained. A wide-spread disease was fast eating out the vigor 
 of its life : Skepticism, Indifference, Sensuality, Epicurean soft 
 ness were only counteracted by the magnificent but vague works 
 of Plato, or the vast but abstruse system of Aristotle. Greek 
 civilization was fast falling to decay. A little time, and Rome, 
 the she-wolfs nursling, would usurp the place which Greece had 
 once so proudly held the place of vanguard of European civiliza 
 tion. Rome, the mighty, would take from the feeble hands of 
 Greece the trust she was no longer worthy to hold. There was 
 a presentiment of Rome in Zeno s breast. In him the manly 
 energy and stern simplicity which were to conquer the world ; 
 in him the deep reverence for moral worth, which was the glory 
 of Rome, before, intoxicated with success, she sought to ape the 
 literary and philosophical glory of old Hellas. Zeno the Stoic 
 had a Roman spirit ; and this is the reason why so many noble 
 Romans became his disciples : he had deciphered the wants of 
 their spiritual nature. 
 
 Alarmed at the skepticism which seemed inevitably following 
 speculations of a metaphysical kind, Zeno, like Epicurus, fixed 
 
284: THE STOICS. 
 
 his thoughts principally upon Morals. His philosophy boasted 
 of being eminently practical, and connected with the daily prac 
 tices of life. But, for this purpose, the philosopher must not 
 regard pleasure so much as Virtue : nor does Virtue consist in a 
 life of contemplation and speculation, but in a life of activity ; 
 for what is Virtue ? Virtue is manhood. And what are the 
 attributes of Man ? Are they not obviously the attributes of an 
 active as well as of a speculative being ? and can that be Virtue 
 which excludes or neglects man s activity ? Man, O Plato, and 
 Aristotle, was not made for speculation only ; wisdom is not 
 his only pursuit. Man, Epicurus, was not made for enjoyment 
 only; he was made also to do somewhat, and to be somewhat. 
 Philosophy ? It is a great thing ; but it is not all. Pleasure ? 
 It is a slight thing ; and, were it greater, could not embrace 
 men s entire activity. 
 
 The aim, then, of man s existence is neither to be wise nor to 
 enjoy, but to be virtuous to realize his manhood. To this aim, 
 Philosophy is a means, and Pleasure may also be one ; but they 
 are both subordinate. Before we can be taught to lead a vir 
 tuous life, we must be taught what Virtue is. Zeno thought, 
 with Socrates, that Virtue was the knowledge of Good ; and that 
 Vice was nothing but error. If to know the good were tanta 
 mount to the pursuit and practice of it, then was the teacher s 
 task easily defined : he had to explain the nature of human 
 knowledge, and to explain the relations of man to the universe. 
 
 Thus, as with Socrates, does Morality find itself inseparably 
 connected with Philosophy ; and more especially with psychol 
 ogy. A brief outline of this psychology becomes, therefore, 
 necessary as an introduction to the Stoical Morality. 
 
 Zeno utterly rejected the Platonic theory of knowledge, and 
 accepted, though with some modifications, the Aristotelian theory. 
 "Reminiscence" and "Ideas" were to him mere words. Ideas 
 he regarded as the universal notions formed by the mind from a 
 comparison of particulars. Sense furnished all the materials oi 
 knowledge; Reason was the plastic instrument whereby these 
 
ZENO. 285 
 
 materials were fashioned. But those who maintain that Sense 
 furnishes us the materials of knowledge are hampered with this 
 difficulty : By what process does Sense perceive ? What rela 
 tion is there between Sense and the sensible Thing ? AVhat 
 proof have w r e of those sensations being conformable with the 
 Things ? This difficulty is a serious one, and early occupied 
 speculators. Indeed, this question may be pronounced the vital 
 question of all philosophy ; upon its solution depends, to a great 
 extent, the solution of all other questions. Let us state it more 
 clearly in an illustration. 
 
 At the distance of fifty yards you descry a tower; it is round. 
 What do you mean by saying, It is round ? You mean that the 
 impression made upon your sense of sight is an impression sim 
 ilar to that made by some other objects, such as trees, which 
 you, and all men, call round. Now, on the supposition that you 
 never approached nearer that tower, you would always believe it 
 to be round, because it appeared so. But, as you are enabled to 
 approach it, and as you then find that the tower is square, and 
 not round, you begin to examine into this difference. It appeared 
 round at that distance ; and yet you say it really is square. A 
 little knowledge of optics seems to explain the difference ; but 
 does not. At fifty yards, you say,, it appears round ; but it really 
 is square. At fifty yards, we reply, it appears round, and at one 
 yard it appears square : it is neither : both round and square are 
 conceptions of the mind, not attributes of things : they have a 
 subjective, not an objective existence. 
 
 Thus far the ancient skeptics penetrated ; but, seeing herein 
 an utter destruction of all certainty in sense-knowledge, and com 
 pelled to admit that Sense was the only source of knowledge, 
 they declared all .knowledge a deceit. The perception of the 
 real issue whence to escape this dilemma the recognition of the 
 uncertainty of sense-knowledge, and the reconciliation of that 
 theory with the natural wants of the speculative mind recon 
 ciling skepticism with belief and both with reason, was the work 
 of after-times.. 
 
286 THE STOICS. 
 
 Those who believed that the senses gave true reports of the 
 Things which affected them, were driven to invent some hypoth 
 esis explanatory of the relation subsisting between the object and 
 the Subject, the Thing and the Sense. We have seen how eidola, 
 airy Images affluent from Things, were invented to choke up the 
 gap, and to establish a direct connection between the Subject 
 and the Object. Zeno, acutely enough, saw that an Image de 
 taching itself in an airy form from the Object, could only repre 
 sent the superficies of that Object, even if it represented it cor 
 rectly. In this way the hypothesis of cidola was shown to be 
 no more than an hypothesis to explain Appearances ; whereas 
 the real question is not, How do we perceive Appearances ? but 
 how do we perceive Objects ? If we only perceive their super 
 ficies, our knowledge is only a knowledge of phenomena, and we 
 fall into the hands of the Skeptics. 
 
 Zeno saw the extent of the difficulty, and tried to obviate it. 
 But his hypothesis, though more comprehensive, was as com 
 pletely without foundation. He assumed that Sense could pene 
 trate beneath Appearance, and perceive Substance itself. 
 
 As considerable confusion exists on this point, we shall con 
 fine ourselves to the testimony of Sextus Empiricus, the most 
 satisfactory of all. In his book directed against the Logicians, 
 he tells us, " the Stoics held that there was one criterium of truth 
 for man, and it was what they called the Cataleptic Phantasm" 
 (<n}v xarstXirrr-Tixr/v (pavratf/av, i. e. the Sensuous Apprehension). 
 We must first understand what they meant by the Phantasm 
 or Appearance. It was, they said, an impression on the mind 
 (rutfutfis tv ^uxS) ^ Llt fr m this point commence their differ 
 ences j for Cleanthus understood, by this impression, an impres 
 sion similar to that made by the signet-ring upon wax, TOU xyjpou 
 Tj-rr wfl jv. Chrysippus thought this absurd ; for, said he, seeing 
 that thought conceives many objects at the same time, the soul 
 must upon that hypothesis receive many impressions of figures. 
 He thought that Zeno meant by impression nothing more than a 
 mollification (Srspoiutfif) : likening the soul to the air, which 
 
ZENO. 287 
 
 when many voices sound simultaneously, receives simultaneously 
 the various alterations, but without confounding them. Thus 
 the Soul unites several perceptions which correspond with their 
 several objects. 
 
 This is extremely ingenious, and the indication of Sensation 
 as a modification of the Soul, opens a shaft deep down into the 
 dark region of psychology. But, if it lets in some of the light 
 of day, it also brings into notice a new obstacle. This soul, 
 which is modified, does it not also in its turn exercise an in 
 fluence ? If wine be poured into water, it modifies the water; 
 but the water also modifies the wine. There can be no action 
 without reaction. If a stone is presented to my sight, it modi 
 fies my soul ; but does the stone remain unmodified ? No ; it 
 receives from me certain attributes, certain form, color, taste, 
 weight, etc., which my soul bestows on it, which it does not 
 possess in itself. 
 
 Thus is doubt again spread over the whole question. The soul 
 modifying the object in sensation, can it rely upon the truth of 
 the sensation thus produced ? Has not the wine become watery, 
 no less than the water vinous ? These consequences, however, 
 Zeno did not foresee. He was intent upon proving that the soul 
 really apprehended objects, not as eidola, not as the wax receives 
 the impression of a seal, but in absolute truth. Let us continue 
 to borrow from Sextus Empiricus. 
 
 The Phantasm, or Appearance, which causes that Modification 
 of the Soul which we name Sensation, is also understood by the 
 Stoics as we understand ideas ; and in this general sense, they 
 said that there were three kinds of Phantasms : those that were 
 probable, those that were improbable, and those that were 
 neither one nor the other. The first are those that cause a slight 
 and equable motion in the soul : such as those which inform us 
 that it is day. The second are those which contradict our reason : 
 such as if one were to say during the day-time, " Now the sun is 
 not above the earth ;" or, during the night-time, " Now it is day." 
 The third are those, the truth of which it is impossible to verify ; 
 
288 THE STOICS. 
 
 such as this, " The number of the stars is even ;" or, " the number 
 is odd." 
 
 Phantasms, when probable, are true or false, or both true and 
 false at the same time, or neither true nor false. They are true 
 when they can be truly affirmed of any thing ; false if they are 
 wrongly affirmed, such as when one believes an oar dipped in the 
 water to be broken, because it appears so. When Orestes, in his 
 madness, mistook Electra for a Fury, he had a Phantasm both 
 true and false : true, inasmuch as he saw something, viz., Elec 
 tra ; false, inasmuch as Electra -was not a Fury. 
 
 Of true Phantasms, some are cataleptic (apprehensive), and 
 others non-cataleptic. The latter are such as arise from disease 
 or perturbation of the mind : as, for instance, the innumerable 
 Phantasms produced in frenzy and hypochondria. The catalep 
 tic Phantasm is that which is impressed by an object which ex 
 ists, which is a copy of that object, and can be produced by no 
 other object. Perception is elsewhere said to be a sort of light, 
 which manifests itself at the same time that it lights up the ob 
 ject from which it is derived. - 
 
 Zeno distinctly saw the weakness of the theories proposed by 
 others ; he failed however in establishing any better theory in 
 their place. Sextus Empiricus may well call the Stoical doctrine 
 vague and undecided. How are we to distinguish the true from 
 the false in appearances ? Above all, how are we to- learn whether 
 an impression exactly coincides with the object ? This is the 
 main problem, and Zeno pretends to solve it by a circular argu 
 ment. Thus : given the problem, how are we to distinguish the 
 true impressions from the false impressions ? The solution offered 
 is, by ascertaining which of the impressions coincide with the 
 real objects : in other words, by distinguishing the true impres 
 sions from the false. 
 
 Let us continue the exposition : Having a< perception of an 
 object is not knowledge : for knowledge, it is necessary that 
 reason should assent. Perception comes from without; assent 
 from within : it is the free exercise of man s reason- Science is 
 
ZENO. 289 
 
 composed of perceptions so solidly established that no argumen 
 tation can shake them. Perceptions not thus established only 
 constitute Opinion. 
 
 This is making short work with difficulties, it must be con 
 fessed ; but the Stoics were eager to oppose something against 
 the Skepticism which characterized the age; and, in their eager 
 ness to build, they did not sufficiently secure their foundations. 
 Universal doubt they felt to be impossible. Man must occa 
 sionally assent, and that too in a constant and absolute manner. 
 There are perceptions which carry with them irresistible convic 
 tion. There would be no possibility of action unless there were 
 some certain truth. Where then is conviction to stop ? That 
 all our perceptions are not correct, every one is willing to admit. 
 But which are exact, and which are inexact ? What criterium 
 have we? The criterium we possess is Evidence. "Nothing 
 can be clearer than evidence," they said ; " and, being so clear, 
 it needs no definition." This was precisely what it did want ; 
 but the Stoics could not give it. 
 
 In truth, the Stoics, combating the Skepticism of their age, 
 were reduced to the same strait as Reid, Beattie, and Hutcheson, 
 combating the Skepticism of Hume : reduced to give up Philos 
 ophy, and to find refuge in Common-Sense. The battle fought 
 by the Stoics is very analogous to the battle fought by the 
 Scotch philosophers, in the ground occupied, in the instruments 
 employed, in the enemy attacked, and the object to be gained. 
 They both fought for Morality, which they thought endangered. 
 
 We shall subsequently have to consider the Common-Sense 
 theory : enough if we now call attention to the curious ignoratio 
 elenchi the curious misconception of the real force of the enemy, 
 and the utter helplessness of their own position, which the Com 
 mon-Sense philosophers displayed. The Skeptics had made an 
 irresistible onslaught upon the two fortresses of philosophy, Per 
 ception and Reason. They showed Perception to be based upon 
 Appearance, and Appearance to be only Appearance, but not 
 Certainty. They showed also that Reason was unable to dis- 
 
 13 
 
290 THE STOICS. 
 
 tinguish between Appearance and Certainty, because, in the first 
 place, it had nothing but Phenomena (Appearances) to build 
 upon ; and, in the second place, because there is no criterium to 
 apply to Reason itself. Having gained this victory, they pro 
 claimed Philosophy no longer existent. "Whereupon the Stoics 
 valorously rise, and, taking their stand upon Common-Sense, be 
 lieve they rout the forces of the Skeptics ; believe they retake 
 the lost fortresses by declaring that Perceptions are true as well 
 as false, and that you may distinguish the true from the false, 
 by distinguishing them : and that Reason has its criterium in 
 Evidence, which requires no criterium, it is so clear. This seems 
 to us pretty much the same as if the French were to invade 
 Great Britain, possess themselves of London, Edinburgh, and 
 Dublin, declare England the subject of France, and patriots were 
 then to declare that the French were to be driven home again 
 by a party of volunteers taking their stand upon Hampstead 
 Heath, displaying the banners of England, and with loud alarums 
 proclaiming the invaders defeated. 
 
 But it is time to consider the Ethical doctrines of the Stoics ; 
 and to do this effectually we must glance at their conception of 
 the Deity. There are two elements in Nature. The first is uX>j 
 tfpwTT), or primordial matter; the passive element from which 
 things are formed. The second is the active element, which 
 forms things out of matter : Reason, Destiny (sipxpjxsv^), God. 
 The divine Reason operating upon matter bestows upon it the 
 laws which govern it, laws which the Stoics called Xo ^oj oVsp- 
 fxarjxoi, or productive causes. God is the Reason of the world. 
 
 With this speculative doctrine it is easy to connect their prac 
 tical doctrine. Their Ethics are easily to be deduced from their 
 theology. If Reason is the great creative law, to live conform 
 ably with Reason must be the practical moral law. If the uni 
 verse be subject to a general law, every part of that universe 
 must also be duly subordinate to it. The consequence is clear : 
 there is but one formula for Morals, and that is, " Live harmo 
 niously with Nature," o/xoXo^ojxsvwj ry (pixfst ffiv. 
 
ZENO. 291 
 
 This is easily said. An anxious disciple might however desire 
 greater precision, and ask, Is it universal nature, or is it the par 
 ticular nature of man, that I am to live in unison with ? Cle- 
 anthes taught the former; Chrjsippus the latter; or, we should 
 rather say, taught that both individual and universal nature 
 should be understood by the formula. And this appears to have 
 been the sense in which it was usually interpreted. 
 
 The distinctive tendency of the formula cannot be mistaken : 
 it is to reduce every thing to Reason, which, as it has supremacy 
 in creation, must also have supremacy in man. This is also the 
 Platonic conception. It makes Logic the rule of life ; and as 
 sumes that there is nothing in man s mind which cannot be 
 reduced within the limits of Logic ; assumes that man is all in 
 tellect. It follows, that every thing which interferes with a 
 purely intellectual existence is to be eliminated as dangerous. 
 The pleasures and the pains of the body are to be despised : only 
 the pleasures and the pains of the intellect are worthy to occupy 
 man. By his passions he is made a slave ; by his intellect he is 
 free. His senses are passive ; his intellect is active. It is his 
 duty therefore to surmount and despise his passions and his 
 senses, that he may be free, active, virtuous. 
 
 We have here the doctrine of the Cynics, somewhat purified, 
 but fundamentally the same ; we have here also the anticipation 
 of Rome ; the forethought of that which was subsequently real 
 ized in act. Rome was the fit theatre of Stoicism, because Rome 
 was peopled with soldiers : these soldiers had their contempt of 
 death formed in perpetual campaigns. How little the Romans 
 regarded the life of man their history shows. The gladiatorial 
 combats, brutal and relentless, must have hardened the minds of 
 all spectators ; and there were no softening influences to counter 
 act them. How different the Greeks ! They did not pretend to 
 despise this beautiful life ; they did not affect to be above hu 
 manity. Life was precious, and they treasured it : treasured it 
 not with petty fear, but with noble ingenuousness. They loved 
 life, and wept on quitting it; and they wept without shame. 
 
292 THE STOICS. 
 
 They loved life, and they said so. When the time came for 
 them to risk it, or to give it for their country, or their honor, 
 when something they prized higher was to be gained by the sac 
 rifice, then they died unflinchingly. The tears shed by Achilles 
 and Ulysses did not unman them : these heroes fought terribly, 
 as they loved tenderly. Philoctetes, in agony, howls like a wild 
 beast, because he feels pain, and feels no shame in expressing it. 
 But these shrieks have not softened him : he is still the same 
 stern, terrible, implacable Philoctetes. 
 
 The Stoics, in their dread of becoming effeminate, became mar 
 ble. They despised pain; they despised death. To be above 
 pain was thought manly. They did not see, that, in this respect, 
 instead of being above Humanity, they sank miserably below it. 
 If it is a condition of our human organization to be susceptible 
 of pain, it is only affectation to conceal the expression of that 
 pain. Could silence stifle pain, it were well ; but to stifle the 
 cry, is not to stifle the feeling ; and to have a feeling, yet affect 
 not to have it, is pitiful. The Savage soon learns that philosophy ; 
 but the civilized man is superior to it. You receive a blow, and 
 you do not wince ? so much of heroism is displayed by a stone. 
 You are face to face with Death, and you have no regrets ? then 
 you are unworthy of life. Real heroism feels the pain it con 
 quers, and loves the life it surrenders in a noble cause. 
 
 As a reaction against effeminacy, Stoicism may be applauded ; 
 as a doctrine it is one-sided. It ends in apathy and egoism. 
 Apathy, indeed, was considered by the Stoics as the highest con 
 dition of humanity ; whereas, in truth, it is the lowest. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 THE NEW ACADEMY. 
 
 I. ARCESILAUS AND CARNEADES. 
 
 THE New Academy would solicit our attention, were it only 
 for the celebrity bestowed on it by Cicero and Horace ; but it 
 has other and higher points of interest than those of literary cu 
 riosity. The combat of which it was the theatre was, and is, of 
 singular importance. The questions connected with it are those 
 vital questions respecting the origin and certitude of human knowl 
 edge, which so long have occupied the ingenuity of thinkers ; 
 and the consequences which flow from either solution of the prob 
 lem are of the utmost importance. 
 
 The Stoics endeavored to establish the certitude of human 
 knowledge, in order that they might establish the truth of mor 
 al principles. They attacked the doctrines of the Skeptics, and 
 believed they triumphed by bringing forward their own doctrine 
 of Common-Sense. But the New Academicians had other argu 
 ments to offer. They too were Skeptics, although their skepti 
 cism differed from that of the Pyrrhonists. The nature of this 
 difference Sextus Empiricus has noted. " Many persons," says he, 
 " confound the Philosophy of the Academy with that of the Skep 
 tics. But although the disciples of the New Academy declare 
 that all things are incomprehensible ; yet they are distinguished 
 from the Pyrrhonists in this very dogmatism : they affirm that 
 all things are incomprehensible the Skeptics do not affirm that. 
 Moreover, the Skeptics consider all perceptions perfectly equal as 
 to the faithfulness of their testimony ; the Academicians distin 
 guish between probable and improbable perceptions: the first 
 
294: THE NEW ACADEMY. 
 
 they class under various heads. There are some, they say, which 
 are merely probable, others which are also confirmed by reflec 
 tion, others which are subject to no doubt. Assent is of two 
 kinds : simple assent, which the mind yields without repugnance 
 as without desire, such as that of a child following its master ; 
 and the assent which follows upon conviction and reflection. The 
 Skeptics admitted the former kind ; the Academicians the latter." 
 
 These differences are of no great moment ; but in the history 
 of sects we find the smallest variation invested with a degree of 
 importance ; and we can understand the pertinacity with which 
 the Academicians distinguished themselves from the Skeptics, 
 even on such slight grounds as the above. 
 
 In treating of the Academicians we are forced to follow the 
 plan pursued with the Skeptics, namely to consider the doctrines 
 of the whole sect, rather than to particularize the share of each 
 individual member. The Middle Academy and the New Aca 
 demy we thus unite in one ; although the ancients drew a dis 
 tinction between them, it is difficult for moderns to do so. 
 Arcesilaus and Carneades, therefore, shall be our types. 
 
 Arcesilaus was born at Pitane in the 116th Olympiad (B. c. 
 316). He was early taught mathematics and rhetoric, became 
 the pupil of Theophrastus, afterwards of Aristotle, and finally of 
 Polemo the Platonist. In this last school he was contemporary 
 with Zeno, and probably there began that antagonism which was 
 so remarkable in their subsequent career. On the death of 
 Crates, Arcesilaus filled the Academic chair, and filled it with 
 great ability and success. His fascinating manners won him 
 general regard. He was learned and sweet-tempered, and gener 
 ous to a fault. Visiting a sick friend, who, he saw, was suffering 
 from privation, he slipped, unobserved, a purse of gold under 
 neath the sick man s pillow. When the attendant discovered it, 
 the sick man said with a smile, " This is one of Arcesilaus s gen 
 erous frauds." He was of a somewhat luxurious temper, but he 
 lived till the age of seventy-five, when he killed himself by hard 
 drinking. 
 
ARCESILATJS AND CAKNEADES. 295 
 
 Carneades, the most illustrious of the Academicians, was born 
 at Gyrene, in Africa, 01. 141, 4 (B. c. 213). He was a pupil of 
 Diogenes the Stoic, who taught him the subtleties of disputation. 
 This made him sometimes exclaim in the course of a debate : " If 
 I have reasoned rightly, you are wrong ; if not, Diogenes, return 
 me the mina I paid you for my lessons." On leaving Diogenes 
 he became the pupil of Hegesinus, who then held the Academic 
 chair ; by him he was instructed in the skeptical principles of 
 the Academy, and on his death he succeeded to his chair. He 
 also diligently studied the voluminous writings of Chrysippus. 
 These were of great value to him, exercising his subtlety, and 
 trying the temper of his own metal. He owed so much to this 
 opponent that he used to say, " Had there not been a Chrysippus, 
 I should not be what I am :" a sentiment very easy of explana 
 tion. There are two kinds of writers : those who directly instruct 
 us in sound knowledge, and those who indirectly lead us to the 
 truth by the very opposition they raise against their views. 
 Next to exact knowledge, there is nothing so instructive as exact 
 error : an error clearly stated, and presented in somewhat the 
 same way as it at first presented itself to the mind which now 
 upholds it, enables us to see not only that it is an error, but by 
 what process it was deduced from its premises, and thus is 
 among the most valuable modes of instruction. It is better than 
 direct instruction : better, because the learner s mind is called 
 into full activity, and apprehends the truth for itself, instead of 
 passively assenting to it. 
 
 Carneades was justified in his praise of Chrysippus. He felt 
 how much he owed to his antagonist. He felt that to him he 
 owed a clear conception of the Stoical error, and a clear convic 
 tion of the truth of the Academic doctrine ; and owed also no 
 inconsiderable portion of that readiness and subtlety which 
 marked him out amongst his countrymen as a fitting Ambassa 
 dor to send to Rome. 
 
 Carneades in Rome Skepticism in the Stoic city presents 
 an interesting picture. The Romans crowded round him, fas- 
 
296 THE NEW ACADEMY; 
 
 cinated by his subtlety and eloquence. Before Galba before 
 Cato the Censor he harangued with marvellous unction in 
 praise of Justice ; and the hard brow of the grim Stoic softened ; 
 an approving smile played over those thin firm lips. But the 
 next day the brilliant orator undertook to exhibit the uncertainty 
 of all human knowledge ; and, as a proof, he refuted all the argu 
 ments with which the day before he had supported Justice. He 
 spoke against Justice as convincingly as he had spoken for it. 
 The brow of Cato darkened again, and with a keen instinct of 
 the dangers of such ingenuity operating upon the Roman youth, 
 he persuaded the Senate to send back the Philosophers to their 
 own country. 
 
 Carneades returned to Athens, and there renewed his contest 
 with the Stoics. He taught with great applause, and lived to 
 the advanced age of ninety. 
 
 That the Academicians should have embraced Skepticism is 
 not strange : indeed, as we have said, Skepticism was the inevit 
 able result of the tendencies of the whole epoch ; and the only 
 sect which did not accept it was forced to find a refuge in Com 
 mon-Sense : that is to say, was forced to find refuge in the abdi 
 cation of Philosophy, which abdication was in itself a species of 
 Skepticism. But it may seem strange that the Academy should 
 derive itself from Plato ; it may seem strange that Arcesilaus 
 should be a continuer and a warm admirer of Plato. The an 
 cients themselves, according to Sextus Empiricus, were divided 
 amongst each other respecting Plato s real doctrine ; some con 
 sidering him a skeptic, others a dogmatist. We have already 
 explained the cause of this difference of opinion, and have shown 
 how very little consistency and precision there is in the ideas of 
 Plato upon all subjects except Method. Skepticism, therefore, 
 might very easily result from a study of his writings. But this 
 is not all. Plato s attack upon the theories of his predecessors, 
 which were grounded upon sense-knowledge, is constant, triumph 
 ant. The dialogue of the Thecetetus, which is devoted to the 
 subject of Philosophy, is an exposition of the incapacity of sense 
 
AKCESILAUS AND CAKNEADES. 297 
 
 to furnish materials for Philosophy. All that sense can furnish 
 the materials for, is Opinion, and Opinion, as he frequently de 
 clares, even when it is Right Opinion, never can be Philosophy. 
 Plato, in short, destroyed all the old foundations upon which 
 theories had been constructed. He cleared the ground before 
 commencing his own work. By this means he obviated the at 
 tacks of the Sophists, and yet refused to sustain the onus of errors 
 which his predecessors had accumulated. The Sophists saw the 
 weakness of the old belief, and attacked it. Having reduced it 
 to ruins, they declared themselves triumphant. Plato appeared, 
 and admitted the fact of the old fortress being in ruins, and its 
 deserving to be so ; but he denied that the city of Truth was 
 taken. "Expend," said he, "your wrath and skill in battering 
 down such fortresses ; I will assist you ; for I too declare them 
 useless. But the real fortress you have not yet approached ; it 
 is situate on far higher ground." Sense-knowledge and Opinion 
 being thus set aside, the stronghold of Philosophy was the Ideal 
 theory : in it Plato found refuge from the Sophists. Aristotle 
 came and destroyed that theory. What then remained ? Skep 
 ticism. 
 
 Arcesilaus admitted, with Plato, the uncertainty of Opinion ; 
 but he also admitted with Aristotle the incorrectness of the Ideal 
 theory. He was thus reduced to absolute Skepticism. The 
 arguments of Plato had quite destroyed the certitude of Opinion ; 
 the arguments of Aristotle had quite destroyed the Ideal theory. 
 And thus, by refusing to accept one argument of the Platonic 
 doctrine, Arcesilaus could from Plato s works deduce his own 
 theory of the Incomprehensibility of all things ; the acatalepsy. 
 
 The doctrine of acatalepsy recalls to us the Stoical doctrine of 
 catalepsy or Apprehension, to which it is the antithesis. The 
 Cataleptic Phantasm was the True Perception, according to the 
 Stoics ; and, according to the Academicians, all Perceptions were 
 acataleptic, i.e. bore no conformity to the objects perceived; or, 
 if they did bear any conformity thereto, it could never be 
 known. 
 
 18* 
 
THE NEW ACADEMY. 
 
 Arcesilaus saw the weak point of the Stoical argument. Zeno 
 pretended that there was a Criterium, which decided between 
 science and opinion, which decided between true and false per 
 ceptions, and this was the Assent which the mind gave to the 
 truth of certain perceptions : in other words, Common-Sense was 
 the Criterium. " But," said Arcesilaus, " what is the difference 
 between the Assent of a wise man, and the Assent of a madman ? 
 There is no difference but in name." He felt that the criterium 
 of the Stoics was itself in need of a Criterium. 
 
 Chrysippus the Stoic combated Arcesilaus, and was in turn 
 combated by Carneades. The great question then pending was 
 this : 
 
 What Criterium is there of the truth of our knowledge ? 
 
 The Criterium must reside either in Reason, in Conception, or 
 in Sensation. It cannot reside in Reason, because Reason itself 
 is not independent of the other two : it operates upon the mate 
 rials furnished by them, and is dependent upon them. Our 
 knowledge is derived from the senses, and every object presented 
 to the mind must consequently have been originally presented 
 to the senses : on their accuracy the mind must depend. 
 
 Reason cannot therefore contain within itself the desired Cri 
 terium. Nor can conception ; for the same arguments apply to 
 it. Nor can the Criterium reside in Sense ; because, as all 
 admit, the senses are deceptive, and there is no perception which 
 cannot be false. For what is Perception ? Our Senses only 
 inform us of the presence of an object in so far as they are affected 
 by it. But what is this ? Is it not we who are affected we who 
 are modified ? Yes ; and this modification reveals both itself 
 and the object which causes it. Like Light, which in showing 
 itself, shows also the objects upon which it is thrown ; like light 
 also, it shows objects in its own colors. Perception is a peculiar 
 modification of the soul. The whole problem now to solve is 
 this : 
 
 Does every modification of the soul exactly correspond with the 
 external object which causes that modification? 
 
ARCESILAUS AND CARNEADES. 299 
 
 This is a problem presented by the Academicians. They 
 answered, but they did not solve it ; they left to their adversaries 
 the task of proving the correspondence between the object and 
 subject. We may here venture to carry out their principles, and 
 endeavor to solve the problem, as it is one still agitating the 
 minds of metaphysicians. 
 
 In nowise does the Sensation correspond with the object ; in 
 nowise does the modification correspond with the external cause, 
 except in the relation of cause and effect. The early thinkers 
 were well aware that, in order to attribute any certainty to sen 
 suous knowledge, we must assume that the Senses transmit us 
 Copies of things. Democritus, who was the first to see the 
 necessity of such an hypothesis, suggested that our Ideas were 
 Eidola, or Images of the Objects, of an extremely airy texture, 
 which were thrown off by the objects in the shape of effluvia, 
 and entered the brain by the pores. Those who could not admit 
 such an explanation substituted the hypothesis of Impressions. 
 Ask any man, not versed in such inquiries, whether he believes 
 his perceptions to be copies of objects whether he believes that 
 the flower he sees before him exists quite independently of him, 
 and of every other human being, and exists with the same attri 
 butes of shape, fragrance, taste, etc., his answer is sure to be in 
 the affirmative. He will regard you as a madman if you doubt 
 it. And yet so early as the epoch of which we are now sketch 
 ing the history, thinking men had learned in somewise to see 
 that our Perceptions were not copies of Objects, but were simply 
 modifications of our minds, caused by the objects. Once admit 
 this, and sensuous knowledge is forever pronounced not only 
 uncertain, but absolutely false. Can such a modification be a 
 copy of the cause which modifies ? As well ask, Is the pain, 
 occasioned by a burn, a copy of the fire ? Is it at all like the 
 fire ? Does it at all express the essence of fire ? Not in the 
 least. It only expresses one relation in which we stand to the 
 fire ; one effect upon us which fire will produce. Nevertheless 
 fire is an Object, and a burn is a sensation. The way in which 
 
300 THE NEW ACADEMY. 
 
 we perceive the existence of the Object (fire) is similar to that 
 in which we perceive the existence of other objects : and that 
 way is in the modifications they occasion ; i. e. in the Sen 
 sations. 
 
 Let us take another instance. We say that we hear Thunder : 
 in other words, we have a Perception of the Object called Thun 
 der. Our sensation really is of a sound, which the electrical 
 phenomena we call Thunder have caused in us, by acting on the 
 aural nerve. Is our sensation of this sound any copy of the 
 Phenomena? Does it in any degree express the nature of the 
 Phenomena? No; it only expresses the sensation we receive 
 from a certain electrical state of the atmosphere. 
 
 In these cases most people will readily acquiesce ; for, by a 
 very natural confusion of ideas, whenever they speak of percep 
 tions, they mostly mean visual perceptions ; because with sight 
 the clearest knowledge is associated ; because also the hypothesis 
 of our perceptions being copies of Things, is founded upon sight. 
 The same persons who would willingly admit that Pain was not 
 a copy of the Fire, nor of any thing in the nature of Fire, except 
 in its effect on our nerves, would protest that the appearance of 
 Fire to the Eye was the real appearance of the Fire, all Eyes 
 apart, and quite independent of human vision. Yet if all sentient 
 beings were at once swept from the face of the earth, the fire 
 would have no attribute at all resembling Pain ; because Pain is 
 a modification, not of Fire, but of a sentient being. In like 
 manner, if all sentient beings were at once swept from the face of 
 the earth, the Fire would have no attributes at all resembling 
 light and color ; because light and color are modifications of the 
 sentient being, caused by something external, but no more resem 
 bling its cause than the pain inflicted by an instrument resembles 
 that instrument. 
 
 Pain and color are modifications of the sentient being. The 
 question at issue is, Can a modification of a sentient being be a 
 copy of its cause ? The answer is clearly a negative. We may 
 imagine that when we see an Object, our sensation is a copy of 
 
ARCESILAUS AND CARNEADES. 301 
 
 it; because we believe that the Object paints itself upon the 
 retina ; and we liken perception to a mirror, in which things are 
 reflected. It is extremely difficult to divest ourselves of this 
 prejudice ; but we may be made aware of the fallacy if we attend 
 to those perceptions which are not visual to the perceptions of 
 sound, fragrance, taste, or paiu. These are clearly nothing but 
 modifications of our sentient being, caused by external objects, 
 but in nowise resembling them. We are all agreed that the heat 
 is not in the fire, but in us ; that sweetness is not in the sugar, 
 but in us ; that fragrance is but the particles which, impinging 
 on the olfactory nerve, cause a sensation in us. In all beings 
 similarly constituted these things would have similar effects, 
 would cause pain, sweetness, and fragrance ; but on all other 
 beings the effects would be different. Fire would burn paper, 
 but not pain it ; sugar would mix with water, but not give it the 
 sensation of sweetness. 
 
 The radical error of those who believe that we perceive things 
 a* they are, consists in mistaking a metaphor for a fact, and 
 believing that the mind is a mirror in which external objects are 
 reflected. But, as Bacon finely says, " The human understand 
 ing is like an unequal mirror to the rays of things, which, mixing 
 its own nature with the nature of things, distorts and perverts 
 them? We attribute heat to the fire, and color to the flower ; 
 heat and color really being states of our consciousness, occasioned 
 by the fire and the flower under certain conditions. 
 
 Perception is nothing more than a state of the percipient ; i. e. 
 a state of consciousness. This state may be occasioned by some 
 external cause, and may be as complex as the cause is complex, 
 but it is still nothing more than a state of consciousness an 
 effect produced by an adequate cause. Of every change in our 
 Sensation we are conscious, and in time we learn to give definite 
 names and forms to the causes of these changes. But in the fact 
 of Consciousness there is nothing beyond consciousness. In our 
 perceptions we are conscious only of the changes which have 
 taken place within us : we can never transcend the sphere of our 
 
302 THE NEW ACADEMY. 
 
 own consciousness ; we can never go out of ourselves, and become 
 aware of the objects which caused those changes. All we can do 
 is to identify certain external appearances with certain internal 
 changes, e. g. to identify the appearance we name " fire," with 
 certain sensations we have known to follow our being placed near 
 it. Turn the fact of Consciousness how we will, we can see 
 nothing in it but the change of a sentient being operated by 
 some external cause. Consciousness is no mirror of the world ; 
 it gives no faithful reflection of things as they are per se ; it only 
 gives a faithful report of its own modification as excited by exter 
 nal things. 
 
 The world, apart from our consciousness, i. e. the non-ego qua 
 non-ego the world per se is, in all likelihood, something utterly 
 different from the world as we know it ; for all we know of it is 
 derived through our consciousness of what its effects are on us, 
 and our consciousness is obviously only a state of ourselves, not 
 a copy of external things. 
 
 It may be here asked, How do you infer that the world is dif 
 ferent from what it appears to us 1 
 
 The question is pertinent, and may be answered briefly. The 
 world per se must be different from what it appears to us through 
 consciousness, because to us it is only known in the relation of 
 cause and effect. World is the Cause ; our Consciousness the 
 Effect. But the same Cause operating on some other organization 
 would produce a very different effect. If all animals were blind, 
 there would be no such thing as light (i. e. light as we know it), 
 because light is a phenomenon made up out of the operation of 
 some unknown thing on the retina. If all animals were deaf, 
 there would be no such thing as sound, because sound is a phe 
 nomenon made up out of the operation of some unknown thing 
 on the tympanum. If all men were without their present ner 
 vous system, there would be no such thing as pain, because pain 
 is a phenomenon made up out of the operation of some external 
 thing on the specialized nervous system. 
 
 Light, color, sound, taste, smell, are all states of Conscious- 
 
AECESILAUS AND CARNEADES. 303 
 
 ness ; what they are beyond Consciousness, as existences per se, 
 we cannot know, we cannot imagine, because we can only con 
 ceive them as we know them. Light, with its myriad forms and 
 colors Sound, with its thousand-fold life make Nature what 
 Nature appears to us. But they do not exist as such apart from 
 our consciousness; they are the investitures with which we 
 clothe the world. Nature in her insentient solitude is an eternal 
 Darkness an eternal Silence. 
 
 We conclude, therefore, that the world per se in nowise re 
 sembles the World as it appears to us. Perception is an Effect ; 
 and its truth is not the truth of resemblance, but of relation, i. e. 
 it is the true operation of the world on us, the true operation of 
 Cause and Effect. But perception is not the true resemblance 
 of the world: Consciousness is no mirror reflecting external 
 things. 
 
 Let us substitute for the metaphor of a mirror the more ab 
 stract expression, " Perception is the Effect of an external Object 
 acting on a sentient being," and much of the confusion darkening 
 this matter will be dissipated. An Effect, we know, agrees with 
 its Cause, but it does not necessarily resemble it. An Effect is no 
 more a Copy of the Cause than pain is a copy of the application 
 of fire to a finger : ergo, Perception can never be an accurate 
 report of what things are per se, but only of what they are in 
 relation to us. 
 
 It has been said that, although no single sense does actually 
 convey to us a correct impression of any thing, nevertheless we 
 are enabled to confirm or modify the report of one sense by the 
 report of another sense, and that the result of the whole activity 
 of the five senses is a true impression of the external Thing. This 
 is a curious fallacy : it pretends that a number of false impres 
 sions are sufficient to constitute a true one ! 
 
 The conclusion to be drawn from the foregoing premises is 
 this : There is no correspondence between the object and the 
 sensation, except that of Cause and Effect. Sensations are not 
 Copies of Objects; do not at all resemble them. As we can 
 
304: THE NEW ACADEMY. 
 
 only know objects through sensation i. e. as we can only know 
 our sensations we can never ascertain the truth respecting 
 objects. 
 
 This brings us back to the New Academy, the disciples of 
 which strenuously maintained that Perception, being nothing but 
 a modification of the Soul, could never reveal the real nature of 
 things. 
 
 Do we then side with the Academicians in proclaiming all 
 human knowledge deceptive ? No : to them, as to the Pyr- 
 rhonists, we answer : You are quite right in affirming that man 
 cannot transcend the sphere of his own consciousness, cannot 
 penetrate the real essences of things, cannot know causes, can 
 only know phenomena. But this affirmation though it crushes 
 Metaphysics though it interdicts the inquiry into noumena, into 
 essences and causes, as frivolous because futile does not touch 
 Science. If all our knowledge is but a knowledge of phenomena, 
 there can still be a Science of Phenomena adequate to all man s 
 true wants. If Sensation is but the effect of an External Cause, 
 we, who can never know that Cause, know it in its relation to us, 
 i. e. in its Effect. These Effects are as constant as their Causes ; 
 and, consequently, there can be a Science of Effects. Such a 
 Science is that named Positive Science, the aim of which is to 
 trace the Co-existences and Successions of Phenomena, i. e. to 
 trace the relation of Cause and Effect throughout the universe 
 submitted to our inspection. 
 
 But neither the Pyrrhonists nor the Academicians saw this 
 refuge for the mind ; they consequently proclaimed Skepticism 
 as the final result of inquiry. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 SUMMARY OF THE EIGHTH EPOCH. 
 
 WE have now brought our narrative to the second crisis in the 
 history of speculation. The Skepticism which made the Sophists 
 powerful, and which closed the first period of this history, we 
 now behold once more usurping the intellects of men, and this 
 time with far greater power. A Socrates appeared to refute the 
 Sophists. Who is there to refute and to discredit the Skeptics? 
 
 The Skeptics, and all thinkers during the epoch we have just 
 treated were such, whether they called themselves Epicureans, 
 Stoics, Pyrrhonists, or New Academicians the Skeptics, we say, 
 were in possession of the most formidable arms. From Socrates, 
 from Plato, and from Aristotle, they had borrowed their best 
 weapons, and with these had attacked Philosophy, and attacked 
 it with success. 
 
 All the wisdom of the antique world was powerless against the 
 Skeptics. Speculative belief was reduced to the most uncertain 
 " probability." Faith in philosophic Truth was extinct. Faith 
 in human endeavor that way was gone. Philosophy was im 
 possible. 
 
 But there was one peculiarity of the Socratic doctrine which 
 was preserved even in the midst of skepticism. Socrates had 
 made Ethics the great object of his inquiries : and all subsequent 
 thinkers had given it a degree of attention which before was 
 unknown. Philosophy contented itself with the Common-Sense 
 doctrine of the Stoics, and the Probabilities of the Skeptics, 
 which, however futile as philosophic principles, were efficacious 
 enough as moral principles. Common-Sense may be a bad basis 
 
306 SUMMARY OF THE EIGHTH EPOCH. 
 
 for metaphysical or scientific reasoning ; but it is not so bad a 
 basis for a system of morals. 
 
 The protest, therefore, which Skepticism made against all 
 Philosophy was not so anarchical in its tendency as the protest 
 made by the Sophists ; but it was more energetic, more terrible. 
 In the wisdom of that age there lay no cure for it. The last cry 
 of despair seemed to have been wrung from the baffled thinkers, 
 as they declared their predecessors to have been hopelessly 
 wrong, and declared also that their error was without a remedy. 
 
 It was, indeed, a saddening contemplation. The hopes and 
 aspirations of so many incomparable minds thus irrevocably 
 doomed ; the struggles of so many men, from Thales, who first 
 asked himself, Whence do all things proceed ? to the elaborate 
 systematization of the forms of thought which occupied an 
 Aristotle the struggles of all these men had ended in Skepti 
 cism. Little was to be gleaned from the harvest of their en 
 deavors but arguments against the possibility of that Philosophy 
 they were so anxious to form. Centuries of thought had not 
 advanced the mind one step nearer to a solution of the problems 
 with which, child-like, it began. It began with a child-like 
 question ; it ended with an aged doubt. Not only did it doubt 
 the solutions of the great problem which others had attempted ; 
 it even doubted the possibility of any solution. It was not the 
 doubt which begins, but the doubt which ends inquiry : it had 
 no illusions. 
 
 This was the second crisis of Greek Philosophy. Reason thus 
 assailed could only find a refuge in Faith ; and the next period 
 opens with the attempt to construct a Religious Philosophy. 
 
NINTH EPOCH. 
 
 PHILOSOPHY ALLIES ITSELF WITH FAITH : THE ALEXAN 
 DRIAN SCHOOLS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 EISE OF NEO-PLATONISM. 
 
 I. ALEXANDRIA. 
 
 PHILOSOPHY no longer found a home in Greece ; it had no 
 longer any worshippers in its native country, and was forced to 
 seek them elsewhere. A period had arrived when all problems 
 seemed to have been stated, and none seemed likely to be solved. 
 Every system which human ingenuity could devise had been 
 devised by the early thinkers ; and not one had been able to 
 withstand examination. In the early annals of speculation, a 
 new and decisive advance is made whenever a new question is 
 asked ; to suggest a doubt, is to exercise ingenuity ; to ask a 
 question, is to awaken men to a new view of the subject. But 
 now all questions had been asked ; old questions had been re 
 vived under new forms ; nothing remained to stimulate inquiry, 
 nothing to give speculators a hope of success. 
 
 Unable to ask new questions, or to offer new answers to those 
 already asked, the Philosophers readily seized on the only means 
 which enabled them to gain renown : they travelled. They 
 carried their doctrines into Egypt and to Rome ; and in those 
 places they were listened to with wonder and delight. Their 
 old doctrines were novelties to a people who had no doctrines of 
 
308 RISE OF NEO-PLATONISM. 
 
 its own ; and, from the excessive cost of books in those days, 
 almost all instruction being oral, the strangers were welcomed 
 warmly, and the doctrines imported were as novel as if they had 
 been just invented. 
 
 Philosophy, exiled from Greece, was a favored guest in Alex 
 andria and Rome : but in both cases it was a stranger, and could 
 not be naturalized. In Alexandria, however, it made a brilliant 
 display; and the men it produced gave it an originality and an 
 influence which it never possessed in Rome. 
 
 Roman Philosophy was but a weak paraphrase of the Grecian ; 
 and we, therefore, give it no place in this history. To speak 
 Greek, to write Greek, became the fashionable ambition of Rome. 
 The child was instructed by a Greek slave. Greek Professors 
 taught Philosophy and Rhetoric to aspiring youths. Athens 
 had become the necessary " tour" which was to complete a 
 man s education. It was there that Cicero learned those ideas 
 which he delighted in setting forth in charming dialogues. It 
 was there Horace learned that light and careless philosophy, 
 which shines through the sparkling crystal of his verse. Wan 
 dering from the Academy to the Porch, and from the Porch to 
 the Garden, he became imbued with that skepticism which 
 checks his poetical enthusiasm ; he learned to make a system of 
 that pensive epicureanism which gives so peculiar a character to 
 his poems ; a character which, with a sort of after-dinner free 
 dom and bonhomie, recommend^ him to men of the world. 
 
 In Rome, Philosophy might tinge the poetry, give weight to ora 
 tory, method to jurisprudence, and supply some topics of conversa 
 tion ; but it was no Belief filling the minds of serious men : it took 
 no root in the national existence ; it produced no great Thinkers. 
 
 In Alexandria the case was different. There several schools 
 were formed, and some new elements introduced into the doc 
 trines then existent. Great thinkers Plotinus, Proclus, Por 
 phyry made it illustrious ; and it had a rival, whose antagonism 
 alone would confer immortal renown upon it : that rival was 
 Christianity. 
 
ALEXANDRIA. 309 
 
 In no species of grandeur was the Alexandrian school deficient, 
 as M. Saisset justly observes :* genius, power, and duration, have 
 consecrated it. Reanimating, during an epoch of decline, the 
 fecundity of an aged civilization, it created a whole family of 
 illustrious names. Plotinus, its real founder, resuscitated Plato; 
 Proclus gave the world another Aristotle ; and, in the person of 
 Julian the Apostate, it became master of the world. For three 
 centuries it was a formidable rival to the greatest power that 
 ever appeared on earth the power of Christianity ; and, if it 
 succumbed in the struggle, it only fell with the civilization of 
 which it had been the last rampart. 
 
 Alexandria, the centre of gigantic commerce, soon became a 
 new metropolis of science, rivalling Athens. The- Alexandrian 
 Library is too celebrated to need more than a passing allusion : 
 to it, and to the men assembled there, we owe the vast labors of 
 erudition in philosophy and literature which were of such service 
 to the world. We cannot here enumerate all the men of science 
 who made it illustrious ; enough if we mention Euclid, for Math 
 ematics ; Conon and Hipparchus, for Astronomy ; Eratosthenes, 
 for Geography ; and Aristarchus, for literary Criticism. Besides 
 these, there were the Philosophers ; and Lucian, the witty Skep 
 tic ; and the Poets, Apollonius Rhodius, Callimachus, Lycophron, 
 Tryphiodorus, and, above all, the sweet idyllic Theocritus. 
 
 It is a curious spectacle. Beside the Museum of Alexandria 
 there rises into formidable importance the Didascalia of the 
 Christians. In the same city, Philo the Jew, and QEnesidemus 
 the Pyrrhonist, founded their respective schools. Ammonias 
 Saccas appears there. Lucian passes through at the same time 
 that Clemens Alexandrinus is teaching. After Plotinus has 
 taught, Arius and Athanasius will also teach. Greek Skepti 
 cism, Judaism, Platonism, Christianity all have their interpreters 
 within so small a distance from the temple of Serapis ! 
 
 * Revue des Deux Mbndes, 1844, tome iii. p. 783 ; un admirable article on 
 the Alexandrian Schools. 
 
310 RISE OF NEOPLATONISM. 
 
 II. PHILO. 
 
 Alexandria, as we have seen, was the theatre of various strug 
 gles : of these we are to select one, and that one the struggle of 
 the Neo-Platonists with the Christian Fathers. 
 
 Under the name of the Alexandrian School are designated, 
 loosely enough, all those thinkers who endeavored to find a refuge 
 from Skepticism iu a new Philosophy, based on altogether new 
 principles. Now, although these various Thinkers by no means 
 constitute a School, they constitute a Movement, and they form 
 an Epoch in the history of Philosophy. We may merely ob 
 serve that the " Alexandrian School" and the " Neo-Platonists" 
 are not convertible terms : the former designates a whole move 
 ment, the latter designates the most illustrious section of that 
 movement. 
 
 Philo the Jew is the first of these Neo-Platonists. He was 
 born at Alexandria, a few years before Christ. The influence of 
 Greek ideas had long been felt in Alexandria, and Philo, com 
 menting on the writings of the Jews, did so in the spirit of one 
 deeply imbued with Greek thought. His genius was Oriental, 
 his education Greek ; the result was a strange mixture of mys 
 ticism and dialectics.* To Plato he owed much : but to the 
 New Academy, perhaps more. From Carneades he learned to 
 distrust the truth of all sensuous knowledge, and to deny that 
 Reason had any criterium of truth. 
 
 Thus far he was willing to travel with the Greeks ; thus far 
 had dialectics conducted him. But there was another element 
 in his mind besides the Greek : there was the Oriental or mys 
 tical element. If human knowledge is a delusion, we must seek 
 for truth in some higher sphere. The Senses may deceive ; 
 Reason may be powerless ; but there is still a faculty in man 
 
 * St. Paul thus comprehensively expresses the national characteristic of 
 the Jews and Greeks: "The Jews require a sign (i e. a miracle), and the 
 Greeks seek after wisdom (i. e. philosophy)."! Corinth, i. 22. 
 
PHILO. 311 
 
 there is Faith. Real Science is the gift of God : its name is 
 Faith : its origin is the goodness of God : its cause is Piety. 
 
 This conception is not Plato s, yet is nevertheless Platonic. 
 Plato would never have thus condemned Reason for the sake of 
 Faith ; and yet he, too, thought that the nature of God could 
 not be known, although his existence could be proved. In this 
 respect he would have agreed with Philo. But, although Plato 
 does not speak of Science as the gift of God, he does in one 
 place so speak of Virtue ; and he devotes the whole dialogue of 
 the Meno to show that Virtue cannot be taught, because it is not 
 a thing of the understanding, but a gift of God. The reasons 
 he there employs may easily have suggested to Philo their ap 
 plication to Philosophy. 
 
 From this point Philo s Philosophy of course becomes a the 
 ology. God is ineffable, incomprehensible : his existence may be 
 known ; his nature can never be known ; 6 <$ ctpa w$s <rw vw 
 xaraX xj Tr roj, OTJ /JL^ xa-ra <ro /vai /xo vov. But to know that he 
 exists, is in itself the knowledge of his being one, perfect, simple, 
 immutable, and without attribute. This knowledge is implied in 
 the simple knowledge of his existence : he cannot be otherwise, 
 if he exist at all. But to know this, is not to know in what 
 consists his perfection. We cannot penetrate with our glance 
 the mystery of his essence. We can only believe. 
 
 If however we cannot know God in his essence, we can obtain 
 some knowledge of his Divinity : we know it in The Word. 
 This \dyos this Word (using the expression in its Scriptural 
 sense) fills a curious place in all the mystical systems. God 
 being incomprehensible, inaccessible, an intermediate existence 
 was necessary as an interpreter between God and Man, and this 
 intermediate existence the Mystics called The Word. 
 
 The Word, according to Philo, is God s Thought. This 
 Thought is two-fold : it is Xo^-os v8ia.6erogj the Thought as em 
 bracing all Ideas (in the Platonic sense of the term Idea), i. e 
 Thought as Thought ; and it is Xoyoj tfpopopixoV, the Thought re 
 alized,: Thought become the World. 
 
312 RISE OF NEO PLATONISM. 
 
 In these three hypostases of the Deity we see the Trinity of 
 Plotinus foreshadowed. There is, first, God the Father ; secondly, 
 the Son of God, i. e. the Xo /oj ; thirdly, the Son of the Xo yos, 
 i. e. the World. 
 
 This brief outline of Philo s Theology will sufficiently ex 
 emplify the two great facts which we are anxious to have under 
 stood : 1st, the union of Platonism with Oriental mysticism ; 
 2dly, the entirely new direction given to Philosophy, by uniting 
 it once more with Religion. It is this direction which character 
 izes the Movement of the Alexandrian School. Reason had 
 been shown to be utterly powerless to solve the great questions 
 of Philosophy then agitated. Various Schools had pursued 
 various Methods, but all with one result. Skepticism was the 
 conclusion of every struggle. "And yet," said the Mystics, 
 "we have an idea of God and of his goodness; we have an in 
 eradicable belief in his existence, and in the Perfection of his 
 nature, consequently, in the beneficence of his aims. Yet these 
 ideas are not innate ; were they innate, they would be uniformly 
 entertained by all men, and amongst all nations. If they are 
 not innate, whence are they derived ? Not from Reason ; not 
 from experience : then from Faith." 
 
 Now, Philosophy, conceive it how you will, is entirely the off 
 spring of Reason : it is the endeavor to explain by Reason the 
 mysteries amidst which we " move, live, and have our being." 
 Although it is legitimate to say, " Reason is incapable of solv 
 ing the problems proposed to it," it is not legitimate to add, 
 " therefore we must call in the aid of Faith." In Philosophy, 
 Reason must either reign alone, or abdicate. No compromise 
 is permissible. If there are things between heaven and earth 
 which are not dreamt of in our Philosophy which do not 
 come within the possible sphere of our Philosophy we may 
 believe in them, indeed, but we cannot christen that belief 
 philosophical. 
 
 One of two things, either Reason is capable of solving the 
 problems, or it is incapable : in the one case its attempt is phi- 
 
PIIILO. 313 
 
 losophical ; in the second case its attempt is futile. Any attempt 
 to mix up Faith with Reason, in a matter exclusively addressed 
 to the Reason, must be abortive. We do not say that what Faith 
 implicitly accepts, Reason may not explicitly justify ; but we say, 
 that to bring Faith to the aid of Reason, is altogether to destroy 
 the philosophical character of an inquiry. Reason may justify 
 Faith ; but faith must not furnish conclusions for Philosophy. 
 Directly Reason is abandoned, Philosophy ceases ; and every ex 
 planation then offered is a theological explanation, and must be 
 put to altogether different tests from what a philosophical ex 
 planation would require. 
 
 All speculation must originally have been theological : but in 
 process of time Reason timidly ventured upon what are called 
 " natural explanations ;" and from the moment that it felt itself 
 strong enough to be independent, Philosophy was established. 
 In the early speculations of the lonians we saw the pure efforts 
 of Reason to explain mysteries. As Philosophy advanced, it 
 became more and more evident that the problems attacked by 
 the early thinkers were, in truth, so far from being nearer a 
 solution, that their extreme difficulty was only just becoming 
 appreciated. The difficulty became more and more apparent, 
 till at last it was pronounced insuperable : Reason was declared 
 incompetent. Then the Faith which had so long been set aside 
 was again called to assist the inquirer. In other words, Philos 
 ophy, discovering itself to be powerless, resigned in favor of 
 Theology. 
 
 When, therefore, we say that the direction given to the human 
 mind by the Alexandrian School, in conjunction with Christian 
 ity the only two spiritual movements which materially influ 
 enced the epoch we are speaking of was a theological direction, 
 the reader will at once see its immense importance, and will be 
 prepared to follow us in our exposition of the mystical doctrines 
 of Plotinus. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 ANTAGONISM OF CHKISTIANITY AND NEO- 
 PLATONISM. 
 
 I. PLOTINUS. 
 
 WHILE Christianity was making rapid and enduring progress 
 in spite of every obstacle ; while the Apostles wandered from 
 city to city, sometimes honored as Evangelists, at other times 
 insulted and stoned as enemies, the Neo-Platonists were develop 
 ing the germ deposited by Philo, and not only constructing a 
 theology, but endeavoring on that theology to found a Church. 
 Whilst a new religion, Christianity, was daily usurping the souls 
 of men, these philosophers fondly imagined that an old Religion 
 could effectually oppose it. 
 
 Christianity triumphed without much difficulty. Looking at 
 it in a purely moral view, its immense superiority is at once 
 apparent. The Alexandrians exaggerated the vicious tendency 
 of which \ve have already seen the fruits in the Cynics and 
 Stoics the tendency to despise Humanity. Plotinus blushed 
 because he had a body : contempt of human personality could 
 go no further. What was offered in exchange ? The ecstatic 
 perception ; the absorption of personality in that of the Deity 
 a Deity inaccessible to knowledge as to love a Deity which the 
 soul can only attain by a complete annihilation of its personality. 
 
 The attempt of the Neo-Platonists failed, as it deserved to fail ; 
 but it had great talents in its service, and it made great noise in 
 the world. It had, as M. Saisset remarks, three periods. The 
 first of these, the least brilliant but the most fruitful, is that of 
 Ammonias Saccas and Plotinus. A porter of Alexandria becomes 
 
PLOTINUS. 315 
 
 the chief of a School, and men of genius listen to him ; amongst 
 his disciples are Plotinus, Origen, and Longinus. This School is 
 perfected in obscurity, and receives at last a solid basis by the 
 development of a metaphysical system. Plotinus, the author of 
 this system, shortly after lectures at Rome with amazing success. 
 It is then that the Alexandrian School enters upon its second 
 period. With Porphyry and lamblicus it becomes a sort of 
 Church, and disputes with Christianity the empire of the world. 
 Christianity had ascended the throne in the person of Constan- 
 tine ; Neo-Platonism dethrones it, and usurps its place in the 
 person of Julian the Apostate. But now mark the difference. 
 In losing Constantine, Christianity lost nothing of its real power ; 
 for its power lay in the might of convictions, and not in the sup 
 port of potentates ; its power was a spiritual power, ever active, 
 ever fruitful. In losing Julian, Neo-Platonism lost its power, 
 political and religious. The third period commences with that 
 loss : and the genius of Proclus bestows on it one last gleam of 
 splendor. In vain did he strive to revive the scientific spirit of 
 Platonism, as Plotinus had endeavored to revive the religious 
 spirit of Paganism : his efforts were vigorous, but sterile. Under 
 Justinian the School of Alexandria became extinct. 
 
 Such is the outward history of the School : let us now cast a 
 glance at the doctrines which were there elaborated. In the 
 writings of thinkers professedly eclectic, such as were the Alex 
 andrians, it is obvious that the greater portion will be repetitions 
 and reproductions of former thinkers ; and the historian will 
 therefore neglect such opinions to confine himself to those which 
 constitute the originality of the School. The originality of the 
 Alexandrians consists in having employed the Platonic Dialectics 
 as a guide to Mysticism and Pantheism ; in having connected 
 the doctrine of the East with the dialectics of the Greeks ; in 
 having made Reason the justification of Faith. 
 
 There are three essential points to be here examined : their 
 Dialectics, their theory of the Trinity, and their principle of 
 Emanation. By their Dialectics they were Platonists ; by their 
 
316 ANTAGONISM OF CHRISTIANITY, ETC. 
 
 theory of the Trinity they were Mystics ; by their principle of 
 Emanation they were Pantheists. 
 
 II. THE ALEXANDRIAN DIALECTICS. 
 
 The nature of the Platonic Dialectics we hope to have already 
 rendered intelligible ; so that in saying Plotinus employed them 
 we are saved from much needless repetition. But although Dia 
 lectics formed the basis of Alexandrian philosophy, they did not, 
 as with Plato, furnish the grounds of belief. As far as human 
 philosophy went, Dialectics were efficient ; but there were pro 
 blems which did not come within the sphere of human philos 
 ophy, and for these another Method was requisite. 
 
 Plotinus agreed with Plato that there could only be a science 
 of Universals. Every individual thing was but a phenomenon, 
 passing quickly away, and having no real existence ; it could not 
 therefore be the object of philosophy. But these universals 
 these Ideas which are the only real existences are they not also 
 subordinate to some higher Existence ? Phenomena were sub 
 ordinate to Noumena ; but Noumena themselves were subordinate 
 to the One Noumenon. In other words, the Sensible world was 
 but the Appearance of the Ideal World, and the Ideal World in 
 its turn was but the mode of God s existence. 
 
 The question then arises : How do we know any thing of God ? 
 The sensible world we perceive through our senses ; the Ideal 
 World we gain glimpses of through the reminiscence which the 
 sensible world awakens in us ; but how are we to take the last 
 step how are we to know the Deity ? 
 
 I am a finite being ; but how can I comprehend the Infinite ? 
 As soon as I comprehend the Infinite, I am Infinite myself; that 
 is to say, I am no longer myself, no longer that finite being, hav 
 ing a consciousness of his own separate existence.* If, there 
 fore, I attain to a knowledge of the Infinite, it is not by my Rea- 
 
 * Ttj uv ovv TIJV 6{>vafiiv avrou cXot b^ov iraaav ; et yap bftou naaav, ri av Tig 
 avrov Siatyipui. Plotinus, Etin. v. lib. 5. c. 10. 
 
THE ALEXANDRIAN DIALECTICS. 317 
 
 son, which is finite and embraces only finite objects, but by some 
 higher faculty, a faculty altogether impersonal, which identifies 
 itself with its object. 
 
 The identity of Subject and Object of the thought with the 
 thing thought of is the only possible ground of knowledge. 
 This position, which some of our readers will recognize as the 
 fundamental position of modern German speculation, is so re 
 moved from all ordinary conceptions, that we must digress awhile 
 in order to explain it. Neo-Platonism is a blank without it. 
 
 Knowledge and Being are Identical ; to know more is to be 
 more. This is not, of course, maintaining the absurd proposition 
 that to know a horse is to be a horse : all we know of that horse 
 is only what we know of the changes in ourselves occasioned by 
 some external cause, and identifying our internal change with 
 that external cause, we call it a horse. Here knowledge and be 
 ing are identical. We really know nothing of the external cause 
 (horse), we only know our own state of being ; and to say, there 
 fore, that " in our knowledge of the horse we are the horse," is 
 only saying, in unusual language, that our knowledge is a state 
 of our being, and nothing more. The discussion in the fourth 
 Chapter of the foregoing Epoch respecting perception, was an 
 attempt to prove that knowledge is only a state of our own con 
 sciousness, excited by some unknown cause. The cause must 
 remain unknown, because knowledge is effect, not cause. 
 
 An apple is presented to you ; you se-e it, feel it, taste it, smell 
 it, and are said to know it. What is this knowledge ? Simply 
 a consciousness of the various ways in which the apple affects 
 you. You are blind and cannot see it : there is one quality less 
 which it possesses, i. e. one mode less in which it is possible for 
 you to be affected. You are without the senses of smell and 
 taste : there are two other deficiencies in your knowledge of the 
 apple. So that, by taking away your senses, we take away from 
 the apple each of its qualities : in other words, we take away the 
 means of your being affected. Your knowledge of the apple is 
 reduced to nothing. In a similar way, by endowing you with 
 
318 ANTAGONISM OF CHRISTIANITY, ETC. 
 
 more senses we increase the qualities of the apple ; we increase 
 your knowledge by enlarging your being. Thus are Knowledge 
 and Being identical ; knowledge is a state of Being as knowing. 
 
 "If," said Plotinus, "knowledge is the same as the thing 
 known, the Finite, as Finite, never can know the Infinite, because 
 it cannot be the Infinite. To attempt, therefore, to know the In 
 finite by Reason is futile, it can only be known in immediate 
 presence, ffapourfia. The faculty by which the mind divests itself 
 of its personality is Ecstasy. In this Ecstasy the soul becomes 
 loosened from its material prison, separated from individual con 
 sciousness, and becomes absorbed in the Infinite Intelligence 
 from which it emanated. In this Ecstasy it contemplates real 
 existence ; it identifies itself with that which it contemplates." 
 
 The enthusiasm upon which this Ecstasy is founded is not a 
 faculty which we constantly possess, such as Reason or Percep 
 tion : it is only a transitory state, at least so long as our personal 
 existence in this world continues. It is a flash of rapturous light, 
 in which reminiscence is changed into intuition, because in that 
 moment the captive soul is given back to its parent, its God. 
 The bonds which attach the soul to the body are mortal ; and 
 God, our father, pitying us, has made those bonds, from which 
 we suffer, fragile and delicate, and in his goodness he gives us 
 certain intervals of respite : Zevg & tfa<njp zki^ag tfcvoujxsvaf, 
 ^v^-rcx, au-rojv <ra dstfpa tfoiwv rfsi a tfovouvra/, (Ji ^wtfiv avatfauXag 1 sv 
 
 The Oriental and mystical character of this conception is worth 
 remarking ; at the same time there is a Platonic element in it, 
 which may be noticed. Plato, in the Ion, speaks of a chain of 
 inspiration, which descends from Apollo to poets, who transmit 
 the inspiration to the rhapsodists; the last links of the chain are 
 the souls of lovers and philosophers, who, unable to transmit the 
 divine gift, are nevertheless agitated by it. The Alexandrians 
 also admit the divine inspiration : not that inspiration which 
 only warms and exalts the heart, but that inspiration revealing 
 the Truth which Reason can neither discern nor comprehend. 
 
THE ALEXANDRIAN DIALECTICS. 319 
 
 Whether, in ascending through the various sciences and labori 
 ously mounting all the degrees of Dialectics, we finally arrive at 
 the summit, and tear away the veil behind which the Deity is 
 hidden ; or, instead of thus slowly mounting, we arrive at the 
 summit by a sudden spring, by the force of virtue or by the force 
 of love, the origin of this revelation is the same : the Poet, the 
 Prophet, and the Philosopher only differ in the point of depart 
 ure each takes. Dialectics, therefore, though a valuable method, 
 is not an infallible one for arriving at Ecstasy. Every thing 
 which purifies the soul and makes it resemble its primal simpli 
 city, is capable of conducting it to Ecstasy. Besides, there are 
 radical differences in men s natures. Some souls are ravished 
 with Beauty ; and these belong to the Muses. Others are ravish 
 ed with Unity and Proportion ; and these are Philosophers. 
 Others are more struck with Moral perfections ; and these are 
 the pious and ardent souls who live only in religion. 
 
 Thus, then, the passage from simple Sensation, or from Remi 
 niscence, to Ecstasy, may be accomplished in three ways. By 
 Music (in the ancient and comprehensive sense of the term), by 
 Dialectics, and by Love or Prayer. The result is always the 
 same, the victory of the- Universal over the Individual. 
 
 Such is the answer given by the Alexandrians to that world- 
 old question, How do we know God ? The Reason of man is in 
 competent to such knowledge, because Reason is finite, and the 
 finite cannot embrace the infinite. But, inasmuch as Man has a 
 knowledge of the Deity, he must have obtained it in some way : 
 the question is, In what way ? This question, which the Chris 
 tian Fathers were enabled to answer satisfactorily by referring to 
 Revelation, the Alexandrians could only answer most unsatisfac 
 torily by declaring Ecstasy to be the medium of communication, 
 because in Ecstasy the soul lost its personality and became ab 
 sorbed in the Infinite Intelligence. 
 
 We may read in this philosophy an instructive lessor respect 
 ing the vicious circle in which all such reasonings are condemned 
 to move : 
 
320 ANTAGONISM OF CHRISTIANITY, ETC. 
 
 "The one poor finite being in the abyss 
 Of infinite being twinkling restlessly." 
 
 This finite being strives to comprehend that which includes it, 
 and in the impossible attempt exerts its confident ingenuity. 
 Conscious that the finite as finite cannot comprehend the infinite, 
 the Alexandrian hypothesis is at least consistent in making the 
 finite become, for an instant, infinite. The grounds however 
 upon which this hypothesis is framed are curious. The axiom 
 is this : The finite cannot comprehend the infinite. The prob 
 lem is this : How can the finite comprehend the infinite ? And 
 the solution is : The finite must become the infinite. 
 
 Absurd as it is, it is the conclusion deduced by a vigorous in 
 tellect from premises which seemed indisputable. It is only one 
 of the absurdities inseparable from the attempted solution of in 
 soluble problems. 
 
 III. THE ALEXANDRIAN TRINITY. 
 
 We have said that the philosophy of the Alexandrians was a 
 theology ; their theology may be said to be concentrated in the 
 doctrine of the Trinity. Nearly allied to the mystery of the In 
 carnation, which was inseparable from the mystery of Redemp 
 tion, the dogma of the Holy Trinity was, as M. Saisset remarks, 
 the basis of all the Christian metaphysics. The greater part of 
 the important heresies, Arianism, Sabellianism, Nestorianism, 
 etc., resulted from differences respecting some portion of this 
 doctrine. It becomes, therefore, a matter of high historical in 
 terest to determine its parentage. Some maintain that the Trin 
 ity of the Christians was but an imitation of that of the Alexan 
 drians ; others accuse the Alexandrians of being the imitators. 
 The dispute has been angrily conducted on both sides. It is not 
 our purpose to meddle with it, as our history steers clear of such 
 matters ; but we think it right to indicate the quarrel.* 
 
 * Such of our readers as may desire a compendious statement of the 
 question are referred to M. Jules Simon, Histolre tie V Ecole (V Alexandrie, 
 vol. i. pp. 308-341, and to the article by M. Saisset, in the Revue des Deux 
 Mondes, before referred to. 
 
THE ALEXANDRIAN TKINITY. 321 
 
 The Alexandrian Trinity is as follows : God is triple, and, at 
 the same time, one. His nature contains within it three distinct 
 Hypostases (Substances, i. e. Persons), and these three make one 
 Being. The first is the Unity : not The One Being, not Being 
 at all, but simple Unity. The second is the Intelligence, which 
 is identical with Being. The third is the Universal Soul, cause 
 of all activity and life. 
 
 Such is the formula of the dogma. Let us now see how their 
 Dialectics conducted them to it. On looking abroad upon the 
 world, and observing its constant transformations, what is the 
 first thing that presents itself to our minds as the cause of all 
 these changes ? It is Life. The whole world is alive ; and, not 
 only alive, but seemingly participating in a life similar to our 
 own. On looking deeper, we discover that life itself is but an 
 effect of some higher cause ; and this cause must be the " Uni 
 versal," which we are seeking to discover. Our logic tells us that 
 it is Activity Motion. But with this Motion we cannot pro 
 ceed far. It soon becomes apparent to us that the myriad on 
 goings of nature are not merely activities, but intelligent activities. 
 No hazard rules this world. Intelligence is everywhere visible. 
 The Cause, then, we have been seeking is at last discovered : it 
 is an Intelligent Activity. Now, what is this, but that mysterious 
 force residing within us, directing us, impelling us ? What is 
 this Intelligent Activity but a soul ? The soul which impels and 
 directs us is an image of the Soul which impels and directs the 
 world. God, therefore, is the eternal Soul, the 4^;^. We have 
 here the first Hypostasis of the Alexandrians. On a deeper inspec 
 tion this notion turns out less satisfactory. The dialectician, whose 
 whole art consists in dividing and subdividing, in order to arrive 
 at pure unity who is always unravelling the perplexed web of 
 speculation, to lay bare at last the unmixed One which had be 
 come enveloped in the Many the dialectician, bred up in the 
 Schools of Plato and Aristotle, could not rest satisfied with so 
 complex an entity as an Intelligent Activity. There are at least 
 two ideas here, and two ideas entirely distinct in nature, viz., In- 
 
 H* 
 
322 ANTAGONISM OF CHRISTIANITY, ETC. 
 
 telligeuce and Motion. Now, although these might be united in 
 some idea common to both, yet superior to both, neither of them 
 could be considered as the last term in an analysis. The Intel 
 ligence, when analyzed, is itself the activity of some intelligent 
 being, of Mind, Xo^oj. 
 
 God, therefore, is Mind, absolute, eternal, immutable. We 
 have here the second Hypostasis. Superior to the Divine Soul, 
 4/u^ TOU tfavroV, which is the cause of all activity, and king of 
 the sensible world, "xopyyvs rfs xivTJrfsw^, /^atfiXsuj TOJV ^j/vojasvwv, 
 we find the Divine Mind, voUj, the magnificence of which we may 
 faintly conceive by reflecting on the splendors of the sensible 
 world, with the Gods, Men, Animals, and Plants, which adorn 
 it: splendors which are but imperfect images of the incomparable 
 lustre of eternal truth. The Divine Mind embraces all the intel 
 ligible Ideas which are without imperfection, without movement. 
 This is the Age of Gold, of which God is the Saturn. For Saturn, 
 of whom the Poets have so grandly sung, is the Divine Intelli 
 gence ; that perfect world which they have described, when 
 
 " Vcr erat seternum : placidique tepentibus auris 
 Mulcebant Zephyri natos sine semine flores. 
 Mox ctiam fruges tell us inarata ferebat ; 
 Nee renovatus ager gravidis canebat aristis. 
 Flumina jam laetis, jam flumina nectaris ibant; 
 Flavaque de viridi stillabarit iliee mella."* 
 
 That golden age is the Intelligible World, the eternal Thought 
 of eternal Intelligence. 
 
 A word or two on this Alexandrian vofe. It is Thought ab 
 stracted from all thinking : it does not reason ; for to reason is 
 to acquire a knowledge of something : he who reasons, arrives 
 at a consequence from his premises, which he did not see in 
 those premises without effort. But God sees the consequence 
 
 * "The flowers unsown in fields and meadows reigned; 
 And western winds immortal spring maintained. 
 In following years the bearded corn ensued 
 From earth unasked ; nor was that earth renewed. 
 From veins of valleys milk and nectar broke, 
 And honey sweating from the pores of oak." DKYDEN S Ovid. 
 
THE ALEXANDRIAN TRINITY. 323 
 
 simultaneously with the premises. His knowledge resembles our 
 knowledge as hieroglyphic writing resembles our written lan 
 guage : that which we discursively develop, he embraces at once. 
 
 This vous is at the same time the eternal existence, since all 
 Ideas are united in it. It is the vdytfig vorjtfswj VOTJO^ of Aristotle, 
 or, to use the language of Plotinus, is the Sight Seeing, the iden 
 tity of the act of seeing with the object seen : grfri yap j VO TJO JS 
 6 patfi^ opwa a, ajjwpw TO s v, a conception which will at once be 
 understood by recurring to our illustration of the identity of 
 Knowledge and Being, given above. 
 
 One would fancy that this was a degree of abstraction to sat 
 isfy the most ardent dialectician ; to have analyzed thus far, and 
 to have arrived at pure Thought and pure Existence the Thought 
 apart from Thinking and the Existence apart from its modes 
 would seem the very limit of human ingenuity, the last abstrac 
 tion possible. But no : the dialectician is not yet contented : 
 he sees another degree of abstraction still higher, still simpler : 
 he calls it Unity. God, as Existence and Thought, is God as 
 conceived by human intelligence : but, although human intelli 
 gence is unable to embrace any higher notion of God, yet is there 
 in human intelligence a hint of its own weakness and an as 
 surance of God s being something ineffable, incomprehensible. 
 God is not, en derniere analyse, Existence and Thought. What 
 is Thought ? What is its type ? The type is evidently human 
 reason. What does an examination of human reason reveal ? 
 This : To think is to be aware of some object from which the 
 thinker distinguishes himself. To think is to have a self-con 
 sciousness, to distinguish one s personality from that of all other 
 objects, to determine the relation of self to not-self. But nothing 
 is external to God : in him there can be no distinction, no determi 
 nation, no relation. Therefore God, in his highest hypostasis, can 
 not think, cannot be thought, but must be something superior to 
 thought. Hence, the necessity for a third hypostasis, which third 
 in the order of discovery is first in the order of being : it is Unity, 
 
324: ANTAGONISM OF CHRISTIANITY, ETC. 
 
 The Unity is not Existence, neither is it Intelligence it is 
 superior to both : it is superior to all action, to all determina 
 tion, to all knowledge ; for, in the same way as the multiple is 
 contained in the simple, the many in the one, in the same way is 
 the simple contained in the unity ; and it is impossible to dis 
 cover the truth of things until we have arrived at this absolute 
 unity ; for, how can we conceive any existing thing except by 
 unity ? What is an individual, an animal, a plant, but that 
 unity which presides over multiplicity I What even is multi 
 plicity an army, an assembly, a flock when not brought under 
 unity ? Unity is omnipresent ; it is the bond which unites even 
 the most complex things. The Unity which is absolute, immu 
 table, infinite, and self-sufficing is not the numerical unit, not the 
 indivisible point. It is the absolute universal One in its perfect 
 simplicity. It is the highest degree of perfection the ideal 
 Beauty, the supreme Good, ^pwrov dyc^ov. 
 
 God therefore in his absolute state in his first and highest 
 Hypostasis is neither Existence nor Thought, neither moved 
 nor mutable : he is the simple Unity, or r as Hegel would say, 
 the Absolute Nothing, the Immanent Negative. Our readers 
 will perhaps scarcely be patient under this infliction of dialec 
 tical subtlety ; but we beg them to remember that the absurdities 
 of genius are often more instructive than the discoveries of com 
 mon men, and the subtleties and extravagances of the Alexan 
 drians are fraught with lessons. If rigorous logic conducted 
 eminent minds to conceptions which appear extravagant and 
 sterile, they may induce in us a wholesome suspicion of the effi 
 cacy of that logic to solve the problems it is occupied with. Nor 
 is the lesson inapplicable to our age. The present enthusiasm 
 for German Literature and German Philosophy will of course 
 turn the attention of many young minds to the speculations in 
 which Germany is- so rife ; we are consequently more interested 
 in Plotinus, because he agitates similar questions and affords very 
 similar answers. The German Metaphysicians resemble Plotinus 
 more than Plato or Aristotle : nor is the reason difficult of dis- 
 
THE ALEXANDRIAN TRINITY. 325 
 
 covery. Plotinus, coming after all the great thinkers had asked 
 almost every metaphysical question and given almost every pos 
 sible answer, was condemned either to skepticism or to accept 
 any consequences of his dialectics, however extreme. Philosophy 
 was in this dilemma either to abdicate, or to be magnificently 
 tyrannical : it chose to be the latter. Plotinus therefore shrank 
 from no extravagances : where Reason failed, there he called 
 upon Faith. The Germans, coming after the secure establish 
 ment of Positive Science, found Philosophy in a similar dilemma: 
 either to declare itself incapable, or to proclaim its despotism 
 and infallibility : what Logic demonstrated must be absolutely 
 true. 
 
 This faith in logic is remarkable, and may be contrasted with 
 the Alexandrian faith in Ecstasy. Of the possibility of human 
 logic not being the standard of truth, the Germans have no sus 
 picion ; they are without the Greek skepticism as to the Crite- 
 rium. They proceed with peaceable dogmatism to tell you that 
 God is this, or that ; to explain how the Nothing becomes the 
 Existing world, to explain many other inexplicable things ; and, 
 if you stop them with the simple inquiry, How do you know 
 this? what is your ground of certitude? they smile, allude 
 blandly to Vernunft, and continue their exposition. 
 
 Plotinus was wiser, though less consequent. He said, that 
 although Dialectics raise us to some conviction of the existence 
 of God, we cannot speak of his nature otherwise than negatively : 
 gv d^oupsVsi Travra <ra irspi <rou<rov Xc^o/jisva. We are forced to ad 
 mit his existence, though it is not correct to speak even of his 
 existence. To say that he is superior to Existence and Thought, 
 is not to define him ; it is only to distinguish him from what he 
 is not. What he is we cannot know ; it would be ridiculous to 
 endeavor to comprehend him. This difference apart, there is 
 remarkable similarity in the speculations of the Alexandrians 
 and the modern Germans : a similarity which all will detect who 
 are capable of detecting identity of thought under diversity of 
 language. 
 
326 ANTAGONISM OF CHRISTIANITY, ETC. 
 
 To return to the Alexandrian Trinity, we see in it the Perfect 
 Principle, the One, TO g v a-jrXoiJv, which generates, but is ungen- 
 erated ; the Principle generated by the Perfect, is of all gener 
 ated things the most perfect : it is therefore Intelligence vouj. 
 In the same way as Intelligence is the Word (Xo^oj) of the One 
 and the manifestation of its power, so also the Soul is the 
 Word and manifestation of the Intelligence, o/ov xa/ v\ 4^ U X^ ^7 
 vou. The three Hypostases of the Deity are therefore, 1st, the 
 Perfect, the Absolute Unity, TO v acrXouv ; 2d, the First Intel 
 ligence, TO vouv tfpwTwj ; 3d, the Soul of the world. 
 
 This Trinity is very similar to the threefold nature of God in 
 Spinoza s system. Spinoza says, that God is the infinite Exist 
 ence, having two infinite Attributes Extension and Thought. 
 Now this Existence, which has neither Extension nor Thought, 
 except as Attributes, although verbally differing from the Abso 
 lute Unconditioned, the One, of Plotinus, is, in point of fact, 
 the same : it is the last abstraction which human logic can 
 make : it is that of which nothing can be predicated, and yet 
 which must be the final predicate of every thing : division and 
 subdivision, however prolonged, stop there, and admit as final 
 the Unconditioned Unconditional Something; that which Pro- 
 clus calls the Non-Being, \w\ o v, although it is not correct to call 
 it nothing, pySiv. 
 
 This conception, which it is impossible to state in words with 
 out stating gross contradictions, is the result of rigorous logic, 
 reasoning from false premises. The process is this : I have to 
 discover that which is at the bottom of the mystery of exist 
 ence the great First Cause ; and to do this, I must eliminate, 
 one by one, every thing which does not present itself as self-ex 
 isting, self-sufficing, as necessarily the first of all things, the 
 
 The ancients began their speculations in the same way, but 
 with less knowledge of the conditions of inquiry. Hence, Water, 
 Air, Soul, Number, Force, were severally accepted as Principia. 
 In the time of the Alexandrians something more subtle was 
 
THE ALEXANDRIAN TRINITY. 327 
 
 required. They asked the same question, but they asked it 
 with a full consciousness of the failure of their predecessors. 
 Even Thought would not satisfy them as a Principium ; nor 
 were they better satisfied with abstract Existence. They said 
 there is something beyond Thought, something beyond Exist 
 ence : there is that which thinks, that which exists. This " that" 
 this Indeterminate Ineffable, is the Principium. It is self-suf 
 ficing, self-existent ; nothing can be conceived beyond it. In the 
 old Indian hypothesis of the world being supported by an ele 
 phant, who stood on the back of a tortoise, the tortoise standing 
 on nothing, we see a rude solution of the same problem : the 
 mind is forced to arrest itself somewhere, and wherever it ar 
 rests itself it is forced to declare, explicitly or implicitly, that it 
 stops at Nothing ; because, as soon as it predicates any thing of 
 that at which it stops, it is forced to admit something beyond : 
 if the tortoise stands on the back of some other animal, upon 
 what does that other animal stand ? 
 
 Human logic, when employed upon this subject, necessarily 
 abuts upon Nothing, upon absolute Negation ; the terms in 
 which this conception is clothed may differ, but the conception 
 remains the same : Plotimis and Hegel shake hands. 
 
 In reviewing the history of Greek speculation, from the 
 " Water" of Thales to the " Absolute Negation" of Plotinus, what 
 a reflection is forced upon us of the vanity of metaphysics ! So 
 many years of laborious inquiry, so many splendid minds en 
 gaged, and, after the lapse of ages, the inquiry remains the 
 same, the answer only more ingeniously absurd ! Was, then, 
 all this labor vain? Were those long, laborious years, all 
 wasted ? Were those splendid minds all useless ? No : earnest 
 endeavor is seldom without result. Those centuries of specula 
 tion were not useless, they were the education of the human 
 race. They taught mankind this truth, at least: the Infinite 
 cannot be known by the finite ; and man, as finite, can only 
 know phenomena. Those labors, so fruitless in their immediate 
 object, have indirect lessons. The speculations of the Greeks 
 
328 ANTAGONISM OF CHRISTIANITY, ETC. 
 
 preserve the same privilege as the glorious products of their art 
 and literature ; they are the models from which the speculations 
 of posterity are reproductions. The history of modern meta 
 physical philosophy, is but the narrative of the same struggles 
 which agitated Greece. The same problems are revived, and the 
 same answers offered. 
 
 IV. THE DOCTRINE OF EMANATION. 
 
 Metaphysics propounds three questions : Has human knowl 
 edge any absolute certainty ? What is the nature of God ? What 
 is the origin of the World ? 
 
 Our review of the various attempts to answer these questions, 
 has ended in the Alexandrian School, which answered them as 
 follows: 1st. Human knowledge is necessarily uncertain; but 
 this difficulty is got over by the hypothesis of an Ecstasy, in 
 which the soul becomes identified with the Infinite. 2d. The 
 Nature of God is a triple Unity three hypostases of the One 
 Being. 3d. The origin of the world is the law of Emanation. 
 
 This third answer is of course implied in the second. God, 
 as Unity, is not Existence ; but he becomes Existence by the 
 Emanation from his Unity (Intelligence), and by the second em 
 anation from his Intelligence (Soul), and this Soul, in its mani 
 festations, is the World. 
 
 Hitherto dualism has been the universal creed of those who 
 admitted any distinction between the world and its creator. 
 Jupiter, organizing Chaos ; the God of Anaxagoras, whose force 
 is wasted in creation ; the 5>jfMoupyo of Plato, who conquers and 
 regulates Matter and Motion ; the immovable Thought of Aris 
 totle : all these creeds were dualistic ; and, indeed, to escape 
 dualism was no easy task. 
 
 If God is distinct from the World, dualism is at once assumed. 
 If he is distinct, he must be distinct in Essence. If distinct iu 
 essence, the question of Whence came the world? is not an 
 swered; for the world must have existed contemporaneously 
 with him. 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF EMANATION. 329 
 
 Here lies the difficulty : either God made the world, or he did 
 not. If he made it, whence did he make it ? He could not, 
 said logic, make it out of Nothing; for nothing can come of 
 Nothing; he must, therefore, have made it out of his own sub 
 stance. If it is made out of his own substance, then it is iden 
 tical with him : it must, then, have existed already in him, or he 
 could not have produced it. But this identification of God with 
 the world is Pantheism ; and begs the question, it should answer. 
 
 If he did not make it out of his own substance, he must have 
 made it out of some substance already existing ; and thus, also, 
 the question still remains unanswered. 
 
 This problem was solved by the Christians and Alexandrians 
 in a similar, though apparently different, manner. The Chris 
 tians said that God created the world out of Nothing by the 
 mere exercise of his omnipotent will ; for to Omnipotence every 
 thing is possible ; one thing is as easy as another. The Alex 
 andrians said that the world was distinct from God in act rather 
 than in essence : it was the manifestation of his will or of his 
 intelligence. 
 
 Thus the world is God ; but God is not the world. Without 
 the necessity of two principles, the distinction is preserved between 
 the Creator and the Created. God is not confounded with Mat 
 ter ; and yet Philosophy is no longer oppressed with the difficul 
 ty of accounting for two eternally existing and eternally distinct 
 principles. 
 
 Plotinus had by his Dialectics discovered the necessity of 
 Unity as the basis of existence : he had also by the same means 
 discovered that the Unity could not possibly remain alone : other 
 wise there would never have been the Many. If the Many im 
 plies the One, the One also implies the Many. It is the property 
 of each principle to engender that which follows it : to engender 
 it in virtue of an ineffable power which loses nothing of itself. 
 This power, ineffable, inexhaustible, exercises itself without stop 
 ping, from generation to generation, till it attains the limits of 
 possibility. 
 
330 ANTAGONISM OF CHRISTIANITY, ETC. 
 
 By this law, which governs the world, and from which God 
 himself cannot escape, the totality of existences, which Dialectics 
 teach us to arrange in a proper hierarchy from God to sensible 
 Matter, appear to us thus united in one indissoluble chain, since 
 each being is the necessary product of that which precedes it, 
 and the necessary producer of that which succeeds it. 
 
 If asked why Unity should ever become Multiplicity why God 
 should ever manifest himself in the world? the answer is ready: 
 The One, as conceived by the Eleatics, had long been found in 
 complete ; for a God who had no intelligence could not be per 
 fect : as Aristotle says, a God who does not think is unworthy 
 of respect. If, therefore, God is Intelligent, he is necessarily ac 
 tive : a force that engenders nothing, can that be a real force ? 
 It was, therefore, in the very nature of God a necessity for him 
 to create the world : sv Ty (putfsi rp TO tfoisn. 
 
 God, therefore, is in his very essence a Creator, #0^%. He 
 is like a Sun pouring forth his rays, without losing any of its 
 substance : o/ ov sx <pw<ro, T^V sg aurou tfpi Xa|x%)^v. All this flux 
 this constant change of things, this birth and death is but the 
 restless manifestation of a restless force. These manifestations 
 have no absolute truth, no duration. The individual perishes, 
 because individual : it is only the universal that endures. The 
 individual is the finite, the perishable ; the universal is the infinite, 
 immortal. God is the only existence : he is the real existence, 
 of which we, and other things, are but the transitory phenomena. 
 And yet timid ignorant man fears death ! timid because ignorant. 
 To die is to live the true life : it is to lose, indeed, sensation, pas 
 sions, interests, to be free from the conditions of space and time, 
 to lose personality ; but it is also to quit this world and to be 
 born anew in God, to quit this frail and pitiable individuality, 
 to be absorbed in the being of the Infinite. To die is to live the 
 true life. Some faint glimpses of it some overpowering anti 
 cipations of a bliss intolerable to mortal sense, are realized in the 
 brief moments of Ecstasy, wherein the Soul is absorbed in the 
 Infinite, although it cannot long remain there. Those moments 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF EMANATION. 331 
 
 so exquisite vet so brief are sufficient to reveal to us the divinity, 
 and to show us that deep imbedded in our personality there is a 
 ray of the divine source of light, a ray which is always struggling 
 to disengage itself, and return to its source. To die is to live the 
 true life : and Plotinus dying, answered, in his agony, to friendly 
 questions : " I am struggling to liberate the divinity within me." 
 This mysticism is worth attention, as indicative of the march 
 of the human mind. In many preceding thinkers we have seen 
 a very strong tendency towards the desecration of personality. 
 From Heraclitus to Plotinus there is a gradual advance in this 
 direction. The Cynics and the Stoics made it a sort of philo 
 sophical basis. Plato implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, gave 
 it his concurrence. The conviction of man s insignificance, and 
 of the impossibility of his ever in this world ascertaining the 
 truth, seem to have oppressed philosophers with self-contempt. 
 To curse the bonds which bound them to ignorance, and to quit a 
 world in which they were thus bound, were the natural conse 
 quences of their doctrines ; but, linked mysteriously as we are to 
 life even to the life we curse our doctrines seldom lead to sui 
 cide. In default of suicide, nothing remained but Asceticism 
 a moral suicide. As man could not summon courage to quit the 
 world, he would at least endeavor to lead a life as far removed 
 from worldly passion and worldly condition as was possible ; and 
 he would welcome death as the only true life. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 PEOCLUS. 
 
 PLOTINUS attempted to unite Philosophy with Religion, at 
 tempted to solve by Faith the problems insoluble by Reason ; and 
 the result of such an attempt was necessarily mysticism. But, 
 although the mystical element is an important one in his doc 
 trine, he did not allow himself to be seduced into all the extrav 
 agances which naturally flowed from it. That was reserved for 
 his successors, lamblicus in particular, who performed miracles, 
 and constituted himself High Priest of the Universe. 
 
 With Proclus the Alexandrian School made a final effort, and 
 with him its defeat was entire. He was born at Constantinople, 
 A. D. 412. He came early to Alexandria, where Olympiodorus 
 was teaching. He passed onwards to Athens, and from Plutarch 
 and Syrianus he learnt to comprehend the doctrines of Plato and 
 Aristotle. Afterwards, becoming initiated into the Theurgical 
 mysteries, he was soon made a High Priest of the Universe. 
 
 The theological tendency is still more visible in Proclus than 
 in Plotinus. He regarded the Orphic poems and the Chaldean 
 oracles as divine revelations, and, therefore, as the real source of 
 philosophy, if properly interpreted ; and in this allegorical inter 
 pretation consisted his whole system. 
 
 " The intelligible forms of ancient poets, 
 The fair humanities of old religion, 
 The Power, the Beauty, and the Majesty, 
 That had her haunts in dale, or piny mountain, 
 Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring, 
 Or chasms and wat ry depths ; all these have vanish d, 
 They live no longer in the faith of reason ! 
 But still the heart doth need a language, still 
 Doth the old instinct bring back the old names. 
 And to yon starry world they now are gone, 
 
PROCLUS. 333 
 
 Spirits or Gods that used to share this earth 
 With man as with their friend."* 
 
 To breathe the breath of life into the nostrils of these defunct 
 deities, to restore the beautiful Pagan creed, by interpreting its 
 symbols in a new sense, was the aim of the whole Alexandrian 
 School. 
 
 Proclus placed Faith above Science. It was the only faculty 
 by which The Good, that is to say, The One, could be appre 
 hended. " The Philosopher," said he, " is not the Priest of one 
 Religion, but of all Religions ;" that is to say, he is to reconcile 
 all modes of Belief by his interpretations. Reason is the Ex 
 positor of Faith. But Proclus made one exception : there was 
 one Religion which he could not tolerate, which he would not 
 interpret, that was the Christian. 
 
 With this conception of his mission, it is easy to see that his 
 method must be eclectic. Accordingly, in making Philosophy 
 the expositor of Religion, he relied upon the doctrines of his pre 
 decessors without pretending to discover new ones for his pur 
 pose. Aristotle, whom he called " the Philosopher of the under 
 standing," he regarded as the man whose writings formed the best 
 introduction to the study of wisdom. In him the student learnt 
 the use of his Reason ; learnt also the forms of thought. After 
 this preparatory study came the study of Plato, whom he called 
 the "Philosopher of Reason," the sole guide to the region of 
 Ideas, that is, of Eternal Truths. The reader will probably rec 
 ognize here the distinction between Understanding and Reason, 
 revived by Kant, and so much insisted on by Coleridge and his 
 followers. 
 
 Plato was the idol of Proclus; and the passionate disciple 
 thought every word of the master an oracle ; he discovered every 
 where some hidden and oracular meaning, interpreting the sim 
 plest recitals into sublime allegories. Thus the affection of Soc 
 rates for Alcibiades became the slender text for a whole volume 
 of mystical exposition. 
 
 * Coleridge, in his translation of the Pkcolommi. 
 
334: PROCLUS. 
 
 It is curious to notice the transformations of philosophy in the 
 various schools. Socrates interpreted the inscription on the tem 
 ple at Delphi, " Know thyself," as an exhortation to psychologi 
 cal and ethical study. He looked inwards, and there discovered 
 certain truths which skepticism could not darken ; and he dis 
 coursed, says his biographer, on Justice and Injustice, on things 
 holy and things unholy. 
 
 Plato also looked inwards, hoping to find there a basis of phi 
 losophy ; but his "Know thyself" had a different signification. 
 Man was to study himself, because, by becoming thoroughly ac 
 quainted with his mind, he would become acquainted with the 
 eternal Ideas of which sense awakened Reminiscence. His self- 
 knowledge was Dialectical, rather than Ethical. The object of 
 it was the contemplation of eternal Existence, not the regulation 
 of our worldly acts. 
 
 The Alexandrians also interpreted the inscription ; but with 
 them the Socratic conception was completely set aside, and the 
 Platonic conception carried to its limits. " Know thyself," says 
 Proclus, in his commentary on Plato s First Aldbiades, " that 
 you may know the essence from whose source you are derived. 
 Know the divinity that is within you, that you may know the 
 divine One of which your soul is but a ray. Know your own 
 mind, and you will have the key to all knowledge." These are 
 not the words of Proclus, but they convey the meaning of many 
 pages of his enthusiastic dialectics. 
 
 We are struck in Proclus with the frank and decided manner 
 in which Metaphysics is assumed to be the only possible science ; 
 we are struck with the naive manner in which the fundamental 
 error of metaphysical inquiry is laid open to view, and presented 
 as an absolute truth. In no other ancient system is it stated so 
 nakedly. If we desired an illustration of the futility of meta 
 physics we could not find a better than is afforded by Proclus, 
 who, be it observed, only pushed the premises of others to their 
 rigorous conclusions. 
 
 He teaches that the hierarchy of ideas, in which there is a 
 
PKOCLUS. 335 
 
 gradual generation from the most abstract to the most concrete, 
 exactly corresponds with the hierarchy of existences, in which 
 there is a constant generation from the most abstract (Unity) to 
 to the most concrete (phenomena) : so that the relations which 
 these ideas bear to each other, the laws which subordinate one 
 to the other in a word, the forms of the nomenclature of human 
 conceptions express the real causes, their action, their combina 
 tions ; in fact, the whole system of the universe.* 
 
 This is frank. The objection to the metaphysician has been 
 that he looks inwards to discover that which lies without him, 
 hoping, in his own conceptions of that which he is seeking to 
 know, to find the thing he seeks. We " philosophers of the Un 
 derstanding" aver that to analyze your mind is to learn the 
 nature of your mind : nothing else. Proclus boldly assumes 
 that to know the nature of your own mind is to know the whole 
 universe. This is at least consistent. But one might reasonably 
 ask how this knowledge is to be gained ? not simply by looking 
 inwards, or else all philosophers would have gained it ; not even 
 by meditation. How then ? Listen : 
 
 " Mercury, the Messenger of Jove, reveals to us Jove s paternal 
 will, and thus teaches us science ; and, as the author of all in 
 vestigation, transmits to us, his disciples, the genius of invention. 
 The Science which descends into the soul from above is more 
 perfect than any science obtained by investigation ; that which 
 is excited in us by other men is far less perfect. Invention is the 
 energy of the soul. The Science which Descends from above fills 
 the soul with the influence of the higher Causes. The Gods an 
 nounce it to us by their presence and by illuminations, and dis 
 cover to us the order of the universe." 
 
 Of course the Mystic who had revelations from above, dis 
 pensed with the ordinary methods of investigation ; and here 
 again we see Proclus consistent, though consistent in absurdity. 
 
 * This is also the doctrine of Hegel. 
 
CONCLUSION OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 WITH Proclus the Alexandrian School expired ; with him 
 Philosophy ceased. Religion, and Religion only, seemed capa 
 ble of affording satisfactory answers to the questions which per 
 plexed the human race, and Philosophy was reduced to the 
 subordinate office which the Alexandrians had consigned to the 
 Aristotelian Logic. Philosophy became the servant of Religion, 
 no longer reigning in its own right. 
 
 Thus was the circle of endeavor completed. With Thales, 
 Reason separated itself from Faith ; with the Alexandrians, the 
 two were again united. The centuries between these epochs 
 were filled with helpless struggles to overcome an insuperable 
 difficulty. 
 
 The difference is great between the childlike question of the 
 Ionian thinker, and the naive extravagance of the Alexandrian 
 Mystic : and yet each, stands upon the same ground, and looks 
 out upon the same troubled sea, hoping to detect a shore, igno 
 rant that all philosophy 
 
 " is an arch where through 
 
 Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades 
 Forever and forever as we move." 
 
 But, to the reflective student who thus sees these men, after cen 
 turies of endeavor, fixed on the self-same spot, the Alexandrian 
 straining his eager eyes after the same object as the Ionian, and 
 neither within the possible range of vision, there is something 
 which would be unutterably sad, were it not corrected by the 
 conviction that these men were fixed to one spot, because they 
 had not discovered the only true pathway, a pathway which those 
 who came after them securely trod. 
 
 Still, the spectacle of human failure, especially on so gigantic 
 
CONCLUSION OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. 337 
 
 a scale, cannot be without some pain. So many hopes thwarted, 
 so many great intellects wandering- in error, are not to be thought 
 of without sadness. But it bears a lesson which we hope those 
 who have followed us thus far will not fail to read : a lesson on 
 the vanity of Philosophy ; a lesson which almost amounts to a 
 demonstration of the impossibility of the human mind ever com 
 passing those exalted objects which its speculative ingenuity sug 
 gests as worthy of its pursuit. It points to that profound remark 
 of Auguste Comte, that there exists in all classes of our investi 
 gations a constant and necessary harmony between the extent 
 of our real intellectual wants, and the efficient extent, actual or 
 future, of our real knowledge. 
 
 But these great Thinkers, whose failures we have chronicled, 
 did not live in vain. They left the great problems where they 
 found them : but they did not leave Humanity as they found it. 
 Metaphysics might be still a region of doubt ; but the human 
 mind, in its endeavors to explore that region, had learnt in some 
 measure to ascertain its weakness and its force. Greek Philoso 
 phy was a failure ; but Greek Inquiry had immense results. 
 Methods had been tried and discarded ; but great preparations 
 for the real Method had been made. 
 
 Moreover, Ethics had become elevated to the rank of a science. 
 In the Pagan Religion morality consisted in obeying the particu 
 lar Gods : to propitiate their favor was the only needful art. 
 Greek Philosophy opened men s eyes to the importance of hu 
 man conduct to the importance of moral principles, which were 
 to stand in the place of propitiations. The great merit of this 
 is due to Socrates. He objected to propitiation as impious : he 
 insisted upon moral conduct as alone guiding man to happiness 
 here and hereafter. 
 
 But the Ethics of the Greeks were at the best narrow and 
 egoistical. Morality, however exalted or comprehensive, only 
 seemed to embrace the individual it was extremely incomplete 
 as regards the family ; and had scarcely any suspicion of what 
 we call social relations. No Greek ever attained the sublimity 
 
 15 
 
338 CONCLUSION OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 of such a point of view. The highest point he could attain was 
 to conduct himself according to just principles ; he never troubled 
 himself with others. By the introduction of Christianity, Ethics 
 became Social, as well as Individual. 
 
 So far advanced are we in the right direction so earnestly 
 are we engaged in the endeavor to perfect Social as well as In 
 dividual Ethics that we are apt to look down upon the progress 
 of the Greeks as trivial ; but it was immense, and in the history 
 of Humanity must ever occupy an honorable place. 
 
 Ancient Philosophy expired with Proclus. Those who came 
 after him, although styling themselves philosophers, were in 
 truth Religious Thinkers employing philosophical formula?. No 
 one endeavored to give a solution of the three great problems : 
 Whence came the world ? What is the nature of God ? What 
 is the nature of human knowledge ? Argue, refine, divide, and 
 subdivide as they would, the Religious Thinkers only used Phi 
 losophy as a subsidiary process : for all the great problems, Faith 
 was their only instrument. 
 
 The succeeding Epochs are usually styled the Epochs of Chris 
 tian Philosophy ; yet Christian Philosophy is a misnomer. A 
 Christian may be also a Philosopher; but to talk of Christian 
 Philosophy is an abuse of language. Christian Philosophy 
 means Christian Metaphysics; and that means the solution of 
 metaphysical problems upon Christian principles. Now what 
 are Christian Principles but the Doctrines revealed through Christ ; 
 revealed because inaccessible to Reason ; revealed and accepted 
 by Faith, because Reason is utterly incompetent? 
 
 So that metaphysical problems, the attempted solution of 
 which by Reason constitutes Philosophy, are solved by Faith, 
 and yet the name of Philosophy is retained ! But the very es 
 sence of Philosophy consists in reasoning, as the essence of Re 
 ligion is Faith. There cannot, consequently, be a Religious Phi 
 losophy : it is a contradiction in terms. Philosophy may be 
 occupied about the same problems as Religion ; but it employs 
 altogether different Methods, and depends on altogether different 
 
CONCLUSION OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. 339 
 
 principles. Religion may, and should, call in Philosophy to its 
 aid ; but in so doing it assigns to Philosophy only the subordinate 
 office of illustrating, reconciling, or applying its dogmas. This 
 is not a Religious Philosophy; it is Religion and Philosophy, 
 the latter stripped of its boasted prerogative of deciding for itself, 
 and allowed only to employ itself in reconciling the decisions of 
 Religion and of Reason. 
 
 From these remarks it is obvious that our History, being a 
 narrative of the progress of Philosophy only, will not include 
 any detailed account of the so-called Christian Philosophy, be 
 cause that is a subject strictly belonging to the History of Re 
 ligion. 
 
 Once more we are to witness the mighty struggle and the sad 
 defeat ; once more we are to watch the progress and develop 
 ment of that vast but ineffectual attempt which the sublime 
 audacity of man has for centuries renewed. Great intellects and 
 great hopes are once more to be reviewed ; and the traces noted 
 which they have left upon that Desert whose only semblance of 
 vegetation is a mirage, the Desert without fruit, without flower, 
 without habitation : arid, trackless, and silent, but vast, awful, 
 and fascinating. To trace the footsteps of the wanderers to fol 
 low them on their gigantic journeys to point again the moral of 
 
 " Poor Humanity s afflicted will 
 Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny," 
 
 to bring home to the convictions of men the humble, useful 
 truth that 
 
 " Wisdom is ofttimes nearer when we stoop, 
 Than when we soar," 
 
 will be the object of our SECOND PART. 
 
PART II. 
 
 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
TRANSITION PERIOD. 
 FKOM PKOCLUS TO BACON. 
 
 I. SCHOLASTICISM. 
 
 ALTHOUGH Modern Philosophy, rigorously defined, commences 
 with Bacon and Descartes, from whom a distinct development is 
 traceable, such as the purpose of this History requires, we must 
 not pass from Proclus to Bacon without at least a rapid glance 
 at the course of speculative activity during the intervening twelve 
 centuries. Mediaeval Philosophy has been much decried and 
 much exalted, but very little studied. So vast a subject demands 
 a patience and erudition few can bring to it. Fortunately for 
 me, whose knowledge of Scholasticism is limited to a superficial 
 acquaintance with some of the works of Aquinas, Abelard, and 
 Averroes, the nature of this History excludes any detailed exam 
 ination of mediaeval speculations. Consulting my own resources 
 and the reader s interest, I find that the whole career of philo 
 sophic inquiry, from Proclus to Bacon, can be presented in three 
 typical figures : namely, ABELARD, as representing Scholasticism ; 
 ALGAZZALI, as representing Arabian philosophy ; and GIORDANO 
 BRUNO, as representing the philosophic struggle which overthrew 
 the authority of Aristotle and the Church. These three thinkers 
 I have studied more or less in their own writings ; and the 
 reader will understand, therefore, that the following sketch is 
 wholly drawn from second-hand knowledge in all but these three 
 instances. 
 
 With the Alexandrians, Philosophy, as we have seen, became 
 absorbed in Religion. The Alexandrians were succeeded by the 
 Christian Fathers, who of course made Philosophy the handmaid 
 
344: FKOM PEOCLUS TO BACON. 
 
 to Religion ancilla Theologies. The whole philosophic effort 
 was to mediate between the dogmas of faith and the demands of 
 reason. Scholasticism derives its name from the schools opened 
 by Charlemagne for the prosecution of speculative studies, which 
 were only prosecuted in those days by the clergy, they alone 
 Laving leisure or inclination for such work. Thus did the Mon- 
 
 O 
 
 asteries form the cradle of Modern Philosophy.* 
 
 As far as we can separate the philosophic from the theological 
 element, it displays itself in three capital manifestations : 1st, The 
 debate on Universals ; 2d, The influence of the Arabians, espe 
 cially in their introduction of the works of Aristotle ; and 3d, 
 The rebellion against Aristotle and all other authority, in the 
 proclamation of the independence of Reason. 
 
 There was no separation at all until the ninth century, when, 
 in the person of Scotus Erigena, Philosophy timidly claimed its 
 privilege. And even Scotus Erigena said, " There are not two 
 studies, one of philosophy and one of religion ; true philosophy 
 is true religion, and true religion is true philosophy." In the 
 eleventh century appeared Roscellinus, who, in advocating the 
 philosophic doctrine of Nominalism, not only separated Philos 
 ophy from Religion, but placed it in direct antagonism with the 
 fundamental dogma of the Trinity. To understand this we must 
 remember that in those days there was a profound and even 
 servile submission to the double authority of the Church and the 
 Greek Philosophers, a submission necessarily resulting from the 
 teaching of the Fathers, who always combined the two. The 
 works of Greek Philosophers were, however, but scantily known 
 through Latin translations and commentaries ; but this perhaps 
 increased the eagerness to know them ; and thus all doctrine be- 
 
 * Victor Cousin, Hist, de la Phil. \\. 9eme Lecjon. The various historians 
 of Philosophy, especially Ritter and Tennemann, should be consulted ; but 
 the clearest and most readable work known to me is M. Rousselot s Etudes 
 sur la P/tilosophie dans le Moyen Age, 3 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1840. M. Remusat s 
 Abelard, 2 vols. Paris, 1845, by its analysis of Abelard s works, gives also a 
 very good idea of Scholastic speculation. 
 
SCHOLASTICISM. 345 
 
 came, in fact, erudition. To interpret Aristotle was to establish 
 philosophy. It is a common error to suppose that Aristotle at 
 once and always reigned despotically over the philosophy of the 
 Middle Ages. As M. Rousselot* remarks, there were two dis 
 tinct characters in Aristotle then accepted : there was first the 
 Logician, whose word was law, magister dixit, whose Organon 
 was the Bible of the schools, whose authority no one thought 
 of questioning ; and there was also the Metaphysician, who, so 
 far from receiving the worship offered to the Logician, was per 
 secuted, excommunicated, and burned, because his metaphysical 
 doctrine was thought to contain the fatal heresy of the unity of 
 substance.f It was not until after Abelard, and owing to the 
 Arabian influence, that Aristotle passed to use M. Remusat s 
 happy phrase from the consulship to the dictatorship of Phi 
 losophy/^ 
 
 Plato taught Realism. He maintained the existence of Ab 
 stract Ideas, as Objects or Substances. Aristotle, on the con 
 trary, taught that Abstract Ideas were nothing but abstractions ; 
 general names, not general things. Early Scholasticism adopted 
 Realism ; and when Roscellinus by subtle argumentation proved 
 that genera and species were nothing more than logical construc 
 tions, general terms, flatus vocis, without corresponding essences, 
 it was soon evident that he was in antagonism with the dogma 
 of the Trinity. "That Universal which you call Trinity cannot 
 exist ; and as the relations which unite these three divine persons 
 do not exist, the Trinity cannot exist. There is either one God 
 or three ; if there is but one, he exists in a single person ; if 
 there are three, there are three beings separate, distinct." 
 
 The consequence of such heresy may be foreseen. Roscellinus 
 was summoned before the Council of Soissons, and there forced 
 
 * Etudes sur la Philos. i. 173. 
 
 t Jourdain, in his erudite work, Kecherches sur Vage et Vorigine des Tra- 
 ductions cVAristote, has placed this condemnation of Aristotle beyond a 
 doubt. 
 
 I Abelard, i. aid. 
 
 15* 
 
34:6 FROM PROCLUS TO BACON. 
 
 publicly to recant. He escaped to England, and perished in 
 exile ; but the seed he had sown fructified, and Nominalism after 
 wards became the reigning doctrine. The amount of verbal 
 quibbling and idle distinctions employed on this famous question 
 is only greater than that employed on other questions, because of 
 its greater importance. No one can form an adequate idea of 
 the frivolity and wearisome prolixity of these Schoolmen without 
 opening one of their books; and even after having done so, it 
 will remain incomprehensible how sane and earnest intellects 
 could have contented themselves with such grinding of the air 
 in metaphysic mills, unless we understand the error which mis 
 led them. The error was in mistaking logical constructions for 
 truths, believing ideas to be the correlates of things, so that 
 whatever was discernible in the mental combination was neces 
 sarily true of external facts. The Schoolmen analyzed the ele 
 ments of speech and thought with the pertinacious eagerness now 
 employed by chemists in analyzing the elements of bodies. This 
 error is the fundamental error, principium et fons, of all meta 
 physical speculation ; and with an ill grace do metaphysicians 
 ridicule the follies of the Schoolmen, who only carried to excess 
 the metaphysical Method of unverified Deduction. It may be 
 true that Scholastic philosophy was for the most part a dispute 
 about words, but it is not for metaphysicians to cast the re 
 proach ; and the defenders of Scholasticism have an easy task 
 when they undertake to show that beneath these verbal disputes 
 lay the deepest problems of Ontology. 
 
 II. LIFE OF ABELARD. 
 
 The name of Abelard has been immortalized by association 
 with that of a noble woman. It is because Heloise loved him, 
 that posterity feels interested in him. M. Michelet indeed thinks 
 that to Abelard she owes her fame : " without his misfortunes 
 she would have remained obscure, unheard of;" and in one sense 
 this is true ; but true it also is that, without her love, Abelard 
 would have long ago ceased to inspire any interest ; for his was 
 
LIFE OF ABELAKD. 347 
 
 essentially a shallow, selfish nature. His popularity was rapid, 
 loud, and scandalous. He was fitted for it, lived for it. But 
 many a greater name has faded from the memories of men ; 
 many a once noisy reputation fails to awaken a single echo in 
 posterity. Apart from the consecration of passion and misfor 
 tune, there is little in his life to excite our sympathy. Viewed 
 in connection with Heloise he must always interest us ; viewed 
 away from her, he presents the figure of a quick, vivacious, un 
 scrupulous, intensely vain Frenchman. But, in several respects, 
 he represents the philosophic struggle of the twelfth century ; and 
 in this light we may consider him. 
 
 He was born in Brittany in 1079, of a noble family, named 
 Berenger. The name of Abelard came to him later. His mas 
 ter laughingly noticed his superficial manner of passing over 
 some studies, filled as he was with others, and said, " When a 
 dog is well filled, he can do no more than lick the bacon." The 
 word to lick, in the corrupt Latin of that day, was bajare, and 
 Bajolardus became the cognomen of this " bacon-licking student" 
 among his comrades, which he converted into Hdbelardus, " se 
 vantant ainsi de posseder ce qu on 1 accusait de ne pouvoir pren- 
 dre."* In the ancient writers the name is variously spelled, as 
 Abailardus, Abaielardus, Abaulardus, Abbajalarius, Baalaurdus, 
 Belardus, and in French as Abeillard, Abayelard, Abalard, Abau- 
 lard, Abaalary, Allebart, Abulard, Beillard, Baillard, Balard, and 
 even Esbaillart; which variations seem to imply that the old 
 French writers were as accurate in their spelling of proper names 
 as their descendants are in their use of English and German 
 names. 
 
 Abelard s father joined to his knightly accomplishments a taste 
 for literature, as literature was then understood ; and this taste 
 
 * Abelard, par M. Charles de Kemusat, Paris 1845, p. 13. This valuable 
 monograph contains the fullest biography of Abelard and the best analysis 
 of his works yet published. Indeed, before M. Cousin published the works 
 of Abelard, in 1836, every account of the philosophy of this thinker was ne 
 cessarily meagre and erroneous. 
 
348 FROM PROCLUS TO BACON. 
 
 became so dominant in the mind of the youth, that he renounced 
 the career of arms altogether for that of learning. Dialectics 
 was the great science of that day, almost rivalling in importance 
 the Theology which it served and disturbed by turns. It was 
 an exercise of intellectual ingenuity, for which this youth mani 
 fested surprising aptitude. He travelled through various prov 
 inces disputing with all comers, like a knight-errant of philoso 
 phy, urged thereto by the goading desire of notoriety. This 
 love of notoriety was his curse through life. At the age of 
 twenty he came to Paris, hoping there to find a fitting opportu 
 nity of display an arena for his powers as a disputant. He at 
 tended the lectures of William de Champeaux, the most re 
 nowned master of disputation, to whom students flocked from 
 all the cities of Europe. The new pupil soon excited attention. 
 The beauty of his person, the easy grace of his manner, his mar 
 vellous aptitude for learning, and still more marvellous facility of 
 expression, soon distinguished him from the rest. The master 
 grew proud of his pupil, loved him through his pride, and 
 doubtless looked on him as a successor. But it soon became 
 evident that the pupil, so quick at learning, did not sit there 
 merely to learn ; he was waiting for some good opportunity of 
 display, waiting to attack his venerable master, whose secret 
 strength and weakness he had discovered. The opportunity 
 came ; he rose up, and in the midst of all the students provoked 
 William de Champeaux to discussion, harassed, and finally van 
 quished him. llage and astonishment agitated the students; 
 rage and terror the master. The students were indignant be 
 cause they clearly saw Abelard s motive. 
 
 Abelard dates the origin of all his woes from this occasion, 
 when he created enmities which pursued him through life ; and, 
 with a sophistication common to such natures, he attributes the 
 enmities to envy at his ability, instead of to the real causes, 
 namely, his inordinate vanity and selfishness. For a time, indeed, 
 the rupture with his master seemed successful. Although only 
 two-and-twenty years of age, he established a school of Philos- 
 
LIFE OF ABELARD. 34:9 
 
 ophy at Melun, which became numerously attended, and spread 
 his name far and wide. Emboldened by success, he removed 
 his school still nearer to Paris to Corbeil in order, as he 
 frankly tells us, that he might be more importunate to his old 
 master. But his rival was still powerful, aged in science and 
 respect. Intense application was necessary, and in the struggle 
 Abelard s overtasked energies gave way. He was commanded 
 by the physicians to shut up his school, and retire into the coun 
 try for repose and fresh air. 
 
 In two years he returned to Paris, and saw with delight that 
 his reputation had not been weakened by absence, but that on the 
 contrary his scholars were more eager than ever. His old an 
 tagonist, William de Champeaux, had renounced the world, and 
 retired to a cloister, where he opened the school of Saint Victor, 
 afterwards so celebrated. His great reputation, although suffer 
 ing from Abelard s attacks, drew crowds. One day, when the 
 audience was most numerous, he was startled by the appearance 
 of Abelard among the students, come, as he said, to learn rhet 
 oric. William was troubled, but continued his lecture. Abe- 
 lard was silent until the question of " Universals" was brought 
 forward, and then suddenly changing from a disciple to an antag 
 onist, he harassed the old man with such rapidity and unexpect 
 edness of assault, that William confessed himself defeated, and 
 retracted his opinion. That retractation was the death of his in 
 fluence. His audience rapidly dwindled. No one would listen 
 to the minor points of Dialectics from one who confessed himself 
 beaten on the cardinal point of all. The disciples passed over 
 to the victor. When the combat is fierce between two lordly 
 stags, the hinds stand quietly by, watching the issue of the con 
 test, and if their former lord and master, once followed and re 
 spected, is worsted, they all without hesitation pass over to the 
 conqueror, and henceforth follow him. Abelard s school became 
 acknowledged as pre-eminent; and, as if to give his triumph 
 greater emphasis, the professor to whom William de Champeaux 
 had resigned his chair, was either so intimidated by Abelard s 
 
350 FROM PEOCLUS TO BACON. 
 
 audacity, or so subjugated by his ability, that he offered his chair 
 to Abelard, and ranged himself among the disciples. 
 
 Abelard was not content even with this victory. Although 
 undisputed master in Dialectics, he could not hear of any other 
 teacher without envy. A certain Anselm taught Theology at 
 Laon with immense success; and this was enough to trouble 
 Abelard s repose ; accordingly to Laon he went, ridiculed An- 
 selm s style, laughed at the puerile admiration of the scholars, 
 and offered to surpass the master in the explanation of Scripture. 
 The scholars first laughed, then listened, and admired. Abelard 
 departed, having excited anarchy in the school, and anguish in 
 the heart of the old man. 
 
 His career, at this period, was brilliant. His reputation had 
 risen above that of every living man. His eloquence and sub 
 tlety charmed hundreds of serious students, who thronged be 
 neath the shadows of the Cathedral in ceaseless disputation, 
 thinking more of success in dispute than of the truths involved. 
 M. Guizot estimates these students at not less than five thousand 
 of course not all at the same time. Amidst these crowds, 
 Abelard might be seen moving with imposing haughtiness of 
 carriage, not without the careless indolence which success had 
 given ; handsome, manly, gallant-looking, the object of incessant 
 admiration. His songs were sung in the streets, his arguments 
 were repeated in cloisters. The multitude reverentially made 
 way for him, as he passed ; and from behind their window-cur 
 tains peeped the curious eyes of women. His name was carried 
 to every city in Europe. The Pope sent hearers to him. He 
 reigned, and he reigned alone.* 
 
 It was at this period that the charms and helpless position of 
 Heloise attracted his vanity and selfishness. He resolved to se 
 duce her ; resolved it, as he confesses, after mature deliberation. 
 He thought she would be an easy victim ; and he who had lived 
 
 * " Cum jam me solum in mundo superesse philosophum sestimarem." 
 Epist. i. p. 9. 
 
LIFE OF ABELARD. 351 
 
 in abhorrence of libertinage scortorum immunditiam semper ab- 
 horrelam felt that he had now attained such a position that he 
 might indulge himself with impunity. We are not here attrib 
 uting hypothetic scoundrelism to Abelard ; we are but repeat 
 ing his own statements. "I thought, too," he adds, "that I 
 should the more easily gain the girl s consent, knowing as I did 
 to how great a degree she both possessed learning and loved it." 
 He tells us how he " sought an opportunity of bringing her into 
 familiar and daily intercourse with me, and so drawing her the 
 more easily to consent to my wishes. With this view I made a 
 proposal to her uncle, through certain of his friends, that he 
 should receive me as an inmate of his house, which was very near 
 to my school, on whatever terms of remuneration he chose ; 
 alleging as my reason that I found the care of a household an 
 impediment to study, and its expense too burdensome." The 
 uncle, Fulbert, was prompted by avarice, and the prospect of 
 gaining instruction for his niece, to consent. He committed her 
 entirely to Abelard s charge, "in order that whenever I should 
 be at leisure from the school, whether by day or by night, I 
 might take the trouble of instructing her; and should I find her 
 negligent, use forcible compulsion. Hereupon I wondered at 
 the man s excessive simplicity, with no less amazement than if I 
 had beheld him intrust a lamb to the care of a famishing wolf; 
 for in thus placing the girl in my hands for me not only to teach, 
 but to use forcible coercion, what did he do but give full liberty 
 to my desires, and offer the opportunity, even had it not been 
 sought, seeing that, should enticement fail, I might use threats 
 and stripes in order to subdue her ?"* 
 
 The crude brutality of this confession would induce us to 
 suppose it was a specimen of that strange illusion which often 
 makes reflective and analytic minds believe that their enthusiasms 
 and passions were calculations, had we not sufficient evidence, 
 throughout Abelard s life, of his intense selfishness and voracious 
 
 * See Epist. i. 
 
352 FKOM PKOCLUS TO BACON. 
 
 vanity. Whatever the motive, the incident is curious ; history 
 has no other such example of passionate devotion filling the mind 
 of a woman for a dialectician. It was dialectics he taught her ; 
 since he could teach her nothing else. She was a much better 
 scholar than he ; in many respects better read. She was perfect 
 mistress of Latin, and knew enough Greek and Hebrew to form 
 the basis of her future proficiency. He knew nothing of Greek 
 or Hebrew, although all his biographers, except M. Remusat, as 
 sume that he knew them both ; M. Michelet, even asserting that 
 he was the only man who did then know them.* In the study 
 of arid dialectics, then, must we imagine Abelard and Heloise 
 thrown together ; and, in the daily communion of their minds, 
 passion ripened, steeped in that vague, dream-like, but intense 
 delight, produced by the contact of great intelligences ; and thus, 
 as the Spanish translator of her letters says, " buscando siempre 
 con pretexto del estudio los parages mas retirados" they sought 
 in the still air and countenance of delightful studies a solitude 
 more exquisite than any society. " The books were open before 
 us," says Abelard, " but we talked more of love than philosophy, 
 and kisses were more frequent than sentences."! 
 
 In spite of the prudential necessity for keeping this intrigue 
 secret, Abelard s truly French vanity overcame his prudence. 
 He had written love-songs to Heloise ; and with the egotism of 
 a bad poet and indelicate lover, he was anxious for these songs 
 to be read by other eyes besides those for whom they were com 
 posed ; anxious that other men should know his conquest. His 
 
 * He knew a few terms current in the theological literature of the day, but 
 had he known more, his ostentatious vanity would have exhibited the knowl 
 edge on all occasions. He expressly declares, moreover, that he was forced 
 to read Greek authors in Latin versions. See Cousin s edition of the (Euvres 
 Inedites, p. 43 ; also Dialectica, p. 200, where the non-existence of Latin ver 
 sions is given as the reason of his ignorance of what Aristotle says in his 
 Physics and Metaphysics. 
 
 t Epist. i. p. 11. He adds, with his usual crudity: " Et ssepius ad sinus 
 quam ad libros reducebantur manus." Madame Guizot excellently indicates 
 the distinction between his sensual descriptions and the chaster, though 
 more passionate, language of Heloise: " die rappette, mais ne detaille point" 
 
LIFE OF ABELAKD. 353 
 
 songs were soon bandied about the streets. All Paris was in 
 the secret of his intrigue. That which a delicate lover, out of 
 delicacy, and a sensible lover, out of prudence, would have hid 
 den from the world, this coxcomb suffered to be profaned by 
 being bawled from idle and indifferent mouths.* 
 
 At length even Fulbert became aware of what was passing 
 under his roof. A separation took place ; but the lovers contin 
 ued to meet in secret. Heloise soon found herself pregnant, and 
 Abelard arranged for her an escape to Brittany, where she resided 
 with his sister, and gave birth to a son. When Fulbert heard of 
 her flight, he was frantic with rage. Abelard came cringing to 
 him, imploring pardon, recalling to him how the greatest men 
 had been cast down by women, accused himself of treachery, and 
 offered the reparation of marriage provided it were kept secret ; 
 because his marriage, if made known, would be an obstacle to 
 his rising in the Church, and the mitre already glimmered before 
 his ambitious eyes. Fulbert consented. But Heloise, with 
 womanly self-abnegation, would not consent. She would not 
 rob the world of its greatest luminary. " I should hate this mar 
 riage," she exclaimed, " because it would be an opprobrium and 
 a calamity." She recalled to Abelard various passages in Scrip 
 ture and ancient writers, in which wives are accursed, pointing 
 out to him how impossible it would be for him to consecrate 
 himself to philosophy unless he were free ; how could he study 
 amid the noises of children and domestic troubles of a house 
 hold ? how much more honorable it would be for her to sacrifice 
 herself to him ! She would be his concubine. The more she 
 humiliated herself for him, the greater would be her claims upon 
 his love ; and thus she would be no obstacle to his advancement, 
 no impediment to the free development of his genius. 
 
 * That this vanity and indelicacy are eminently French, though unhappily 
 not exclusively French, will be admitted by all who are conversant with the 
 life and literature of that remarkable people. It had not escaped the pier 
 cing gaze and healthy instincts of Moliere, who has an admirable passage on 
 this national peculiarity: see Arnolphe s monologue, act. iii. scene iii. of 
 L jEcole des Femmes. 
 
* 
 
 354: FROM PROCLUS TO BACON. 
 
 "I call God to witness," she wrote many years afterwards, 
 " that if Augustus, the emperor of the world, had deemed me 
 worthy of his hand, and would have given me the universe for a 
 throne, the name of your concubine would have been more glori 
 ous to me than that of his empress : carius mihi et dignius vide- 
 retur tua did meretrix quam illius imperatrix" 
 
 Gladly would Abelard have profited by this sublime passion ; 
 but he was a coward, and his heart trembled before Fulbert. He 
 therefore endeavored to answer her arguments ; and she, finding 
 that his resolution was fixed a resolution which he very char 
 acteristically calls a bit of stupidity, meam stultitiam burst into 
 tears, and consented to the marriage, which was performed with 
 all secrecy. Fulbert and his servants, however, in violation of 
 their oath, divulged the secret. Whereupon Heloise boldly denied 
 that she was married. The scandal became great ; but she per 
 sisted in her denials, and Fulbert drove her from the house with 
 reproaches. Abelard removed her to the nunnery of Argenteuil, 
 where she assumed the monastic dress, though without taking 
 the veil. Abelard furtively visited her.* Meanwhile Fulbert s 
 suspicions w^ere roused, lest this seclusion in the nunnery should 
 be but the first step to her taking the veil, and so ridding Abe 
 lard of all impediment. Those were violent and brutal times, but 
 the vengeance of Fulbert startled even the Paris of those days 
 with horror. With his friends and accomplices, he surprised 
 Abelard sleeping, and there inflicted that atrocious mutilation, 
 which Origen in a moment of religious frenzy inflicted on him 
 self. 
 
 In shame and anguish Abelard sought the refuge of a cloister. 
 He became a monk. But the intense selfishness of the man 
 would not permit him to renounce the world without also forcing 
 Heloise to renounce it. Obedient to his commands, she took the 
 
 * He adds " Nosti . . . quid ibi tecum inea Hbidinis egerit intemperantia 
 in quadam etiam parte ipsius rcfeotorii. Nosti id impudentissime tune ac- 
 tum esse in turn reverendo loco et summje Virgin! consecrato." Epist. v. 
 p. 69. 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF ABIiLARD. 355 
 
 veil ; thus once again sacrificing herself to him whom she had 
 accepted as a husband with unselfish regret, and whom she aban 
 doned in trembling, to devote herself henceforth without hope, 
 without faith, without love, to her divine husband. 
 
 The gates of the convent closed forever on that noble woman 
 whose story continues one of pure heroism to the last ; but we 
 cannot pause to narrate it here. With her disappearance, the 
 great interest in Abelard disappears ; we shall not therefore de 
 tail the various episodes of his subsequent career, taken up for 
 the most part with quarrels first with the monks, whose dis 
 soluteness he reproved, next with, theologians, whose hatred he 
 roused by the " heresy" of reasoning. He was condemned pub 
 licly to retract ; he was persecuted as a heretic ; he had ventured 
 to introduce Rationalism, or the explanation of the dogmas of 
 Faith by Reason, and he suffered, as men always suffer for 
 novelties of doctrine. He founded the convent of Paraclete, of 
 which Heloise was the first abbess, and on the 21st of April, 1142, 
 he expired, aged sixty-three. " II vecut dans 1 angoisse et mourut 
 dans rhumiliation," says M. de Remusat, " mais il eut de la gloire 
 et il fut aime." 
 
 III. PHILOSOPHY OF ABELARD. 
 
 It would not be difficult to fill a volume with the exposition of 
 Abelard s philosophy ; indeed, in M. de Remusat s work a volume 
 and a quarter are devoted to the subject without exhausting it. 
 But the nature of this History, and the necessities of space, 
 equally force us to be very brief. Abelard s contributions to the 
 development of speculation may all be reduced to two points : 
 the question of Universals, and the systematic introduction of 
 Reason as an independent element in theology, capable not only 
 of explaining dogmas, but of giving dogmas of its own. 
 
 " The nature of genera and species has formed perhaps the 
 longest and most animated, and certainly the most abstract con 
 troversy which has ever agitated the human mind," says M. de 
 Remusat, who adds, " that it is also one which now seems the 
 
356 FROM PKOCLUS TO BACON. 
 
 least likely to have interested men so deeply." The same will, 
 probably, one day be said of the question of Im materialism and 
 Materialism, a logomachy as great, as animated, and as remote 
 from all practical results, as that of Universals, but which, from 
 its supposed relation to religious truths, has been made the great 
 controversy of the schools. In our day there are few speculators 
 who do not believe that important religious principles are indis- 
 solubly connected with the doctrine of an immaterial principle 
 superadded to, and in nowise identical with, the brain; and this 
 in spite of the indisputable fact that the early Christian Fathers 
 maintained the materiality not only of the soul, but of God him 
 self;* in spite also of the many pious moderns of unimpeachable 
 orthodoxy who held, and hold, the doctrines stigmatized as Ma 
 terialism, and who think with Occam : " Experimur enim quod 
 iutelligimus et volumus et nolumus, et similes actus in nobis 
 habemus ; sed quod ilia sint e forma immateriali et incorrupti- 
 bili non experimur, et omnis ratio ad hujus probationer!! assumpta 
 assumit aliquod dubium."f 
 
 Although, therefore, the intense feeling stirred by the dispute 
 respecting Universals appears incomprehensible to us, who con 
 sider the dispute to have been a logomachy, for the most part; 
 we may render intelligible to ourselves how such a dispute came 
 to be so important, by considering the importance now attached 
 to the dispute respecting an " immaterial principle." Idle or im 
 portant, it was the dispute of the Middle Ages ; and M. Cousin 
 is guilty of no exaggeration in saying "the whole Scholastic 
 philosophy issued out of a phrase in Porphyry as interpreted by 
 Boethius." Here is the passage : " Intentio Porphyrii est in hoc 
 opere facilcm intellectum ad pra3dicamenta prseparare, tractando 
 
 * Tertullian wrote a work expressly to combat the immaterialism of Plato 
 and Aristotle. One sentence will suffice to bear out what is said above re 
 specting God : " Quis autem negabit Deum esse corpus, etsi Deus spiritus?" 
 M. Guizot, in \i\sLefons sur I" 1 Hist, de la Civilisation en France, and M. Rous- 
 selot s Etudes sur la PMlos. dans If, Moyen Age, will furnish the reader with 
 other examples. 
 
 t We borrow the passage from Rousselot s Etudes, iii. 256. 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF ABELARD. 357 
 
 de quinque rebus vel vocibus, genere scilicet, specie, differentia, 
 proprio et accidenti ; quorum cognitio valet ad praedicamentorum 
 cognitionem."* In the phrase rebus vel vocibus he was under 
 stood to signify that things and words were mutually convertible; 
 to discourse of one or of the other was indifferent ; and the ques 
 tion turned upon this point : Does the word Genus, or the word 
 Species, represent an actual something, existing externally, or 
 is it a mere name which designates a certain collection of indi 
 viduals ? The former opinion was held until Roscellinus attacked 
 it, and brought forward the heresy of Nominalism with such 
 force of argument that, although the heresy was condemned, the 
 logic forced its way ; and Abelard, when he attacked the doctrine 
 of Realism, taught by William de Champeaux, borrowed so much 
 of the Nominalist argument that until quite recently he has been 
 called a Nominalist himself. That he was not a pure Nominalist 
 is now clear ; and M. Rousselot has even made out an ingenious 
 case for him as a Realist. But, in truth, he was entirely neither; 
 he was something of both ; he was a Conceptualist. The pe 
 culiarity of his doctrine consists in the distinction of Matter and 
 Form applied to genus and species. " Every individual," he says 
 in a very explicit passage of the treatise De Generibus et Specie- 
 bus, printed by M. Cousin, " is composed of matter and form, t. e. 
 Socrates from the matter of Man, and the form of Socratity ; so 
 Plato is of the same matter, namely that of man, but of different 
 form, namely that of Platonity ; and so of all other individual 
 men. And just as the Socratity which formally constitutes Soc 
 rates is nowhere but in Socrates, so the essence of man which 
 sustains Socratity in Socrates, is nowhere but in Socrates. The 
 same of all other individuals. By species therefore I mean, not 
 that essence of man which alone is in Socrates, or in any other 
 individual, but, the whole collection which is formed of all the 
 
 * "The object of Porphyry in this work is to prepare the mind for the 
 easy understanding of the Predicaments, by treating of the five things or 
 words, namely, genus, species, difference, property, and accident ; the 
 knowledge of which leads to the knowledge of the Predicaments." 
 
358 FKOM PKOCLUS TO BACON. 
 
 individuals of the same nature. This whole collection, although 
 essentially multiple, by the Authorities is named one Species, one 
 Universal, one Nature ; just as a nation, although composed of 
 many persons, is called one. Thus each particular essence of the 
 collection called Humanity is composed of matter and form, 
 namely the animal is matter, the form is however not one, but 
 many, i. e. rationality, morality, bipedality, and all the other sub 
 stantial attributes. And that which is said of man, namely that 
 the part of man which sustains Socratity is not essentially the 
 part which sustains Platonity, is true also of the Animal.* For 
 the Animal which in me is the form of Humanity, cannot essen 
 tially be elsewhere ; but there is in it something not different 
 from the separate elements of individual animals. Hence, I call 
 Genus the multitude of animal essences which sustain the indi 
 vidual species of Animal : the multitude diversified by that which 
 forms Species. For this latter is only composed by a collection 
 of essences which sustain individual forms ; Genus, on the con 
 trary, is composed by a collection of the substantial differences 
 of different Species. . . . The particular essence which forms the 
 Genus Animal, results from a certain matter, essence of body, 
 and substantial forms, animation and sensibility, which can only 
 exist essentially there, although they take indifferently the forms 
 of all species of body. This union of essences produces the uni 
 versal named Animal Nature."f 
 
 This passage will give the reader a taste of Abelard s quality 
 when he is least tiresome ; from it we see clearly enough the kind 
 of reality which he attributed to general terms, in opposition to 
 the Nominalists, who taught that terms were only terms; he 
 said they were terms which expressed conceptions, and these con- 
 
 * We must subjoin the original : " Et sicut de homine dictum est, scilicet 
 quod ill ml horninis quod sustinet Socratitatem, illud esscntialiter non sus- 
 tinet Platonitatern, ita de animali. Nam illud animal quod formam humani- 
 tatis quoe in me est, sustinet, illud e?sentialiter alibi non est, sed illi non 
 differens est et singulis materiis singulorum individuorum anhnalis." 
 
 t De Generibus et /Speci-ebtis, p. 524. 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF ABELARD. 359 
 
 ceptions were based on realities : as when a multitude is con 
 ceived under the form of unity, linking together all the actual 
 resemblances existing between the individuals. This looks so 
 very like Realism, that M. Rousselot may be pardoned for having 
 argued at great length the paradoxical thesis of Abelard s being 
 a Realist ; but a closer examination of the treatise from which 
 we have just cited a long passage, proves that Abelard did not 
 deceive himself in maintaining the Realist doctrine to be errone 
 ous from his point of view. He maintained that genus and 
 species were not general essences existing essentially and inte 
 grally in the individuals, whose identity admitted of no other 
 diversity than that of individual modes, or accidents ; which was 
 the doctrine of Realism ; for, if this doctrine were true, the sub 
 ject of these accidents, the substance of these modes being iden 
 tical, every individual would possess the same substance, and 
 humanity would only be one man ; thus Socrates being at 
 Athens, humanity would be at Athens; but Plato being at 
 Thebes, humanity must then either not be at Athens, or Plato 
 must not be humanity. 
 
 Let us quit here the question of Universals, to consider the 
 second characteristic of Abelard s philosophy. It was he who 
 gave the form if not the subject-matter of Scholasticism. It was 
 he who brought Logic as an independent power into the arena 
 of theological debate ; a heresy which drew the terrors of the 
 Church upon him : Ponit in coelum os suum et scrutatur alia 
 Dei, said St. Bernard, writing to the Pope ; and the same St. 
 Bernard let fall the terrible accusation : " transgreditur fines quos 
 posuerunt patres nostri he has gone beyond the limits set by 
 our forefathers !" in all ages, in all nations, a mark of repro 
 bation. 
 
 Supported, as he thought, by thousands of partisans, Abelard 
 assumed an attitude of offence, almost of disdain. Unconscious 
 of his real danger, he published the substance of his Lectures in 
 a work called Introductio ad Theoloyiam, in which he undertook 
 to demonstrate by Reason the dogmas of Faith, and promulgated 
 
360 FROM PliOCLUS TO BACON. 
 
 the then audacious opinion, that all dogmas should be presented 
 under a rational form. That this was very far from being ac 
 ceptable, may be read not only in his condemnation, but also in 
 the passage of his Dialectica, where he says that his rivals de 
 clared it not permissible in a Christian to treat even of Dialec 
 tics, because Dialectics was not only incapable of instructing any 
 one in the faith, but disturbed and destroyed faith by the com 
 plication of its arguments.* 
 
 This commencement, feeble though it may have been, marks a 
 new epoch in the development of speculation. The struggle of 
 Reason against Authority, which began with Abelard, has not 
 yet terminated. " My disciples," he says in his Introduction, 
 " asked me for arguments drawn from philosophy such as reason 
 demanded, begging me to instruct them that they might under 
 stand, and not merely repeat what was taught them ; since no 
 one can believe any thing until he has first understood it; and it 
 is ridiculous to preach to others what neither teacher nor pupil 
 understand." 
 
 Not content with this revolutionary principle, Abelard further 
 "transgressed the limits of his forefathers" by the composition of 
 the treatise Sic et Non,\ the object of which was to cite the pas 
 sages of Scripture and the Fathers pro and con. upon every im 
 portant topic : this collocation of contradictory statements given 
 by the highest possible authorities was meant, as Abelard dis 
 tinctly informs us. to train the mind to vigorous and healthy 
 doubt, in fulfilment of the injunction, " Seek, and ye shall find ; 
 knock, and it shall be opened unto you." " Dubitando enim ad 
 inquisitionem venimus ; inquirendo vcritatem percipimus; juxta 
 quod et Veritas ipsa Qucerite, inquit, invenietis pulsate, et ape- 
 rietur vobis"^ Whatever his intention may have been, the re- 
 
 * Dialectica, p. 434. 
 
 t It is printed in Cousin s edition, but with omissions. The entire work 
 was published in Germany, 1841, under this title : Petri Abaelardi Sic (,t 
 Non / primum integrum ediderunt E. L. Henke et G. S. Lindenkokl. 
 
 \ Page 17 of the edition just named. 
 
ALGAZZALI. 361 
 
 suit of such a work was clearly foreseen by theological teachers, 
 who regarded doubt as damnable, and would not tolerate it under 
 the plausible aspects of intellectual gymnastics, or the love of 
 seeking for truth. But theologians were unable to arrest the 
 development of speculation. Doubt began ; disputation waxed 
 stronger ; logic played like lambent flame around the most sacred 
 subjects ; Scholasticism entered every city in Europe, and filled 
 it with subtle disputants. 
 
 During the centuries which succeeded, the question of Nomi 
 nalism was constantly in debate ; and besides it many others so 
 remote, and, to modern apprehensions, so frivolous, that few his 
 torians boast of more than superficial acquaintance with mediaeval 
 philosophy, and few mention it without scorn. To name but 
 one topic, what does the reader think of a debate, utrum Deus 
 intelligat omnia alia a se per ideas eorum, an aliter? What 
 does he think of men wasting their energies in trying to convince 
 each other of the true process by which God conceived ideas 
 discussing, with ardor and unmisgiving ingenuity, topics which 
 are necessarily beyond all possible demonstration ? Nevertheless, 
 absurd as such discussions were, they have found, even in modern 
 times, legitimate successors; and the laborious futility of the 
 Schoolmen has been rivalled by the laborious futility of the Ger 
 man metaphysicians. 
 
 We are not here to follow step by step the long course of me- 
 diseval speculation, but may pass at once to the Arabian Philos 
 ophy as illustrated in Algazzali. 
 
 III. ALGAZZALI. 
 
 In our ignorance of Arabian history, it would be presumptuous 
 to assert that, until the Greeks became known to them, the Arabs 
 had no philosophy at all of their own ; but whatever they may 
 have had, we are only repeating their own avowal in asserting, 
 that after their acquaintance with the Grecian systems, all phil 
 osophical energy was devoted to the mastery and development 
 of those systems. The history of their philosophy is divided into 
 
 16 
 
362 FROM PKOCLUS TO BACON. 
 
 two parts : the first comprising the period of ancient thinkers, 
 the Greeks ; the second comprising the efforts of the Mussulman 
 schools. The Greek schools were divided into two series, those 
 which preceded and those which succeeded Aristotle.* In the 
 first series there is scarcely a name familiar to our ears which 
 was not familiar to the Arabian philosophers, Orpheus and 
 Homer included. The Seven Sages are constantly alluded to. 
 Thales, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, in short all the great thinkers, 
 are expounded and commented on, not, according to M. Schmol- 
 ders, with any historical or critical accuracy, but at any rate 
 sufficiently to show their acquaintance with Greek books. In 
 the series succeeding Aristotle they are more at home. They 
 translated every work they could procure, and studied with ser 
 vile ingenuity to appropriate all the doctrines of the Stagirite. 
 Thus it is that Arabian Philosophy lies beside the sphere of 
 European development ; although the Arabians played an im 
 portant part in the development of European culture during the 
 Middle Ages, and Averroes and Avicenna were long regarded as 
 magistri, no sooner did Europe possess the originals from which 
 the Arabs learned, than they neglected these interpreters, and 
 interpreted for themselves. 
 
 The work which will form the basis of the present Section is 
 one which has the attraction of being entirely original the his 
 tory of a mind developing amid Arabian influences, and not the 
 mere reflex of Grecian thought. It is probably owing to the 
 originality of this treatise that it was never translated during the 
 Middle Ages, the translators of those days caring only for Greek 
 Philosophy ; and thus, in spite of the high reputation of Algazzali, 
 the work was a closed book to all but Arabian scholars, until 1842, 
 when a learned German reprinted it with a translation into French.f 
 
 Algazzali, the Light of Islam and Pillar of the Mosque, who 
 
 * Schrnolders, Essai sur les Ecoles Pliilosophiques chez les Arabes, p. 96. 
 
 t JSssai sur les Ecoles Philosophiques chez les Arabes. Par M. Schmolders- 
 Paris, 1842. From my notice of this work in the Edinburgh Review, April, 
 1847, I have incorporated many passages in the present Section. 
 
ALGAZZALI. 363 
 
 under the names of Gazzali, Ghazail, and Algazel is frequently 
 mentioned by writers on Arabian Philosophy, and was at one 
 time made familiar to Europe by the attacks of his adversary 
 Averroes, was born in the city of Tous, A. D. 1508. He was 
 named Abou Hamed Mohammed, and his father was a dealer in 
 cotton-thread (gazzdfy, from whence he drew his name. Losing 
 his father in early life, he was confided to the care of a Soufi. 
 The nearest approach to what is meant by a Soufi, is what we 
 mean by Mystic. The influence of this Soufi was great. No 
 sooner had the youth finished his studies, than he was appointed 
 professor of theology at Bagdad, where his eloquence achieved 
 such splendid success that all the Imams became his eager parti 
 sans. So great was the admiration he inspired, that the Mus 
 sulman sometimes said, " If all Islam were destroyed, it would 
 be but a slight loss, provided Algazzali s work on the Revivifi 
 cation of the Sciences of Religion were preserved." It is this 
 work which M. Schmolders has translated. It bears so remark 
 able a resemblance to the Discours sur la MetJwde of Descartes, 
 that, had any translation of it existed in the days of Descartes, 
 every one would have cried out against the plagiarism. 
 
 Like Descartes, he begins with describing how he had in vain 
 interrogated every sect for an answer to the mysterious problems 
 which " disturbed him with a sense of things unknown ;" and 
 how he finally resolved to discard all authority, and detach him 
 self from the opinions which had been instilled into him during 
 the unsuspecting years of childhood. "I said to myself," he 
 proceeds, " My aim is simply to know the truth of things ; con 
 sequently it is indispensable for me to ascertain what is knowl 
 edge. Now, it was evident to me that certain knowledge must be 
 that which explains the object to be known, in such a manner 
 that no doubt can remain, so that in future all error and conjec 
 ture respecting it must be impossible. Not only would the 
 understanding then need no efforts to be convinced of certitude, 
 but security against error is in such close connection with knowl 
 edge, that even were an apparent proof of its falsehood to be 
 
364: FROM PKOCLUS TO BACON. 
 
 brought forward, it would cause no doubt, because no suspicion 
 of error would be possible. Thus, when I have acknowledged 
 ten to be more than three, if any one were to say, On the con 
 trary, three is more than ten ; and to prove the truth of my 
 assertion, I will change this rod into a serpent : and if he were 
 to change it, my conviction of his error would remain unshaken. 
 His manoeuvre would only produce in me admiration for his 
 ability. I should not doubt my own knowledge. 
 
 " Then was I convinced that knowledge which I did not pos 
 sess in this manner, and respecting which I had not this cer 
 tainty, could inspire me with neither confidence nor assurance ; 
 and no knowledge without assurance deserves the name of 
 knowledge. 
 
 "Having examined the state of my own knowledge, I found it 
 divested of all that could be said to have these qualities, unless 
 perceptions of the senses and irrefragable principles were to be 
 considered such. I then said to myself, Now having fallen into 
 this despair, the only hope remaining of acquiring incontestable 
 convictions is by the perception of the senses, and by necessary 
 truths. Their evidence seemed to me indubitable. I began, 
 however, to examine the objects of sensation and speculation, to 
 see if they could possibly admit of doubt. Then doubts crowded 
 upon me in such numbers that my incertitude became complete. 
 Whence results the confidence I have in sensible thino-s ? The 
 
 O 
 
 strongest of all our senses is sight; and yet, looking at a shadow 
 and perceiving it to be fixed and immovable, we judge it to be 
 deprived of movement ; nevertheless, experience teaches us that, 
 when we return to the same place an hour after, the shadow is 
 displaced; for it does not vanish suddenly, but gradually, little 
 by little, so as never to be at rest. If we look at the stars, they 
 seem as small as money-pieces ; but mathematical proofs convince 
 us they are larger than the earth. These and other things are 
 judged by the senses, but rejected by reason as false. I aban 
 doned the senses, therefore, having seen all my confidence in 
 their truth shaken. 
 
ALGAZZALI. 365 
 
 "Perhaps," said I, "there is no assurance but in the notions of 
 Reason : that is to say, first principles, e. g. ten is more than 
 three : the same thing cannot have been created and yet have 
 existed from all eternity; to exist and not to exist at the same 
 time is impossible. 
 
 "Upon this the senses replied : What assurance have you that 
 your confidence in Reason is not of the same nature as your 
 confidence in us ? When you relied on us, Reason stepped in 
 and gave us the lie ; had not Reason been there, you would have 
 continued to rely on us. Well, may there not exist some other 
 judge superior to Reason, who, if he appeared, would refute the 
 judgments of Reason in the same way that Reason refuted us ? 
 The non-appearance of such a judge is no proof of his non-ex 
 istence." 
 
 These skeptical arguments Algazzali borrowed from the Gre 
 cian skeptics, and having borrowed them, he likewise borrowed 
 from Grecian mystics, of the Alexandrian school, the means of 
 escape from skepticism. He looked upon life as a dream. 
 
 " I strove in vain to answer the objections. And my difficul 
 ties increased when I came to reflect upon sleep. I said to my 
 self. During sleep you give to visions a reality and consistence, 
 and you have no suspicion of their untruth. On awakening, 
 you are made aware that they were nothing but visions. What 
 assurance have you, that all you feel and know when awake, does 
 actually exist ? It is all true as respects your condition at that 
 moment ; but it is, nevertheless, possible that another condition 
 should present itself, which should be to your awakened state 
 that which your awakened state now is to your sleep ; so that, 
 in respect to this higher condition, your waking is but sleep." 
 
 If such a superior condition be granted, Algazzali asks whether 
 we can ever attain to participation in it. He suspects that the 
 Ecstasy described by the Soufis must be the very condition. But 
 he finds himself philosophically unable to escape the conse 
 quences of skepticism : the skeptical arguments could only be 
 refuted by demonstrations ; but demonstrations themselves must 
 
366 FROM PROCLUS TO BACON. 
 
 be founded on first principles ; if they are uncertain, no demon 
 stration can be certain. 
 
 " I was thus forced to return to the admission of intellectual 
 notions as the basis of all certitude. This, however, was not by 
 systematic reasoning and accumulation of proofs, but by a flash 
 of light which God sent into my soul For whoever imagines that 
 truth can only be rendered evident by proofs, places narrow limits 
 to the wide compassion of the Creator." 
 
 Thus we see Algazzali eluding skepticism just as the Alexan 
 drians eluded it, taking refuge in faith. He then cast his eyes on 
 the various sects of the faithful, whom he ranged under four 
 classes : 
 
 I. The Dogmatists : those who ground their doctrine wholly 
 upon reason. 
 
 II. The Basttnis, or Allegorists : those who receive their doc 
 trine from an Imam, and believe themselves sole possessors of truth. 
 
 III. The Philosophers : those who call themselves masters of 
 Logic and Demonstration. 
 
 IV. The Soufis : those who claim an immediate intuition, by 
 which they perceive the real manifestations of truth as ordinary 
 men perceive material phenomena. 
 
 These schools he resolved thoroughly to question. In the 
 writings of the Dogmatists he acknowledged that their aim was 
 realized ; but their aim was not his aim : " Their aim," he says, 
 "is the preservation of the Faith from the alterations introduced 
 by heretics." But his object was philosophical, not theological ; 
 so he turned from the Dogmatists to the Philosophers, studying 
 their works with intense ardor, convinced that he could not refute 
 them until he had thoroughly understood them. He did refute 
 them, entirely to his satisfaction ;* and having done so, turned 
 to the Soufis, in whose writings he found a doctrine which re 
 quired the union of actidn with speculation, in which virtue was 
 
 * In the ninth volume of the works of Averroes there is a treatise by Al- 
 gazzfdi, Destructio Philosopher um t which contains his refutation of the phil 
 osophical schools. 
 
ALGAZZALI. 367 
 
 n, guide to knowledge. The aim of the Soufis was to free the 
 mind from earthly considerations, to purify it from all passions, 
 to leave it only God as an object of meditation. The highest 
 truths were not to be reached by study, but by transport by a 
 transformation of the soul during ecstasy. There is the same 
 difference between this higher order of truth and ordinary sci 
 ence, as between being healthy and knowing the definition of 
 health. To reach this state, it was necessary first to purify the 
 soul from all earthly desires, to extirpate from it all attachment 
 to the world, and humbly direct the thoughts to our eternal 
 home. 
 
 "Reflecting on my situation, I found myself bound to this 
 world by a thousand ties, temptations assailing me on all sides. 
 I then examined my actions. The best were those relating to 
 instruction and education ; and even there I saw myself given 
 up to unimportant sciences, all useless in another world. Reflect 
 ing on the aim of my teaching, I found it was not pure in the 
 sight of the Lord. I saw that all my efforts were directed to 
 wards the acquisition of glory to myself." 
 
 Thus did Philosophy lead him to a speculative Asceticism, 
 w r hich calamity was shortly afterwards to transform into practical 
 Asceticism. One day, as he was about to lecture to a throng of 
 admiring auditors, his tongue refused utterance : he was dumb. 
 This seemed to him a visitation of God, a rebuke to his vanity, 
 which deeply afflicted him. He lost his appetite ; he was fast sink 
 ing ; physicians declared his recovery hopeless, unless he could 
 shake off the sadness which depressed him. He sought refuge in 
 contemplation of the Deity. 
 
 " Having distributed my wealth, I left Bagdad and retired into 
 Syria, where I remained two years in solitary struggle with my 
 soul, combating my passions and exercising myself in the purifica 
 tion of my heart, and in preparation for the other world," 
 
 He visited Jerusalem, and made a pilgrimage to Mecca, but at 
 length returned to Bagdad, urged thereto by " private affairs" and 
 the requests of his children, as he says, but more probably urged 
 
368 FROM PROCLUS TO BACON. 
 
 thereto by his sense of failure, for he confesses not to have reached 
 the ecstatic stage. Occasional glimpses were all he could attain, 
 isolated moments of exaltation passing quickly away. 
 
 "Nevertheless, I did not despair of finally attaining this state. 
 Every time that any accident turned me from it, I endeavored 
 quickly to re-enter it. In this condition I remained ten years. In 
 my solitude there were revelations made to me which it is impos 
 sible for me to describe, or even indicate. Enough it^ for the 
 reader s profit, I declare that the conviction was forced upon me 
 that the Soufis indubitably walked in the true paths of salvation. 
 Their way of life is the most beautiful, and their morals the 
 purest that can be conceived." 
 
 The first condition of Soufi purification is, that the novice 
 purge his heart of all that is not God. Prayers are the means. 
 The object is absorption in the Deity. 
 
 " From the very first, Soufis have such astonishing revelations 
 that they are enabled, while waking, to see visions of angels and 
 the souls of the prophets ; they hear their voices, and receive their 
 favors. Afterwards a transport exalts them beyond the mere per 
 ception of forms, to a degree which exceeds all expression, and con 
 cerning which we cannot speak without employing language that 
 would sound blasphemous. In fact, some have gone so far as to 
 imagine themselves to be amalgamated with God, others identified 
 with him, and others to be associated with him.* All these are 
 sinful." 
 
 Algazzali refuses to enter more minutely into this subject ; he 
 contents himself with the assertion that whoso knows not Ecstasy 
 knows prophetism only by name. And what is Prophetism ? 
 The fourth stage in intellectual development. The first, or infant 
 ile stage, is that of pure Sensation ; the second, which begins at 
 the age of seven, is that of Understanding ; the third is Reason, 
 by means of which the intellect perceives the necessary, the pos 
 sible, the absolute, and all those higher objects which transcend 
 
 * How characteristic this is of mysticism in all ages may be seen in the 
 delightful Hours with the Mystics, by Mr. R. A. Vuughan. 
 
ALGAZZALI. 369 
 
 the Understanding.* After this comes the fourth stage, when 
 another eye is opened, by which man perceives things hidden from 
 others perceives all that will be perceives things that escape 
 the perceptions of Reason, as the objects of Reason escape the 
 Understanding, and as the objects of Understanding escape the 
 sensitive faculty. This is Prophetism. Algazzali undertakes to 
 prove the existence of this faculty : 
 
 "Doubts respecting Prophetism must refer either to its possibility 
 or its reality. To prove its possibility it is only necessary to prove 
 that it belongs to the category of objects which cannot be regarded 
 as the products of intelligence : such, for example, as Astronomy or 
 Medicine. For whoso studies these sciences is aware that they 
 cannot be comprehended except by Divine inspiration, with the 
 assistance of God, and not by experience. Since there are astro 
 nomical indications which only appear once in a thousand years, 
 how could they be known by experience ? From this argument it 
 is evident that it is very possible to perceive things which the 
 intelligence cannot conceive. And this is precisely one of the 
 properties of Prophetism, which has a myriad other properties ; 
 but these others are only perceptible during ecstasy by those who 
 lead the life of the Soufis." 
 
 We are now in a position to judge of Soufism, which was not, 
 strictly speaking, a Philosophy, nor was it a Religion. No Mus 
 sulman, according to M. Schmolders, ever regarded it as either. 
 It was simply a rule of life, carried into practice by a body of 
 men, similar to what in Europe would have been a monastic order. 
 The aim of Algazzali s treatise was something more than the 
 mere inculcation of Soufism, it was the endeavor to supply a 
 philosophical basis for the rule of life ; in other words, an attempt 
 to reconcile Religion with Philosophy, or Philosophy with Re 
 ligion ; precisely analogous to that attempt which constitutes the 
 whole philosophic activity of Scholasticism. There were two 
 great epochs in the intellectual development of the Arabians : the 
 
 * Kant^s three psyhorogical elements, SinnUchkeit,. Verstand, Vernunft, 
 are here anticipated. 
 
 J6* 
 
370 FROM PROCLUS TO BACON. 
 
 preaching of Mahomet, and the conquest of Alexandria : the one 
 gave them a Religion, the other gave them a Philosophy. The 
 doctrines of the Koran were blended with those of the Neo-Pla- 
 tonists, and the result was that system of speculation known as 
 Arabian Philosophy; a system different in its details, but similar 
 in spirit and purpose to that known as Scholasticism, which 
 blended the doctrines of Christianity with those of Grecian spec 
 ulators. 
 
 IV. REVIVAL OF LEARNING. 
 
 However similar in spirit, Scholasticism could of course only 
 accept, from the Arabian Philosophy, that portion which was de 
 rived from Greece, since Christianity necessarily replaced the Ma 
 hometan element. Europe was indebted to the Arabs for most of 
 the principal works of Aristotle ; and although it has long been 
 the cue of historians and critics to speak contemptuously of the 
 Arabian translations a contempt perfectly impartial, seeing that 
 the critics could read no Arabic we are assured by M. Schrnolders 
 that these translations were very careful, and critical. Through 
 the schools of Cordoba, Seville, Toledo, Valencia, Murcia, and 
 Almeria, the Greek writers penetrated everywhere. 
 
 With the revival of learning, after the fall of Constantinople 
 came fresh streams of Grecian influence. The works of Plato be 
 came generally known ; under Marsilio Ficino to whom we owe 
 the Latin translation of Plato* a school of Platonists was formed, 
 which continued to divide, with the school of Aristotle, the su 
 premacy of Europe, under new forms, as before it had divided it 
 under the form of Realism. The effect of this influx of Grecian 
 influence, at a period when Philosophy was just emancipating 
 itself from the absolute authority of the Church, and proclaiming 
 the divine right of Reason to be heard on all rational topics, was to 
 transfer the allegiance from the Church to Antiquity. To have 
 suddenly cast off all authority would have been too violent a 
 
 * In many respects our best guide to Plato s meaning where he is most 
 obscure. It is printed in Bekker s edition. 
 
REVIVAL OF LEARNING. 371 
 
 change ; and it may on the whole be regarded as fortunate for 
 human development that Philosophy did so blindly accept the 
 new authority one altogether human, yet without deep roots in 
 the life of the nation, without any external constituted power, 
 consequently very liable to disunion and disruption, and certain 
 to give way before the necessary insurgence of Reason insisting 
 on freedom. 
 
 There is something profoundly significant in the principle ot 
 Authority, when not exercised despotically, and something essen 
 tially anarchical in the principle of Liberty of Thought, when not 
 restrained within due limits. Both Authority and Liberty are 
 necessary principles, which only in misuse become paralyzing or 
 destructive. It may be made perfectly clear to the rational mind 
 that there can be no such thing as "liberty of private judgment" 
 in Mathematics, Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, or any other 
 science the truths of which have been established ; the person 
 ignorant of these sciences does, and must, take upon trust the 
 statements made by those who are authorities ; he cannot indulge 
 his "private judgment" on the matter, without forfeiting the re 
 spect of those who hear him. Does this mean that all men are 
 bound blindly to accept what astronomers and chemists assert ? 
 No ; to require such submission of the judgment, is to pass beyond 
 the principle of Authority, and assume that of Despotism. The 
 principle of Liberty assures entire freedom to intellectual activity, 
 warrants the control of Authority, incites men to control it by 
 submitting its positions to those elementary tests by which it was 
 itself originally constituted. If I have made a series of experiments 
 which have led to the disclosure of an important truth, your 
 liberty of private judgment is mere anarchy if it assert itself in 
 denying the truth simply out of your own preconceptions ; but it 
 is healthy freedom if it assert itself in denying the truth after 
 having submitted my authority to its original tests (those experi 
 ments, namely, which gave it authority), and after detecting some 
 error in my experimentation, or some inaccuracy in my induction. 
 The authoritative statement of Sir Charles Bell, repeated by every 
 
372 FROM PKOCLUS TO BACON. 
 
 other anatomist, respecting the separate functions of the anterior 
 and posterior columns of the spinal chord, was one which permitted 
 no liberty of private judgment, but did permit liberty of private 
 verification ; and when M. Brown-Sequard repeated the original 
 experiments and proved the former conclusions to be erroneous,* 
 his authoritative statement replaced that of previous anatomists, 
 and will continue to replace it, until it has undergone a similar 
 defeat through the process of verification. 
 
 If this is a correct view, it will enable us to understand the 
 long continuance of Aristotle s authority, which coerced the 
 minds of men as the authority of one confessedly a master in his 
 art, and one whose positions would not easily be brought to the 
 test of verification. Hence, as Bayle says, the method employed 
 was first to prove every thesis by authority, and next by argu 
 ments ; the proofs by authority were passages of Aristotle : the 
 arguments went to show that these passages, rightly interpreted, 
 meant what the thesis meant. 
 
 Other causes contributed to foster this reverence for Authority ; 
 only one cause could effectually destroy it, and that was the rise 
 of positive Science, which by forcing men to verify every step 
 they took, led them into direct antagonism with the ancients, 
 and made them choose between the new truth and the old dogma. 
 As Campanella one of the reforming thinkers acutely saw, 
 " the reforms already made in philosophy must make us expect 
 its complete change ; and whoever denies that the Christian 
 mind will surpass the Pagan mind, must also deny the existence 
 of the New World, the planets and the stars, the seas, the ani 
 mals, the colonies, and the modern sects of the new cosmog 
 raphy."! It does not come within our purpose here to trace 
 the rise and development of Science ; we must therefore pass at 
 once to Giordano Bruno, whom we have selected as the type of 
 the philosophical insurgents against the authority of Aristotle 
 and the Church. 
 
 * See Memoires de la Societc de Biologie. 1855. 
 
 t Quotod by M. Kenouvier, Manuel de Philos* Moderne, p. 7. 
 
GIORDANO BRUNO. 373 
 
 Y. GIORDANO BRUNO.* 
 
 On the 17th of February, 1600, a vast concourse of people was 
 assembled in the largest open space in Rome, gathered together 
 by the irresistible sympathy which men always feel with what 
 ever is terrible and tragic in human existence. In the centre 
 stood a huge pile of fagots ; from out its logs and branches rose 
 a stake. Crowding round the pile were eager and expectant 
 faces, men of various ages and of various characters, but all for 
 one moment united in a common feeling of malignant triumph. 
 Religion was about to be avenged : a heretic was coming to ex 
 piate on that spot the crime of open defiance to the dogmas pro 
 claimed by the Church the crime of teaching that the earth 
 moved, and that there was an infinity of worlds : the scoundrel ! 
 the villain ! the blasphemer ! Among the crowd might be seen 
 monks of every description, especially Dominicans, who were 
 anxious to witness the punishment of an apostate from their 
 order ; wealthy citizens were jostling ragged beggars, young 
 and beauteous women, some of them with infants at their breasts, 
 were talking with their husbands and fathers, and playing 
 about amidst the crowd, in all the heedlessness of childhood, 
 were a number of boys, squeezing their way, and running up 
 against scholars pale with study, and bearded soldiers glittering 
 with steel. 
 
 Whom does the crowd await ? Giordano Bruno the poet, 
 philosopher, and heretic the teacher of Galileo s heresy the 
 friend of Sir Philip Sidney, and open antagonist of Aristotle. 
 Questions pass rapidly to and fro among the crowd ; exultation 
 is on every face, mingled with intense curiosity. Grave men 
 moralize on the power of Satan to pervert learning and talent to 
 evil : Oh, my friends, let us beware ! let us beware of learning ! 
 let us beware of every thing ! Bystanders shake significant 
 heads. A hush comes over the crowd. The procession solemn- 
 
 * In this Section I have altered and abridged an essay of my own in the 
 British Quarterly Review. 
 
374 FROM PKOCLUS TO BACON. 
 
 ly advances, the soldiers peremptorily clearing the way for it. 
 "Look, there he is there, in the centre! How calm how 
 haughty and stubborn !" (women whisper, " How handsome !") 
 His large eyes are turned towards us, serene, untroubled. His 
 face is placid, though so pale. They offer him the crucifix ; he 
 turns aside his head he refuses to kiss it ! " The heretic !" 
 They show him the image of Him who died upon the cross for 
 the sake of the living truth he refuses the symbol ! A yell 
 bursts from the multitude. 
 
 They chain him to the stake. He remains silent. Will he 
 not pray for mercy? Will he not recant? Now the last hour 
 is arrived will he die in his obstinacy, when a little hypocrisy 
 would save him from so much agony ? It is even so : he is stub 
 born, unalterable. They light the fagots ; the branches crackle ; 
 the flame ascends ; the victim writhes and now we see no more. 
 The smoke envelops him ; but not a prayer, not a plaint, not a 
 single cry escapes him. In a little while the wind has scattered 
 the ashes of Giordano Bruno. 
 
 The martyrdom of Bruno has preserved his name from foiling 
 into the same neglect as his writings. Most well-read men re 
 member his name as that of one who, whatever his errors might 
 have been, perished a victim of intolerance. But the extreme 
 rarity of his works, aided by some other causes into which it is 
 needless here to enter, has, until lately, kept even the most curi 
 ous from forming any acquaintance with them. The rarity of 
 the writings made them objects of bibliopolic luxury : they were 
 the black swans of literature. Three hundred florins were paid 
 for the Spaccio, in Holland, and thirty pounds in England. 
 Jacobi s mystical friend, Hamann, searched Italy and Germany 
 in vain for the dialogues De la Causa and De V.lnfinito. But 
 in 1830, Herr Wagner, after immense toil, brought out his valu 
 able edition of the Italian works, and since then students have 
 been able to form some idea of the Neapolitan thinker.* 
 
 * Op ere di Giordano Bruno, Nolarto, ora per Id prlma xolta raccolte e pub- 
 bllcate da, Adolfo Wagner. 2 vols., Leipzig, 1850 
 
GIORDANO BRUNO. 375 
 
 Giordano Bruno was born at Nola, in La Terra di Lavoro, a 
 few miles from Naples, and midway between Vesuvius and the 
 Mediterranean.* The date of his birth is fixed as 1550 that is 
 to say, ten years after the death of Copernicus, whose system 
 he was to espouse with such ardor, and ten years before the 
 birth of our own illustrious Bacon. Tasso well says : 
 
 " La terra 
 Simili a s gli abitator produce ;" 
 
 and Bruno was a true Neapolitan child as ardent as its volcanic 
 soil, burning atmosphere, and dark thick wine (mangia guerra) 
 as capricious as its varied climate. There was a restless en 
 ergy which fitted him to become the preacher of a new crusade 
 urging him to throw a haughty defiance in the face of every 
 authority in every country, an energy which closed his wild 
 adventurous career at the stake lighted by the Inquisition. He 
 was also distinguished by a rich fancy, a varied humor, and a 
 chivalrous gallantry, which constantly remind us that the athlete 
 is an Italian, and an Italian of the sixteenth century. Stern as 
 was the struggle, he never allowed the grace of his nature to be 
 vanquished by its vehemence. He went forth as a preacher; 
 but it was a preacher young, handsome, gay, and worldly as a 
 poet, not as a fanatic. 
 
 The first thing we hear of him is the adoption of the Domini 
 can s frock. In spite of his ardent temperament, so full of vigor 
 ous life, he shuts himself up in a cloister, allured, probably, by 
 the very contrast which such a life offered to his own energetic 
 character. Bruno in a cloister has but two courses open to him: 
 either all that affluent energy will rush into some stern fanati 
 cism, and, as in Loyola, find aliment in perpetual self-combat, and 
 in bending the wills of others to his purposes ; or else his restless 
 spirit of inquiry, stimulated by avidity for glory, will startle and 
 irritate his superiors. It was not long ere the course was decided. 
 
 * For the biographic details I am mainly indebted to the valuable work of 
 M. Christian Bartholmess, entitled Jordano Bruno, 2 vols., Paris, 1848. 
 
376 FROM PKOCLUS TO BACON. 
 
 He began to doubt the mystery of transubstantiation. Nay 
 more : he not only threw doubt upon the dogmas of the Church, 
 he had also the audacity to attack the pillar of all faith, the great 
 authority of the age Aristotle himself. The natural conse 
 quences ensued he was feared and persecuted. Unable to with 
 stand his opponents, he fled. Casting aside the monkish robe, 
 which clothed hini in what he thought a falsehood, he fled from 
 Italy at the very moment when Montaigne, having finished the 
 first part ,of his immortal Essays, entered it, to pay a visit to the 
 unhappy Tasso, then raving in an hospital. 
 
 Bruno was now an exile, but he was free ; and the delight he 
 felt at his release maybe read in several passages of his writings, 
 especially in the sonnet prefixed to L 1 Infinite : 
 
 " Uscito di prigione angusta e nera, 
 Ove tanti anni error stretto m avvinse : 
 Qua lascio la catena, che mi cinse, 
 La man di mia nenrica invida e fera." etc. 
 
 He was thirty years of age when he began his adventurous course 
 through Europe to wage single-handed war against much of 
 the falsehood, folly, and corruption of his epoch. Like his great 
 prototype, Xenophanes, who wandered over Greece, a rhapsodist 
 of philosophy, striving to awaken mankind to a recognition of 
 the Deity whom they degraded by their dogmas, and like his 
 own unhappy rivals, Campanella and Vanini, Bruno became the 
 knight-errant of truth, ready to combat all comers in its cause. 
 His life was a battle without a victory. Persecuted in one coun 
 try, he fled to another everywhere sowing the seeds of revolt, 
 everywhere shaking the dynasty of received opinion. It was a 
 strange time, to every earnest man, a sad and almost hopeless 
 time. The Church was in a pitiable condition decaying from 
 within, and attacked from without. The lower clergy were de 
 graded by ignorance, indolence, and sensuality ; the prelates, if 
 more enlightened, were enlightened only as epicures and pedants, 
 swearing by the Gods of Greece and Rome, and laboriously imi 
 tating the sonorous roll of Ciceronian periods. The Reformation 
 
GIORDANO BRUNO. 377 
 
 had startled the world, especially the ecclesiastical world. The 
 Inquisition was vigilant and cruel ; but among its very members 
 were skeptics. Skepticism, with a polish of hypocrisy, was the 
 general disease. It penetrated almost everywhere from the 
 cloister to the cardinal s palace. Skepticism, however, is only a 
 transitory disease. Men must have convictions. Accordingly, 
 in all ages, we see skepticism stimulating new reforms ; and re 
 formers were not wanting in the sixteenth century. Of the 
 Lutheran movement it is needless here to speak. The sixteenth 
 century marks its place in history as the century of revolutions : 
 it not only broke the chain which bound Europe to Rome, it 
 also broke the chain which bound philosophy to Scholasticism 
 and Aristotle. It set human reason free ; it proclaimed the lib 
 erty of thought and action. In the vanguard of its army, we 
 see Telesio, Campanella, and Bruno, men who must always excite 
 our admiration and our gratitude for their cause and for their 
 courage. They fell fighting for freedom of thought and utter 
 ance the victims of a fanaticism the more odious because it was 
 not the rigor of belief, but of pretended belief. They fought in 
 those early days of the great struggle between science and pre 
 judice, when Galileo was a heretic, and when the implacable 
 severity of dogmatism baptized in blood every new thought born 
 into the world. 
 
 One spirit is common to all these reformers, however various 
 their doctrines : that spirit is one of unhesitating opposition to 
 the dominant authority. It is the crisis of the Middle Ages 
 the modern era dawns there. In the fifteenth century men were 
 occupied with the newly awakened treasures of ancient learning : 
 it was a century of erudition ; the past was worshipped at the ex 
 pense of the present. In art, in philosophy, and in religion, men 
 sought to restore the splendors of an earlier time. Brunelleschi, 
 Michael Angelo, Raphael, disdaining the types of Gothic art, 
 strove to recall once more the classic type. Marsilio Ficino, 
 Mirandola, Telesio, and Bruno, discarding the subtleties and dis 
 putes of Scholasticism, endeavored to reproduce Pythagoras, 
 
378 FKOM PROCLUS TO BACON. 
 
 Plato, and Plotinus. In religion, Luther and Calvin, avowedly 
 rising against Papal corruptions, labored to restore the Church 
 to its primitive simplicity. Thus the new era seemed retrograde. 
 It is often so-. The recurrence to an earlier time is the prepara 
 tion for a future. We cannot leap far, leaping from the spot 
 where we stand ; we must step backwards a few paces to acquire 
 momentum. 
 
 Giordano Bruno ceaselessly attacked Aristotle. In so doing 
 he knew that he grappled with the Goliath of the Church. Aris 
 totle was a synonym for reason. An anagram was made of his 
 name, " Aristoteles : iste sol erat? His logic and physics, to 
 gether with the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, were then con 
 sidered as inseparable portions of the Christian creed. In 1624 
 a quarter of a century after Bruno s martyrdom the Parlia 
 ment of Paris issued a decree banishing all who publicly main 
 tained theses against Aristotle; and in 1629, at the urgent 
 remonstrance of the Sorbonne, decreed that to contradict the 
 principles of Aristotle was to contradict the Church ! There is 
 an anecdote recorded somewhere of a student, who, having de 
 tected spots in the sun, communicated his discovery to a worthy 
 priest : " My son," replied the priest, " I have read Aristotle 
 many times, and I assure you there is nothing of the kind men 
 tioned by him. Go rest in peace; and be certain that the spots 
 which you have seen are in your eyes, and not in the sun." 
 When Kamus solicited the permission of Beza to teach in Ge 
 neva, he was told, " the Genovese have decreed once for all, that 
 neither in logic, nor in any other branch of knowledge, will they 
 depart from the opinions of Aristotle ne tantillum quidem ab 
 Aristotelis sentintia deflectere" It is well known that the Stagi- 
 rite narrowly escaped being canonized as a Saint. Are you for 
 or against Aristotle ? was Hie question of philosophy ; and the 
 piquant aspect of this dpjoVorsXsGjxa^ia is the fact that both par 
 ties were often ignorant of the real opinions of the Stagirite ; at 
 tributing to him indeed doctrines the very reverse of what a more 
 ample knowledge of his writings has shown to have been his. 
 
GIORDANO BRUNO. 379 
 
 Bruno, as we said, took his stand opposite to tlie Aristotelians. 
 Pythagoras, Plato, and Plotinus were his teachers. Something 
 of temperament may have originated this ; for Bruno undoubt 
 edly belongs to that class of thinkers in whom logic is but the 
 handmaid of Imagination and Fancy. To him the Aristotle of 
 that age was antipathetic. The Aristotelians taught that the 
 world was finite, and the heavens incorruptible. Bruno declared 
 the world to be infinite, and subject to an eternal and universal 
 revolution. The Aristotelians proclaimed the immobility of the 
 earth : Bruno proclaimed its rotation. Such open dissidence 
 could of course only enrage the party in power. It would have 
 been sufficiently audacious to promulgate such absurdities hor- 
 renda prorsus absurdissima as the rotation of the earth ; but to 
 defy Aristotle and ridicule his logic, could only proceed from in 
 sanity, or impiety. So Bruno had to fly. 
 
 To Geneva he first directed his steps. Bui there the power 
 which had proved stronger than the partisans of Servetus, was 
 still dominant. He made his escape to Toulouse ; there he 
 raised a storm among the Aristotelians, such as compelled him 
 to fly to Paris. Behold him then in Paris, the streets of which 
 were still slippery with the blood of the Eve of St. Bartholomew. 
 One expects to see him butchered without mercy ; but, by some 
 good fortune, he obtains the favor of Henry III., who not only 
 permits him to lecture at the Sorbonne, but offers to admit him 
 as a salaried professor, if Bruno will but attend Mass. Is it not 
 strange that at a time when attendance at Mass was so serious a 
 matter, when the echoes of that lugubrious cry, la Messe ou la 
 mort! which had resounded through those narrow murky streets, 
 must have been still ringing in men s ears, Bruno, in spite of 
 his refusal, not only continued to lecture, but became exceeding 
 ly popular ? Since Abelard had captivated the students of Paris 
 with his facile eloquence and startling novelties, no teacher had 
 been so enthusiastically received as Bruno. Young, handsome, 
 eloquent, and facetious, he charmed by his manner no less than 
 by his matter. Adopting by turns every form of address rising 
 
380 FROM PROCLUS TO BACON. 
 
 into the aerial altitudes of imagination, or descending into the 
 kennel of obscenity and buffoonery now grave, prophet-like, and 
 impassioned now fierce and controversial now fanciful and 
 humorous he threw aside all the monotony of professional 
 gravity, to speak to them as a man. He did not on this 
 occasion venture openly to combat the prejudices and doc 
 trines of the age ; that was reserved for his second visit, after 
 he had learned in England to speak as became a free and earn 
 est man. 
 
 To England let us follow him. On the misty banks of our 
 noble Thames, he was rudely initiated into the brutality of the 
 English character ; but he was amply compensated by his recep 
 tion at the Court of Elizabeth, where a friendly welcome awaited 
 all foreigners especially Italians. Nor was his southern heart 
 cold to the exquisite beauty and incomparable grace of our wo 
 men. England was worth visiting ; and he had reason to refer 
 with pride to " questo paese Brittannico a cui doviamo la fedelta 
 ed amore ospitale." It was in England he published the greater 
 part of his Italian works. It was here perhaps that the serenest 
 part of his life was spent. Patronized by the Queen (" Tunica 
 Diana qual e tra voi, qual che tra gli astri il sole," as he calls 
 her), he had the glory and the happiness to call Sir Philip Sid 
 ney friend. 
 
 In the high communion of noble minds, in the interchange of 
 great thoughts and glorious aspirations, another than Bruno 
 might have been content to leave the world and all its errors in 
 peace ; but he had that within him which would not suffer him 
 to be at rest. He could not let the world wag on its way, con 
 tent to smile on its errors. He had a mission without the cant 
 of a mission. He was a soldier, and had his battles to fight. In 
 the society of Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Fulke Greville, Dyer, Harvey, 
 and most probably of Antonio Perez and Shakspeare s Florio, 
 Bruno might have discussed with calmness every question of phi 
 losophy, that is, had he been of an epicurean turn had he not 
 been Bruno. As it was, lured by his passion for publicity by 
 
GIORDANO BRUNO. 381 
 
 his vanity, no less than by his love of truth he rushed into the 
 
 arena, 
 
 "Confident as is the falcon s flight." 
 
 If we attribute to him motives not altogether pure if we see as 
 much ostentation as devotion in this conduct, let it be remem 
 bered, that in this life the great aims of humanity are worked 
 out by human means, wherein the impure and selfish are as much 
 vital elements as the noble. In the great mechanism there are 
 numberless trivial wheels, and littleness is often the accessory 
 spring of some heroic act. This is no concession to the school 
 of Rochefoucauld. That school makes the great mistake of at 
 tributing the splendor of the sun to its spots, of deriving the 
 greatness of human nature from its littleness. A selfish impulse 
 will often mingle with the unselfish impulses which prompt an 
 heroic act. We have only to reflect on the numerous instances 
 of selfish impulse unaccompanied by any heroism, to be assured 
 that if selfishness and disinterestedness may be found conjoined 
 in the mingled woof of human nature, it in nowise alters the 
 fact of disinterestedness, it in nowise lessens the worthiness of 
 heroism. What philosophy is that which sees only vanity in 
 martyrdom, only love of applause in the daring proclamation of 
 truth 1 Gold without dross is not to be found in the earth ; but 
 is it therefore copper ? 
 
 Let us follow Bruno s course with other feelings than those of 
 a short-sighted philosophy. It was not very long after his arrival 
 in England (1583), that Leicester, then Chancellor of Oxford, 
 gave that splendid fte in honor of the County Palatine Albert 
 de Lasco, of which the annals of Oxford and the works of Bruno 
 have preserved some details. In those days a foreigner was 
 " lionized" in a more grandiose style than modern Amphitryons 
 attempt. It was not deemed sufficient to ask the illustrious stran 
 ger to " breakfast;" there were no " dinners" given in public, or at 
 the club. The age of tournaments had passed away ; but there 
 were still the public discussions, which were a sort of passage-of- 
 arms between the knights of intellect. And such a tourney had 
 
382 FROM PROCLUS TO BACON. 
 
 Leicester prepared in honor of the Pole. Oxford called upon 
 her doughty men to brighten up their arms, that is to say, to 
 shake the dust from their volumes of Aristotle, and all comers 
 were challenged. Bruno stepped into the arena. Oxford chose 
 her best men to combat for Aristotle and Ptolemy. On that 
 cause her existence seemed to depend. Her statutes declared 
 that the Bachelors and Masters of Arts who did not faithfully 
 follow Aristotle, were liable to a fine of five shillings for every 
 point of divergence, or for every fault committed against the 
 Organon. Bruno wittily called Oxford the widow of sound 
 learning " la vedova di buone lettere." 
 
 The details of this " wit combat" are unknown to us. Bruno 
 declares that fifteen times did he stop the mouth of his pitiable 
 adversary, who could only reply by abuse.* But there is con 
 siderable forfanterie about the Neapolitan, and such statements 
 must be received with caution. That he created a " sensation," 
 we have no doubt ; but his doctrines were sufficiently startling. 
 We also find him, on the strength of that success, soliciting per 
 mission of the Oxford Senate to profess openly. With his usual 
 arrogance, he styles himself, in this address, as a " doctor of a 
 more perfect theology, and professor of a purer wisdom," than 
 was there taught. Strange as it may appear, permission was 
 granted ; probably because he had the patronage of Elizabeth. 
 He lectured on cosmology, and on the immortality of the soul : 
 a doctrine which he maintained, not upon the principles of Ar 
 istotle, but upon those of the Neo-Platonists, who regarded this 
 life as a brief struggle, a sort of agony of death, through which 
 the soul must pass ere it attains to the splendor of existence in 
 
 * " Andate in Oxoaia e fatevi raccontar le cose intravenute al Nolano quan- 
 do pubblicamente disputo con que dottori in teologia in presenza del Prin 
 cipe Alasco Polacco, et altri de la nobilita inglese ! Fatevi dire come si sapea 
 rispondere a gli argomenti, come resto per quindici sillogismi quindici volte 
 qual pnloino entro la stoppa quel povero dottor, die come il corifeo de 1 ac- 
 cademia ne puosero avanti in questa grave occasione ! Fatevi dire con quanta 
 incivilita e discortesia procedea quel porco, e con quanta pazienza et umanita 
 quell altro, die in fatto mostrava essere Napoletano nato et allevato sotto piu 
 benigno cielo !" La Gena de le Generi: Opp. Ital. ii. 179. 
 
GIORDANO BRUNO. 383 
 
 the eternal and universal life. In the deep unquenchable desire 
 which is within us to unite ourselves with God, and to quit this 
 miserable sphere for the glorious regions of eternity, is the writ 
 ten conviction of our future existence. No doubt he preached 
 this doctrine with stirring eloquence ; but it must have sounded 
 very heterodox in the ears of that wise conclave styled by 
 Bruno " a constellation of pedants, whose ignorance, presump 
 tion, and rustic rudeness would have exhausted the patience of 
 Job" and they soon put an end to his lectures.* 
 
 We have already intimated the protection which Elizabeth 
 accorded him, and which he repaid by adulation, extravagant 
 enough, but which was then the current style in speaking of 
 royalty ; and it should not be forgotten that this praise of a 
 Protestant Queen was not among the least of his crimes in the 
 eyes of his accusers. Still, even Elizabeth could not protect a 
 heretic; and Bruno s audacious eloquence roused such opposition, 
 that he was forced to quit England. He returned to Paris, once 
 more to court the favor of the Quartier Latin. He obtained 
 permission to open a public disputation on the physics of Aris 
 totle. For three successive days did this dispute continue, in 
 which the great questions of nature, the universe, and the rota 
 tion of the earth, were discussed. Bruno had thrown aside the 
 veil, and presented his opinions naked to the gaze. His impet 
 uous onslaught upon established opinions, produced the natural 
 result : he was forced again to fly. 
 
 We next find him in Germany, carrying the spirit of innova 
 tion into its august universities. In July, 1586, he matriculated 
 as theologice doctor Romanensis, in the university of Marburg, in 
 Hesse ; but permission to teach philosophy was refused him ob 
 arduas causas. Whereupon he insulted the Rector in his own 
 house, created a disturbance, and insisted that his name should 
 be struck off from the list of members of the University. He 
 set off for Wiirtemberg. His reception in this centre of Luther- 
 
 * Vide Cena de le Ceneri. 
 
384: FROM PKOCLUS TO BACON. 
 
 anism was so gratifying, that he styled Wiirtemberg the Athens 
 of Germany. " Your justice,"- he writes to the Senate, " has re 
 fused to listen to the insinuations circulated against my character 
 and my opinions. You have, with admirable impartiality, per 
 mitted me to attack with vehemence that philosophy of Aristotle 
 which you prize so highly." For two years did he teach there 
 with noisy popularity, yet on the whole with tolerable prudence, 
 in not speaking against the peculiar views of Lutheranism. He 
 even undertook a defence of Satan ; but whether in that spirit 
 of pity which moved Burns, or whether in the spirit of buffoon 
 ery which delights to play with awful subjects, we have no means 
 of ascertaining. He did not offend his audience, in whatever 
 spirit he treated the subject. 
 
 Here, then, in Wiirtemberg, with admiring audiences and free 
 scope for discussion, one might fancy he would be at rest. Why 
 should he leave so enviable a position ? Simply because he was 
 not a man to rest in ease and quiet. He was possessed with the 
 spirit of a reformer, and this urged him to carry his doctrines 
 into other cities. Characteristic of his audacity is the next step 
 he took. From Wiirtemberg he went to Prague ; from the cen- 
 dre of Lutheranism to the centre of Catholicism ! In this he had 
 reckoned too much on his own powers. He met with neither 
 sympathy nor support in Prague. He then passed on to Helm- 
 stadt, where his fame having preceded him, the Duke of Bruns 
 wick conferred upon him the honorable charge of educating the 
 hereditary Duke. Here again, if he had consented to remain 
 quiet, he might have been what the world calls " successful ;" 
 but he was troubled with convictions things so impedimental to 
 success ! and these drew down upon him a sentence of excom 
 munication. He justified himself, indeed, and the sentence was 
 removed ; but he was not suffered to remain in Helmstadt ; so 
 he passed to Frankfort, and there in quiet, brief retirement, pub 
 lished three of his Latin works. Here a blank occurs in his an 
 nals. When next we hear of him he is at Padua. 
 
 After an absence of ten years, the wanderer returns to Italy. 
 
GIORDANO BRUNO. 385 
 
 In his restless course, he has traversed Switzerland, France, Eng 
 land, and Germany; his hand against every man, and every 
 man s hand against him. Heretic and innovator, he has irritated 
 the clergy without securing the protection of philosophers. He 
 has sought no protection but that of truth. That now he should 
 choose Padua above all places, must ever excite our astonish 
 ment. Padua, where Aristotle reigns supreme ! Padua, which 
 is overshadowed by Venice and the Inquisition ! Was he weary 
 of life, that he thus marched into the camp of his enemy ? or 
 did he rely on the force of his convictions and the vigor of his 
 eloquence to triumph even in Padua ? None can say. He came 
 he taught he fled. Venice received him, but it was in her 
 terrible prison. Lovers of coincidences will find a piquant illus 
 tration in the fact, that at the very moment when Bruno was 
 thrown into prison, Galileo opened his course of mathematics at 
 Padua ; and the six years in which Galileo occupied that mathe 
 matical chair, were the six years Bruno spent in miserable captivity. 
 Bruno s arrest was no sooner effected, than intimation of it 
 was sent to the Grand Inquisitor San Severina, at Rome, who 
 ordered that the prisoner should be sent to him, under escort, on 
 the first opportunity. Thomas Morosini presented himself before 
 the Savi of Venice, and demanded, in the name of his Emi 
 nence, that Bruno should be delivered up to him. " That man," 
 said he, " is not only a heretic, but an heresiarch. He has writ 
 ten works in which he highly lauds the Queen of England and other 
 heretical princes. He has written diverse things touching religion, 
 which are contrary to the faith." The Savi, for some reason or 
 other, declined to give up their prisoner, saying the matter was 
 too important for them to take a sudden resolution. Was this 
 mercy ? Was it cruelty ? In effect, it was cruelty ; for Bruno 
 languished six years in the prisons of Venice, and only quitted 
 them to perish at the stake. Six long years of captivity worse 
 than any death. To one so ardent, solitude itself was punishment. 
 He wanted to be among men, to combat, to argue, to live ; and 
 he was condemned to the fearful solitudes of that prison, without 
 
 17 
 
386 FKOM PKOCLUS TO BACON. 
 
 books, without paper, without friends. Such was the repose which 
 the weary wanderer found on his native soil. 
 
 His prison doors were at length opened, and he was removed 
 to Rome, there to undergo a tedious and fruitless examination. 
 Of what use was it to call upon him to retract his opinions? 
 The attempt to convince him was more rational ; but it failed. 
 The tiresome debate was needlessly prolonged. Finding him 
 insensible to their threats and to their logic, they brought him, 
 on the 9th of February, to the palace of San Severino; and 
 there, in the presence of the cardinals and most illustrious theo 
 logians, he was forced to kneel and receive the sentence of ex 
 communication. That sentence passed, he was handed over to 
 the secular authorities, with a recommendation of a "punish 
 ment as merciful as possible, and without effusion of blood" the 
 ut quam dementis sim^ et citra, sanguinis effasionem puniretur 
 the atrocious formula for burning alive. 
 
 Calm and dignified was the bearing of the victim during the 
 whole of this scene. It impressed even his persecutors. On 
 hearing his sentence, one phrase alone disturbed the unalterable 
 serenity of his demeanor. Raising his head with haughty supe 
 riority, he said, " I suspect you pronounce this sentence with 
 more fear than I receive it." A delay of one week was accorded 
 to him, in the expectation that fear might force a retractation; 
 but the week expired, and Bruno remained immovable. He per 
 ished at the stake ; but he died in the martyr spirit, self-sus 
 tained and silent, welcoming death as the appointed passage to 
 a higher life. 
 
 " Fendo i cieli e a 1 infinite m ergo." 
 
 Bruno perished, the victim of intolerance. It is impossible to 
 read of such a punishment without strong indignation and dis 
 gust. There is, indeed, no page in the annals of mankind which 
 we would more willingly blot out, than those upon which fanat 
 icism has written its bloody history. Frivolous as have often 
 been the pretexts for shedding blood, none are more abhorrent 
 to us than those founded upon religious differences. Surely the 
 
GIORDANO BRUNO. 387 
 
 question of religion is awful enough in itself! Men have the 
 deepest possible interest in ascertaining the truth of it; and if 
 they cannot read the problem aright by the light of their own 
 convictions, will it be made more legible by the light of an auto- 
 da-fe ? Tolerance is still far from being a general virtue ; but 
 what scenes of struggle, of violence, and of persecution, has the 
 world passed through, before even the present modicum of tol 
 erance could be gained ! In the sixteenth century, free thought 
 was a crime. The wisest men were bitterly intolerant ; the 
 mildest, cruel. Campanella tells us that he was fifty times im 
 prisoned, and seven times put to the torture, for daring to think 
 otherwise than those in power. It was, indeed, the age of per 
 secution. That which made it so bloody, was the vehemence of 
 the struggle between the old world and the new between 
 thought and established dogma between science and tradition. 
 In every part of Europe in Rome itself men uprose to utter 
 their new doctrines, and to shake off the chains which enslaved 
 human intellect. It was the first great crisis in modern history, 
 and we read its progress by the bonfires lighted in every town. 
 The glare of the stake reddened a sky illumined by the fair au 
 roral light of Science. 
 
 Did Bruno deserve to die ? According to the notions of that 
 age, he certainly did ; though historians have, singularly enough, 
 puzzled themselves in the search after an adequate motive for so 
 severe a punishment. He had praised heretical princes ; he had 
 reasoned philosophically on matters of faith properly the sub 
 jects of theology ; he had proclaimed liberty of thought, and in 
 vestigation ; he had disputed the infallibility of the Church in 
 science ; he had propagated such heresies as the rotation of the 
 earth, and the infinity of worlds ; he had refused to attend Mass ; 
 he had repeated many buffooneries then circulating, which threw 
 contempt upon sacred things ; finally, he had taught a system 
 of Pantheism, which was altogether opposed to Christianity. 
 He had done all this ; and whoever knows the sixteenth century, 
 will see that such an innovator had no chance of escape. Ac- 
 
388 FROM PROCLUS TO BACON. 
 
 cordingly, the flames (as Scioppius sarcastically wrote in describ 
 ing the execution to a friend) " carried him to those worlds which 
 he imagined." 
 
 " As men die, so they walk among posterity," is the felicitous 
 remark of Monckton Milnes ; and Bruno, like many other men, is 
 better remembered for his death than for any thing he did while 
 living. The flames which consumed his body have embalmed 
 his name. He knew it would be so " La morte d un secolo fa 
 vivo in tutti gli altri." 
 
 Considered as a system of philosophy, we cannot hesitate in 
 saying that Bruno s has only an historical, not an intrinsic value. 
 Its condemnation is written in the fact of its neglect. But taken 
 historically, his works are very curious, and still more so when 
 we read them with a biographical interest ; for they not only 
 illustrate the epoch, but exhibit the man exhibit his impetuos 
 ity, recklessness, vanity, imagination, buffoonery, his thoroughly 
 Neapolitan character, and his sincere love of truth. Those who 
 wish to see grave subjects treated with dignity, will object to the 
 license he allows himself, and will have no tolerance for the bad 
 taste he so often displays. But we should rather look upon these 
 works as the rapid productions of a restless athlete as the im 
 provisations of a full, ardent, but irregular mind, in an age when 
 taste was. less fastidious than it has since become. If Bruno 
 mingled buffooneries and obscenities with grave and weighty 
 topics, he therein only follows the general license of that age ; 
 and we must extend to him the same forgiveness as to Bembo, 
 Ariosto, Tansillo, and the rest. Plato himself is not wholly ex 
 empt from the same defect. 
 
 In adopting the form of dialogue, Bruno also, followed the 
 taste of his age. It is a form eminently suited to polemical sub 
 jects ; and all his works were polemical. It enabled him to rid 
 icule by turns the pedants, philosophers, and theologians ; and 
 to enunciate certain doctrines which evea his temerity would 
 have shrunk from, had he not been able to place them in the 
 mouth of another. He makes, his dialogues far more entertain- 
 
GIORDANO BRUNO. 389 
 
 ing than works of metaphysics usually are ; and this he does by 
 digressions, by ridicule, by eloquence, and a liberal introduction 
 of sonnets. Sometimes his very vivacity becomes wearisome. 
 The reader is stunned and bewildered by the remorseless torrent 
 of substantives and epithets which pours from his too prolific 
 pen. There is nobody to rival him, but Rabelais, in this flux of 
 words.* His great butts are the clergy, and the philosophers. 
 He reproaches the former with ignorance, avarice, hypocrisy, and 
 the desire to stifle inquiry and prolong the reign of ignorance. 
 The philosophers he reproaches with blind adherence to author 
 ity, with stupid reverence for Aristotle and Ptolemy, and with 
 slavish imitation of antiquity. It should be observed that he 
 does not so much decry Aristotle, as the idolatry of Aristotle.f 
 Against the pedantry of that pedantic age he is always hurling 
 his thunders. " If," says he, in one place, characterizing the 
 pedant, " he laughs, he calls himself Democritus ; if he weeps, it 
 is with Heraclitus ; when he argues, he is Aristotle ; when he 
 combines chimeras, he is Plato ; when he stutters, he is Demos 
 thenes." That Bruno s scorn sprang from no misology, his own 
 varied erudition proves. But while he studied the ancients to 
 extract from them such eternal truths as were buried amidst a 
 mass of error, they, the pedants, only studied how to deck them 
 selves in borrowed plumes. 
 
 Turning from manner to matter, we must assign to Bruno a 
 place in the history of philosophy, as a successor of the Neo- 
 Platonists, and the precursor of Spinoza, Descartes, Leibnitz, and 
 
 * To give the reader a taste of this quality, we will cite a sentence from 
 the dedicatory epistle to Gil Eroici Farori : " Che spettacolo, o Dio buono ! 
 piu vile e ignobile puo presentarsi ad un occhio di terso sentimento, che un 
 uomo cogitabundo, afflitto, tormentato, triste, maninconioso, per divenir or 
 freddo, or caldo, or fervente, or tremante, or pallido, or rosso, or in mina di 
 pcrplesso, or in atto dirisoluto, un, che spende il miglior intervallo di tempo 
 destillando 1 elixir del cervello con mettere scritto e sigillar in pubblici mon- 
 ximenti, quelle continue torture, que gravi tormenti, que razionali discorsi, 
 que fatuosi pensieri, e quelli amarissimi studi, destinati sotto la tirannide 
 d una indegna imbecille stolta e sozza sporcaria?" Thus it continues for 
 some fifty lines more! Opp. Ital. ii. 299. 
 
 t Vide Oj.)p. Ital. ii. 67, where this is explicitly stated. 
 
390 FROM PKOCLUS TO BACON. 
 
 Schelling. That Spinoza and Descartes were actually conversant 
 with the writings of Giordano Bruno, does not distinctly appear. 
 Yet it is not to be disputed that Bruno anticipated Spinoza 
 in his conception of the immanence of the Deity, in his famous 
 natura naturans and natura naturata, and in his pantheistic 
 theory of evolution. He also anticipated Descartes famous cri- 
 terium of truth, viz. that whatever is clear and evident to the 
 mind, and does not admit of contradiction, must be true ; and in 
 his proclamation of Doubt as opposed to Authority, he thus in 
 sists upon Doubt as the starting-point : " Chi vuol perfettamente 
 giudicare deve saper spogliarsi de la consuetudine di credere, deve 
 T una e V altre contradittoria esistimare egualmente possibile, e 
 dismettere afatto quelf affezione di cui e imbibeto da nativita"* 
 Leibnitz was avowedly acquainted with Bruno s works, and de 
 rived therefrom his theory of monads. Schelling makes no secret 
 of his obligations. 
 
 There is another merit in Bruno which should not be over 
 looked, that, namely, of giving a strong impulse to the study of 
 Nature. Occupied with Syllogisms about entities and quiddities, 
 the philosophy of the Middle Ages had missed the great truth 
 that " man is the minister and interpreter of nature." Philoso 
 phy taught that the interpretation could proceed only from 
 within ; that men were to look into their own minds to analyze, 
 subdivide, and classify their own ideas, instead of looking forth 
 into Nature, and patiently observing her processes.f Bruno was 
 one of the first to call men out into the free air. With his poet 
 ical instinct, he naturally looked to Nature as the great book for 
 man to read. He deified Nature ; and looked upon the Universe 
 as the garment of God, as the incarnation of the divine activity. 
 Let not this be misunderstood, however. If Bruno embraced 
 
 * De P Infinite Unwerso e Mondi: Opp. Ital. ii. 84. 
 
 t It is of them Telesio energetically says : " Sed veluti cum Deo de sapi- 
 entia contendentes decertantesque, mnndi ipsius principia et cuusas ratione in- 
 quirere ausi, et quae non invenerant, inventa ea sibi esse existimantes, volen- 
 tesque, veluti suo arbitratu, mundum affluxere." De Rerum Natura in 
 Prooem. 
 
GIORDANO BRUNO. 391 
 
 the Copernican theory, and combated the general physics of his 
 day, he is not, on that account, to be mistaken for a man of sci 
 entific Method. He espoused the correct view of the earth s 
 sphericity and rotation ; but he did so on the faith of his meta 
 physical theories, not on rigorous induction. 
 
 Bruno s creed was Pantheism. God was the Infinite Intelli 
 gence, the Cause of Causes, the Principle of all life and mind ; 
 the great Activity, whose action we name the Universe. But 
 God did not create the universe ; he informed it with life with 
 being. He is the universe ; but only as the cause is the effect, 
 sustaining it, causing it, but not limited by it. He is self-exist 
 ing, yet so essentially active as incessantly to manifest himself as 
 a Cause. Between the supreme Being and the inferior beings 
 dependent upon him, there is this distinction : He is absolutely 
 simple, without parts. He is one whole, identical and universal ; 
 whereas the others are mere individual parts, distinct from the 
 great Whole. Above and beyond the visible universe there is 
 an Infinite Invisible, an immovable, unalterable Identity, which 
 rules over all diversity. This Being of Beings, this Unity of 
 Unities, is God : " Deus est monadum monas, nempe entium 
 entitas." 
 
 Bruno says, that although it is impossible to conceive nature 
 separated from God, we can conceive God separated from nature. 
 The infinite Being is the essential centre and substance of the 
 universe, but he is above the essence and substance of all things : 
 he is super essentialis, supersubstantialis. Thus we cannot con 
 ceive a thought independent of a mind, but we can conceive a 
 mind apart from any one thought. The universe is a thought 
 of God s mind nay more, it is the infinite activity of his mind. 
 To suppose the world finite is to limit his power. " Wherefore 
 should we imagine that the Divine activity (la divina efficacia) 
 is idle ? Wherefore should we say that the Divine goodness, 
 which can communicate itself ad infinitum, and infinitely diffuse 
 itself, is willing to restrict itself? Why should his infinite capa 
 city be frustrated defrauded of its possibility to create infinite 
 
392 FROM PKOCLUS TO BACON. 
 
 worlds ? And why should we deface the excellence of the Di 
 vine image, which should rather reflect itself in an infinite mirror, 
 as his nature is infinite and immense ?"* 
 
 Bruno admits the existence of only one intelligence, and that 
 is God. Est Deus in nobis. This intelligence, which is perfect 
 in God, is less perfect in inferior spirits ; still less so in man ; 
 more and more imperfect in the lower gradations of created be 
 ings. But all these differences are differences of degree, not of 
 kind. The inferior order of beings do not understand them 
 selves, but they have a sort of language. In the superior orders 
 of beings, intelligence arrives at the point of self-consciousness 
 they understand themselves, and those below them. Man, who 
 occupies the middle position in the hierarchy of creation, is ca 
 pable of contemplating every phasis of life. He sees God above 
 him he sees around him traces of the divine activity. These 
 traces, which attest the immutable order of the universe, constitute 
 the soul of the world. To collect them, and connect them with 
 the Being whence they issue, is the noblest function of the human 
 mind. Bruno further teaches that, in proportion as man labors 
 in this direction, he discovers that these traces, spread abroad in 
 nature, do not differ from the ideas which exist in his own mind.f 
 He thus arrives at the perception of the identity between the 
 soul of the world, and his own soul, both as reflections of the Di 
 vine intelligence. He is thus led to perceive the identity of 
 Subject and Object, of Thought and Being. 
 
 Such is the faint outline of a doctrine, to preach which, Bruno 
 became a homeless wanderer and a martyr; as he loftily says, 
 " Con questa filosofia 1 anima mi s aggrandisce, e mi si magni 
 fied V intelletto" If not original, this doctrine has at any rate 
 the merit of poetical grandeur. In it deep thoughts, wrestling 
 
 * De V Infinite: Opp. Ital. ii. 24. 
 
 t " ELF. : What is the purpose of the senses ? FIL, : Solely to excite the 
 reason ; to indicate the truth, but not to judge of it. Truth is in the sensi 
 ble object as in a mirror ; in the reason, as a matter of argument ; in the 
 intellect, as a principle and conclusion ; but in the mind it has its true and 
 proper form." De V Infinite, p. 18. 
 
GIORDANO BKUNO. 393 
 
 with imperfect language, do get some sort of utterance. As a 
 system, it is more imaginative than logical ; but to many minds 
 it would be all the more acceptable on that account. Coleridge 
 used to say, and with truth, that imagination was the greatest 
 faculty of the philosopher ; and Bruno said, " Philosophi sunt 
 quodammodo pictores atque poetse. . . . Non est philosophus 
 nisi fingit et pingit." Little as the dull man of science may be 
 aware of it, the great faculty of imagination is indispensable even 
 to his science : it is the great telescope with which, we look into 
 the infinite. But in metaphysics imagination plays a still greater 
 part : it there reigns as a queen. 
 
 The works of Bruno are mostly in Italian, Latin having been 
 happily reserved by him for the logical treatises. The volumes 
 which we owe to the honorable diligence and love of philosophy 
 of Adolph Wagner, open with the comedy, // Candclajo, which 
 was adapted to the French stage under the title of Boniface le 
 Pedant, from which Cyrano de Bergerac took his Pedant Joue, 
 a piece which in its turn was plundered by Moliere, who, with 
 charming wit and candor, avows it : " Ces deux scenes (in Cy 
 rano) etaient bonnes ; elles m appartenaient de plein droit ; on 
 reprend son lien partout ou on le trouve"* According to 
 
 * This is, perhaps, the wittiest of all the variations of the " pereant male 
 qui ante nos nostra dixissent." The Chevalier D Aceilly s version is worth 
 citing : 
 
 "Dis-je quelque chose assez belle ? 
 L antiquite tout en cervelle 
 Pretend 1 avoir dite avant moi. 
 C est une plaisante donzelle ! 
 Que ne venait-elle apres moi ? 
 J aurais dit la chose avant elle !" 
 
 While on this subject, we cannot resist Piron s lines; 
 
 " Us ont dit, il est vrai, presque tout ce qu on pense. 
 Leurs ecrits sont des vols qu ils nous ont faits d avance. 
 Mais le remede est simple ; il faut faire comme eux, 
 Us nous ont derobes ; derobons nos neveux. 
 Un dernou triomphant rn eleve a cet emploi : 
 Malheur aux ecrivains qui viendront apres moi !" 
 
 La Metromanic. 
 
 17* 
 
394 FROM PKOCLUS TO BACON. 
 
 Charles Nodier, Moliere was indebted to Bruno for several 
 scenes; but it is difficult to settle questions of plagiarism. Bruno s 
 comedy is long, full of absurd incidents and Neapolitan buffoon 
 ery, and might have suggested a good deal to such a prolific 
 mind as Moliere s. In it he has exhibited " the amorousness of 
 one old man named Bonifacio, the sordid avarice of another 
 named Bartolomeo, and the pedantry, not less sordid, of a third 
 named Manfurio." Ladies of vacillating virtue, soldiers, sailors, 
 and scamps concert together to deceive these three old men, and 
 wring money from their sensuality, their avarice, and their super 
 stition. Bonifacio, desperately in love with Vittoria, is never 
 theless alarmed at the enormous expense necessary to make his 
 addresses acceptable. He had recourse to Scaramure, a reputed 
 magician, who sells him a wax figure, which he is to melt, and 
 thus melt the obdurate heart of his fair one. After a succession 
 of disasters, Bonifacio is seized by pretended police, who force 
 from him a heavy ransom. Bartolomeo becomes the dupe of 
 Cencio, an impostor, who sells him a receipt for making gold. 
 Manfurio, the pedant, is beaten, robbed, and ridiculed through 
 out. The sensualism and niggardliness of Bonifacio, and the 
 pedantry of Manfurio, are hit off with true comic spirit; and the 
 dialogue, though rambling and diffuse, is enlivened by lazzi not 
 always the most decent, it is true and crowded with proverbs. 
 Dramatic art there is none : the persons come on and talk ; they 
 are succeeded by fresh actors, who, having talked, also retire to 
 give place to others. The whole play leaves a very confused im 
 pression. The hits at alchemy and pedantry were, doubtless, 
 highly relished in those days. 
 
 It is very strange to pass from this comedy to the work which 
 succeeds it in Wagner s edition, La Cena de le Ceneri. In five 
 dialogues he combats the hypothesis of the world s immobility ; 
 proclaims the infinity of the universe, and warns us against seek 
 ing its centre or circumference. He enlarges on the difference 
 between appearances and reality in celestial phenomena ; argues 
 that our globe is made of the same substance as the other plan- 
 
GIORDANO BRUNO. 395 
 
 ets, and that every thing which is, is living, so that the world 
 may be likened to a huge animal.* In this work he also an 
 swers his objectors, who bring against his system the authority 
 of Scripture, exactly in the same way as modern geologists an 
 swer the same objection, viz. by declaring that the revelation in 
 the Bible was a moral not a physical revelation. It did not pre 
 tend to teach science, but, on the contrary, adopted ordinary 
 notions, and expressed itself in the language intelligible to the 
 vulgar.f In this work there are some digressions more than 
 usually interesting to us, because they refer to the social condi 
 tion of England during Elizabeth s reign. 
 
 The two works, De la Causa and De 1? Infinite, contain the 
 most matured and connected exposition of his philosophical opin 
 ions. As our space will not admit of an analysis, we must refer 
 to that amply given by M. Bartholmess.J The Spaccio de la 
 Bestia Trionfante is the most celebrated of all his writings. It 
 was translated by Toland, in 1713, who printed only a very few 
 copies, as if wishing it to fall into the hands of only a few choice 
 readers. The very title has been a sad puzzle to the world, and 
 has led to the strangest suppositions. The "Triumphant Beast," 
 which Bruno undertakes to expel, is none other than this : an 
 cient astronomy disfigured the heavens with animals as constel 
 lations, and under guise of expelling these, he attacks the great 
 beast (superstition) whose predominance causes men to believe 
 that the stars influence human affairs. In his Cabala del Ca- 
 vallo Pegaseo, he sarcastically calls the ass " la bestia trionfante 
 viva," and indites a sonnet in praise of that respectable quad 
 ruped : 
 
 * An idea borrowed from Plato, who, in the Timceus, pays, Qvrus ovv S/i 
 Kara \oybv rbv dx6ra Stl Xiyeiv r<5i/ta rbv Ktiapov $woi> epipvxov evvovv rt rjj a\i]Qdq. 
 <W rf/v TOV Otov ysvlffOai irp6voiav. p. 26, ed. Bekker. Compare also Politicus, 
 p. 273. Bruno may have taken this directly from Plato, or he might have 
 learned it from the work of his countryman, Telesio, De Rerum Naturd. 
 
 t " Secondo il senso volgare et ordinario :nodo di comprendere e parlare." 
 The whole of the early portion of Dialogue 4 (in which this distinction is 
 maintained) is worth consulting. Opere, i. 172 sq. 
 
 \ Vol. ii. pp. 128-154. 
 
396 FROM PROCLUS TO BACON. 
 
 " Oh sant asinita, sant ignoranza, 
 Santa stoltizia, e pia divozione, 
 Qual sola puoi far 1 anima si buone 
 Oh uman ingegno e studio non 1 avanza !" etc. 
 
 The Spaccio is an attack upon the superstitions of the day, a 
 war against ignorance, and "that orthodoxy without morality, 
 and without belief, which is the ruin of all justice and virtue." 
 Morality, Bruno fancifully calls " the astronomy of the heart ;" 
 but did not even Bacon call it "the Georgics of the mind?" 
 The Spaccio is a strange medley of learning, imagination, and 
 buffoonery ; and on the whole, perhaps the most tiresome of all 
 his writings. M. Bartholmess, whose admiration for Bruno 
 greatly exceeds our own, says of it : " The mythology and sym 
 bolism of the ancients is there employed with as much tact as 
 erudition. The fiction that the modern world is still governed 
 by Jupiter and the court of Olympus, the mixture of reminis 
 cences of chivalry, and the marvels of the middle ages, with the 
 tales and traditions of antiquity all those notions which have 
 given birth to the philosophy of mythology, of religions, and of 
 history the Vicos and the Creuzers this strange medley makes 
 the Spaccio so interesting. The philosopher there speaks the 
 noble language of a moralist. As each virtue in its turn appears 
 to replace the vices which disfigure the heavens, it learns from 
 Jupiter all it has to do, all it has to avoid : all its attributes are 
 enumerated and explained, and mostly personified in the allegor 
 ical vein ; all the dangers and excesses it is to avoid are charac 
 terized with the same vigor. Every page reveals a rare talent 
 for psychological observation, a profound knowledge of the heart, 
 and of contemporary society. The passions are subtly analyzed 
 and well painted. That which still more captivates the thought 
 ful reader is the sustained style of his long fiction, which may be 
 regarded as a sort of philosophic sermon. Truth and wisdom, 
 justice and candor, take the place in the future now occupied 
 by error, folly, and falsehood of every species. In this last re 
 spect the Spaccio has sometimes the style of the Apocalypse." 
 Without impugning the justice of this criticism, we must add, 
 
GIORDANO BRUNO. 397 
 
 that the Spaccio taxes even a bookworm s patience, and ought 
 to be read with a liberal license in skipping. 
 
 Perhaps of all his writings, Gli Eroici Furori is that which 
 would most interest a modern reader, not curious about the phi 
 losophical speculations of the Neapolitan. Its prodigality of son 
 nets, and its mystic exaltation, carry us at once into the heart of 
 that epoch of Italian culture when poetry and Plato were the 
 great studies of earnest men. In it Bruno, avowing himself a 
 disciple of Petrarch, proclaims a Donna more exalted than Laura, 
 more adorable than all earthly beauty : that Donna is the imper 
 ishable image of Divine Perfection. It is unworthy of a man, he 
 says, to languish for a woman ; to sacrifice to her all those 
 energies and faculties of a great soul, which might be devoted 
 to the pursuit of the Divine. Wisdom, which is truth and 
 beauty in one, is the idol adored by the genuine hero. Love 
 woman if you will, but remember that you are also a lover of the 
 Infinite. Truth is the food of every heroic soul ; hunting for 
 Truth the only occupation worthy of a hero.* The reader of 
 Plato will trace here a favorite image ; and was it not Berkeley 
 who defined Truth as the cry of all, but the game few run down ? 
 
 * Vide, in particular, the fine passage, Opp. Ital. ii. 406-7. 
 
FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 FOUNDATION OF THE INDUCTIVE METHOD. 
 
 I. THE LIFE OF BACON. 
 
 FRANCIS BACON was born on the 22d January, 1561. Mr. 
 Basil Montagu, the laborious and affectionate (we had almost 
 said idolatrous) biographer of Bacon, wishes us to believe that 
 the family was ancient and illustrious ; and favors us with rhe 
 torical flourishes about Bacon retiring to the " halls of his an 
 cestors." This is somewhat different from the story of Bacon s 
 grandfather having kept the sheep of the Abbot of Bury.* 
 
 But although we can claim for Bacon no illustrious ancestry, 
 we must not forget his excellent parentage. His father, Sir 
 Nicholas, was generally considered as ranking next to the great 
 Burleigh as a statesman. His mother, Anne, daughter of Sir 
 Anthony Cooke, "was distinguished both as a linguist and as a 
 theologian. She corresponded in Greek with Bishop Jewel, and 
 translated his Apologia from the Latin so correctly, that neither 
 he nor Bishop Parker could suggest a single alteration."! 
 
 His health was very delicate, which made him sedentary and 
 reflective. Of his youth we know little, but that little displays 
 
 * See this question of lineage, and a great many other curious points, 
 satisfactorily settled in an article on the Lives of Bacon, London Review, 
 Jan. 1836. 
 
 t Edinb. Review, July, 1887, p. 9. This is the brilliant article on Bacon, 
 by Macaulay, which has excited so much attention. It is reprinted in his 
 Essays. 
 
THE LIFE OF BACON. 399 
 
 the reflective tendency of his mind. At the age of twelve he 
 discussed the point as to how a juggler could tell the card of 
 which a man thought : he at first ascribed it to a confederacy 
 between the juggler and the servants, till he at last discovered 
 the law of the mind on which the trick depends. We hear also 
 of his leaving his playfellows to examine the cause of an echo 
 which he had observed in a vault. At thirteen he was entered 
 at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he soon felt a profound 
 contempt for the course of study pursued there, and an inveterate 
 scorn for Aristotle and his followers. It is said that he there 
 planned his Novum Organum ; but this is highly improbable. 
 What he did was perhaps to sketch some new scheme of philo 
 sophical study, originated by his contempt for that in vogue. 
 There must however be a wide difference between the sketch 
 of a boy, prompted by contempt for reigning opinions, and 
 the wise maturity of his greatest work, the fruit of a life s medi 
 tations. 
 
 On leaving Cambridge, he visited Paris, Poitiers, and other 
 parts of France, from whence he was recalled on the sudden 
 death of his father. " Being returned from travaile," says Dr. 
 Rowley, " he applyed himself to the study of the Common Law, 
 which he took upon him to be his profession ; in which he ob 
 tained to great excellency, though he made that (as himself said) 
 but as an accessory, and not as his principal study." 
 
 In 1590, he sat in Parliament as Member for Middlesex. He 
 soon became distinguished as an orator and as a debater. We 
 have the testimony of an admirable judge to assure us that 
 Bacon s oratory was worthy of his other powers. Ben Jonson 
 thus writes : " There happened, in my time, one noble speaker, 
 who was full of gravity in his speaking. His language, where 
 he could spare or pass by a jest, was nobly censorious. No man 
 ever spoke more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered 
 less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. No member of 
 his speech but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could 
 not cough or look aside from him without loss. He commanded 
 
400 THE LIFE OF BACON. 
 
 when he spoke, and had his judges angry or pleased at his de 
 votion."* 
 
 A grave biographical question, namely that of Bacon s politi 
 cal and moral conduct, must be passed over by us without a word 
 of comment, because the question is too complicated and critical 
 for any succinct narrative.f Let us pass on to the year 1616, 
 when Sir Francis Bacon was sworn of the Privy Council ; and 
 in March, 1617, on the retirement of Lord Brackley, was ap 
 pointed Keeper of the Great Seal. His administration was any 
 thing but pure. He was the tool of Buckingham, who was alto 
 gether unscrupulous. On his own account, too, he accepted 
 large presents from persons engaged in Chancery suits. His 
 enemies reckoned his gains in this way at a hundred thousand 
 pounds : an immense sum in those days, and probably exagger 
 ated. His works had spread his fame throughout Europe. He 
 had also been created Baron Verulam ; and subsequently Vis 
 count St. Alban s. We have every reason to believe that he 
 valued this title more highly than that of the author of the In- 
 xtauratio Magna ; but, as Mr. Macaulay remarks, posterity, in 
 defiance of royal letters-patent, has obstinately refused to degrade 
 Francis Bacon into Viscount St. Alban s. 
 
 In the height of this prosperity a terrible reverse was at hand. 
 He was accused of corruption, and was impeached. His re 
 morse and dejection of mind were dreadful. " During several 
 days he remained in his bed, refusing to see any human being. 
 He passionately told his attendants to leave him to forget him 
 never again to name his name never to remember that there 
 had been such a man in the world." The charges against him 
 were such that the King, impotent to save him, advised him to 
 
 * Ben Jonson, Underwoods. In the Discoveries, Ben also speaks admir 
 ingly and affectionately of him. 
 
 t In the former edition, Mr. Macaulay s view of this question was 
 adopted ; but on the eve of the appearance of that long-promised edition of 
 Bacon s works, in which Mr. Spedding is to give the results of his ex 
 haustive study of this question, it seems desirable not to repeat statements 
 which may turn out erroneous when all the evidence is produced. 
 
THE LIFE OF BACON. 401 
 
 plead guilty. He did so. The sentence he received was severe : 
 a fine of forty thousand pounds, and to be imprisoned in the 
 Tower during the King s pleasure. He was declared incapable 
 of holding any office in the State, or of sitting in Parliament, 
 and was banished for life from the verge of the Court. 
 
 This sentence was not executed. He was sent, indeed, to the 
 Tower, but at the end of the second day he was released. His 
 fine was remitted by the Crown. He was soon allowed to pre 
 sent himself at Court; and in 1624 the rest of his sentence was 
 remitted. He was at liberty to sit in the House of Lords, and 
 was summoned to the next Parliament. He did not, however, 
 attend : age. infirmity, and perhaps shame, prevented him. 
 
 In his retirement, he devoted himself to literature; and 
 amongst other works published his wonderful treatise De Aug- 
 mentis, which, though only an expansion of his Advancement of 
 Learning, may nevertheless be regarded as a new work.* 
 
 " The great apostle of experimental philosophy," says Mr. Ma- 
 caulay, " was destined to be its martyr. It had occurred to him 
 that snow might be used with advantage for the purpose of pre 
 venting animal substances from putrefying. On a very cold day, 
 early in the spring of the year 1626, he alighted from his coach 
 near Highgate, to try the experiment. He went into a cottage, 
 bought a fowl, and with his own hands stuffed it with snow. 
 While thus engaged, he felt a sudden chill, and was so much in 
 disposed, that it was impossible for him to return to Gray s Inn. 
 After an illness of about a week, he expired on the morning of 
 Easter-day, 1626. His mind appears to have retained its strength 
 and liveliness to the end. He did not forget the fowl which had 
 caused his death. In the last letter that he ever wrote, with fin 
 gers which, as he said, could not steadily hold a pen, he did not 
 omit to mention that the experiment of the snow had succeeded 
 excellently well." 
 
 * " I find, upon comparison, that more than two-thirds of this treatise are 
 a version, with slight interpolation or omission, from the Advancement of 
 Learning, the remainder being new matter." Hallam, History of Literature 
 of Europe, iii. 169. 
 
402 BACON. 
 
 Bacon, when dying, did not disguise from himself the mournful 
 fact, that if he had thought profoundly, he had acted unworthily. 
 Knowing at once his errors and his greatness, he said, " For my 
 name and memory, I leave it to men s charitable speeches, and 
 to foreign nations, and to the next age." His confidence was 
 well placed. Leniently as we cannot but think him to have 
 been treated by his contemporaries, posterity has been still more 
 gracious ; and the reason is felicitously expressed by Macaulay : 
 "Turn where we will, the trophies of that mighty intellect are 
 full in view. We are judging Manlius in sight of the Capitol." 
 
 BACON S METHOD. 
 
 Bacon is commonly styled the Father of Experimental Philos 
 ophy. Was he the first great experimentalist ? No. Was he 
 the most successful experimentalist? No. Was he the dis 
 coverer of some of those great laws, the application of which is 
 the occupation of succeeding generations was he a Copernicus, 
 a Galileo, a Kepler, a Torricelli, a Harvey, or a Newton ? No. 
 
 He owes this title to his Method, as will be understood after the 
 following sketch, in which we shall follow Professor Playfair s 
 exposition in his Dissertation on the Progress of Physical Sci 
 ence, prefixed to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. 
 
 Before laying down the rules of his Method, Bacon proceeds 
 to enumerate the causes of error the Idols, as he terms them, 
 in his figurative language, or false divinities, to which the mind 
 had so long been accustomed to bow.* He considered this enu 
 meration as the more necessary, that the same idols were likely to 
 return, even after the reformation of science. 
 These idols he divides into four classes, viz. : 
 
 Idola Tribus Idols of the Tribe. 
 
 Idola SpecCis Idols of the Den. 
 
 Idola Fori Idols of the Forum. 
 
 Idola Theatri Idols of the Theatre. 
 
 * Mr. Hallam was the first to point out the mistake which all modern 
 writers have made respecting the meaning of the word Idol, as used by Ba 
 con; which does not mean idol, but false appearance (ttiwXov). See the 
 passage in Hallam s Lit. of Europe, iii. 194-6. 
 
403 
 
 1. The Idols of the Tribe are the causes of error founded on 
 human nature in general. " The mind," he observes, " is not 
 like a plane mirror, which reflects the images of things exactly 
 as they are ; it is like a mirror of an uneven surface, which com 
 bines its own figure with the figures of the objects it represents." 
 
 Among the idols of this class, we may reckon the propensity 
 which there is in all men to find a greater degree of order, sim 
 plicity, and regularity, than is actually indicated by observa 
 tion. Thus, as soon as men perceived the orbits of the planets 
 to return into themselves, they immediately supposed them to be 
 perfect circles, and the motion in those circles to be uniform ; 
 and to these hypotheses the astronomers and mathematicians of 
 all antiquity labored incessantly to reconcile their observations. 
 
 The propensity which Bacon has here characterized, may be 
 called the spirit of system. 
 
 2. The Idols of the Den are those which spring from the pe 
 culiar character of the individual. Besides the causes of error 
 common to all mankind, each individual has his own dark cav 
 ern, or den, into which the light is imperfectly admitted, and in 
 the obscurity of which a tutelary idol lurks, at whose shrine the 
 truth is often sacrificed. 
 
 Some minds are best adapted to mark the differences of things, 
 others to catch at the resemblances of things. Steady and pro 
 found understandings are disposed to attend carefully, to proceed 
 slowly, and to examine the most minute differences ; while those 
 that are sublime and active, are ready to lay hold of the slightest 
 resemblances. Each of these easily runs into excess; the one 
 by catching continually at distinctions, the other at affinities. 
 
 3. The Idols of the forum are those which arise out of the 
 intercourse of society, and those also which arise from lan 
 guage. 
 
 Men believe that their, thoughts govern their words ; but it 
 also happens, by a certain kind of reaction, that their words fre 
 quently govern their thoughts. This is the more pernicious, 
 that words, being generally the work of the multitude, divide 
 
4:04 BACON. 
 
 things according to the lines most conspicuous to vulgar appre 
 hensions. Hence, when words are examined, few instances are 
 found in which, if at all abstract, they convey ideas tolerably 
 precise and defined. 
 
 4. The Idols of the Theatre are the deceptions which have 
 arisen from the dogmas of different schools. 
 
 As many systems as existed, so many representations of im 
 aginary worlds had been brought upon the stage. Hence the 
 name of Idola Theatri. They do not enter the mind impercep 
 tibly like the other three ; a man must labor to acquire them, 
 and they are often the result of great learning and study. 
 
 After these preliminary discussions. Bacon proceeds, in the 
 Second Book of his Organuin, to describe and exemplify the 
 nature of induction. 
 
 The first object must be to prepare a history of the phenomena 
 to be explained, in all their modifications and varieties. This 
 history is to comprehend not only all such facts as spontaneously 
 offer themselves, but all the experiments instituted for the sake of 
 discovery, or for any of the purposes of the useful arts. It ought 
 to be composed with great care ^ the facts accurately related and 
 distinctly arranged ; their authenticity diligently examined ; 
 those that rest on doubtful evidence, though not rejected, yet 
 noted as uncertain, with the grounds of the judgment so formed. 
 This last is very necessary, for facts often appear incredible only 
 because we are ill-informed, and cease to appear marvellous when 
 our knowledge is further extended. This record of facts is Nat 
 ural History. 
 
 The Natural History being prepared of any class of phenom 
 ena, the next object is to discover, by a comparison of the differ 
 ent facts, the cause of these phenomena, or, as Bacon calls it, the 
 form. The form of any quality in a body is something convert 
 ible with that quality ; that is, where it exists the quality exists : 
 thus, if transparency in bodies be the thing inquired after, the 
 form of it is something found wherever there is transparency. 
 Thus/orm differs from cause in this only : we call it form or es- 
 
BACON S METHOD. 405 
 
 sence, when the effect is a permanent quality ; we call it cause, 
 when the effect is a change or/ an event. 
 
 Two other subjects, subordinate to forms, but often essential to 
 the knowledge of them, are also occasionally subjects of investiga 
 tion. These are the latent process, latens processus ; and the la 
 tent schematism, latens schematisms. The former is the secret 
 and invisible progress by which sensible changes are brought 
 about, and seems, in Bacon s acceptation, to involve the principle 
 since called the law of continuity, according to which no change, 
 however small, can be effected but in time. To know the rela 
 tion between the time and the change effected in it, would be to 
 have a perfect knowledge of the latent process. In the firing of 
 a cannon, for example, the succession of events during the short 
 interval between the application of the match and the expulsion 
 of the ball, constitutes a latent process of a very remarkable and 
 complicated nature, which, however, we can now trace with 
 some degree of accuracy. 
 
 The latent schematism is that invisible structure of bodies on 
 which so many of their properties depend. When we inquire 
 into the constitution of crystals, or into the internal structure of 
 plants, etc., we are examining into the latent schematism. 
 
 In order to inquire into the form of any thing by induction, 
 having brought together all the facts, we are to begin with consid 
 ering what things are thereby excluded from the number of pos 
 sible forms. This conclusion is the first part of the process of 
 induction. Thus, if we are inquiring into the quality which is 
 the cause of transparency in bodies ; from the fact that the dia 
 mond is transparent, we immediately exclude rarity or porosity 
 as well as fluidity from these causes, the diamond being a very 
 solid and dense body. 
 
 Negative instances, or those where the form is wanting, to be 
 also collected. 
 
 That glass when pounded is not transparent, is a negative fact, 
 when the form of transparency is inquired into ; also, that col 
 lections of vapors have not transparency. The facts thus col- 
 
406 BACON. 
 
 lected, both negative and affirmative, should, for the sake of ref 
 erence, be reduced to tables. 
 
 Bacon exemplifies his Method on the subject of Heat ; and 
 though his collection of facts is imperfect, his method of treating 
 them is extremely judicious,* and the whole disquisition highly 
 interesting. 
 
 After a great many exclusions have been made, and left but 
 few principles common to every case, one of these is to be as 
 sumed as the cause ; and by reasoning from it synthetically, we 
 are to try if it will account for the phenomena. So necessary 
 did this exclusive process appear to Bacon, that he says, " It may, 
 perhaps, be competent to angels or superior intelligences to de 
 termine the form or essence directly, by affirmations from the 
 first consideration of the subject ; but it is certainly beyond the 
 power of man, to whom it is only given to proceed at first by 
 negatives, and in the last place to end in affirmatives, after the 
 exclusion of every thing else." 
 
 There is, however, great difference in the value of facts. Some 
 of them show the thing sought for in the highest degree, some 
 in the lowest ; some exhibit it simple and uncombined, in others 
 it appears confused with a variety of circumstances. Some facts 
 are easily interpreted, others are very obscure, and are understood 
 only in consequence of the light thrown on them by the former. 
 This led Bacon to his consideration of Prerogative Instances, or 
 the comparative value of facts as means of discovery. He enu 
 merates twenty-seven different species : but we must content our 
 selves with giving only the most important. 
 
 I. Instantice solitaries : which are either examples of the same 
 quality existing in two bodies otherwise different, or of a quality 
 differing in two bodies otherwise the same. In the first instance 
 the bodies differ in all things but one ; in the second they agree 
 in all but one. Thus, if the cause or form of color be inquired 
 
 * This is Playfair s judgment ; a different opinion will presently be quoted 
 from John Mill. 
 
407 
 
 into, instantice solitarice are found in crystals, prisms, drops of 
 dew, which occasionally exhibit color, and yet have nothing in 
 common with the stones, flowers, and metals which possess color 
 permanently, except the color itself. Hence Bacon concludes 
 that color is nothing else than a modification of the rays of light, 
 produced in the first case by the different degrees of incidence ; 
 and second, by the texture or constitution of the surface of bodies. 
 He may be considered as very fortunate in fixing on these exam 
 ples, for it was by means of them that Newton afterwards found 
 out the composition of light. 
 
 II. The instantice migrantes exhibit some property of the 
 body passing from one condition to another, either from less to 
 greater or from greater to less ; arriving nearer perfection in the 
 first case, or verging towards extinction in the second. 
 
 Suppose the thing inquired into were the cause of whiteness 
 in bodies ; an instantia migrant is found in glass, which entire 
 is colorless, but pulverized becomes white. The same is the case 
 with water unbroken or dashed into foam. 
 
 III. The instantice ostensivce are the facts which show some 
 particular property in its highest state of power and energy, 
 when it is either freed from impediments which usually counter 
 act it, or is itself of such force as entirely to repress those im 
 pediments. 
 
 If the weight of air were inquired into, the Torricellian ex 
 periment, or the barometer, affords an ostensive instance, where 
 the circumstance which conceals the weight of the atmosphere 
 in common cases, namely the pressure of it in all directions, be 
 ing entirely removed, that weight produces its full effect, and 
 sustains the whole column of mercury in the tube. 
 
 IV. The instances called analogous or parallel consist of facts 
 between which a resemblance or analogy is visible in some par 
 ticulars, notwithstanding great diversity in all the rest. Such 
 are the telescope and microscope compared to the eye. It was 
 the experiment of the camera obscura which led to the discovery 
 of the formation of images of external objects in the bottom of 
 
408 BACON. 
 
 the eye by the action of the crystalline lens, and other humors 
 of which the eye is formed. 
 
 V. Instantice comitatus : examples of certain qualities which 
 always accompany one another. Such are flame and heat : flame 
 being always accompanied by heat, and the same degree of heat 
 in a given substance being always accompanied with flame. 
 
 Hostile instances, or those of perpetual separation, are the re 
 verse of the former. Thus transparency and malleability in solids 
 are never combined. 
 
 VI. The instantia crucis. When in any investigation the un 
 derstanding is placed in cequilibrio, as it were, between two or 
 more causes, each of which accounts equally well for the appear 
 ances as far as they are known, nothing remains to be done, but 
 to look out for a fact which can be explained by one of these 
 causes and not by the other. Such facts perform the office of a 
 cross, erected at the separation of two roads, to direct the travel 
 ler which to take : hence called crucial instances. 
 
 The experimentum crucis is of such weight in matters of in 
 duction, that in all those branches of science where it cannot be 
 resorted to (an experiment being out of our power and incapable 
 of being varied at pleasure) there is often a great want of con 
 clusive evidence. 
 
 III. THE SPIRIT OF BACON S METHOD. 
 We may now resume the question of Bacon s claim to the 
 title of Father of Experimental Science. That which distin 
 guishes his conception of philosophy from all previous concep 
 tions is the systematization of graduated Verification, as the sole 
 Method of research. Others before him, notably Albertus 
 Magnus, had insisted on some parts of the experimental Method; 
 his great predecessor and namesake, Roger Bacon, had, in the 
 Opus Majus, insisted on experience as the truest guide, and had 
 distributed the causes of error under four heads (Authority, Cus 
 tom, Vulgar Prejudice, and False Science), but no one had co 
 ordinated into a compact body of doctrine all the elements of 
 
409 
 
 the Inductive Method ; and it is in this co-ordination that Ba 
 con s great merit lies. Roger Bacon had said that " experience 
 alone gives accurate knowledge. Reasoning concludes, but estab 
 lishes nothing ; even mathematical demonstration gives no com 
 plete and certain conviction without this sanction. But this 
 experimental science is entirely unknown to the many. It has 
 three grand prerogatives relatively to the other kinds of knowl 
 edge. The first is, that experiment proves and verifies by its in 
 vestigations the highest propositions which the other sciences can 
 present. The second is, that this method, which alone merits 
 the name of mistress of speculative knowledge, can alone attain 
 to those sublime truths which other sciences cannot reach ; in 
 experimental truths the mind must not seek for the reason of 
 things before the testimony of facts, nor reject those facts because 
 it cannot justify them by argument. The third prerogative is 
 so peculiar to this method that it is independent of its relations 
 with the others : it consists in two points, namely, in the knowl 
 edge of the future, the present, and the past, and in the admira 
 ble operations in which it surpasses judicial astrology."* Many 
 from Socrates downwards had insisted on Induction ; but the 
 Induction they conceived was that which Bacon calls inductio 
 per enumerationem simpticem, and which consists in " ascribing 
 the character of general truths to all propositions which are true 
 in every instance that we happen to know of :" an induction 
 perpetually made in the loose latitude of common talk, and in 
 the less pardonable laxity of common literature. It is the natural 
 and instinctive action of the mind, and is thus distinguished from 
 the circumspect Method of Science. The real merit of Bacon s 
 conception was his accurate detection of this natural source of 
 
 * This passage, translated from M. Rousselot s Etudes, iii. 189, is not prop 
 erly Bacon s, but an abstract of the doctrines developed and exemplified in 
 the sixth part of the Opus Majus, pp. 445-477 of the London edition, 1733. 
 The four causes of error are mentioned in p. 2 of the same edition : " Fragi- 
 lis et indignas anctoritatis exemplum, consuetudinis diuturnitas, vulgi sensus 
 imperiti, et propriae ignorantiae occultatio cum ostentatione sapientiae appa- 
 rentis." 
 
 18 
 
410 BACON. 
 
 error, and his insistance on the wider and more circumspect 
 Method of Verification. 
 
 He did not content himself with telling men to make observa 
 tions and experiments : he told them how observations and ex 
 periments ought to be made. He did not content himself with 
 stating the proper mode of investigation to be that of Induc 
 tion founded upon facts : he distinguished proper from impro 
 per inductions the "interrogation" from the "anticipation" of 
 Nature. 
 
 He did this, and he did more. His Method may be said to 
 have two parts : the one, that precise system of rules we have 
 just quoted ; the other, that wise and pre-eminently scientific 
 spirit which breathes through his works. The latter is expressed 
 in wise and weighty aphorisms which form perpetual texts for 
 philosophic writers, and reveal the magnificence and profundity 
 of his intellect. It is in these he shows how completely he saw 
 through the false methods of his day, and how justly he is en 
 titled the Father of Positive Science. 
 
 These aphorisms form, as we have said, perpetual texts. They 
 are quoted on all occasions when Method is treated of. We 
 cannot however resist quoting a half-dozen of them here, because 
 of their exceeding value, and of their fitness as illustrations of 
 his greatness : 
 
 I. Man, the minister and interpreter of Nature, can act and 
 understand in as far as he has, either in fact or in thought, ob 
 served the order of Nature ; more he can neither know nor do. 
 
 II. The real cause and root of almost all the evils in science 
 is this: that, falsely magnifying and extolling the powers of the 
 mind, we seek not its real helps. 
 
 III. There are two ways of searching after and discovering 
 truth : the one, from sense and particulars, rises directly to the 
 most general axioms, and resting upon these principles, and their 
 unshaken truth, finds out intermediate axioms, and this is the 
 method in use ; but the other raises axioms from sense and par 
 ticulars by a continued and gradual ascent, till at last it arrives 
 
411 
 
 at the most general axioms, which is the true way, but hitherto 
 untried. 
 
 IV. The understanding, when left to itself, takes the first of 
 these ways ; for the mind delights in springing up to the most 
 general axioms, that it may find rest ; but after a short stay there, 
 it disdains experience, and these mischiefs are at length increased 
 by logic, for the ostentation of disputes. 
 
 V. The natural human reasoning we, for the sake of clearness, 
 call the anticipation of nature, as being a rash and hasty thing; 
 and the reason duly exercised upon objects, we call the interpre 
 tation of nature. 
 
 VI. It is false to assert that human sense is the measure of 
 things, since all perceptions, both of sense and mind, are with 
 relation to man, and not with relation to the universe ;* but the 
 human understanding is like an unequal mirror to the rays of 
 things, which, mixing its own nature with the nature of things, 
 distorts and perverts them. 
 
 We need only consider these half-dozen aphorisms to see the 
 positive tendency of his speculations ; and the greater the atten 
 tion we bestow on his writings, the more is this fact pressed on 
 our notice. His mind was antipathetic to all metaphysics. 
 Neither the ingenuities of logicians, nor the passionate earnest 
 ness of theologians, in that age of logicians and theologians, 
 could lure him from his path. " He lived in an age," says Mr. 
 Macaulay, "in which disputes on the most subtle points of di 
 vinity excited an intense interest throughout Europe, and no 
 where more than in England. He was placed in the very thick 
 of the conflict. He was in power at the time of the Synod of 
 Dort ; and must for months have been daily deafened with talk 
 about election, reprobation, and final perseverance ; yet we do 
 not remember a line in his works from which it can be inferred 
 that he was either a Calvinist or an Arminian. While the world 
 
 * This is Dr. Shaw s translation. The original is, " sunt ex analogia homi- 
 nis, non ex analogia universi," which is intelligible and expressive enough, 
 but difficult to render. 
 
412 BACOX. 
 
 was resounding with the noise of a disputatious theology and a 
 disputatious philosophy, the Baconian School, like Allworthy 
 seated between Thwackum and Square, preserved a calm neutral 
 ity, half scornful, half benevolent, and, content with adding to 
 the sum of practical good, left the war of words to those who 
 liked it." 
 
 It may not at once be apparent how eminently scientific a 
 spirit is shown in Bacon s separation of Science from Theology ; 
 but a slight reflection will convince us that, at such an epoch, 
 such a conception was wonderful. The persecution of Galileo 
 by the Church, and his recantation, were fresh in every one s 
 memory ; they suffice to show that Religion was still considered 
 the arbiter of Philosophy and Science ; nor is this notion yet ex 
 tinct. The objections raised against the geologists still operate 
 as a powerful obstacle to the universal acceptation of the science ; 
 and similar objections constantly obstruct our scientific progress 
 in other departments. This tendency is frequently deplored; 
 perhaps it might be checked in some degree if it were shown to 
 violate a fundamental canon of all sound philosophy, a canon 
 which may be thus expressed : No speculation should be con 
 trolled by an order of conceptions not essentially presupposed by 
 it. For example, every one feels the absurdity of controlling 
 Poetry by Mathematics ; because Poetry in no sense presupposes 
 Mathematics, and derives no assistance from them ; but Physics 
 can be controlled by Mathematics, because in Physics there is 
 an essential dependence on Mathematics. We cannot control a 
 chemical speculation by any physiological laws ; but conversely 
 we can, and do, control physiological speculations by chemical 
 laws. The canon, thus expounded, is readily applied to the old 
 disputes between Religion and Science. Theology belongs to a 
 totally different order of conceptions from that of Science. Its 
 aims are different, its methods are different, its proofs are differ 
 ent. Only in so far as Theology comes into the circle of other 
 sciences, can it be legitimately controlled by them; for instance, 
 when Theology rests any claims on historical evidence, then, and 
 
413 
 
 to that extent, must it be controlled by historical criticism ; when 
 it rests any claim on scientific evidence, then and to that extent, 
 must it submit to scientific control ; just as Poetry, if dealing at 
 all with Mathematical problems, must do so correctly, or submit 
 to the criticism of mathematicians. But when the Church de 
 clares against Galileo ; when the perhaps well-meaning but cer 
 tainly unwise declaimers of the present day oppose Geology on 
 theological grounds, the error is of the same nature as that of a 
 poet who should assail Mathematics on poetical grounds. There 
 can be no fair disputes between Theology and Science. Each 
 pursues its own path ; the one may push aside the other ; they 
 cannot argue, for they have no common ground. In Theology 
 there may be disputes, as between Catholic and Protestant, 
 Lutheran and Zuinglian, Presbyterian and Quaker, because all 
 proceed from the same starting-point, all invoke the same evi 
 dence ; and in Science there may be disputes, as between Chem 
 ists, Geologists, and Physiologists, because, all employing the same 
 methods, the same kind of evidence, there is common ground for 
 them to fight on. But what a dissonance of words, expressive 
 of no less dissonance in ideas, in the phrases " Lutheran Botany" 
 and " Presbyterian Optics," "Catholic Chemistry" and "Evan 
 gelical Anatomy !" Yet it is clear that if Theology is to inter 
 fere with and control the speculations of Science, the various 
 theological sects may also control it according to their various 
 views. We therefore see in Bacon s rigorous separation of the 
 two disparate paths of inquiry a profoundly philosophical tend 
 ency. He took another and far greater step when he emphatic 
 ally proclaimed that Physics was " the mother of all the sciences." 
 That this was greatly in advance of his age may be gathered 
 from the fact of its to this day remaining a heresy; the notion of 
 ethics and politics having the same methods, and being suscep 
 tible of the same treatment as physics, is by the majority looked 
 upon as fanciful, if not absurd. 
 
 Speaking of the causes of errors in preceding philosophers, 
 Bacon says, "A second cause of very great moment is, that 
 
414: BACON. 
 
 through all those ages wherein men of genius and learning prin 
 cipally or even moderately flourished, the smallest part of human 
 industry has been spent upon natural philosophy, though this 
 ought to be esteemed as the great mother of the sciences ; for all 
 the rest, if torn from this root, may perhaps be polished and 
 formed for use, but can receive little increase. . . . 
 
 " But let none expect any great promotion of the sciences, 
 especially in their effective part, unless natural philosophy be 
 drawn out to particular sciences ; and again, unless these partic 
 ular sciences be brought back again to natural philosophy. From 
 this defect it is that astronomy, optics, music, many mechanical 
 arts, and what seems stranger, even moral and civil philosophy 
 and logic, rise but little above their foundations, and only skim 
 over the varieties and surfaces of things, viz. because after these 
 particular sciences are formed and divided off, they are no longer 
 nourished by natural philosophy, which might give them strength 
 and increase ; and therefore no wonder if the sciences thrive not, 
 when separated from their roots."* 
 
 It was in consequence of his having so profoundly penetrated 
 the very nature of science that Bacon was able " to lay down the 
 rules for the conduct of experimental inquiries, before any such 
 inquiries had yet been instituted. The power and compass of a 
 mind which could form such a plan beforehand, and trace not 
 merely the outline, but many of the most minute ramifications of 
 sciences which did not yet exist, must be an object of admiration 
 to all succeeding ages."f 
 
 In his separation of Science from Metaphysics and Theology, 
 and in his conception of Physics as the mother of all the sciences, 
 we see the eminently positive spirit of his works ; and this makes 
 him so entirely a modern. He was indeed thoroughly opposed 
 to antiquity, and epigrammatically exposed the fallacy of undue 
 reverence. " The opinion which men entertain of antiquity is a 
 very idle thing," said he, " and almost incongruous to the word ; 
 
 * Novum Organwn,) i. Aph. 79, 80. f Play fair. 
 
THE SPIRIT OF BACON s METHOD. 415 
 
 for the old-age and length of days of the world should in reality 
 be accounted antiquity, and ought to be attributed to our own 
 times, not to the youth of the world which it enjoyed among the 
 ancients ; for that age, though with respect to us it be ancient 
 and greater, yet with regard to the world it was new and less."* 
 He bore testimony to the genius of several of the ancients, 
 while he declared that their genius availed them nothing, be 
 cause wrongly employed ; adding, in his usual happy style, " a 
 cripple in the right way may beat a racer in the wrong one. 
 Nay, the fleeter the racer is, who has once missed his way, the 
 farther he leaves it behind." " We have an example," he says, 
 " in Aristotle, who corrupted natural philosophy with Logic, . . . 
 being all along more solicitous how men might defend them 
 selves by answers, and advance something that should be positive 
 in words, than to come at the inward truth of nature. ... It 
 is true his books of animals, problems, and other pieces, make 
 frequent use of experiments ; but then he first pronounced with 
 out their assistance, and did not duly consult experience in form 
 ing his degrees and axioms / but after he had passed judgment 
 according to his own humor, he winds experience round, and 
 leads her captive to his own opinions. . . . Another great reason 
 of the slow progress of the sciences is this : that it is impossible 
 to proceed well in a course where the end is not rightly fixed 
 and defined. Now, the true and genuine end of the sciences is 
 no other than to enrich human life w^ith new inventions and new 
 powers. . . . Fruits and discoveries of works are as the vouchers 
 and securities for the truth of philosophies. But from the phi 
 losophies of the Greeks, and their descents through particular 
 sciences, now for the space of so many years scarce a single ex 
 periment can be produced tending to accommodate or improve 
 
 * It is a point of some interest to ascertain from whom Bacon got the 
 aphorism he frequently quotes : " Antiquity the youth of the world." The 
 idea is in Seneca, and is thus expressed by Koger Bacon : " Quanto juniores 
 tanto perspicaciores, quia juniores, posteriores successione temporum, ingre- 
 diuntur labores priorum." Opus M(jjus, pars i. cap. 6, p. 9. 
 
416 BACON. 
 
 the state of man, that may be justly attributed to the speculations 
 and doctrines of their philosophy. . . . Therefore, since the end 
 of the sciences has not hitherto been well defined by any one, 
 we need not wonder if men have erred and wandered in the 
 things subservient to the proper end. Again, if this end had 
 been rightly proposed, yet men have chosen a very wrong and 
 impassable ivay to proceed in. And it may strike any one with 
 astonishment who duly considers it, that no mortal should hither 
 to have taken care to open and prepare a way for the human un 
 derstanding, from sense and a well-conducted experience ; but that 
 all things should be left either to the darkness of tradition, the 
 giddy agitation and whirlwind of argument, or else to the uncer 
 tain waves of accident, or a vague and uninformed experience. 
 Let any one soberly consider what the way is which men have 
 accustomed themselves to, in the inquiry and discovery of any 
 thing, and he will doubtless find that the manner of invention 
 most commonly used is simple and unartful : or on no other 
 than this, viz. when a person goes upon an inquiry, in the first 
 place he searches out and peruses what has been said upon it by 
 others ; in the next place adds his own thoughts thereto ; and 
 lastly, with great struggle of the mind, solicits and invokes, as 
 it were, his own spirit to deliver him oracles ; which is a method 
 entirely destitute of foundation, and rolls wholly upon opinions. 
 Others may call in the assistance of logic ; but this is wholly a 
 nominal assistance, for logic does not discover the principles and 
 capital axioms upon which arts are built, but only such as seem 
 agreeable thereto ; and when men are curious and earnest with 
 it, to procure proofs, and discover principles or first axioms, it 
 refers them to faith, or puts them off with this trite and common 
 answer that every artist must believe in his own art." 
 
 Dugald Stewart* well says, " that the idea of the object of phy 
 sical science (which may be justly regarded as the groundwork 
 
 * In the excellent Chapter on Induction, Philos. of Mind, vol. ii. ch. iv. 
 sect. 1. 
 
417 
 
 of Bacon s Novum Organum) differs essentially from what was 
 entertained by the ancients, according to whom Philosophy is 
 the science of causes? If indeed by causes they had meant 
 merely the constant forerunners or antecedents of events, the de 
 finition would have coincided nearly with the statement which 
 I have given. But it is evident that by causes they meant such 
 antecedents as were necessarily connected with the effects, and 
 from the knowledge of which the effects might be foreseen and 
 demonstrated. And it was owing to this confusion of the proper 
 objects of Physics and Metaphysics that, neglecting the observa 
 tion of facts exposed to the examination of their senses, they 
 vainly attempted, by synthetical reasoning, to deduce, as neces 
 sary consequences from their supposed causes, the phenomena 
 and laws of nature." 
 
 Dugald Stewart also quotes Aristotle s express declaration, 
 that to know the physical cause is also to know the efficient cause ; 
 and observes, that from this disposition to confound efficient with 
 physical causes, may be traced the greater part of the theories 
 recorded in the history of philosophy. It is this which has given 
 rise to the attempts, both in ancient and modern times, to ac 
 count for all the phenomena of moving bodies by impulse ; and 
 it is this, also, which has suggested the simpler expedient of ex 
 plaining them by the agency of minds united with the particles 
 of matter. To this last class of theories may also be referred the 
 explanations of physical phenomena by such causes as sympa 
 thies, antipathies, nature s horror of a vacuum, etc., and other 
 phrases borrowed by analogy from the attributes of animated 
 beings. 
 
 It was Bacon s constant endeavor, as it has been the cause of 
 his enduring fame, to teach men the real object of Science, and 
 the scope of their faculties, and to furnish them with a proper 
 Method whereon these faculties might be successfully employed. 
 He thus not only stands clearly out in history as the exponent 
 of the long-agitated antagonism to all the ancient and scholastic 
 thinkers, but also as the exponent of the rapidly increasing ten- 
 
 18* 
 
418 BACON. 
 
 dency towards positive science. He is essentially modern. All 
 his predecessors, even in their boldest attacks upon ancient 
 philosophy, were themselves closely allied to the spirit of that 
 which they opposed. Ramus is the child of Aristotle, though 
 he raised his hand against his father. But Bacon was modern 
 in culture, in object, and in method. He attacked the ancient 
 philosophy without having thoroughly understood it : he attacked 
 it, because he saw that a method which conducted great intelli 
 gences to such absurd conclusions as those then in vogue, must 
 necessarily be false. 
 
 "Whence can arise," he asks, "such vagueness and sterility 
 in all the physical systems which have hitherto existed in the 
 world 2 It is not, certainly, from any thing in nature itself; for 
 the steadiness and regularity of the laws by which it is governed, 
 clearly mark them out as objects of precise and certain knowledge. 
 
 " Neither can it arise from any want of ability in those who 
 have pursued such inquiries, many of whom have been men of 
 the highest talent and genius of the ages in which they lived ; 
 and it can therefore arise from nothing else but the perverseness 
 and insufficiency of the methods which have been pursued. Men 
 have sought to make a world from their own conceptions, and to 
 draw from their own minds all the materials which they em 
 ployed ; but if, instead of doing so, they had consulted experi 
 ence and observation, they would have had facts, and not opin 
 ions, to reason about, and might have ultimately arrived at the 
 knowledge of the laws which govern the material world. 
 
 " As things are at present conducted, a sudden transition is 
 made from sensible objects and particular facts to general propo 
 sitions, which are accounted principles, and round which, as round 
 so many fixed polls, disputation and argument continually re 
 volve. From the propositions thus hastily assumed, all things 
 are derived by a process compendious and precipitate, ill suited to 
 discovery, but wonderfully accommodated to debate. 
 
 " The way that promises success is the reverse of this. It re 
 quires that we should generalize slowly, going from particular 
 
419 
 
 things to those that are but one step more general ; from those 
 to others of still greater extent, and so on to such as are universal. 
 By such means we may hope to arrive at principles, not vague 
 and obscure, but luminous and well-defined, such as Nature her 
 self will not refuse to acknowledge." 
 
 In this pregnant passage he has clearly enough pointed out 
 the position which his philosophy was to occupy. " Many other 
 philosophers," as Professor Macvey Napier remarks, " both an 
 cient and modern, had referred to observation and experiment in 
 a cursory way, as furnishing the materials of physical knowl 
 edge ; but no one before him had attempted to systematize the 
 true method of discovery ; or to prove that the inductive is the 
 only method by which the genuine office of philosophy can be 
 exercised, and its genuine ends accomplished. It has sometimes 
 been stated that Galileo was, at least, in an equal degree with 
 Bacon, the father of the Inductive Logic ; but it would be more 
 correct to say that his discoveries furnished some fortunate illus 
 trations of its principles. To explain these principles was no 
 object of his ; nor does he manifest any great anxiety to recom 
 mend their adoption with a view to the general improvement of 
 science. The Aristotelian disputant, in his celebrated Dialogues, 
 is made frequently to appeal to observation and experiment ; but 
 the interlocutor, through whom Galileo himself speaks, nowhere 
 takes occasion to distinguish between the flimsy inductions of 
 the Stagirite, in regard to the objects in dispute, and those which 
 he himself had instituted, or to hint at the very different com 
 plexion which philosophy must assume, according as the one 
 kind or the other is resorted to."* 
 
 IV. WAS THE METHOD NEW AND USEFUL? 
 
 Bacon s Method, and the scientific spirit which animates his 
 works, have been indicated in the foregoing pages. His philo 
 sophical importance is to be measured by that Method and that 
 
 * On the Scope and Influence of the Philos. Writings of Bacon : Trans, of 
 the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1618. 
 
420 BACON. 
 
 spirit ; not by any scientific discoveries. A mind so richly stored 
 could not fail to illustrate his writings with manifold graces of 
 style, and with pregnant aphorisms. Accordingly, his Method 
 having been established, and been superseded, having done its 
 work, nothing remains for our profit but these very graces and 
 aphorisms. The great reformer may excite our admiration, his 
 torically / his Method excites no admiration for its present in 
 trinsic value. We have a more perfect Method ; the processes 
 of scientific investigation are better understood ; but we are never 
 in communion with his vast and penetrating intellect without 
 acknowledging his greatness ; for his remarks are often as appli 
 cable now as they were when first written. Hence the frequency 
 of quotations from Bacon ; and these quotations, as Dr. Whewell 
 observes, are more frequently made by metaphysical, ethical, and 
 even theological writers, than they are by the authors of works 
 on Physics. For the present generation, then, whatever the value 
 of Bacon s works, Bacon s Method is useless. Some modern wri 
 ters have asserted that it was always useless ; and this assertion 
 has been supported by arguments so plausible, that they demand 
 attention. 
 
 The objections made to Bacon s Method are of three kinds. 
 1st. It was nothing new ; 2d. It was useless as a guide to inves 
 tigation ; 3d. It was already latent in the scientific spirit then 
 abroad, and must have been elicited by some one, sooner or 
 later. 
 
 " It was nothing new." This is a very frequent objection, and 
 is urged by the Count Joseph de Maistre and Mr. Macau lay. 
 The former has written a long chapter to prove that Bacon s In 
 duction is nothing more than the Induction of Aristotle ; and 
 Mr. Macaulay, who adopts the same opinion, devotes several viva 
 cious pages to show that everybody unconsciously practices this 
 inductive Method. M. de Maistre s Examen de la Philosophic de 
 Bacon is a vehement attack, written with the celebrated author s 
 usual vivacity, but with more than his usual arrogance and ve 
 hemence. As there are many things in Bacon hasty, inexact, or 
 
WAS BACON S METHOD NEW AND USEFUL? 421 
 
 partaking of the prejudices and errors of his age, his antagonist 
 is at no loss to find matter for ridicule ; but when he treats of 
 Bacon s Method and Spirit as contemptible puerilities, he only ex 
 cites a smile in the dispassionate reader. His arguments against 
 Bacon s Method are, first, that Aristotle had analyzed it before 
 him ; secondly, that Induction is only one form of the Syllogism. 
 
 It is true that Aristotle told us what Induction was ; but it is 
 not true that he analyzed it, as Bacon has done ; nor did he ever 
 pronounce it to be the Method of inquiry : on the contrary, it 
 only served him as one of the means of ascertaining truth, and 
 was not so important in his eyes as the Syllogism. Bacon asserts 
 Induction to be the only Method ; and has no words too strong 
 to express his scorn of the Syllogism, " which may catch the as 
 sent, but lets the things slip through." Dugald Stewart observes 
 that we might as well declare that the ancients had anticipated 
 Newton because they too used the word ** attraction," as that Ar 
 istotle anticipated Bacon because he too speaks of " Induction."* 
 This is, however, going too far the other way. In our Chapter 
 on the Stag! rite we have indicated the relation in which the two 
 conceptions stand to each other. 
 
 M. de Maistre says that Induction and Syllogism are the same. 
 " At bottom, what is Induction ? Aristotle clearly saw it : It is 
 a syllogism without the middle term stfn $= o <rojou<ro a uXXo^ jtffAoj 
 TY<S tfpurris xca dpisVou 7r po=ra0 W. (Anal. Prior, ii. 12.) What 
 does it signify whether I say, Every simple being is indestructible 
 l)y nature j now my soul is a simple being, therefore, etc. ; or 
 whether I say directly, My soul is simple, it is therefore inde 
 structible. In either case it is the syllogism which is virtually 
 in the induction, as it is in the enthymeme." 
 
 Now it is quite true that every induction may be thrown into 
 the form of a syllogism by supplying the major premise ; and 
 it is this which led Archbishop Whately to conclude that Induc 
 tion itself is but a peculiar case of ratiocination, and that the 
 universal type of all reasoning is the syllogism. We cannot but 
 * P kilos, of Mind, vol. ii. ch. iv. sect. 2. 
 
422 BACON. 
 
 agree with John Mill in holding precisely the reverse opinion, 
 and believing that ratiocination itself is resolvable into Induc 
 tion.* Be this as it may, M. de Maistre has afforded us an illus 
 tration of the difference between Aristotle and Bacon in the very 
 passage quoted. 
 
 If every induction can be thrown into the form of a syllogism, 
 by supplying the major premise, it is in the way this major 
 premise is established that we must seek the real difference be 
 tween the Syllogistic and Inductive Methods : and that difference 
 is the difference between a priori and a posteriori. Every one 
 who has read Bacon, knows that his scorn for the Syllogism is 
 not scorn for it as a form of ratiocination, but as a means of in 
 vestigation. He objects to our proceeding to deduce from an 
 axiom not accurately and inductively obtained, consequences 
 which may very well be contained in the axiom, although hav 
 ing no relation to the truth of things. " The axioms in use, be 
 ing derived from slender experience and a few obvious particu 
 lars, are generally applied in a corresponding manner ; no won 
 der they lead not to new particulars."! Again : " Syllogism 
 consists of propositions, propositions of words, and words are 
 the signs of notions ; therefore, if our notions, the basis of all, 
 are confused, and over-hastily taken from things, nothing that is 
 built upon them can be firm ; whence our only hope rests upon 
 genuine Induction."^ 
 
 Nothing can be more explicit. Bacon very well knew the dif 
 ference between his Method and that of the Aristotelians ; and 
 he very well expressed this difference. To turn round upon him 
 and say all Induction is itself but Syllogism, is mere evasion. 
 He was not giving a logical analysis of the mind : he was warn 
 ing men against long-standing errors, and pointing out to them 
 the path of truth. 
 
 Mr. Macaulay s arguments are of a different stamp. To us 
 they are only ingenious and plausible ; yet so ingenious and so 
 
 * See System of Logic, vol. i. pp. 372-3. 
 
 t Novum Organum, Apb. 25. \ Ibid., Apli. 14. 
 
WAS BACON S METHOD NEW AND USEFUL? 423 
 
 plausible as to gain many followers. They are mostly true as 
 far as they go, but do not appear to us to go to the real point. 
 We shall select the main parts of his opposition : 
 
 "The inductive method has been practised ever since the be 
 ginning of the world, by every human being. It is constantly 
 practised by the most ignorant clown, who by this method is led 
 to the conclusion, that if he sows barley he shall not reap wheat. 
 A plain man finds his stomach out of order. He never heard ot 
 Lord Bacon s name ; but he proceeds in the strictest conformity 
 with the rules laid down in the second book of the Novum Or- 
 ganum, and satisfies himself that mince-pies have done the mis 
 chief. I ate mince-pies on Monday and Wednesday, and was 
 kept awake by indigestion all night. This is the comparentia 
 ad intellectum instantiarum convenientium. I did not eat any on 
 Tuesday and Friday, and I was quite well. This is the comparentia 
 instantiarum in proximo quce natura data privantur. I ate 
 very sparingly of them on Sunday, and was very slightly indis 
 posed in the evening. But on Christmas-day I almost dined on 
 them, and was so ill that I was in some danger. This is the 
 comparentia instantiarum secundum magis ct minus. It cannot 
 be the brandy which I took with them ; for I have drunk brandy 
 for years, without being the worse for it. This is the rejectio 
 naturarum. We might easily proceed, but we have already suf 
 ficiently explained our meaning." 
 
 The answer to this is, that Induction being the process of all 
 reasoning, of course so long as men have reasoned they have 
 reasoned inductively. But there is simple and incautious Induc 
 tion, and there is cautious methodical Induction, instinct and 
 science ; in ordinary cases, men pursue the induction per enu- 
 merationem simplicem ; in scientific investigations they must pur 
 sue a very different method ; and at the time Bacon wrote, al 
 most all philosophical and scientific speculations were vitiated by 
 the incorrect method. 
 
 " Those who object to the importance of Bacon s precepts in 
 philosophy," says Mr. Hallam, " that mankind have practised 
 
424: BACON. 
 
 many of them immemorially, are rather confirming their utility 
 than taking off much from their originality, in any fair sense of 
 the term. Every logical method is built on the common facul 
 ties of human nature, which have been exercised since the crea 
 tion, in discerning better or worse truth from falsehood, and 
 inferring the unknown from the known. That men might have 
 done this more correctly, is manifest from the quantity of error 
 into which, from want of reasoning well on what came before 
 them, they have habitually fallen. In experimental philosophy, 
 to which the more special rules of Lord Bacon are generally re 
 ferred, there was a notorious want of that very process of reason 
 ing which he supplied."* " Nothing can be more certain," as 
 Professor Napier observes, "than that Bacon rests the whole 
 hopes of his philosophy on the novelty of his logical precepts ; 
 and that he uniformly represents the ancient philosophers, par 
 ticularly Aristotle, as having been wholly regardless of the in 
 ductive method in their physical inquiries. Bacon does not in 
 deed say that the ancient philosophers never employed themselves 
 in observing Nature ; but he maintains that there is a wide dif 
 ference between observation, as it was employed by them, and 
 the art of observing for the purposes of philosophical discovery."]- 
 Men in Bacon s time reasoned like the facetious judge in Mr. 
 Macaulay s anecdote, "who was in the habit of jocosely pro 
 pounding, after dinner, a theory, that the cause of the prevalence 
 of Jacobinism was the practice of bearing three names. He 
 quoted, on the one side, Charles James Fox, Richard Brinsley 
 Sheridan, John Home Tooke, John Philpot Curran, Samuel 
 Taylor Coleridge, Theobald Wolfe Tone. These were instant ice 
 convenientes. He then proceeded to cite instances absentia; in 
 proximo William Pitt, John Scott, William Wyndham, Samuel 
 Horsley, Henry Dundas, Edmund Burke. He might have gone 
 
 * Hist, of Lit. of Europe, iii. 182. 
 
 t Dissertation on the Scope and Influence of Bacon s Writings, p. 13. See, 
 also, a passage to the same effect in Herschel s Discourse, pp. 113, 114, which 
 we do not quote, because the work is in everybody s hands. 
 
WAS BACON S METHOD NEW AND USEFUL? 425 
 
 on to instances secundum magis et minus. The practice of giv 
 ing children three names has been for some time a growing prac 
 tice, and Jacobinism has also been growing. The practice of 
 giving children three names is more common in America than 
 in England. In England we have still a King and a House of 
 Lords ; but the Americans are Republicans. The rejectiones are 
 obvious. Burke and Wolfe Tone were both Irishmen ; therefore 
 the being an Irishman is not the cause. In this way our induc 
 tive philosopher arrives at what Bacon calls the vintage, and 
 pronounces that having three names is the cause of Jacobinism." 
 
 This is a very good theory for a jocular"one ; but we are sur 
 prised to find so acute a writer as Mr. Macaulay speaking of it in 
 the terms he does : " Here is an induction corresponding with 
 Bacon s analysis, and ending in a monstrous absurdity. In 
 what then does this induction differ from the induction which 
 leads us to the conclusion that the presence of the sun is the 
 cause of our having more light by day than by night? The 
 difference evidently is, not in the kind of instances, but in the 
 number of instances ; that is to say, the difference is not in that 
 part of the process for which Bacon has given precise rules, but 
 in a circumstance for which no precise rule can possibly be given. 
 If the learned author of the theory about Jacobinism had en 
 larged either of the tables a little, his system would have been 
 destroyed. The names of Tom Paine and William Windham 
 Grenville would have been sufficient to do the work." 
 
 We especially dissent from the clause printed in italics, which 
 seems to us at variance with all sound Induction. It is precisely 
 the kind of instances adduced in the theory, which makes the 
 theory absurd. The whole theory is a gross example of " causa 
 tion inferred from casual conjunction, without any presumption 
 arising from known properties of the supposed agent: which is 
 the characteristic of empiricism." Although in this theory there 
 has been a certain superficial elimination employed, yet that elim 
 ination is obviously too incomplete for any satisfactory result. 
 Mr. Macaulay subsequently asks, What number of instances is 
 
426 BACON. 
 
 sufficient to justify belief? After how many experiments would 
 Jenner have been justified in believing vaccination to be a safe 
 guard against the smallpox ? We answer that the number of 
 instances depends on the kind of instances, and on the theory 
 which presides over their collection. In proportion as the facts 
 adduced are complex, must the theory which would explain 
 them be consistent with all other known truths, before the facts 
 themselves can have any significance. 
 
 Bacon s originality is in no way affected by proving that all 
 men at all times, when they reasoned correctly, reasoned induc 
 tively. Moreover, in Bacon s particular department, men had 
 notoriously pursued a wrong Method.* They were not aware of 
 the necessity, which he declared there was in all investigations, 
 to proceed upon a graduated and successive Induction. Bacon 
 first made them aware of this ; and, as Dr. Whewell says, " the- 
 truly remarkable circumstance is to find this recommendation of 
 a continuous advance from observation, by limited steps, through 
 successive gradations of generality, given at a time when specu 
 lative men in general had only just begun to perceive that they 
 must begin their course from experience in some way or other. 
 ... In catching sight of this principle, and in ascribing to it 
 its due importance, Bacon s sagacity, so far as I am aware, 
 wrought unassisted and unrivalled."f 
 
 The second question now presents itself. Was the method 
 useful as a guide in investigation ? Many persons have declared 
 it to be useless. Mr. Macaulay is of the same opinion. He says, 
 with great truth, "By stimulating men to the discovery of new 
 truth, Bacon stimulated them to employ the inductive method 
 
 * And this in spite of the warning so emphatically given three centuries 
 before Francis Bacon, by his great namesake Koger Bacon : " Sine experien- 
 tia nihil sufficienter sciri potest. Duo enim stint modi cognoscendi, scilicet 
 per argumentum ct experimentum. Argumentum concludit et facit nos con- 
 cludere quaestionem, sed non certificat neque removet dubitationem, ut 
 quiescat animus in intuitu veritatis, nisi cam inveniat via experientise." 
 Opus Majus, pars vi. cap. i. 
 
 f Phtios. of Inductive Sciences, ii. 395, 896. 
 
427 
 
 the only method by which truth can be discovered. By stimu 
 lating men to the discovery of useful truth, lie furnished them 
 with a motive to perform the inductive process well and care 
 fully. His predecessors had been anticipators of Nature. They 
 had been content with first principles, at which they had ar 
 rived by the most scanty and slovenly induction. And why was 
 this ? It was, we conceive, because their philosophy proposed 
 to itself no practical end, because it was merely an exercise of 
 the mind. A man who wants to contrive a new machine, or a 
 new medicine, has a strong motive to observe patiently and ac 
 curately, and to try experiment after experiment; but a man 
 who merely wants a theme for disputation, or declamation, has 
 no such motive." 
 
 Now in this passage, as it seems to us, the very merit we are 
 claiming for Bacon is conceded. We are told that Bacon stimu 
 lated men to employ the Inductive Method the only method by 
 which new truth could be discovered. Who pointed out the futil 
 ity of anticipating Nature ? Bacon. Who exposed the " scanty 
 and slovenly induction" of the Schoolmen ? Bacon. His merit 
 is not simply that of stimulating men to the discovery of new 
 lands, but of also affording them chart and compass wherewith to 
 discover the new lands. There were several eminent men, his 
 predecessors and contemporaries, who all rose up against the an 
 cient systems, and stimulated men to the discovery of useful truth ; 
 but these men, although all of them constantly insisted upon ob 
 servation and experiment, had no glimpse, or only a very partial 
 and confused glimpse, of the Inductive Method. So that when 
 Mr. Macaulay says, " It was not by furnishing philosophers with 
 rules for performing the inductive process well, but by furnishing 
 them with a motive for performing it well, that he conferred so 
 vast a benefit on society," we believe he is contradicted, on all 
 sides, by history. The motive had been given by many indeed, 
 one may say that it was a tendency of the age ; the rules had 
 been devised by no one but himself. These rules, it is true, were 
 far from perfect ; but they constitute the beginning, and form the 
 
428 BACON. 
 
 basis of the more perfect structure which successors have erected. 
 Mr. Macaulay s argument receives its force solely from what we 
 cannot but regard as his misconception of the Baconian Induction. 
 That Induction he declares to be daily performed by every man ; 
 but this is confounding ordinary Induction with scientific Induc 
 tion. It is confounding a simple inference, with a long and com 
 plicated process of inference. It is confounding what Bacon in 
 cessantly and emphatically distinguishes, viz. Induction with the 
 Inductive Method ; and this confusion has probably influenced 
 him in the selection of his illustrations. None of the things he 
 has named require a complicated process of reasoning for their 
 discovery. If a man wants to make a shoe, he needs inductions, 
 but is certainly in no need of the Inductive Method; if he wants 
 to discover a law of Nature, the Inductive Method is indispensa 
 ble. Mr. Macaulay will not maintain that the ordinary man, who 
 wishes to find out a law of Nature, proceeds in his inquiry by a 
 graduated and successive Induction from particulars to generals, 
 and from generals to those which are still more general ; and this 
 without " anticipation" of Nature without rash and hasty leap 
 ing from one particular to some extreme generality. In fact, 
 although Induction, as the type of reasoning, must be carried 
 on by every reasoning animal, yet so far is the Inductive Method 
 from being the ordinary process of ordinary men, that we know 
 of scarcely any process so contrary to the natural bias of the 
 mind. Bacon has more than once alluded to this bias, which 
 makes us judge hastily, and on the slenderest evidence. In 
 deed, the Inductive Method requires a constant and watchful 
 repression of our natural tendency to " anticipate," and endeavor, 
 by a short cut, to abridge the long journey which conducts us to 
 the Truth. 
 
 But while we think Mr. Macaulay underrates the importance of 
 the inductive rules, we quite agree with him that Bacon overrated 
 their importance. " Our method of discovery in science," so runs 
 one of his aphorisms, "is of such a nature that there is not much 
 left to acuteness and strength of genius, but all degrees of genius 
 
WAS BACON S METHOD NEW AND USEFUL? 429 
 
 and intellect are brought nearly to the same level."* This is con 
 tradicted by every two men engaging in scientific pursuits. In 
 proportion to the effectiveness of the instrument, will the original 
 superiority make itself more manifest. Place axes in the hands of 
 two men commissioned to make a clearing in the forest, and the 
 stronger man will be at a greater advantage than he was before. 
 Moreover the Method, however excellent when followed, cannot 
 force men to follow it : the natural bias of the mind is against it. 
 Mr. Macaulay therefore is perfectly right in preferring the spirit 
 of Bacon s Method to the rules given in the second book of the 
 Organum. 
 
 There is however another reason why the spirit is preferable to 
 the rules ; and that reason is the incompleteness of those rules. 
 The radical defect of Bacon s method lies in its being inductive, 
 and not also deductive. He was so deeply impressed with a sense 
 of the insufficiency of the Deductive Method alone, which he saw 
 his contemporaries pursuing, and which he knew to be the cause 
 of the failure of his predecessors, that he bestowed all his attention 
 on the Inductive Method. His want of mathematical knowledge 
 had also no small share in this error. Although however it may 
 be justly said that he did not sufficiently exemplify the Deductive 
 Method, it is not correct to say that he. entirely neglected it. 
 Those who assert this, forget that the second part of the Novum 
 Organum was never completed. In the second part it was his 
 intention to treat of Deduction, as is plain from the following pas 
 sage : " The indications for the interpretation of Nature include two 
 general parts. The first relates to the raising of Axioms from ex 
 perience ; and the second, to the deducing or deriving of new 
 experiments from Axioms (de ducendis aut derivandis experi- 
 mentis novis ab axiomatibus)."f We here see that he compre 
 hended the two-fold nature of the method ; but inasmuch as he 
 did not publish the second part of his Organum, we may admit 
 the remark of Professor Playfair, that "in a very extensive depart- 
 
 * N&vum Organum, i. Aph. 61. t Ibid., ii. Aph. 10. 
 
430 BACON. 
 
 meat of physical science, it cannot be doubted that investigation 
 has been carried on, not perhaps more easily, but with a less fre 
 quent appeal to experience, than the rules of the Novum Organum 
 would seem to require. In all physical inquiries where mathemat 
 ical reasoning has been employed, after a few principles have 
 been established by experience, a vast multitude of truths, equally 
 certain with the principles themselves, have been deduced from 
 them by the mere application of geometry and algebra. . . . The 
 strict method of Bacon is therefore only necessary where the 
 thing to be explained is new, and where we have no knowledge, 
 or next to none, of the powers employed."* 
 
 His deficiency in mathematical knowledge caused him to over 
 look the equal importance of Deduction and Induction : " Bacon 
 has judiciously remarked, that the axiomata media of every sci 
 ence principally constitute its value. The lowest generalizations, 
 until explained by and resolved into the middle principles, of 
 which they are the consequences, have only the imperfect accu 
 racy of empirical laws ; while the most general laws are too gen 
 eral, and include too few circumstances to give sufficient indica 
 tion of what happens in individual cases, where the circumstan 
 ces are almost always immensely numerous. In the importance 
 therefore which Bacon assigns, in every science, to the middle 
 principles, it is impossible not to agree with him. But I con 
 ceive him to have been radically wrong in his doctrine respecting 
 the mode in which these axiomata media should be arrived at ; 
 although there is no one proposition in his works for which he 
 has been so extravagantly eulogized. He enunciates, as a uni 
 versal rule, that induction should proceed from the lowest to the 
 middle principles, and from those to the highest, never reversing 
 that order, and consequently leaving no room for the discovery 
 of new principles by way of deduction at all. It is not to be 
 conceived that a man of Bacon s sagacity could have fallen into 
 this mistake, if there had existed in his time, among the sciences 
 
 * Dissertation, pp. 58, 61. 
 
WAS BACON S METHOD NEW AND USEFUL? 431 
 
 which treat of successive phenomena, one single deductive sci 
 ence, such as mechanics, astronomy, optics, acoustics, etc., now 
 are. In those sciences, it is evident that the higher and middle 
 principles are by no means derived from the lowest, but the re 
 verse. In some of them, the very highest generalizations were 
 those earliest ascertained with any scientific exactness; as, for 
 example (in mechanics), the laws of motion. Those general 
 laws had not indeed at first the acknowledged universality which 
 they acquired after having been successfully employed to explain 
 many classes of phenomena to which they were not originally 
 seen to be applicable ; as when the laws of motion were em 
 ployed in conjunction with other laws to explain deductively the 
 celestial phenomena. Still the fact remains, that the proposi 
 tions which were afterwards recognized as the most general 
 truths of the science, were, of all its accurate generalizations, 
 those earliest arrived at. 
 
 " Bacon s greatest merit therefore cannot consist, as we are so 
 often told that it did, in exploding the vicious method pursued 
 by the ancients, of flying to the highest generalizations for it, 
 and deducing the middle principles from them, since this is 
 neither a vicious nor an exploded method, but the universally 
 accredited method of modern science, and that to which it owes 
 its greatest triumphs. The error of ancient speculation did not 
 consist in making the largest generalizations first, but in making 
 them without the aid or warrant of rigorous inductive methods, 
 and applying them deductively without the needful use of that 
 important part of the deductive method termed verification."* 
 
 This passage certainly lays bare the weakness of Bacon s 
 Method ; and does so, we believe, for the first time. But we 
 cannot entirely concur in the concluding paragraph. Although 
 Bacon did not perhaps see the real importance of the Deductive 
 Method, he did see the futility of the Deductive Method em 
 ployed before his time ; and he saw moreover that the cause lay 
 
 * Mill s System &f Logic, ii. 524-6. 
 
432 BACON. 
 
 in the want of u verification" in the want of " the aid or war 
 rant of rigorous inductive methods:" this we must think his 
 greatest merit, as we think his imperfect conception of the De 
 ductive Method his greatest imperfection. 
 
 There is also another potent reason why the merely Inductive 
 Method should not have contributed to any great discoveries ; 
 and we must again borrow from the System of Logic the passage 
 wherein this is exhibited : 
 
 " It has excited the surprise of philosophers that the detailed 
 system of inductive logic has been turned to so little direct use 
 by subsequent inquirers, having neither continued, except in a 
 few of its generalities, to be recognized as a theory, nor having 
 conducted, in practice, to any great scientific results. But this, 
 though not unfrequently remarked, has scarcely received any 
 plausible explanation ; and some indeed have preferred to assert 
 that all rules of induction are useless, rather than suppose that 
 Bacon s rules are grounded upon an insufficient analysis of the 
 inductive process. Such however will be seen to be the fact, as 
 soon as it is considered that Bacon entirely overlooked plurality 
 of causes. All his rules tacitly imply the assumption, so con 
 trary to all we know of Nature, that a phenomenon cannot have 
 more than one cause."* 
 
 In another passage, too long for extract, the same author points 
 out a capital error in Bacon s view of the inductive philosophy, 
 viz. his supposition that the principle of elimination that great 
 logical instrument which he had the immense merit of first 
 bringing into use was applicable in the same sense, and in the 
 same unqualified manner, to the investigation of co-existences, as 
 to that of the successions of plienomena.\ 
 
 In conclusion, it may be said that Bacon s conception of a 
 scientific Method was magnificent, as far as it went ; but in con 
 sequence of certain deficiencies, owing principally to the want of 
 any established science as a model, the Method he laid down was 
 
 * System of Logic, ii. 373. t Ibid., ii. 127 et seq. 
 
WAS BACON S METHOD NEW AND USEFUL? 433 
 
 only indirectly useful. If it did not produce great discoveries, it 
 certainly did exercise an important influence on the minds of 
 those who were afterwards to make great discoveries. " The 
 way to prove that Bacon s writings w 7 ere powerful agents in the 
 advancement of physical knowledge," says Professor Napier, " is 
 to prove that they produced these effects (viz. the overthrow of 
 existing methods stimulus given to experimental inquiry and 
 ingenious views and principles requisite for such inquiry) ; and 
 the proof that such effects were actually produced by them, must 
 necessarily be derived from the testimony of those who early ex 
 perienced, or became otherwise acquainted with, their operation." 
 And the greater part of his instructive Essay is devoted to this 
 proof. The proofs are numerous and decisive, gathered not only 
 from the English and French writers, but also from Italian and 
 German. 
 
 And now the last question presents itself, Was not Bacon s 
 Method latent in the scientific spirit of the age ? Yes ; just as 
 much as the invention of the steam-engine was latent in the 
 knowledge and tendencies of the age of Watt. What does in 
 vention mean more than the finding what others are still seek 
 ing? were it not hidden somewhere, no one could find it. Let 
 no one therefore endeavor to rob a great man of his fame by de 
 claring that the thing found was lying ready to be found, and 
 would have sooner or later been found by some one. Yes, by 
 some one who had eyes to see what his fellow-men could not 
 see : by some other great man. How was it that Bacon s im 
 mediate predecessors and contemporaries did not detect this 
 latent method ? It was lying there as open for inspection to 
 them as to him. Why did he alone find it ? Because he alone 
 was competent to find it. 
 
 It is very true that in his day, and previously, great discover 
 ies had been made ; and as they only could be made upon a true 
 Method, the Method was implied in them. But this is no argu 
 ment against Bacon s originality. " Principles of evidence," says 
 Mr. Mill, "and theories of method, are not to be constructed a 
 
 19 
 
434: BACON. 
 
 priori. The laws of our rational faculty, like those of every 
 other natural agency, are only learnt by seeing the agent at 
 work. The earlier achievements of science were made without 
 the conscious observance of any scientific method ; and we should 
 never have known by what process truth is to be ascertained if 
 we had not previously ascertained truths." And if we consider 
 for a moment the extreme paucity of ascertained truths in science 
 at the time Bacon wrote, it will enhance our admiration of his 
 marvellous sagacity, to see him do so much with such poor ma 
 terials ; as Play fair says, "the history of human knowledge points 
 out nobody of whom it can be said that, placed in the situation 
 of Bacon, he would have done what Bacon did, no man whose 
 prophetic genius would enable him to delineate a system of 
 science which had not yet begun to exist." 
 
 Bacon is a great subject, and one as attractive as great ; but 
 our object here has been solely to exhibit his Method, and to 
 indicate its historical position. We have done nothing but point 
 out the grounds upon which his fame, as the father of Experi 
 mental Philosophy, is built. His Method alone engaged us, be 
 cause by it alone he claims a place in this history. We have 
 not dwelt upon his errors ; neither have we dwelt upon the won 
 drous and manifold excellences of that mind which Mr. Macaulay 
 has so felicitously compared to the tent the fairy Peribanou gave 
 to Prince Ahmed : " Fold it, and it seemed the toy for the hand 
 of lady : spread it, and the armies of powerful Sultans might re 
 pose beneath its shade." 
 
SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 FOUNDATION OF THE DEDUCTIVE METHOD. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 DESCAETES. 
 
 I. LIFE OF DESCARTES. 
 
 JUST at the close of the sixteenth century, 1596, there was 
 born in Touraine, of Breton parents, a feeble sickly child, named 
 Rene Descartes Duperron. A few days after his birth, a disease 
 of the lungs carried off his mother. The sickly child grew to 
 be a sickly boy ; and, till the age of twenty, his life was always 
 despaired of. 
 
 That boy was one the world could ill afford to lose. Few who 
 saw him creeping on the path, which his companions galloped 
 along like young colts, would have supposed that the boy, whose 
 short dry cough and paleness seemed to announce an early grave, 
 was shortly to become one of the world s illustrious leaders, whose 
 works would continue, centuries after their appearance, to be 
 studied, quoted, and criticised. His masters loved him. He was 
 a pupil of promise ; and in his eighth year had gained the title of 
 the Young Philosopher, from his avidity to learn, and his con 
 stant questioning. 
 
 His education was confided to the Jesuits. This astonishing 
 body has many evils laid to its door, but no one can refuse to it 
 the praise of having been ever ready to see and apply the value 
 
436 DESCARTES. 
 
 of education. In the college of La Fleche the young Descartes 
 was instructed in mathematics, physics, logic, rhetoric, and the 
 ancient languages. He was an apt pupil ; learned quickly, and 
 was never tired of learning. 
 
 Was the food supplied by the Jesuits nutritious ? M. Thomas 
 remarks, " There is an education for the ordinary man ; for the 
 man of genius there is no education but what he gives himself; 
 the second generally consists in destroying the first." And so it 
 was with Descartes, who, on leaving La Fleche, declared that 
 he had derived no other benefit from his studies than that of a 
 conviction of his utter ignorance, and a profound contempt for 
 the systems of philosophy in vogue. The incompetence of phi 
 losophers to solve the problems they occupied themselves with, 
 the anarchy which reigned in the scientific world, where no 
 two thinkers could agree upon fundamental points, the extrav 
 agance of the conclusions to which some accepted premises led, 
 determinedhim to seek no more to slake his thirst at their fountains. 
 
 " And that is why, as soon as my age permitted me to quit 
 my preceptors," he says, " I entirely gave up the study of letters ; 
 and resolving to seek no other science than that which I could 
 find in myself, or else in the great book of the world, I employed 
 the remainder of my youth in travel, in seeing courts and camps, 
 in frequenting people of diverse humors and conditions, in col 
 lecting various experiences, and above all in endeavoring to draw 
 some profitable reflection from what I saw. For it seemed to 
 me that I should meet with more truth in the reasonings which 
 each man makes in his own affairs, and which if wrong would 
 be speedily punished by failure, than in those reasonings which 
 the philosopher makes in his study, upon speculations which pro 
 duce no effect, and which are of no consequence to him, except 
 perhaps that he will be more vain of them the more remote they 
 are from common sense, because he would then have been forced to 
 employ more ingenuity and subtlety to render them plausible."* 
 
 * Discours de la Mtihode, p. 6 of the convenient edition of M. Jnles Si 
 mon. Paris, 1844. 
 
LIFE OF DESCARTES. 437 
 
 For many years he led a roving, unsettled life ; now serving 
 in the army, now making a tour ; now studying mathematics in 
 solitude, now conversing with scientific men. One constant pur 
 pose gave unity to those various pursuits. He was elaborating 
 his answers to the questions which perplexed him ; he was pre 
 paring his Method. 
 
 When only three-and-twenty he conceived the design of a 
 reformation in philosophy. He was at that time residing in his 
 winter-quarters at Neuburg, on the Danube. His travels soon 
 afterwards commenced, and at the age of thirty-three he retired 
 into Holland, there in silence and solitude to arrange his thoughts 
 into a consistent whole. He remained there eight years ; and 
 so completely did he shut himself from the world, that he con 
 cealed from his friends the very place of his residence. 
 
 When the results of his meditative solitude were given to the 
 world, in the shape of his celebrated Discourse on Method, and 
 his Meditations (to which he invented replies), the sensation pro 
 duced was immense. It was evident to all men that an original 
 and powerful thinker had arisen ; and although of course this 
 originality could not but rouse much opposition, from the very 
 fact of being original, yet Descartes gained the day. His name 
 became European. His controversies were European quarrels. 
 Charles I., of England, invited him over, with the promise of a 
 liberal appointment ; and the invitation would probably have 
 been accepted, had not the civil war broken out. He afterwards 
 received a flattering invitation from Christina of Sweden, who 
 had read some of his works with great satisfaction, and wished 
 to learn from himself the principles of his philosophy. He ac 
 cepted it, and arrived in Stockholm in 1649. His reception was 
 most gratifying ; and the Queen was so pleased with him as earn 
 estly to beg him to remain with her, and give his assistance 
 towards the establishment of an academy of sciences. But the 
 delicate frame of Descartes was ill fitted for the severity of the 
 climate, and a cold, caught in one of his morning visits to Chris 
 tina, produced inflammation of the lungs, which put an end to 
 
438 DESCAKTES. 
 
 his existence. Christina wept for him, had him interred in the 
 cemetery for foreigners, and placed a long eulogium upon his 
 tomb. His remains were subsequently (1066) carried from 
 Sweden into France, and buried with great ceremony in St. 
 Genevieve du Mont. 
 
 Descartes was a great thinker ; but having said this, we have 
 almost exhausted the praise we can bestow upon him as a man. 
 In disposition he was timid to servility. When promulgating 
 his proofs of the existence of the Deity, he was in evident alarm 
 lest the Church should see something objectionable in them. He 
 had also written an astronomical treatise ; but hearing of the 
 fate of Galileo, he refrained from publishing, and always used 
 some chicane in speaking of the world s movement. He was 
 not a brave man ; nor was he an affectionate man. But he was 
 even-tempered, placid, and studious not to give offence. In 
 these, as in so many other points, he resembles his illustrious 
 rival, Francis Bacon; but his name has descended spotless to 
 posterity, while Bacon s has descended darkened with more spots 
 than time can efface. It would be hard to say how much differ 
 ence of position had to do with this difference of moral purity. 
 Had Bacon lived in his study, we should have only praises for 
 his name. 
 
 II. THE METHOD OF DESCARTES. 
 
 There have been disputes as to Bacon s claim to the title of 
 Father of Experimental Science ; but no one disputes the claim 
 of Descartes to the title of Father of Modern Philosophy. On 
 tology and Psychology are still pursued upon his Method ; and 
 his speculations are still proudly referred to, by most Continental 
 thinkers, as perfect, or almost perfect, examples of that Method. 
 
 In his Dedication of the Meditations to the Sorbonne, he says : 
 " I have always thought that the two questions, of the existence 
 of God t and the nature of the soul, were the chief of those 
 which ought to be demonstrated rather by philosophy than by 
 theology ; for although it is sufficient for us, the faithful, to be- 
 
THE METHOD OF DESCARTES. 439 
 
 lieve in God, and that the soul does not perish with the body, it 
 certainly does not seem possible ever to persuade the infidels to 
 any religion, nor hardly to any moral virtue, unless we first prove 
 to them these two things by natural reason." Extraordinary 
 language, which shows how completely Philosophy had gained 
 complete independence. 
 
 But if Philosophy is to be independent, if reason is to walk 
 alone, in what direction must she walk ? Having relinquished 
 the aid of the Church, there were but two courses open : the 
 one, to tread once more in the path of the ancients, and to en 
 deavor by the arfcient Methods to attain the truth ; or else to 
 open a new path, to invent a new Method. The former was 
 barely possible. The spirit of the age was deeply imbued with 
 a feeling of opposition against the ancient Methods ; and Des 
 cartes himself had been painfully perplexed by the universal an 
 archy and uncertainty which prevailed. The second course was 
 therefore chosen. 
 
 Uncertainty was the disease of the epoch. Skepticism was 
 wide-spread, and even the most confident dogmatism could offer 
 no criterium of certitude. This want of a criterium we saw 
 leading, in Greece, to Skepticism, Epicureanism, Stoicism, the 
 New Academy, and finally leading the Alexandrians into the ! 
 province of faith, to escape from the dilemma. The question of 
 a criterium had long been the vital question of philosophy. 
 Descartes could get no answer to it from the Doctors of his day. 
 Unable to find firm ground in any of the prevalent systems ; dis 
 tracted by doubts; mistrusting the conclusions of his own un 
 derstanding ; mistrusting the evidences of his senses, he deter 
 mined to make a tabula rasa, and reconstruct his knowledge. 
 He resolved to examine the premises of every conclusion, and to 
 believe nothing but upon the clearest evidence of reason ; evidence 
 so convincing that he could not by any effort refuse to assent 
 to it. 
 
 He has given us the detailed history of his doubts. He has 
 told us how he found that he could plausibly enough doubt of 
 
44:0 DESCARTES. 
 
 every thing, except of his own existence. He pushed his skepti 
 cism to the verge of self-annihilation. There he stopped : there, 
 in Self, in his Consciousness, he found at last an irresistible Fact, 
 an irreversible Certainty. 
 
 Firm ground was discovered. lie could doubt the existence 
 of the external world, and treat it as a phantasm; he could 
 doubt the existence of God, and treat the beliet as a superstition ; 
 but of the existence of his thinking, doubting mind, no sort of 
 doubt was possible. He, the doubter, existed, if nothing else ex 
 isted. The existence that was revealed in his own Consciousness 
 was the primary fact, the first indubitable certainty. Hence his 
 famous Cogito, ergo Sum : I think, therefore I am. 
 
 It is somewhat curious, and, as an illustration of the frivolous 
 verbal disputes of philosophers, not a little instructive, that this 
 celebrated Cogito, ergo Sum should have been frequently attacked 
 for its logical imperfection. It has been objected, from Gassendi 
 downwards, that to say, ** I think, therefore I am," is a begging 
 of the question, since existence has to be proved identical with 
 thought. Certainly, if Descartes had intended to prove his ow r n 
 existence by reasoning, he would have been guilty of the petitio 
 principii Gassendi attributes to him ; viz. that the major prem 
 ise, " that which thinks exists," is assumed, not proved. But he 
 did not intend this. What was his object? He has told us that 
 it was to find a starting-point from which to reason, to find an 
 irreversible certainty. And where did he find this ? In his own 
 Consciousness. Doubt as I may, I cannot doubt of my own ex 
 istence, because my very doubt reveals to me a something which 
 doubts. You may call this an assumption, if you will : I point 
 out the fact as one above and beyond all logic ; which logic can 
 neither prove nor disprove ; but which must always remain an 
 irreversible certainty, and as such a fitting basis of philosophy.* 
 
 I exist. No doubt can darken such a truth ; no sophism can 
 confute this clear principle. This is a certainty, if there be none 
 
 * See his replies to the third and fifth series of Objections, affixed to his 
 Meditations. 
 
THE METHOD OF DESCARTES. 441 
 
 other. This is the basis of all science. It is in vain to ask for a 
 proof of that which is self-evident and irresistible. I exist. The 
 consciousness of my existence is to me the assurance of my ex 
 istence. 
 
 Had Descartes done no more than point out this fact, he would 
 have no claim to notice here ; and we are surprised to find many 
 writers looking upon this Cogito, ergo Sum, as constituting the 
 great idea in his system. Surely it is only a statement of uni 
 versal experience an epigrammatic form given to the common- 
 sense view of the matter. Any clown would have told him that 
 the assurance of his existence was his consciousness of it ; but 
 the clown would not have stated it so well. He would have 
 said : I know I exist, because I feel that I exist. 
 
 Descartes therefore made no discovery in pointing out this fact 
 as an irresistible certainty. The part it plays in his system is 
 only that of a starting-point. It makes Consciousness the basis 
 of all truth ; there is none other possible. Interrogate Con 
 sciousness, and its clear replies will be Science. Here we have 
 a new basis and a new philosophy introduced. It was indeed 
 but another shape of the old formula, " Know thyself," so differ 
 ently interpreted by Thales, Socrates, and the Alexandrians : 
 but it gave that formula a precise signification, a thing it had 
 before always wanted. Of little use could it be to tell man to 
 know himself. How is he to know himself? By looking in 
 wards? We all do that. By examining the nature of his 
 thoughts ? That had been done without success. By examining 
 the process of his thoughts ? That too had been accomplished, 
 and the logic of Aristotle was the result. 
 
 The formula needed a precise interpretation ; and that inter 
 pretation Descartes gave. Consciousness, said he, is the basis of 
 all knowledge ; it is the only ground of absolute certainty. 
 Whatever it distinctly proclaims must be true. The process, 
 then, is simple : examine your Consciousness, and its clear re 
 plies. Hence the vital portion of his system lies in this axiom, 
 all clear ideas are true : whatever is clearly and distinctly con- 
 
 190 
 
442 DESCARTES. 
 
 ceived is true. This axiom he calls the foundation of all science, 
 the rule and measure of truth.* 
 
 The next step to be taken was to determine the rules for the 
 proper detection of these ideas ; and these rules he has laid 
 down as follows : 
 
 I. Never to accept any thing as true, but what is evidently so ; 
 to admit nothing but what so clearly and distinctly presents 
 itself as true that there can be no reason to doubt it. 
 
 II. To divide every question into as many separate questions 
 as possible ; that each part being more easily conceived, the 
 whole may be more intelligible. (Analysis.) 
 
 III. To conduct the examination with order, beginning by that 
 of objects the most simple, and therefore the easiest to be known, 
 and ascending little by little up to knowledge of the most com 
 plex. (Synthesis.) 
 
 IV. To make such exact calculations, and such circumspec 
 tions, as to be confident that nothing essential has been omitted. 
 
 Consciousness being the ground of all certainty, every thing 
 of which you are clearly and distinctly conscious must be true ; 
 every thing which you clearly and distinctly conceive exists, if 
 the idea of it involves existence. 
 
 In the four rules, and in this view of Consciousness, we have 
 only half of Descartes system : the psychological half. It was 
 owing, we believe, to the exclusive consideration of this half that 
 Dugald Stewart was led (in controverting Condorcet s assertion 
 that Descartes had done more than either Galileo or Bacon to 
 wards experimental philosophy) to say that Condorcet would 
 have been nearer the truth if he had pointed him out as the 
 Father of the Experimental Philosophy of the Mind. Perhaps 
 the title is just; but Condorcet s praise, though exaggerated, was 
 not without good foundation. 
 
 * " Hac igitur detectii veritate simul etiam invenit omnium scientiarum 
 fundfimentum : ac etiam omnium alinrum vcritatum mensnram ac regulam ; 
 scilicet, quit-quid tarn clare ac distincte percipitur quaiu istud vertim est." 
 Princip. Phil. p. 4. 
 
THE METHOD OF DESCARTES. 4:4:3 
 
 There is, in truth, another half of Descartes system ; equally 
 important, or nearly so : we mean the Mathematical or Deduc 
 tive Method. His eminence as a mathematician is universally 
 recognized. He was the first to make the grand discovery of the 
 application of Algebra to Geometry ; and he made this at the 
 age of twenty-three. The discovery that geometrical curves 
 might be expressed by algebraical numbers, though highly im 
 portant in the history of mathematics, only interests us here by 
 leading us to trace his philosophical development. We see him 
 deeply engrossed in mathematics ; we see him awakening to the 
 conviction that mathematics were capable of a still further simpli 
 fication, and of a far more extended application. Struck as he 
 was with a certitude of mathematical reasoning, he began apply 
 ing the principles of mathematical reasoning to the subject of 
 metaphysics. His great object was, amidst the skepticism and 
 anarchy of his contemporaries, to found a system which should 
 be solid and convincing. He first wished to find a basis of cer 
 titude a starting-point : this he found in Consciousness. He 
 next wished to find a method of certitude : this he found in 
 mathematics. 
 
 "Those long chains of reasoning," he tells us, " all simple and 
 easy, which geometers use to arrive at their most difficult demon 
 strations, suggested to me that all things which came within 
 human knowledge must follow each other in a similar chain ; 
 and that provided we abstain from admitting any thing as true 
 which is not so, and that we always preserve in them the order 
 necessary to deduce one from the other, there can be none so 
 remote to which we cannot finally attain, nor so obscure but that 
 we may discover them."* From these glimpses of the twofold 
 nature of Descartes Method, it will be easy to see into his whole 
 system. The psychological and mathematical Methods are in 
 separable, Consciousness being the only ground of certitude, 
 mathematics the only method of certitude. 
 
 * Discours dc, la Methods, p. 12. 
 
444 DESCARTES. 
 
 "VVe may say therefore that the Deductive Method was now 
 completely constituted. The whole operation of philosophy 
 henceforth consisted in deducing consequences. The premises 
 had been found ; the conclusions alone were wanting. This was 
 held to be true of physics no less than of psychology. Thus, in 
 his Principia, he announces his intention of giving a short ac 
 count of the principal phenomena of the world, not that he may 
 use them as reasons to prove any thing ; for he adds, "we desire 
 to deduce effects from causes, not causes from effects, but only in 
 order that out of the innumerable effects which we learn to be 
 capable of resulting from the same causes, we may determine our 
 minds to consider some rather than others."* 
 
 Such being the Method of Descartes, our readers will hear 
 with surprise that some French writers have declared it to be 
 the same Method as that laid down by Bacon ; and this surprise 
 will be heightened on learning that M. Victor Cousin is one of 
 those writers. He says, " Let us now see what our Descartes has 
 done. He has established in France the same Method that. Eng 
 land has endeavored to attribute exclusively to Bacon ; and he 
 has established it with less grandeur of imagination in style, but 
 with the superior precision which must always characterize one 
 who, not content with laying down rules, puts them himself in 
 practice, and gives the example with the precept."| M. Cousin 
 then quotes the four rules we quoted from Descartes ; and seeing 
 in them Analysis and Synthesis, which he believes constitutes 
 the sole Method of Bacon, declares that the two Methods are 
 one. Such a statement requires no refutation ; nor indeed would 
 
 * Prlndpia Philos. pars 5ii. p. 51. The phrase, "cupimus enim rationes 
 effectuum a causis, uon autem e contrario causarum ab effectibus deducere," 
 may be said to express the nature of his method, as opposed to the method 
 of Bacon. When M. Jules Simon said, " The commencement of philosophy 
 for Descartes is Doubt ; that alone is all his entire method cela seul est touie 
 ta Mi-thode" (Introduction prefixed to his edition of Descartes, p. 3), he mis 
 takes, as it seems to us, the whole purpose of Descartes artificial skepticism : 
 besides, how can a Doubt be a Method ? 
 
 t Hist, dela Philos. 109011 iii. p. 91, ed. Bruxelles, 1840. 
 
THE METHOD OF DESCARTES. 44:5 
 
 it have been noticed, did it not afford an illustration of the loose 
 way in which the terra Method is employed by many writers. 
 
 Bacon was the reverse side of the medal of Descartes. Bacon s 
 deficiencies lay in that department where Descartes was greatest 
 in mathematics. Hence Bacon s over-valuation of Induction, 
 and neglect of Deduction ; hence also Descartes over-valuation 
 of Deduction, and neglect of Induction. Both cultivated Phys 
 ics ; but Bacon made it the basis of all the sciences ; Descartes 
 made it a mere illustration of his principles. The one argued 
 from effects to causes from the known to the unknown ; the 
 other deduced effects from causes explaining phenomena by 
 noumena explaining that which presented itself to the senses 
 by that which was intuitively known. Both separated religion 
 from philosophy ; but Bacon declared the problems of religion 
 and ontology insoluble by reason, and therefore beyond the prov 
 ince of science ; Descartes declared them soluble only by reason, 
 and that it was the first object of philosophy to solve them. 
 
 Besides these and other points of difference, there were also 
 several points of resemblance, owing to the resemblance of their 
 positions as reformers. They both overvalued their Methods, 
 which they declare will enable all men to philosophize with equal 
 justness. " It is not so essential to have a fine understanding," 
 says Descartes, " as to apply it rightly. Those who walk slowly 
 make greater progress, if they always follow the right road, than 
 those who run swiftly, but run on a wrong one." This is pre 
 cisely the thought of Bacon : " A cripple in the right path will 
 beat a racer in the wrong one." But both these thinkers assume 
 that the racer will choose the wrong path : whereas, if their 
 Methods are adopted, the finer understanding must always sur 
 pass the duller in the discovery of truth. 
 
 Before quitting this subject, we must remark on the essentially 
 metaphysical nature and tendency of the Method of Descartes, 
 even when employed on Physics ; and for this purpose we can 
 not do better than borrow the admirable language of Fontenello 
 in his parallel between Descartes and Newton. " Tons deux geo- 
 
446 DESCARTES. 
 
 metres excellents ont vu la necessite de transporter la geometric 
 dans la physique . . . Mais Pun, prenant un vol hardi, a voulu 
 se placer a la source de tout, se rendre maitre des premiers prin- 
 cipes par quelques idees claires et fondamentales, pour n avoir 
 plus qu a descendre aux phenomenes de la nature comme a des 
 consequences necessaires; Pautre, plus timide ou plus modeste, 
 a commence sa marche par s appuyer sur les phenomenes pour 
 remonter aux principes inconnus, resolu de les admettre, quels 
 que les put dormer Penchainement des consequences. L uu part 
 de ce qu il entend nettement pour trouver la cause de ce qu il 
 voit; Pautre part de ce qu il voit pour en trouver la cause, soit 
 claire, soit obscure." 
 
 III. APPLICATION OF THE METHOD. 
 
 To prove the existence of God was the first application of Des 
 cartes Method ; not, as some say, to prove his own existence ; for 
 that neither admitted of logical proof nor of disproof: it was a pri 
 mary fact. Interrogating his Consciousness, he found that he had 
 the idea of God, understanding, by God, a substance infinite, eter 
 nal, immutable, independent, omniscient, omnipotent. This, to him, 
 was as certain a truth as the truth of his own existence. I exist : 
 not only do I exist, but exist as a miserably imperfect, finite 
 being, subject to change greatly ignorant, and incapable of cre 
 ating any thing. In this, my Consciousness, I find by my fini- 
 tude that I am not the All ; by my imperfection, that I am not 
 perfect. Yet an infinite and perfect being must exist, because 
 infinity and perfection are implied, as correlatives, in my ideas of 
 imperfection and finitude. God therefore exists : his existence is 
 clearly proclaimed in my Consciousness, aad can no more be a 
 matter of doubt, when fairly considered, than my own existence. 
 The conception of an infinite being proves his real existence ; 
 for if there is not really such a being, / must have made the 
 conception ; but if I could make it, I can also unmake it, which 
 evidently is not true ; therefore there must be, externally to my 
 self, an archetype from which the conception was derived. 
 
APPLICATION OF THE METHOD. 447 
 
 "The ambiguity in this case," it has been remarked,* "is the 
 pronoun 7, by which in one place is to be understood my will, 
 in another the laws of my nature. If the conception, existing as 
 it does in my mind, had no original without, the conclusion would 
 unquestionably follow that /had made it that is, the laws of 
 my nature must have spontaneously evolved it ; but that my will 
 made it, would not follow. Now, when Descartes afterwards adds 
 that I cannot unmake the conception, he means that I cannot 
 get rid of it by an act of my will, which is true, but is not the 
 proposition required. That what some of the laws of my nature 
 have produced, other laws, or the same laws in other circumstan 
 ces, might not subsequently efface, he would have found it dif 
 ficult to establish." 
 
 His second demonstration is the weakest of the three. Indeed, 
 it is the only one not irrefragable, upon his principles. The 
 third demonstration is peculiarly Cartesian, and may be thrown 
 into this syllogism : 
 
 All that we clearly and distinctly conceive as contained in 
 
 any thing, is true of that thing. 
 
 Now we conceive, clearly and distinctly, that the existence 
 of God is contained in the idea we have of him. 
 
 Ergo, 
 God exists. 
 
 Having demonstrated the existence of God, he had to prove 
 the distinction between body and soul. This, to him, was easy. 
 The fundamental attribute of Substance must be extension, be 
 cause we can abstract from Substance all the qualities except ex 
 tension. The fundamental attribute of Mind is thought, because 
 by this attribute Mind is revealed to itself. Now, according to 
 one of his logical axioms, two substances are really distinct when 
 their ideas are complete, and in no way imply each other. The 
 ideas, therefore, of extension and thought being distinct, it fol 
 lows that Substance and Mind are distinct in essence. 
 
 We need not pursue our analysis of his metaphysical notions 
 * Mill s System of Logic, ii. 447. 
 
44:8 DESCARTES. 
 
 further. We only stop to remark on the nature of his demon 
 strations of God and the soul. It is, and was, usual to prove the 
 existence of God from what is called the " evidence of design." 
 Descartes neither started from design, nor from motion, which 
 must have a mover : he started from the a priori ideas of per 
 fection and infinity ; his proof was in the clearness of his idea 
 of God. His Method was that of definition and deduction. To 
 define the idea of God, and hence to construct the world not 
 to contemplate the world, and thence infer the existence of God 
 was the route he pursued. Is it not eminently the procedure 
 of a mathematician? and of a mathematician who has taken 
 Consciousness as his starting-point? 
 
 Descartes speculations are beautiful exemplifications of his 
 Method ; and he follows that Method, even when it leads him to 
 the wildest conclusions. His physical speculations are some 
 times admirable (he made important discoveries in optics), but 
 mostly fanciful. The famous theory of vortices deserves a men 
 tion here, as an example of his Method. 
 
 He begins by banishing the notion of a vacuum, not, as his 
 contemporaries said, because Nature has a horror of vacuum, but 
 because the essence of Substance being extension, wherever there 
 is extension there is Substance ; consequently empty space is a 
 chimera. The substance which fills all space must be assumed 
 as divided into equal angular parts. Why must this be assumed ? 
 Because it is the most simple, therefore the most natural suppo 
 sition. This substance being set in motion, the parts are ground 
 into a spherical form; and the corners thus rubbed off, like 
 filings or sawdust, form a second or more subtle kind of substance. 
 There is, besides, a kind of substance, coarser and less fitted for 
 motion. The first kind makes luminous bodies, such as the sun 
 and fixed stars ; the second makes the transparent substance of 
 the skies ; the third kind is the material of opake bodies, such 
 as earth, planets, etc. We may also assume that the motions of 
 these parts take the form of revolving circular currents, or vor 
 tices. By this means the matter will be collected to the centre 
 
APPLICATION OF THE METHOD. 449 
 
 of each vortex, while the second or subtle matter surrounds it, 
 and by its centrifugal effort constitutes light. The planets are 
 carried round the sun by the motion of this vortex, each planet 
 being at such a distance from the sun as to be in a part of the 
 vortex suitable to its solidity and mobility. The motions are 
 prevented from being exactly circular and regular by various 
 causes. For instance, a vortex may be pressed into an oval 
 shape by contiguous vortices.* 
 
 Descartes, in his physics, adopted a method which permitted 
 him to set aside the qualities and the substantial forms (which 
 others were seeking), and to consider only the relations of num 
 ber, figure, and motion. In a word, he saw in physics only 
 mathematical problems. This was premature. Science, in its 
 infancy, cannot be carried on by the deductive Method alone : 
 such a process is reserved for its maturity. 
 
 But this deductive Method, though premature, was puissant. 
 Science is forced to employ it, and Bacon s greatest error was in 
 not sufficiently acknowledging it. Hence we may partly account 
 for the curious fact that Bacon, with his cautious Method, made 
 no discoveries, while Descartes, with his premature Method, made 
 important discoveries. Of course the greater physical knowledge 
 of Descartes, and the greater attention bestowed by him upon 
 physics, had something to do with this ; but his Method also as 
 sisted him, precisely because his discoveries were of a kind to 
 which the mathematical method was strictly applicable. 
 
 That Descartes had read Bacon there is no doubt. He has 
 himself praised Bacon s works as leaving nothing to be desired 
 on the subject of experience but he perceived Bacon s deficiency, 
 and declared that we are " liable to collect many superfluous ex 
 periences of particulars, and not only superfluous, but false," if 
 we have not ascertained the truth before we make these expe- 
 
 * We have followed Dr. Whewell s exposition of this theory, as given by 
 him, Hist, of Ind. Sciences, ii. p. 134. The curious reader will do well, 
 however, to turn to Descartes own exposition in the Principia Philosophies, 
 where it is illustrated by diagrams. 
 
450 DESCARTES. 
 
 riences. In other words, experiment should be the verification 
 of an a priori conception ; whereas Bacon teaches us to form 
 our conceptions from experiment. 
 
 We have said enough to make the Method of Descartes appre 
 ciable. His position is that of founder of the Deductive Method 
 on the basis of Consciousness. His scholars may be divided into 
 the mathematical cultivators of Physics, and the deductive culti 
 vators of Philosophy. By the first he was speedily surpassed, 
 and his influence on them can only be regarded as an impulsion. 
 By the second he was continued : his principles were unhesita 
 tingly accepted, and only developed in a somewhat different 
 manner. 
 
 His philosophical Method subsists in the present day. It is 
 the Method implicitly or explicitly adopted by most metaphy 
 sicians in their speculations upon ontological subjects. Is it a 
 good Method ? The question is of the highest importance : we 
 will endeavor to answer it. 
 
 IV. Is THE METHOD TRUE ? 
 
 In the Dedicatory Epistle prefixed to his Meditations, Des 
 cartes declares that his demonstrations of the existence of God, 
 etc., " equal, or even surpass, in certitude the demonstrations of 
 geometry." Upon what does he found this belief? He founds 
 it upon the very nature of certitude. Consciousness is the basis 
 of all certitude. Whatever I am distinctly conscious of, I must 
 be certain of; all the ideas which I find in my Consciousness, as 
 distinctly conceived, must be true. The belief I have in my 
 existence is derived from the fact of my Consciousness : I think, 
 therefore I exist. Now as soon as I conceive a truth with dis 
 tinctness, I am irresistibly led to believe in it ; and if that belief 
 is so firm that I can never have any reason to doubt that which 
 I believe, I have all the certitude that can be desired. 
 
 Further : we have no knowledge whatever of any thing external 
 to us except through the medium of ideas. The consequence is, 
 
IS THE METHOD TRUE ? 451 
 
 says Descartes, that whatever we find in the ideas must necessarily 
 be in the external things. 
 
 It is only in our minds that we can seek whether things exist, 
 or not. There cannot be more reality in an effect than in a 
 cause. The external thing, being the cause of the idea, must 
 therefore possess as much reality as the idea, and vice versa. So 
 that whatever we conceive as existent, exists. 
 
 This is the basis on which Descartes system is erected ; if this 
 basis be rotten, the superstructure must fall. If the root is 
 vitiated, the tree will bear no fruit. No thinker, except Spinoza, 
 has so clearly, so frankly stated his criterium. Let us then ac 
 cept the challenge which it offers, since an opportunity is now 
 afforded of bringing together in a narrow field the defenders and 
 antagonists of philosophy. 
 
 If Descartes is wrong if Consciousness is not the ultimate 
 ground of Certitude, embracing both objective and subjective 
 if ideas are not the internal copies of external things then must 
 Philosophy be content to relinquish all claim to certitude, and 
 find refuge again in Faith. 
 
 And Descartes is wrong. The very Consciousness to which 
 he appeals, convicts him. There is this fallacy in his system : 
 Consciousness is the ultimate ground of certitude, for me ; if I 
 am conscious that I exist, I cannot doubt that I exist ; if I am 
 conscious of pain, I must be in pain. This is self-evident. But 
 what ground of certitude can my Consciousness afford respecting 
 things which are not me ? How does the principle of certitude 
 apply ? How far does it extend ? It can only extend to things 
 which relate to me. I am conscious of all that passes within 
 myself ; but I am not conscious of what passes in not-self : all 
 that I can possibly know of the not-self is in its effects upon me. 
 
 Consciousness is therefore " cabin d, cribb d, confined" to me, 
 and to what passes within me j so far does the principle of cer 
 titude extend, and no farther. Any other ideas we may have, 
 any knowledge we may have respecting not-self, can only be 
 founded -on inferences. Thus, I burn myself in the fire : I 
 
452 DESCARTES. 
 
 am conscious of the sensation ; I have certain and immediate 
 knowledge of that. But I can only be certain that a change has 
 taken place in my consciousness ; when from that change I infer 
 the existence of an external object (the fire), my inference may 
 be correct, but I have obviously shifted my ground ; Conscious 
 ness my principle of certitude forsakes me here : I go out of 
 myself to infer the existence of something which is not-self. My 
 knowledge of the sensation was immediate, indubitable. My 
 knowledge of the object is mediate, uncertain. 
 
 Directly therefore we leave the ground of Consciousness for 
 that of inference, avenues of doubt are opened. Other inferences 
 can be brought to bear upon any one inference to illustrate or to 
 refute it. The mathematical certainty which Descartes attributed 
 to these inferences becomes a great uncertainty. He says we 
 only know things through the medium of ideas. We will accept 
 the proposition as unquestionable. But then he also says that, 
 in consequence of this, whatever we find in the, ideas must neces 
 sarily be true of the things. The reason is, that as ideas are 
 caused in us by objects, and as every effect must have as much 
 reality as the cause the effect being equal to the cause so must 
 ideas have the same reality as things. But this is a double fal 
 lacy. In the first place, an effect is not equal to its cause ; it is 
 a mere consequent of an antecedent, having no such relation as 
 equality whatever. In the second place, the use of the term 
 " reality" is ambiguous. Unquestionably an effect really exists ; 
 but reality of existence does not imply similarity of modes of 
 existence. The burn occasioned by a fire is as real as the fire ; 
 but it in no way resembles the fire. 
 
 So when Descartes says that what is true of ideas must be true 
 of things, he assumes that the mind is a passive recipient a mir 
 ror, in which things reflect themselves. This is altogether fal 
 lacious ; the mind is an active co-operator in all sensation sen 
 sation is a consciousness of changes operated in ourselves, not a 
 consciousness of the objects causing those changes. In truth, so 
 far from our being able to apprehend the nature of things ex- 
 
IS THE METHOD TRUE ? 4:53 
 
 ternal to us, there is an impenetrable screen forever placed before 
 our eyes, and that impenetrable screen is the very Consciousness 
 upon which Descartes relies. When placed in contact with ex 
 ternal objects, they operate upon us ; their operations we know, 
 themselves we cannot know ; precisely because our knowledge of 
 them is mediate, and the medium is our Consciousness. Into 
 whatever regions we wander, we carry with us this Conscious 
 ness, by means of which, indeed, we know, but all we know, is 
 ourselves. 
 
 Knowledge is composed of Ideas. Ideas are the joint product 
 of mind on the one hand, and of external causes on the other ; 
 or rather we may say that Ideas are the products of mind excited 
 by external causes. Upon what principles of inference (since we 
 are here on the ground of inference) can you infer that the ideas 
 excited are copies of the exciting causes that the ideas excited 
 apprehend the whole nature of the causes ? The cause of the 
 fallacy is in that very strong disposition to give objectivity to a 
 law of the mind; in consequence of which we often hear people 
 declare that something they are asserting is " involved in the 
 idea." 
 
 There is one mode of escape left for those who believe in the 
 validity of ontological speculations : namely, to assert the exist 
 ence of Innate Ideas, or as the theory is generally stated in 
 modern times of Necessary Truths independent of all experi 
 ence. If the idea of God, for example, be innate in us, it is no 
 longer a matter of inference, but of Consciousness ; and on such 
 an hypothesis Descartes is correct in believing that the certainty 
 of this idea equals the certainty of geometry. 
 
 But some maintain that he did not assert the existence of In 
 nate Ideas, though, from its having been a doctrine maintained 
 by his followers, it is usually attributed to him. Dugald Stewart 
 quotes the following passage from Descartes in reply to his ad 
 versaries, who accused him of holding the tenet of Innate Ideas : 
 " When I said that the idea of God is innate in us, I never 
 meant more than this, that Nature has endowed us with a facul- 
 
454 DESCARTES. 
 
 ty by ivhich we may know God y but I have never either said or 
 thought that such ideas had an actual existence, or even that 
 they were a species distinct from the faculty of thinking. . . . 
 Although the idea of God is so imprinted on our minds that 
 every person has within himself the faculty of knowing Him, it 
 does not follow that there may not have been various individuals 
 who have passed through life without making this idea a distinct 
 object of apprehension ; and, in truth, they who think they have 
 an idea of a plurality of Gods have no idea of God whatever." 
 
 From this it would appear that he did not hold the doctrine 
 of Innate Ideas. But we must venture to dissent from the con 
 clusion drawn by Dugald Stewart on the strength of such a pas 
 sage ; against that passage we will bring another equally explicit 
 (we could bring fifty, if necessary), which asserts the existence 
 of Innate Ideas. "By the word idea" he says, "I understand all 
 that can be in our thoughts ; and I distinguish three sorts of 
 ideas : adventitious, like the common idea of the sun ; framed 
 by the mind, such as that which astronomical reasoning gives of 
 the sun ; and innate, as the idea of God, mind, body, a triangle, 
 and generally all those which represent true, immutable, and eternal 
 essences"* This last explanation is distinct; and it is all that 
 the serious antagonists of Innate Ideas have ever combated. If 
 Descartes, when pressed by objections, gave different explana 
 tions, we may attribute that to the want of a steady conception 
 of the vital importance of Innate Ideas in his system. The fact 
 remains that Innate Ideas form the necessary groundwork of the 
 Cartesian doctrine. 
 
 Although the theory of Innate Ideas may, in its Cartesian 
 form, be said to be exploded, it does really continue to be upheld, 
 under a new form. A conviction of the paramount necessity of 
 some such groundwork for metaphysical speculation has led to 
 the modern theory of Necessary Truths. This plausible theory 
 has been adopted by Dr. Whewell in his Philosophy of the In- 
 
 * Lettres de Descartes, liv. 
 
IS THE METHOD TRUE ? 455 
 
 ductive Sciences ; but his arguments have been completely 
 shattered by John Mill on the one hand, and by Sir John Her- 
 schel on the other.* 
 
 The basis of all modern ontolog-ical speculations lies in the as 
 sumption that we have ideas independent of experience. Experience 
 can only tell us of ourselves, or of phenomena ; of noumena it 
 can tell us nothing. That we have no ideas independent of ex 
 perience has been clearly enough established in the best schools 
 of psychology ; but the existence of metaphysical speculation 
 proves that the contrary opinion still finds numerous upholders.! 
 
 The fundamental question then of modern Philosophy was 
 this : Have we any Ideas independent of Experience ? And the 
 attempt to solve it will occupy the greater portion of our history. 
 Before entering upon it we must exhibit the Method of Descartes, 
 pushed to its ultimate conclusions in Spinoza.J 
 
 * System of Logic, book ii. ch. v. ; and Quarterly Review, June, 1841 ; in 
 deed, Dr. W he well s arguments had been anticipated and refuted by Locke 
 long before. See Essay, book iv. ch. 6, 7. 
 
 t See the question discussed further on : Epoch VIII. v. 
 
 % The best modern works on Descartes, apart from regular Histories of 
 Philosophy, are M. Francisque Boullier s Histoire et Critique de la Revolution 
 Cartesienne, Paris, 1842; M. Ch. Kenouvier s Manuel de la Philos. Moderne^ 
 Paris, 1841 ; and Feuerbach s Geschichte derneuern PMlosophie, Leipzig, 1847. 
 The best edition of Descartes works is that by Victor Cousin, in eleven vols., 
 8vo., Paris, 1826. M. Jules Simon has also published a cheap and conveni 
 ent edition, in one vojume, of the Discourse on Method, the Meditations, and 
 the Treatise on the Pa-ssions, Paris, 1844. Both of these have been excel 
 lently translated into English (Edinburgh, 1853). 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 SPINOZA. 
 
 I. SPINOZA S LIFE. 
 
 EARLY in the seventeenth century, on a fair evening of sum 
 mer, a little Jewish boy was playing with his sisters on the Burg- 
 wall of Amsterdam, close to the Portuguese synagogue. His 
 face was mild and ingenious ; his eyes were small, but bright 
 quick, and penetrative ; and the dark hair floated in luxuriant 
 curls over his neck and shoulders. Noticeable, perhaps, for his 
 beauty and joyousness, the little boy played amongst the active 
 citizens of that active town. The Dutch then occupied the 
 thoughtful attention of all Europe. After having first conquered 
 for themselves firm footing on this earth, by rescuing their coun 
 try from the sea, they had thrown off the oppressive yoke of 
 Spain ; and had now conquered for themselves a freedom from a 
 far greater tyranny, the tyranny of thought. 
 
 Amsterdam was noisy with the creaking of cordage, the bawl 
 ing of sailors, and the busy trafficking of traders. The Zuyder 
 Zee was crowded with vessels laden with precious stores from all 
 quarters of the globe. The canals which ramify that city, like 
 a great arterial system, were blocked up with boats and barges : 
 the whole scene was vivid with the greatness and the littleness 
 of commerce. Heedless of all this turmoil, as unheeded in it 
 heedless of all those higher mysteries of existence, the solution 
 of which was hereafter to be the endeavor of his life untouched 
 by any of those strange questions which a restless spirit cannot 
 answer, but which it refuses to have answered by others heed 
 less of every thing but his game, the little boy played merrily 
 with his sisters. That boy was Benedict Spinoza. 
 
457 
 
 It is a pleasant thing to think of Spinoza as a boy, playing 
 at boyish games. He has for so long been the bugbear of theo 
 logians and timid thinkers ; he has for so long been looked upon 
 as a monster, an atheist, and (to add to the horror), a Jewish 
 atheist ; and looked upon, even by those who were not so aghast 
 at the consequences of his system, as nothing more than a frigid 
 logician, that we dwell with singular pleasure on any more human 
 aspect of his character. We hope, ere we have done, to con 
 vince the reader that this rigorous logician was a wise, virtuous, 
 and affectionate man. 
 
 His parents were honest merchants of Amsterdam, who had 
 settled there in company with a number of their brethren, on 
 escaping the persecution to which all Jews were subject in Spain. 
 The young Baruch* was at first destined to commerce; but his 
 passion for study, and the precocity of his intellect, made his 
 parents alter their resolution in favor of a rabbinical education : 
 a resolution warranted by sickliness of constitution, which had 
 increased his love of study. The sickly child is mostly thought 
 ful : he is thrown upon himself and his own resources ; he suf 
 fers, and asks himself the cause of his pains, asks himself 
 whether the world suffers like him ; whether he is one with na 
 ture, and subject to the same laws, or whether he is apart from 
 it, and regulated by distinct laws. From these he rises to the 
 awful questions Why ? Whence ? and Whither ? 
 
 The education of the Jews was almost exclusively religious, 
 the Old Testament and the Talmud forming their principal stu 
 dies. Spinoza entered into them with a fanatical zeal, which, 
 backed as it was by remarkable penetration and subtlety, won 
 the admiration of the Chief Rabbin, Saul Levi Morteira, who be 
 came his guide and instructor. Great indeed were the hopes en 
 tertained of this youth, who at fourteen rivalled almost all the 
 doctors in the exactitude and extent of his biblical knowledge. 
 
 * Baruch was Spinoza s Hebrew name, which he himself translated into 
 Latin as Benedictus ; from which some have erroneously supposed that he 
 embraced Christianity, whereas he only renounced Judaism. 
 
 20 
 
458 SPINOZA. 
 
 But these hopes were turned to fears, when they saw that young 
 and pertinacious spirit pursue his undaunted inquiries into what 
 ever region they conducted him, and found him putting difficul 
 ties to them which they, Rabbins and philosophers, were unable 
 to solve. 
 
 Spinoza was to be deterred neither by threats nor by sophisti 
 cations. He found in the Old Testament no mention of the doc 
 trine of immortality : there was complete silence on the point.* 
 He made no secret of his opinions ; and two of his schoolfel 
 lows, irritated at his intellectual superiority, or else anxious to 
 curry favor with the Rabbins, reported his heresy with the usual 
 fertility of exaggeration. Summoned to appear before the Syn 
 agogue, he obeyed with a gay carelessness, conscious of his inno 
 cence. His judges, finding him obstinate in his opinions, threat 
 ened him with excommunication: he answered with a sneer. 
 Morteira, informed of the danger, hastened to confront his re 
 bellious pupil ; but Spinoza remained as untouched by his rhet 
 oric as he was unconvinced by his arguments. Enraged at this 
 failure, Morteira took a higher tone, and threatened him with 
 excommunication, unless he at once retracted. His pupil was 
 irritated, and replied in sarcasms. The Rabbin then impetuously 
 broke up the assembly, and vowed "only to return with the 
 thunderbolt in his hand." 
 
 In anticipation of the threatened excommunication, Spinoza 
 wisely withdrew himself from the Synagogue a step which 
 profoundly mortified his enemies, as he thereby rendered futile all 
 intimidations which had been employed against him, particularly 
 the otherwise terrible excommunication ; for what terror could 
 such a sentence inspire in one who voluntarily absented himself 
 from the society which pretended to exclude him ? 
 
 Dreading his ability, and the force of his example, the Syna 
 gogue made him an offer of an annual pension of a thousand 
 
 * On this silence Warburton endeavored to establish the divinity of the 
 Legation of Moses ; and Bishop Sherlock has exerted considerable ingenuity 
 in explaining 1 the discrepancy which skeptics had seized hold of as an argu 
 ment in their favor. 
 
459 
 
 florins, if he would only consent to be silent, and assist from time 
 to time at their ceremonies. Spinoza, indignant at such an at 
 tempt to palter with his conscience, refused it with scorn. One 
 evening, as he was coming out of the theatre, where he had 
 been relaxing his overtasked mind, he was startled by the fierce 
 expression of a dark face, thrust eagerly before his. The glare 
 of bloodthirsty fanaticism arrested him ; a knife gleamed in the 
 air, and he had barely time to parry the blow. It fell upon his 
 chest, but, fortunately deadened in its force, only tore his coat. 
 The assassin escaped. Spinoza walked home thoughtful.* 
 
 The day of excommunication at length arrived ; and a vast 
 concourse of Jews assembled to witness the awful ceremony. It 
 began by the solemn and silent lighting of a quantity of black 
 wax candles, and by opening the tabernacle wherein were depos 
 ited the Books of the Law of Moses. Thus were the dim imagina- 
 
 O 
 
 tions of the faithful prepared for all the horror of the scene. Mor- 
 teira, the ancient friend and master, now the fiercest enemy of the 
 condemned, was to order the execution of the sentence. He 
 stood there, pained, but implacable ; the people fixed their eager 
 eyes upon him. High above, the chanter rose and chanted forth, 
 in loud, lugubrious tones, the words of execration ; while from 
 the opposite side another mingled with these curses the thrilling 
 sounds of the trumpet ; and now the black candles were reversed, 
 and were made to melt, drop by drop, into a huge tub filled with 
 blood. This spectacle a symbol of the most terrible faith 
 made the whole assembly shudder; and when the final Anath 
 ema Maranatha! were uttered, and the lights all suddenly im- 
 merced in the blood, a cry of religious horror and execration 
 burst from all ; and in that solemn darkness, and to those solemn 
 curses, they shouted Amen, Amen ! 
 
 Thus was the young truth-seeker expelled from his commu- 
 
 * Some of the biographers contradict Bayle s statement of the assassina 
 tion being attempted as Spinoza was leaving the theatre, and declare that he 
 was coming from the Synagogue; but they forget that he had entirely re 
 nounced going there, and this was the probable motive of the assassin. 
 
460 SPINOZA. 
 
 nil) , his friends and relations forbidden to hold intercourse with 
 him. Like the young and energetic Shelley, who afterwards im 
 itated him, he found himself an outcast iu this busy world, with 
 no other guides through its perplexing labyrinths than sincerity 
 and self-dependence. Two or three new friends soon presented 
 themselves ; men who warred against their religion as he had 
 warred against his own ; and a bond of sympathy was forged 
 out of a common injustice. Here again we trace a resemblance 
 to Shelley, who, discountenanced by his relations, sought amongst 
 a few skeptical friends to supply the affections he was thus de 
 prived of. Like Spinoza, he too had only sisters, with whom he 
 had been brought up. No doubt, in both cases, the conscious 
 ness of sincerity, and the pride of martyrdom, were great sus- 
 tainments in this combat with society. They are always so ; and 
 it is well that they are so, or the battle would never be fought ; 
 but they never entirely replace the affections. Shut out from 
 our family, we may seek a brotherhood of apostasy ; but these 
 new and precarious intellectual sympathies are small compensa 
 tion for the loss of the emotional sympathies, with all their links 
 of association, and all their memories of childhood. 
 
 Spinoza must have felt this, and, to fill the void of his yearn 
 ing heart, he sought the daughter of his friend and master, Van 
 den Eude, as his wife. 
 
 This Van den Eude had some influence on Spinoza s life. He 
 was a physician in Amsterdam, who conducted a philological 
 seminary with such success, that all the wealthy citizens sent him 
 their sons ; but it was afterwards asserted, that to every dose of 
 Latin he added a grain of atheism. He undertook to instruct 
 Spinoza in Latin, and to give him board and lodging, on condi 
 tion that he should subsequently aid him in instructing his schol 
 ars. This Spinoza accepted with joy ; for although master of 
 the Hebrew, German, Spanish, Portuguese (and of course Dutch) 
 languages, he had long felt the urgent necessity of Latin. 
 
 Van den Ende had a daughter; her personal charms were 
 equivocal, but she was thoroughly versed in Latin, and was an 
 
461 
 
 accomplished musician. The task of teaching young Benedict 
 generally fell to her : and as a consequence the pupil soon be 
 came in love with the tutor. We often picture this courtship as 
 a sort of odd reverse of Abelard and Heloise. Spinoza we fancy 
 not inattentive to the instruction, but the more in love with it 
 coming from so soft a mouth : not inattentive, yet not wholly ab 
 sorbed. He watches her hand as it moves along the page, and 
 longs to squeeze it. While " looking out" in the dictionary, their 
 hands touch and he is thrilled; but the word is found, never 
 theless. The lesson ended, he ventures on a timid compliment, 
 which she receives with a kind smile; but the smile is lost, 
 for the bashful philosopher has his eyes on the ground ; when 
 he raises them, it is to see her trip away to household duties, or 
 to another pupil : and he looks after her sighing. But, alas for 
 maidenly discernment! our female Abelard was more captivated 
 by the showy attractions of a certain Kerkering, a young Ham 
 burg merchant, who had also taken lessons in Latin and love 
 from the fair teacher ; and who, having backed his pretensions 
 by the more potent seductions of pearl necklaces, rings, etc., 
 quite cast poor Benedict into the shade, who then turned from 
 love to philosophy. 
 
 His progess in Latin had, however, been considerable ; he 
 read it with facility, and found it invaluable in his philosophical 
 studies, especially as the works of Descartes now fell into his 
 hands : these he studied with intense avidity, feeling that a new 
 world was therein revealed. The laws of the ancient Jewish 
 doctors expressly enjoin the necessity of learning some mechan 
 ical art, as well as the study of the law. It was not enough, 
 they said, to be a scholar the means of subsistence must also 
 be learned. Spinoza had accordingly, while belonging to the 
 Synagogue, learnt the art of polishing glasses for telescopes, mi 
 croscopes, etc., in which he arrived at such proficiency that Leib 
 nitz, writing to him, mentioned, " Among the honorable things 
 which fame has acquainted me with respecting you, I learn with 
 no small interest that you are a clever optician." By polishing 
 
462 SPINOZA. 
 
 glasses he gained a subsistence humble, it is true, but equal to 
 his wants. To this he joined, by way of relaxation, the study of 
 design, and soon became very expert. Colerus had a portfolio 
 of portraits of several distinguished men, sketched by him ; and 
 one among them was a portrait of himself, in the dress of Ma- 
 saniello.* 
 
 In his eight-and-twentieth year Spinoza left his natal city of 
 Amsterdam, and resolving to devote his life to study, retired to 
 Rhynsburg, near Leyden, where, still pursuing his trade as a 
 glass-polisher, he devoted every spare hour to philosophy. The 
 fruits of his solitude were the Abridgment of the Meditations of 
 Descartes, with an Appendix, in which he first disclosed the 
 principal points of his own system. This is a very interesting 
 work. It contains the most accurate and comprehensible ac 
 count of Descartes ever written ; and the Appendix is curious, as 
 containing the germ of the Ethica. It made a profound sensa 
 tion ; and when, the following year, he removed to Woorburg 
 a small village near the Hague, his reputation attracted to him 
 a great concourse of visitors. Many enmities were excited 
 amongst the disciples of Descartes, by the exposition of the weak 
 points of their master s system ; and Spinoza had to suffer their 
 rude attacks in consequence. But the attention of all thinking- 
 men was fixed upon him ; and the clearness and precision of his 
 work won him admiration. So many new friendships did he 
 form, that he at last yielded to the numerous solicitations that 
 he should come and live entirely at the Hague. It was not the 
 learned alone who sought his friendship ; men of rank in public 
 affairs were also numbered amongst them. Of the latter we may 
 mention the celebrated Jan de Witt, who loved Spinoza, and 
 profited by his advice in many an emergency. The great Conde 
 also, during the invasion of Holland by the French, sent to de- 
 
 * "Your enemies have not failed to assert that by that you pretended to 
 show that you would create in a little while the same uproar in Christianity 
 that Masaniello created in Naples." Rmoontre de Bayle avec Spinoza dans 
 Vautre Monde. 1711. 
 
463 
 
 sire Spinoza to come and see him. The Philosopher obeyed, but 
 the Prince was prevented from keeping his appointment to his 
 own loss. This journey was very near proving fatal to Spinoza. 
 The populace having learned that he had been in communication 
 with the enemy, began to suspect him of being a spy. His land 
 lord, alarmed at these reports, warned him of them ; he feared, 
 he said, that the populace would attack the house. " Fear noth 
 ing," replied Spinoza, calmly ; " it is easy for me to justify my 
 self, and there are persons enough who know the object of my 
 journey ; but whatever may arrive, as soon as the people assemble 
 before your door, I will go out and meet them, even though I 
 should share the fate of De Witt." The same calm courage 
 which made him proclaim the truth, now made him ready to 
 confront the infuriated populace. Fortunately all passed off in 
 peace, and he was left to his studies. Karl Ludwig, anxious to 
 secure so illustrious a thinker, offered him the vacant chair of 
 Philosophy at Heidelberg, which, however, Spinoza could not 
 accept, conscious that the philosophy he would teach was too 
 closely allied to theology not to trench on its dogmas ; and the 
 Elector had expressly stipulated that he should teach nothing 
 which could prejudice the established religion. He therefore 
 begged to decline it, as his public duties would interfere with his 
 private meditations. Yet it was both a lucrative and honorable 
 post he refused ; but a philosophical contempt for worldly honors 
 was amongst his characteristics. 
 
 It is invigorating to contemplate Spinoza s life. Dependent 
 on his own manual exertions for his daily bread, limited in his 
 wants, and declining all pecuniary assistance so liberally offered 
 by his friends, he was always at ease, cheerful, and occupied. 
 There is an heroic firmness traceable in every act of his life ; 
 there is a perpetual sense of man s independence, worthy all imi 
 tation. He refuses to accept the belief of another man he will 
 believe for himself; he sees mysteries around him, awful, inex 
 plicable ; but he will accept of no man s explanation. God has 
 given him a soul, a?ad with that he will solve the problem, or 
 
464: SPINOZA. 
 
 remain without a solution. He leaves the Synagogue ; he leaves 
 Descartes; he thinks for himself. In a far subordinate sphere 
 he will also assert his independence. Having but the most mis 
 erable pittance, and with the purses of his friends open to him, 
 he preferred limiting his desires to accepting their bounties. He 
 preferred working and gaining his own subsistence, so long as it 
 was to be gained. This was no crotchet, neither was it ignoble 
 calculation. The friends were sincere, their offers were sincere : 
 he knew it, but thanked them, and declined. The heritage, 
 which on his father s death fell to his lot, he resigned to his sis 
 ters. The large property which his friend Simon de Vries had 
 announced his intention of leaving him, he would not consent to 
 accept, but made Simon alter his will in favor of his brother, at 
 Schiedam. The pension offered him if he would dedicate his 
 next work to Louis XIV., he refused, " having no intention of 
 dedicating any thing to that monarch." He was indebted to no 
 one but to God ; who had given him talents, and energy to make 
 those talents available, not to let them and him rot in idleness, or 
 in ignoble dependence, while all the world had to toil.* 
 
 Yet it was a hard, griping poverty that he endured. On look 
 ing over his papers after his death, they found accounts of his 
 expenditure. One day he ate nothing but a soupe au lait, with 
 a little butter, which cost about three halfpence, and a pot of 
 beer, which cost three farthings more. Another day he lived on 
 a basin of gruel, with some butter and raisins, which cost him 
 twopence halfpenny ; " And," says the pastor Colerus, " although 
 often invited to dinner, he preferred the scanty meal that he 
 found at home, to dining sumptuously at the expense of another." 
 This was the man who was, by his contemporaries, branded with 
 the names of Atheist and Epicurean ; and who has borne these 
 
 * It was in a man s own energy that he saw the germ of worth and great 
 ness, and wisely ridiculed the notion of patronage in this noteworthy pas 
 sage : " Governments should never found academies, for they serve more to 
 oppress than to encourage genius. The unique method of making the arts 
 and sciences flourish, is to allow every individual to teach what he thinks, at 
 his own risk and peril." Tract. Pollt. c. 3, 49. 
 
465 
 
 names forever after through all Europe, excepting only Germany. 
 While on the one hand no man was perhaps ever more filled 
 with religion (so that Novalis could call him a "God-intoxicated 
 man"), on the other hand his Epicureanism, at twopence-half 
 penny sterling per diem, stands a legible charge against him. 
 
 The publication of his Tractatus Thcologico-Politicus was an 
 event of some importance, both in the history of philosophy and 
 of Spinoza. The state of men s minds at that period was not 
 favorable to the reception of any great philosophical system ; 
 and Spinoza found himself obliged to prepare the way for his 
 future doctrines, by examining the nature of that ecclesiastical 
 power which could excite at will such violent perturbation in 
 the State, and by examining also the foundations on which that 
 power reposed. This great question still agitates mankind ; and 
 it is as curious as instructive to observe that the late orthodox 
 and estimable Dr. Arnold taught a doctrine precisely similar to 
 that taught by the heretical and persecuted Spinoza.* 
 
 Times were troubled. Holland, it is true, was reposing on 
 her laurels, won in the long and desperate struggle against 
 Spain. Having freed herself from a foreign yoke, she had, one 
 would fancy, little now to do but to complete her canals, extend 
 her commerce, and enjoy her peace. But this land of political 
 freedom this ark of refuge for the persecuted of all nations 
 the republic whose banner was freedom, and in whose cities Eu 
 ropean freethinkers published their works was disturbed by 
 theological faction. The persecuted Jews might flock from 
 Spain and Portugal, the synagogue might rear itself beside the 
 church ; the Protestants of France and Belgium were welcome 
 as brothers and citizens; but, arrived there, the fugitives might 
 witness, even there, the implacable war of party. Toleration 
 was afforded to political freethinking, and to the diversities of 
 religion ; but, within the pale of the State religion, malice and 
 all uncharitableness were daily witnessed. There the Gomarists 
 
 * Compare Arnold, Introductory Lectures on Modern History: Appendix 
 to the first Lecture. 
 
466 SPINOZA. 
 
 and Arminians disputed concerning the infallibility of their doc 
 trines, and cloaked their political ambition under evangelical 
 protestations.* 
 
 This was the state of things on the appearance of the Trac- 
 tatus. Spinoza, seeing the deplorable dissensions of the theolo 
 gians, endeavored to make evident the necessity of a State 
 religion, which, without absolutely imposing, or interfering with, 
 private creeds, should regulate all outward observances. Because, 
 as it is the office of the State to watch over all that concerns 
 the common welfare, so should it watch over the Church, and 
 direct it according to the general wish. But two things per 
 fectly distinct must not here be confounded, viz. liberty of 
 observance and liberty of thought. The latter is independent of 
 all civil power ; but the former must be subject to it, for the 
 sake of the public tranquillity. 
 
 Although this portion of the Tractatus could not have met 
 with general approbation, yet it would scarcely have raised 
 violent dissensions, had Spinoza confined himself to such specu 
 lation ; but, anticipating the rationalism of modern Germans, he 
 undertook a criticism of the Bible, and attacked the institution 
 of priesthood as injurious to the general welfare. It is curious 
 to notice Spinoza s anticipation of the Hegelian Christology, 
 which, in the hands of Strauss, Feuerbach, and Bruno Bauer, 
 has made so much noise in the theological world : " I tell you," 
 says Spinoza, in his letter to Oldenburg, "that it is not necessary 
 for your salvation that you should believe in Christ according to 
 the flesh ; but of that eternal son of God, i. e. eternal ivisdom of 
 God, which is manifested in all things, but mostly in the human 
 mind, and most of all in Jesus Christ, a very different concep 
 tion must be formed. 1 "Dico ad salutem non esse omnino 
 necesse, Christum, secundum carnem noscere, sed de seterno illo 
 filio Dei, hoc est, Dei sterna sapientia, quse sese in omnibus 
 rebus, et maxime in mente human a et omnium maxime in 
 
 * Saintes, Histoire de la Vie de Spinoza, p. 6&. 
 
467 
 
 Christo Jesu manifestavit, longe aliter sentiendum."* The con 
 sequences were as might have been expected : the book was at 
 once condemned, and forbidden to be received in almost every 
 country. This, as usual, only gave a greater stimulus to curi 
 osity, and the sensation the work produced may be judged of 
 by the quantity of " refutations " which appeared. Many were 
 the artifices used to introduce it into the various countries. An 
 edition was published at Leyden, under this title : Dan. Hensii 
 Operum Historicorum collectio prima. Edit. //., priori editione 
 multo emendatior et auctior ; accedunt qucedam hactenus inedita. 
 This was reprinted at Amsterdam as Henriquez de Villacorta, 
 M. Dr. a Cubiculo Philippi IV., Caroli //., Archiatri Opera 
 chirurr/ica omnia, sub auspiciis potentissimi Hispaniarum Regis. 
 This absurd title was adopted to pass it into Spain. Another 
 edition in French, called La Clef du Sanctuaire, was published 
 at Leyden in 1678, and in Amsterdam as Traite des Ceremonies 
 des Juifs, and again as Reflexions curieuses d un Esprit des- 
 interesse. 
 
 Spinoza s devotion to study, with its concurrent abstemious 
 ness and want of exercise, soon undermined his constitution ; 
 but he never complained. He suffered that, as he had suffered 
 every thing else in silence. Once, only, a hint escapes him. 
 "If my life be continued," he writes to a friend respecting a 
 promise to explain certain matters. No plaint no regret 
 merely a condition put upon a promise. He was a calm, brave 
 man ; he could confront disease and death, as he had confronted 
 poverty and persecution. Bravery of the highest kind distin 
 guished him through life, and it was not likely to fail him on 
 the quitting it ; and yet beneath that calm, cold stoicism, there 
 was a childlike gayety springing from a warm and sympathizing 
 heart. His character was made up of generous simplicity and 
 heroic forbearance. He could spare somewhat from even his 
 scanty pittance to relieve the wretched. He taught the learned 
 
 * Opera Posthuma, p. 450. 
 
468 SPINOZA. 
 
 world the doctrines he had elaborated with endless toil ; but he 
 taught children to be regular in their attendance on divine ser 
 vice. He would question his host and hostess, on their return 
 from church, respecting the sermon they had heard, and the 
 benefit they had derived. He had no unwise proselytism which 
 would destroy convictions in minds unfitted to receive others. 
 One day his hostess asked him if he believed that she would be 
 saved by her religion. He answered, " Your religion is a good 
 one you ought not to seek another, nor doubt that yours will 
 procure your salvation, provided you add to your piety the 
 tranquil virtues of domestic life." Words full of wisdom, spring 
 ing from an affectionate and experienced mind. 
 
 So lived the Jew, Spinoza. So he developed his own nature, 
 and assisted the development in others. Given up to philosophy, 
 he found in it " the true medicine of the soul " of which Cicero 
 speaks.* His only relaxations were his pipe, receiving visitors, 
 chatting to the people of his house, and watching spiders fight. 
 This last amusement would make the tears roll down his cheeks 
 with laughter. 
 
 The commencement of the year 1677 found him near his end. 
 The phthisis, which he had suffered from for twenty years, now 
 alarmingly increased. On Sunday, the 22d February, he insisted 
 on his kind host and hostess leaving him, and attending divine 
 service, as he would not permit his illness to obstruct their devo 
 tions. They obeyed. On their return he talked with them 
 about the sermon, and ate some broth with a good appetite. 
 After dinner his friends returned to church, leaving the physician 
 with him. When they came home they learned, with sorrow 
 and surprise, that he had expired about three o clock, in the 
 presence of the physician, who seized what money there was on 
 the table, together with a silver-handled knife, and left the body 
 without further care. So died, in his forty-fifth year, in the full 
 vigor and maturity of his intellect, Benedict Spinoza. " Offer 
 
 * Cicero, Tusc. iii. 6. Compare also the fine saying of Giordano Bruno 
 (p. 393). 
 
SPINOZA S DOCTRINE. 469 
 
 up with me a lock of hair to the manes of the holy but repudi 
 ated Spinoza !" exclaims the pious Schleiermacher. " The great 
 spirit of the world penetrated him ; the Infinite was his beginning 
 and his end ; the universe his only and eternal love. He was 
 filled with religion and religious feeling ; and therefore it is that 
 he stands alone, unapproachable ; the master in his art, but 
 elevated above the profane world, without adherents, and with 
 out even citizenship."* 
 
 II. SPINOZA S DOCTRINE. 
 
 The system of Spinoza, which has excited so much odium, is 
 but the logical development of the system of Descartes which has 
 excited so much admiration. Curious ! The demonstration of 
 the existence of God was one of Descartes proudest laurels ; the 
 demonstration of the existence of God and of no other exist 
 ence being possible condemned Spinoza to almost universal 
 execration. 
 
 Dugald Stewart, generally one of the most candid of men, evi 
 dently shared the common prejudice with respect to Spinoza. 
 He refuses therefore to admit that Spinoza, whom he dislikes, 
 held opinions at all similar to those of Descartes, whom he ad 
 mires. "It was in little else," says he, "than his physical prin 
 ciples that he agreed with Descartes ; for no two philosophers 
 ever differed more widely in their metaphysical and theological 
 tenets. Fontenelle characterizes his system as Cartesianism 
 pushed to extravagance." This is far from correct. Spinoza 
 differed with Descartes on a few points, and agreed with him on 
 most ; the differences were only those of a more rigorous logical 
 development of the principles both maintained. 
 
 It was at an important era in Spinoza s life that the writings 
 of Descartes fell in his way. He was then striving to solve for 
 himself the inexplicable riddle of the universe. He had studied 
 with the learned Morteira ; but though wise in all the wisdom 
 
 * Schleiermaclier, Rede uber die Religion, p. 47. 
 
470 SPINOZA. 
 
 of the Jews, he was still at an immeasurable distance from the 
 desired solution. Descartes captivated him by the boldness of 
 his logic, and by the independent nature of his Method, jvvhereby_ 
 truth was sought_in the inner world of man, not in the outward 
 world, nor in the records of authority. He studied Descartes 
 with avidity ; but he soon found that there also the riddle re 
 mained unsolved. He found the fact of his own existence some 
 what superfluously established ; but the far greater existence in 
 which his own was included of which the great All was but a 
 varied manifestation of this he found no demonstration. Cogito, 
 ergo sum, is irresistible. Cogito, ergo Deus est, is no basis for 
 philosophy. 
 
 Spinoza therefore asked himself What is the noumenon which 
 lies beneath all phenomena ? We see everywhere transforma 
 tions perishable and perishing ; yet there must be something be 
 neath, which is imperishable, immutable ; what is it ? We see 
 a wondrous universe peopled with wondrous beings, yet none of 
 these beings exist per se, but per aliud : they are not the authors 
 of their own existence ; they do not rest upon their own reality, 
 but on a greater reality on that of the TO sv xai TO crav. What 
 is this reality ? 
 
 The question, Spinoza thought, could not be answered by the 
 idea of Perfection. No : the great reality of all existence is Sub 
 stance. Not Substance in the gross and popular sense of " body" 
 or "matter," but the substans that which is standing under all 
 phenomena, supporting and giving them reality. What is a 
 phenomenon ? An appearance, a thing perceived : a state of 
 the perceiving mind. But what originates this perception 
 what changes the mind from its prior to its present state ? Some 
 thing, external and extrinsic, changes it. AVhat is this some 
 thing ? What it is, in itself, we can never know : because to 
 know it would bring it under the forms and conditions of the 
 mind, i. e. would constitute it a phenomenon : unknown, there 
 fore, but not denied this ens this something, is ; and this, 
 which Kant calls noumenon, Spinoza calls Substance. 
 
471 
 
 All philosophy, as all existence, must start from one principle , 
 which must be the ground of all. What is this commencement 
 this apx*) ? Perfection, replies Descartes. No, says Spinoza, 
 Perfection is an attribute of something prior to it. Substance is 
 tb&JjLfSdL Descartes, in common with most philosophers, had 
 assumed a duality : he had assumed a God, and a world created 
 by God. Substance, to him, was by no means the primal fact of 
 all existence ; on the contrary, he maintained that both Exten 
 sion and Thought were Substances ; in other words, that mind 
 and matter were distinct independent Substances, different in 
 essence, and united only by God. Spinoza affirmed that both 
 Extension and Thought were nothing more than Attributes ; and 
 by a subtle synthesis he reduced the duality of Descartes to 
 an all-embracing unity, and thus arrived at a conception of 
 the One. 
 
 The absolute Existence the Substance (call it what you 
 will) is God. From Him all individual concrete existences arise. 
 All that exists, exists in and by God ; and can only thus be con 
 ceived. Here then the mystery of the world begins to unfold 
 itself to the patient thinker ; he recognizes God as the fountain 
 of life ; he sees in the universe nothing but the manifestation of 
 God ; the finite rests upon the bosom of the infinite ; the incon 
 ceivable variety resolves itself into unity. There is but one real 
 ity, and that is God. 
 
 Such was Spinoza s solution of the problem : upon this he felt 
 he could repose in peace, and upon this only. To live with God 
 to know God with perfect knowledge, was the highest point 
 of human development and happiness; and to this he conse 
 crated his life. Taking the words of St. Paul, " In Him we live, 
 move, and have our being," as his motto, he undertook to trace 
 the relations of the world to God and to man, and those of man 
 to society. 
 
 Spinoza agreed with Descartes in these three vital positions : 
 I. The basis of all certitude is Consciousness. II. Whatever 
 is clearly perceived in Consciousness must therefore be necessari- 
 
472 SPINOZA. 
 
 ly true ; and distinct ideas are true ideas, true expressions of ob 
 jective existences. III. Consequently metaphysical problems are 
 susceptiWe of mathematical demonstration. 
 _^.Xhe only noxQlty^in^nozas Methods, JhalJL_k.aJiirther 
 
 development of the Method of Descartes,- Descartes thought 
 that the mathematical Method was capable of being applied to 
 metaphysics, but he did not apply it; Spinoza did apply it. 
 This may seem a trifling addition : in reality it was the source 
 of all the differences between Spinoza and his teacher. Des 
 cartes principles will inevitably lead to Spinoza s system, if those 
 principles are rigorously carried out. But Descartes never at 
 tempted the rigorous deduction of those consequences, which 
 Spinoza, using the mathematical method, calmly and inflexibly 
 deduced. Those who rebel at the conclusions drawn, must im 
 pugn the premises from which they are drawn ; for the system 
 of Spinoza is neither more nor less than a demonstration. 
 
 To this demonstration we are about to lead our readers, and 
 only beg of them a little steady attention and a little patient 
 thought, convinced that they will then have little difficulty in 
 finding their way. We shall translate some portions of the 
 Ethica with the utmost care, because we think it every way ad 
 visable that the reader should have Spinoza s own mode of state 
 ment, and thereby be enabled to watch his manner of deducing 
 his conclusions from his premises. The work opens with eight 
 
 DEFINITIONS. 
 
 I. By a thing which is its own Cause I understand a thing, 
 the essence of which involves existence ; or the nature of 
 which can only be considered as existent.* 
 II. A thing finite is that which can be limited (terminari po- 
 by another thing of the same nature, e. g. body is said 
 
 * This is an important definition, as it gets rid of the verbal perplexity 
 hitherto felt relative to an "endless chain of causes." The doubter might 
 always ask the cause of the first cause in the series ; but here, by identi 
 fying cause and existence, Spinoza annihilates the difficulty. 
 
473 
 
 to be finite because it can always be conceived as larger. 
 So thought is limited by other thoughts. But body does 
 not limit thought, nor thought limit body. 
 
 III. By Substance I understand that which exists in itself, and 
 is conceived per se : in other words, the conception of 
 which does not require the conception of any thing else 
 antecedent to it. 
 
 IV. By Attribute I understand that which the mind perceives 
 as constituting the very essence of Substance. 
 
 V. By Modes I understand the accidents (a/ectiones) of Sub 
 stance ; or that which is in something else, through which 
 also it is conceived. 
 
 VI. By God I understand the Being absolutely infinite, i. e. the 
 Substance consisting of infinite Attributes, each of which 
 expresses an infinite and eternal essence. 
 
 Explanation: I say absolutely infinite, but not infinite suo 
 genere ; for to whatever is infinite only suo genere, we can 
 deny infinite Attributes ; but that which is absolutely in 
 finite includes in its essence every thing which implies es 
 sence, and involves no negation. 
 
 VII. That thing is said to be free which exists by the sole ne 
 cessity of its nature, and by itself alone is determined to 
 action. But that thing is necessary, or rather constrained, 
 which owes its existence to another, and acts according to 
 certain and determinate causes. 
 
 VIII. By Eternity I understand Existence itself, in as far as it is 
 conceived necessarily to follow from the sole definition of 
 an eternal thing. 
 
 These are the Definitions : they need not long be dwelt on, 
 although frequently referred to by him ; above all, no objection 
 ought to be raised against them, as unusual or untrue, for they 
 are the meanings of various terms in constant use with Spinoza, 
 and he has a right to use them as he pleases, provided he does 
 not afterwards depart from this use, which he is careful not to 
 do. We now come to the seven axioms. 
 
474 SPINOZA. 
 
 AXIOMS. 
 
 I. Every thing which is, is in itself, or in some other thing. 
 II. That which cannot be conceived through another (per aliud) 
 must be conceived through itself ( per se). 
 
 III. From a given determinate cause the effect necessarily fol 
 lows ; and vice versa, if no determinate cause be given, no 
 effect can follow. 
 
 IV. The knowledge of an effect depends on the knowledge of 
 the cause, and implies it. 
 
 V. Things that have nothing in common with each other can 
 not be understood by means of each other, i. e. the concep 
 tion of one does not involve the conception of the other. 
 
 VI. A true idea must agree with its object (idea vera debet cum 
 suo ideato convenire.) 
 
 VII. Whatever can be clearly conceived as non-existent, does 
 not, in its essence, involve existence. 
 
 These axioms at once command assent, if we except the 
 fourth, which, because the wording is ambiguous, has been 
 sometimes thought absurd ; but the truth is, that the opposite 
 conceptions now prevalent respecting cause and effect prevent a 
 real appreciation of this axiom. Mr. Hallam goes so far as to 
 say, " It seems to be in this fourth axiom, and in the proposition 
 grounded upon it, that the fundamental fallacy lurks. The rela 
 tion between a cause and effect is surely something perfectly dif 
 ferent from our perfect comprehension of it, or indeed from our 
 having any knowledge of it at all ; much less can the contrary 
 assertion be deemed axiomatic."* There is a want of subtlety 
 in this criticism, as well as a want of comprehension of Spinoza s 
 doctrines; and we wonder it never suggested itself to Mr. Ilallam 
 that the modern notions of cause and effect do not correspond 
 with the Spinozistic notions. In the above axiom it is not 
 meant that there are no effects manifested to us of which we 
 
 * Introduction to Literature of Europe, iv. 246. 
 
475 
 
 do not also know the causes it is not meant that a man receiv 
 ing a blow in the dark is not aware of that blow (effect), 
 though ignorant of the immediate cause. What is meant is, 
 that a complete and comprehensive knowledge of the effect is 
 only to be obtained through a complete and comprehensive 
 knowledge of the cause. If you would know the effect in its 
 totality in itself you must know also the cause in its totality. 
 This is obvious : for what is an effect ? an effect is a cause re 
 alized : it is the natura naturans conceived as natura naturata. 
 We call the antecedent, Cause, and the sequent, Effect; but 
 these are merely relative designations : the sequence itself is 
 antecedent to some subsequent change, and the former ante 
 cedent was once only a sequent to its cause ; and so on. Causa 
 tion is change ; when the change is completed, we name the 
 result effect. It is only a matter of naming. But inciting this x 
 change, causing it, as we say, there is some power (cause) in 
 nature ; to know this effect therefore that is, not merely to < 
 have a relative conception of our own condition consequent on 
 it, but to comprehend this power, this reality, to penetrate its 
 mystery, to see it in its totality, we must know what the effect 
 is, and how it is ; we must know its point of departure, and its 
 point of destination ; in a word, we must transcend the knowledge 
 of phenomena, and acquire that of noumena. In a popular sense 
 we are said to know effects, but to be ignorant of causes. 
 Truly, we are ignorant of both and equally ignorant. A 
 knowledge of sequences we have, and of nothing more. The 
 vital power determining these sequences we name, but cannot 
 know ; we may call it attraction, heat, electricity, polarization, 
 etc., but, having named, we have not explained it. 
 
 This is what Spinoza implicitly teaches; and had Mr. Hallam 
 attended only to what the very next axiom proclaims, namely, 
 that things have nothing in common with each other, cannot be 
 understood by means of each other, i. e. the conception of one 
 not involving the conception of the other he would have un 
 derstood Spinoza s meaning; for, if effect be different from cause, 
 
4:76 SPINOZA. 
 
 then its conception does not involve the conception of cause ; 
 but if it be the same as cause, then does the one conception in 
 volve that of the other ; ergo, the more complete the knowledge 
 of the one, the more complete the knowledge of the other. 
 The reader will bear this in mind when studying Spinoza. 
 We will now proceed to the 
 
 PROPOSITIONS. 
 
 PROP. I. Substance is prior in nature to its accidents. 
 
 Demonstration. Per Definitions 3 and 5. 
 
 PROP. II. Two Substances, having different Attributes, have 
 nothing in common with each other. 
 
 Demonst. This follows from Def. 3 ; for each Substance must be 
 conceived in itself and through itself; in other words, the 
 conception of one does not involve the conception of the 
 other. 
 
 PROP. III. Of things which have nothing in common, one can 
 not be the cause of the other.* 
 
 Demonst. If they have nothing in common, then (per Axiom 5) 
 they cannot be conceived by means of each other ; ergo 
 (per Axiom 4) one cannot be the cause of the other. 
 Q. E. D. 
 
 PROP. IV. Two or more distinct things are distinguished among 
 themselves either through the diversity of their Attributes, 
 or through the diversity of their Modes. 
 
 Demonst. Every thing which is, is in itself or in some other 
 thing (per Axiom 1) ; that is (per Def. 3 and 5), there is 
 
 * This fallacy has been one of the most influential corrupters of philosoph 
 ical speculation. For many years it was undisputed ; and most metaphy 
 sicians still adhere to it. See Mill s Si/stem of Logic, ii. 37(3-386. The 
 assertion is that only like can act upon like. This was the assumption of 
 Anaxagoras, and the groundwork of his system. If the assumption be cor 
 rect, his system is true. But although it is true that like produces (causes) 
 like, it is also as true thatZi^e produces unlike: thus fire produces pain when 
 applied to our bodies, explosion when applied to gunpowder, charcoal when 
 applied to wood ; all these eifects are unlike the cause. Spinoza s position 
 is logical ; those who have since upheld the fallacy have not that excuse. 
 
SPINOZA/8 DOCTRINE. 477 
 
 nothing- out of ourselves (extra intellectum) but Substance 
 and its Modes. There is nothing out of ourselves whereby 
 things can be distinguished amongst one another, except 
 Substances, or (which is the same thing, per Def. 4*) their 
 Attributes and Modes. 
 
 PROP. V. It is impossible that there should be two or more 
 Substances of the same nature, or of the same Attribute. 
 
 Demonst. If there are many different Substances, they must be 
 distinguished by the diversity of their Attributes, or of their 
 Modes (per Prop. 4). If only by the diversity of their 
 Attributes, it is thereby conceded that there is nevertheless 
 only one Substance of the same Attributes ; but if by the 
 diversity of their Modes, it follows that Substance being 
 prior in nature to its Modes, it must be considered inde 
 pendently of them ; that is (per Def. 3 and 6), cannot be 
 conceived as distinguished from another ; that is (per Prop. 
 4), there cannot be many Substances, but only one Sub 
 stance. Q. E. D. 
 
 PROP. VI. One Substance cannot be created by another Sub 
 stance. 
 
 Demonst. There cannot be two Substances with the same At 
 tributes (per Prop. 5) ; i. e. (per Prop. 2), having any thing 
 in common with each other ; and therefore (per Prop. 3) 
 one cannot be the cause of the other. 
 
 Corollary. Hence it follows that Substance cannot be created by 
 any thing else. For there is nothing in existence except 
 Substance and its Modes (per Axiom 1, and Def. 3 and 5) ; 
 now this Substance, not being created by another, is self- 
 caused. 
 
 Corollary 2, This proposition is more easily to be demonstrated 
 by the absurdity of its contradiction ; for if Substance can 
 
 * In the original, by a slip of the pen, Axiom 4 is referred to instead of 
 Def. 4 ; and Auerbach has followed the error in his translation. We notice 
 it because the reference to Axiom 4 is meaningless, and apt to puzzle the 
 student. 
 
478 SPINOZA. 
 
 be created by any thing else, the conception of it would de 
 pend on the conception of the cause (per Axiom 4 *), and 
 hence (per Def. 3) it would not be Substance. 
 PROP. VII. It pertains to the nature of Substance to exist. 
 Demonst. Substance cannot be created by any thing else (per 
 Coroll. Prop. 6). and is therefore the cause of itself; i.e. 
 (per Def. 1) its essence necessarily involves existence ; or 
 it pertains to the nature of Substance to exist. Q. E. D. 
 PROP. VIII. All Substance is necessarily infinite. 
 Demonst. There exists but one Substance of the same Attribute ; 
 and it must either exist as infinite or as finite. But not as 
 finite, for (per Def. 2) as finite it must be limited by another 
 Substance of the same nature, and in that case there would 
 be two Substances of the same Attribute, which (per Prop. 
 5) is absurd. Substance therefore is infinite. Q. E. D. 
 Scholium. I do not doubt that to all who judge confusedly 
 of things, and are not wont to inquire into first causes, it will be 
 difficult to understand the demonstration of Prop. 7, because 
 they do not sufficiently distinguish between the modifications of 
 Substance, and Substance itself, and are ignorant of the manner 
 in which things are produced. Hence it follows, that seeing 
 natural things have a commencement, they attribute a commence 
 ment to Substances ; for he who knows not the true causes of 
 things, confounds all things, and sees no reason why trees should 
 not talk like men; or why men should not be formed from 
 stones as well as from seeds ; or why all forms cannot be changed 
 into all other forms. So, also, those who confound the divine 
 nature with the human, naturally attribute human affections to 
 God, especially as they are ignorant how these affections are 
 produced in the mind. But if men attended to the nature of 
 Substance, they would not in the least doubt the truth of Prop. 
 7 ; nay, this proposition would be an axiom to all, and would be 
 numbered among common notions. For by Substance they 
 
 * Here the potency and significance of Axiom 4 begins to unfold itself. 
 
479 
 
 would understand that which exists in itself, and is conceived 
 through itself; i. e. the knowledge of which does not require the 
 knowledge of any thing antecedent to it.* But by modification 
 they would understand that which is in another thing, the con 
 ception of which is formed through the conception of the thing 
 in which it is, or to which it belongs : we can therefore have 
 correct ideas of non-existent modifications, because, although 
 out of the understanding they have no reality, yet their essence 
 is so comprehended in that of another, that they can be con 
 ceived through this other. The truth of Substance (out of the 
 understanding) lies nowhere but in itself, because it is conceived 
 per se. If therefore any one says that he has a distinct and 
 clear idea of Substance, and yet doubts whether such a Sub 
 stance exist, this is as much as to say that he has a true idea, 
 and nevertheless doubts whether it be not false (as a little atten 
 tion sufficiently manifests) ; or, if any man affirms Substance to 
 be created, he at the same time affirms that a true idea has be 
 come false ; than which nothing can be more absurd. Hence 
 it is necessarily confessed that the existence of Substance, as 
 well as its essence, is an eternal truth. And hence we must 
 conclude that there is only one Substance possessing the same 
 Attribute ; a position which requires here a fuller development. 
 I note therefore 
 
 1. That the correct definition of a thing includes and expresses 
 nothing but the nature of the thing defined. From which it 
 follows 
 
 2. That no definition includes or expresses a distinct number 
 of individuals, because it expresses nothing but the nature of the 
 thing defined ; e.g. the definition of a triangle expresses no more 
 than the nature of a triangle, and not any fixed number of 
 triangles. 
 
 * The reader will bear in mind the result of Descartes philosophy, if he 
 would fully seize Spinoza s meaning and the basis on which it reposes. 
 Descartes, as we saw, could find nothing indubitable but existence. Exist 
 ence was the primal fact of all philosophy, self-evident and indisputable. 
 
480 SPINOZA. 
 
 3. There must necessarily be a distinct cause for the existence 
 of every existing thing. 
 
 4. This cause, by reason of which any thing exists, must be 
 either contained in the nature and definition of the existing thing 
 (viz. that it pertains to its nature to exist), or else must lie beyond 
 it must be something different from it. 
 
 From these positions it follows, that if a certain number of indi 
 viduals exist, there must necessarily be a cause why that number, 
 and not a larger or smaller number : e. g. if in the world twenty 
 men exist (whom, for greater perspicuity, I suppose to exist at 
 once, no more having previously existed), it will not be sufficient 
 to show the reason why twenty men exist, to point to human 
 nature as the cause, but it will further be necessary to show cause 
 why only twenty men exist, because (per note 3) a cause must be 
 given for the existence of every thing. This cause however (per 
 notes 2 and 3) cannot be contained in human nature itself, 
 because the true definition of man does not involve the number 
 twenty. Hence (per note 4) the cause why twenty men exist, 
 and why each individual exists, must lie beyond each of them ; 
 and therefore must we absolutely conclude that every thing, the 
 nature of which admits of many individuals, must necessarily 
 have an external cause. As therefore it pertains to the nature 
 of Substance to exist, so must its definition include a necessary 
 existence, and consequently from its sole definition we must con 
 clude its existence. But, as from its definition, as already shown 
 in notes 2 and 3, it is not possible to conclude the existence of 
 many Substances, ergo it necessarily follows that only one Sub 
 stance of the same nature can exist." 
 
 Here we may pause in our translation, before we penetrate too 
 far in this geometrical exposition of Spinoza s theology. Enough 
 has already been given to exhibit the rigor and precision with 
 which the consequences are deduced step by step, each propo 
 sition being evolved from those which preceded it; and he who 
 wishes to follow the system in detail must open the Ethics for 
 himself, abridgment being impossible. To complete our expo- 
 
481 
 
 sition of the doctrine, we shall merely state in a few sentences 
 the principal positions : 
 
 There is but one infinite Substance, and that is God. What 
 ever is, is in God; and without Him, nothing can be conceived. 
 He is the universal Being of which all things are the manifesta 
 tions. He is the sole Substance ; every thing else is a Mode ; yet, 
 without Substance, Mode cannot exist. God, viewed under the 
 attributes of Infinite Substance, is the natura naturans, viewed 
 as a manifestation, as the Modes under which his attributes 
 appear, he is the natura naturata. He is the cause of all things, 
 and that immauently, but not transiently. He has two infinite 
 attributes Extension and Thought. Extension is visible Thought, 
 and Thought is invisible Extension : they are the Objective and 
 Subjective of which God is the Identity. Every thing is a mode 
 of God s attribute of Extension ; every thought, wish, or feeling, 
 a mode of his attribute of Thought. That Extension and Thought 
 are not Substances, as Descartes maintained, is obvious from this : 
 that they are not conceived per se, but per aliucl. Something is 
 extended : what is ? Not the Extension itself, but something 
 prior to it, viz. Substance. Substance is uncreated, but creates 
 by the internal necessity of its nature. There may be many 
 existing things, but only one existence ; many forms, but only 
 one Substance. God is the " idea immanens " the One and All. 
 
 Such is a brief outline of the fundamental doctrine of Spinoza ; 
 and now we ask the reader, can he reconcile the fact of this 
 being a most religious philosophy, with the other fact of its 
 having been almost universally branded with Atheism ? Is this 
 intelligible ? Yes ; three causes present themselves at once. 
 1. The readiness with which that term of obloquy has been ap 
 plied to opponents, from time immemorial to Socrates as to 
 Gottlieb Fichte. 2. The obscurity of polemical vision, and the 
 rashness of party judgment. 3. The use of the ambiguous word 
 Substance, whereby God was confounded with the material world. 
 
 This last point is the most important, and deserves attention. 
 To say " God is the infinite substance," does look, at first sight, 
 
 21 
 
482 SPINOZA. 
 
 like the atheism of the D Holbach School ; but no one could 
 ever have read twenty pages of Spinoza without perceiving this 
 to be a misunderstanding ; for he expressly teaches that God is 
 not corporeal, but that body is a Mode of Extension.* No : 
 God is not the material universe, but the universe is one aspect 
 of his infinite Attribute of Extension : he is the identity of the 
 natura naturans and the natura naturata.\ 
 
 It is a mere verbal resemblance, therefore, this, of Spinozism 
 to Atheism ; but the history of philosophy shows too many 
 instances of verbal analogies and ambiguities becoming sources 
 of grave error, to astonish any reader. 
 
 Next to the inevitable misapprehensions created by Spinoza s 
 use of the word Substance, we must rank among the sources of 
 his ill repute the misapprehensions created by his doctrine of 
 Final Causes. Although Bacon energetically reprobated the 
 pursuit of Final Causes those " barren virgins," as he charac 
 teristically styled them pointing out the productive error of all 
 such pursuit ; and although the advance and extension of science 
 has gradually more and more displaced this pursuit, it is still 
 followed by minds of splendid reach and attainment, as the surest 
 principle of research in some departments. But although the 
 error has the countenance of men whom we cannot speak of 
 
 * Dugald Stewart somewhat naively remarks that "in no part of Spinoza s 
 works has he avowed himself an Atheist" (he would have been very much 
 astonished at the charge) ; " but it will not be disputed by those who compre 
 hend the drift of his reasonings, that, in point of practical tendency, Atheism 
 and Spinozism are one and the same." It may be so ; yet nothing can war 
 rant the accusation of Atheism, merely because Spinoza s doctrines may 
 have the same practical tendency as that of Atheism. Spinoza did not deny 
 the existence of God ; he denied the existence of the world : he was conse 
 quently an Acosmist, not an Atheist. If the practical tendency of these two 
 opposite systems really is the same, Spinoza could not help it. 
 
 t " Natura naturans et natura naturata in identitate Deus est." It must 
 be borne in mind that identity does not (as in common usage) mean same 
 ness, but the root from which spring two opposite stems, and in which they 
 have a common life. Man, for instance, is the identity of soul and body; 
 water is the identity of oxygen and hydrogen. Great mistakes are con 
 stantly being made, owing to overlooking this distinction of vulgar and 
 philosophical terms. 
 
483 
 
 without respect, the fact itself that only in those departments of 
 inquiry, wherein imperfect knowledge still permits the Meta 
 physical Method to exercise its perverting influence, are Final 
 Causes ever appealed to, is significant, we think, of the nature of 
 the error. While no Astronomer, no Physicist, no Chemist 
 reasons ideologically, there are many Biologists who proclaim 
 teleology to be a luminous guide. Cuvier declared that to it he 
 owed his discoveries ; Owen declares that it has often aided him. 
 We cannot here pause to discuss the validity of final causes, but 
 the reader will probably be glad to have Spinoza s remarkable 
 analysis, which he throws into an Appendix at the end of the 
 book De Deo : 
 
 " Men do all things for the sake of an end, namely the good, 
 or useful, which they desire. Hence it comes that they always 
 seek to know only the final causes of things which have taken 
 place, and when they have heard these they are satisfied, not 
 having within themselves any cause for further doubt. But if 
 they are unable to learn these final causes from some one else, 
 nothing remains to them but to turn in upon themselves, and to 
 reflect on the ends by which they are themselves wont to be 
 determined to similar actions ; and thus they necessarily judge 
 of the mind of another by their own. Further, as within them 
 selves and out of themselves they discover many means which 
 are highly conducive to the pursuit of their own advantage, 
 for example, eyes to see with, teeth to masticate with, vegetables 
 and animals for food, the sun to give them light, the sea to 
 nourish fish, etc., so they come to consider all natural things 
 as means for their benefit: and because they are- aware that these 
 things have been found, and not prepared by them, they have 
 been led to believe that some one else has adapted these means 
 to their use. For after considering things in the light of means, 
 they could not believe these things to have made themselves, 
 but arguing from their own practice of preparing means for their 
 use, they must conclude that there is some ruler or rulers of 
 nature endowed with human freedom, who have provided all 
 
484: SPINOZA. 
 
 these things for them, and have made them all for the use of 
 men. Moreover, since they have never heard any thing of the 
 mind of those rulers, they must necessarily judge of this mind 
 also by their own ; and hence they have argued that the Gods 
 direct all things for the advantage of man, in order that they 
 may subdue him to themselves, and be held in the highest honor 
 by him. Hence each has devised, according to his character, a 
 different mode of worshipping God, in order that God might love 
 him more than others, and might direct all nature to the advan 
 tage of his blind cupidity and insatiable avarice. Thus this 
 prejudice has converted itself into superstition, and has struck 
 deep root into men s minds ; and this has been the cause why 
 men in general have eagerly striven to explain the final causes of 
 all things. But while they have sought to show that Nature 
 does nothing in vain (i. e. which is not fit for the use of men), 
 they seem to me to have shown nothing else than that Nature 
 and the Gods are as foolish as men. And observe, I pray you, 
 to what a point this opinion has brought them. Together with 
 the many useful things in Nature, they necessarily found not a 
 few injurious things, namely, tempests, earthquakes, diseases, etc. ; 
 these they supposed happened because the Gods were angry on 
 account of offences committed against them by men, or because 
 of faults incurred in their worship ; and although experience every 
 day protests, and shows by infinite examples that benefits and 
 injuries happen indifferently to pious and ungodly persons, they 
 do not therefore renounce their inveterate prejudice. For it was 
 easier to them to class these phenomena among other things, the 
 cause of which was unknown to them, and thus retain their 
 present and innate condition of ignorance, than to destroy all the 
 fabric of their belief, and excogitate a new one." 
 
 We cannot pursue the argument further, because in the sub 
 sequent positions Spinoza refers to propositions proved in the 
 Ethics ; what has been given will however suffice to show how 
 clearly and emphatically he described the anthropomorphic tend 
 ency of judging Infinite by Finite wisdom. With it we conclude 
 
SPINOZA S DOCTRINE. 485 
 
 the exposition of Spinoza s theology one of the most extraordi 
 nary efforts of speculative faculty which history has revealed to 
 us. We have witnessed the mathematical rigor with which it 
 is developed ; we have followed him step by step, dragged on 
 wards by his irresistible logic ; and yet the final impression left 
 on our minds is, that the system has a logical but not a vital truth. 
 We shrink back from the consequences whither it so irresistibly 
 leads us ; we gaze over the abyss to the edge of which we have 
 been dragged, and seeing naught but chaos and despair, we re 
 fuse to build our temple there. We retrace our steps with hur 
 ried earnestness, to see if no false route has been taken ; we 
 examine every one of his positions, to see if there be not some 
 secret error, parent of all other errors. Arrived at the starting- 
 point, we are forced to confess that we see no error that each 
 conclusion is but the development of antecedent positions ; and 
 yet, in spite of this, the mind refuses to accept the conclusions. 
 
 This, then, is the state of the inquirer : he sees a vast chain of 
 reasoning carried on with the strictest rigor. He has not been 
 dazzled by rhetoric nor confused by illustrations. There has 
 been no artful appeal to his prejudices or passions ; he has been 
 treated as a reasoning being, and has no more been able to doubt 
 the positions, after once assenting to the definitions and axioms, 
 than he is able to doubt the positions of Euclid. And yet we 
 again say that the conclusions are repugned, refused ; they are 
 not the truth the inquirer has been seeking ; they are no expres 
 sions of the thousand-fold life, the enigma of which he has been 
 endeavoring to solve. 
 
 Unable to see where this discrepancy lies, he turns with impa 
 tience to the works of others, and seeks in criticisms and refuta 
 tions an outlet from his difficulty. But and it is a curious 
 point in the history of philosophy he finds that this bold and 
 extraordinary thinker has never been refuted by any one meeting 
 him on his own ground. Men have taken up separate proposi 
 tions, and having wrenched them from their connection with the 
 whole system, have easily shown them to be quite at variance 
 
486 SPINOZA. 
 
 with the systems of the refutcrs. This is easy work.* On the 
 other hand, the inquirer finds that the great metaphysicians of 
 Germany adopt Spinoza s fundamental positions, differing with 
 him only on points of detail or of language. In their works the 
 consequences do not look so appalling, because they are set forth 
 in lofty terms and ambiguous eloquence ; but the difference is 
 only verbal. Is there, then, no alternative? Must I accept 
 Spinoza s system, repugnant as it is ? Such is the inquirer s per 
 plexity. 
 
 To release him from this perplexity will perhaps be possible, 
 although only possible, we believe, by arguments which cut away 
 the root of all metaphysical knowledge whatever. If Spinoza is 
 in error, the error must be initial, for we have just admitted that 
 it does not lie in any illogical deduction. And initial the error 
 is. The method brings it into distinctness. The application of 
 Geometry to Metaphysics is the process most repulsive to meta 
 physicians, because it best serves to elucidate the nullity of their 
 attempts. Geometry is purely deductive ; from a few definitions 
 and axioms the whole series of consequences is evolved. Meta 
 physics also is purely deductive ; from a few definitions and 
 axioms it constructs a universe. M. Damiron, in his very able 
 Mfrnoire, denies that the geometrical method can be applied to 
 Metaphysics, because our intelligence cannot form notions so clear 
 and necessary respecting substance, cause, time, good and evil, as 
 respecting points, lines, and surfaces ; and whenever such clear 
 notions have been attempted it has only been by sacrificing some 
 thing of the reality, by the consideration of one aspect to the ex 
 clusion of the other.f This is perfectly true if applied to meta- 
 
 * This is the way Bayle answers Spinoza ; yet his answer has been pro 
 nounced by Dugald Stewart " one of the most elaborate and acute refuta 
 tions which has yet appeared." Mr. Stewart s dislike of the consequences 
 he believed inseparable from Spinozism has here, we think, biased his judg 
 ment. Bayle s attempt at a refutation is now pretty generally considered to 
 be pitiable. Jacobi declares Spinozism to be unanswerable by those who 
 simply reason on the problem : faith alone can solve it otherwise. 
 
 t Memoire sur Spinoza, 19, 20. 
 
487 
 
 physicians in general ; but is certainly not true as applied to 
 Spinoza, whose notions of substance, cause, etc. are not less clear 
 than his notions of lines and surfaces, a point we shall insist on 
 presently. Meanwhile let us ask, why can we not form notions 
 of cause, substance, and the rest, equalling in clearness our no 
 tions of lines and surfaces ? The answer to this question dooms 
 metaphysics to eternal uncertainty : It is because Geometry never 
 quits the sphere of its first assumption, that its axioms retain 
 their necessary clearness, and its consequences their necessary 
 truth. It begins with lines and surfaces, with lines and surfaces 
 it ends ; it is a purely subjective and deductive science. Its 
 truths, when objectively applied, include no other elements than 
 those originally given; when from ideal lines and the relations 
 of those lines we pass to real lines and relations, we are still 
 strictly within the sphere of lines and their relations; and the 
 mightiest geometry can tell us nothing whatever of any other 
 property of substance ; it is powerless before any relations except 
 those of surfaces. If Metaphysics could thus remain within the 
 sphere of its original assumption, it also might rival geometry in 
 precision; but Metaphysics unhappily starts from the subjective 
 sphere, and immediately passes on to the objective, pretending 
 to include in its circle far more than is given in the original sub 
 jective datum, pretending indeed to disclose the whole nature of 
 substance, cause, time, and space, and not merely certain relations 
 among our ideas of these. When, for example, Spinoza passes 
 from his ideal distinction of cause and effect to real applications, 
 as when he proves that God must act according to the laws of 
 His own nature, yet without constraint, nothing determining Him 
 save His own perfection, it is evident that by this Spinoza be 
 lieves the purely subjective definition he has framed expresses 
 the whole truth of objective reality ; he pretends to know the 
 nature of God, and to know it through the notions he has framed 
 of cause and effect. The error here is as great, though not so 
 potent, as if a mathematician were to deduce the chemical pro 
 perties of a salt from the properties of right angles. To select 
 
488 SPINOZA. 
 
 another example, the fifth proposition, on which so much of 
 Spinoza s system depends : " It is impossible that there should 
 be two or more Substances of the same nature, or of the same 
 Attribute." This is subjectively true ; as true as a proposition 
 in Euclid ; that is to say, it is perfectly coherent with all that 
 Spinoza teaches of Substance and Attribute ; but if we pass from 
 his subjective circle out into the great world of reality if we 
 disregard his definition, and look only at actual substances before 
 us say two minerals we then fail to detect any proof of his 
 subjective definition necessarily or even probably according with 
 objective fact, since we perceive the definition to be framed from 
 his ideas, and not founded on objective reality. 
 
 The mathematician deduces conclusions from purely subjective 
 distinctions, and these conclusions are found to correspond with 
 objective fact, to nearly the whole extent of what was originally 
 assumed; namely the relations of surfaces, and no further. The 
 metaphysician deduces conclusions equally subjective, and it may 
 be that such conclusions will apply to objective fact (as when it 
 is said " nothing can be and not be at the same moment") ; but 
 the moment he transcends the circle of subjective distinction, as 
 when he speaks of Cause, Time, Space, and Substance, his ideas 
 are necessarily indistinct, because he cannot know these things: 
 he can only frame logical conclusions respecting them, and these 
 logical conclusions at every step need verification. 
 
 This, of course, the metaphysician will deny. He believes in 
 the validity of reason. He maintains the perfect competence of 
 human intellect to know and discourse on Cause, Time, Space, 
 and Substance ; but he has not the same clear argument Spinoza 
 had, on which to ground this belief. And here we are face to 
 face with the radical assumption which constitutes the initial 
 error and logical perfection of Spinoza s system. He holds and 
 expressly teaches that the subjective idea is the actual image or 
 complete expression of the objective fact. "Hoc est, id quod in 
 intellectu objective continetur debet necessario in natura dari." 
 The order and connection of ideas is precisely the order and 
 
SPINOZA S DOCTRINE. 489 
 
 connection of things. In the Scholium to Prop. VIII. we have 
 seen him maintaining that the correct definition of a thing ex 
 presses the nature of a thing, and nothing but its nature : which 
 is true in one sense ; for unless it express the nature of the 
 thing, the definition must be incorrect : but false in another and 
 more important sense ; for every definition we can frame only 
 expresses our conceptions of the nature of the thing : and thus 
 we may define the nature of the inhabitants of the moon, and 
 adhere to our definitions with the utmost logical rigor, yet all the 
 while be utterly removed from any real knowledge of those in 
 habitants. The position is logically deducible from Spinoza s 
 conception of the relation between Thought and Extension as the 
 two Attributes of Substance ; but it is a position which is emphat 
 ically contradicted by all sound psychology. Nevertheless, with 
 out it Metaphysics has no basis. Unless clear ideas are to be 
 accepted as the truths of things, and unless every idea, which is 
 distinctly conceived by the mind, has its ideate, or object, met 
 aphysicians are without plausible pretence. 
 
 Having thus signalized the fundamental position of Spinoza s 
 doctrine, it is there, if anywhere, that we shall be able to show 
 his fundamental error. On the truth or falsehood of this one 
 assumption, must Spinozism stand or fall ; and we have formerly 
 endeavored to show that the assumption is false. Those who 
 agree in the reasonings we adduced may escape Spinozism, but 
 they escape it by denying the possibility of all Philosophy. 
 
 This consideration, that the mind is not a passive mirror re 
 flecting the nature of things, but the partial creator of its own 
 forms that in perception there is nothing but certain changes 
 in the percipient this consideration, we say, is the destruction 
 of the very basis of metaphysics, for it expressly teaches that the 
 subjective idea is not the correlate of the objective fact.: and 
 only upon the belief that our ideas are the perfect and adequate 
 images of external things can any metaphysical speculation rest. 
 Misled by the nature of geometry, which draws its truths from 
 
 the mind as the spicier draws the web from its bosom, Descartes 
 
 oj o 
 
490 SPINOZA. 
 
 assumed that metaphysical truths could be attained in the same 
 way. This was a confusion of reasoning, yet Spinoza, Leibnitz, 
 and their successors, followed him unhesitatingly. Spinoza, how 
 ever, had read Bacon s denouncement of this a priori Method, 
 though evidently unprepared to see the truth of the protest. It 
 is curious to read his criticism of Bacon : he looks on it as that 
 writer s great error to have mistaken the knowledge of the first 
 cause and origin of things. " On the nature of mind," he says, 
 " Bacon speaks very confusedly ; and while he proves nothing, 
 judges much. For in the first place he supposes that the human 
 intellect, besides the deceptions of the senses, is subject to the 
 deceptions of its own nature, and that it conceives every thing 
 according to the analogies of its own nature, and not according 
 to the analogies of the universe ; so that it is like an unequal 
 mirror to the rays of things, which mixes the conditions of its 
 own nature with those of external things."* 
 
 We look upon Spinoza s aberration as remarkable, however, 
 because he had also seen that in some sense the subjective was 
 not the absolute expression of the objective ; as is proved by his 
 celebrated argument for the destruction of final causes, wherein 
 he showed that order was a thing of the imagination, as were 
 also right and wrong, useful and hurtful these being merely 
 such in relation to us. Still more striking is his anticipation of 
 Kant in this passage : " Ex quibus clare videre est, mensuram, 
 tempus, et numerum, nihil esse praeter cogitandi, seu potius ima- 
 ginandi modos;" which should have led him to suspect that 
 the same law of mental forms was also applicable to all other 
 subjects. 
 
 We have pointed out the initial error, let us now refer to the 
 logical perfection of Spinoza s system. M. Damiron argues 
 against the application of the geometric method, on the ground 
 
 * " Nam prhno supponit quod-intellectus humamis, praeter fallaciam sen- 
 suum, sua sola natura fallitur, omniaque fingit exanalogia suae natnraj, etnon 
 ex analogia universi; adeo ut sit instar speculi inaeqnalis ad radias rerum, 
 qui suam naturam natur* rerum hnmiscet." fipist. ii., Opera, p. 398. 
 
491 
 
 of the imperfect conceptions men form of metaphysical objects; 
 but this, as already hinted, cannot be said of Spinoza s concep 
 tions ; they are as perfect and as clear as his conceptions of ge 
 ometry ; whether they are as accurate and comprehensive as 
 they are clear, is another question. Spinoza would maintain 
 them to be so ; and he would be justified on his principles ; jus 
 tified, indeed, on all logical principles of metaphysics. Did we 
 not see that the perfection of Mathematics was owing to its never 
 transcending the sphere of its first assumption, never including 
 other elements than those included in its definitions and axioms? 
 Precisely this may also be said of Spinozism : its original as 
 sumption is, that every clear idea expresses the actual nature of 
 the object ; and hence whatever conclusions are logically evolved 
 from clear ideas, will be found objectively represented in the ex 
 ternal world. Whether the mathematician works a problem in 
 his mind with ideal surfaces, or actually juxtaposes substances 
 and points out their relations of surface, the truths deduced are 
 equally valid ; in the same way, whenever a Spinozist works out 
 a problem with ideal elements, he is doing no more on his as 
 sumption than if he had the objective elements before him, and 
 could visibly disclose their relations. Hence the full justification 
 of Spinoza s employment of the geometrical method. And his 
 employment of it, while exciting the admiration of all posterity 
 for the gigantic power of thought disclosed, has had the further 
 advantage of bringing within the narrowest possible field, the 
 whole question of the possibility of Metaphysical certitude. 
 
 We must not, however, longer linger with this great and good 
 man, and his works. A brave and simple man, earnestly medi 
 tating on the deepest subjects that can occupy the human race, 
 he produced a system which will ever remain as one of the most 
 astounding efforts of abstract speculation a system that has 
 been decried, for nearly two centuries, as the most iniquitous and 
 blasphemous of human invention ; and which has now, within 
 the last sixty years, become the acknowledged parent of a whole 
 nation s philosophy, ranking among its admirers some of the 
 
4:92 SPINOZA. 
 
 most pious and illustrious intellects of the age. The ribald 
 atheist turns out, on nearer acquaintance, to be a " God-intox 
 icated man." The blasphemous Jew becomes a pious, virtuous, 
 and creative thinker. The dissolute heretic becomes a childlike, 
 simple, self-denying-, and heroic philosopher. We look into his 
 works with calm earnestness, and read there another curious page 
 of human history : the majestic struggle with the mysteries of ex 
 istence has failed, as it always must fail ; but the struggle demands 
 our warmest approbation, and the man our ardent sympathy. 
 Spinoza stands out from the dim past like a tall beacon, whose 
 shadow is thrown athwart the sea, and whose light will serve to 
 warn the wanderers from the shoals and rocks on which hun 
 dreds of their brethren have perished.* 
 
 * Spinoza s works have been ably edited by Prof. Paulus, and better, re 
 cently by Bruder, in three volumes, 12ino. The edition we use is the quar 
 to, which appeared shortly after his death : B. D. S. Opera Posthuma, 1677 
 A very close and literal German translation in five small volumes, by Berthold 
 Auerbach, was published in 1841. M. Emile Saisset published one more 
 paraphrastic in French. We are aware of scarcely any thing in English, 
 critical or explanatory, except the account given in Mr. Hallam s Introduction, 
 to the Literature of Europe, and the articles Spinoza and Spinozism in the 
 Penny Cyclopaedia, and Spinoza s Life and Works in the Westminster Re 
 view, May, 184-3 (the three last by the present writer). 
 
 Since the first edition of this History, there have appeared two remarkable 
 articles by Mr. Froude, one on Spinoza s Life, in the Oxford and Cambridge 
 Review, Oct., 1847, and one on his doctrine, Westminster Review, July, 1854. 
 An analysis of the Tractatus appeared in the British Quarterly a few years 
 ago ; and a translation of the Tractate Politicus by William Maccall, 1855. 
 
 Besides historians of philosophy the following writers may be consulted ; 
 Sigwart, Der Spinozismus historisch und pJdlosophisch erldutert ; Herder, 
 Gott, emigre Gesprdche uber Spinoza s System ; Damiron, Memoire sur Spinoza 
 et sa Doctrine (in the Memoires de VAcademie). 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 FIEST CEISIS IN MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 THE doctrine of Spinoza was of great importance, if only be 
 cause it brought about the first crisis in modern Philosophy. 
 His doctrine was so clearly stated, and so rigorously deduced 
 from admitted premises, that he brought Philosophy into this 
 dilemma : 
 
 Either my premises are correct, and we must admit that 
 every clear and distinct idea is absolutely true ; true, not only 
 subjectively, but objectively ; If so, my system is true ; 
 
 Or my premises are false ; the voice of Consciousness is not 
 the voice of truth ; and if so, then is my system false, but all 
 Philosophy is impossible : since the only ground of Certitude 
 our Consciousness is pronounced unstable, our only means of 
 knowing the truth is pronounced fallacious. 
 
 Spiuozism or Skepticism ? choose between them, for you have 
 no other choice. 
 
 Mankind refused however to make a choice. If the princi 
 ples which Descartes had established could have no other result 
 than Spinozism, it was worth while inquiring whether those 
 principles themselves might not be modified. 
 
 The ground of discussion was shifted : psychology took the 
 place of ontology. It was Descartes theory of knowledge 
 which led to Spinozism ; that theory therefore must be exam 
 ined : that theory henceforth becomes the great subject of dis 
 cussion. Before deciding upon the merits of any system which 
 embraced the great questions of Creation, the Deity, Immor 
 tality, etc., men- saw that it was necessary to decide upon the 
 competence of the human mind to solve such problems. 
 
494 FIRST CRISIS IN MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 All knowledge must be obtained either through experience, or 
 independent of experience. Knowledge dependent on experience 
 must necessarily be merely knowledge of phenomena. All are 
 agreed that experience can only be experience of ourselves as 
 modified by objects. All are agreed that to know things per se 
 noumena we must know them through some other channel 
 than experience. 
 
 Have we, or have we not, that other channel ? This is the 
 problem. Before we can dogmatize upon ontological subjects, 
 we must settle this question : 
 
 Can we transcend the sphere of our Consciousness and know 
 things per se ? 
 
 And this question further resolves itself into Have we ideas 
 independent of experience ? 
 
 To answer this question was the great object of succeeding 
 philosophers. The fact that modern philosophy, until Fichte, 
 was almost exclusively occupied with Psychology has been con 
 stantly noticed ; but the reason why Psychology assumed this 
 importance, the reason why it took the place of all the higher 
 subjects of speculation, has not, we believe, been distinctly 
 stated. Men have contented themselves with the fact that 
 Psychology occupied little of the attention of antiquity, still 
 less of the attention of the Middle Ages ; and only in modern 
 times has it been the real ground on which the contests of the 
 schools have been carried on. Psychology was the result of a 
 tendency similar to that which in science produced the Inductive 
 Method. In both cases a necessity had arisen for a new course 
 of investigation ; it had become evident that men had begun at 
 the wrong end, and that before a proper answer could be given 
 to any of the questions agitated, it was necessary first to settle 
 the limits and conditions of inquiry, the limits and conditions of 
 the inquiring faculties. Thus Consciousness became the basis 
 of Philosophy ; to make that basis broad and firm, to ascertain 
 its nature and capacity, became the first object of speculation. 
 
THIRD EPOCH. 
 
 PHILOSOPHY REDUCED TO A QUESTION OF PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 HOBBES. 
 
 PERHAPS no writer except Spinoza has ever been so uniformly 
 depreciated as Hobbes. From his first appearance until the 
 present day he has been a by-word of contempt with the 
 majority of writers ; and even by those who have been liberal 
 enough to acknowledge merit in an adversary, he has been 
 treated as a dangerous and shallow thinker. The first person 
 who saw his importance as a political thinker, and had the 
 courage to proclaim it, was, we believe, James Mill. But as 
 long as political and social theories continue to be judged of 
 by their supposed consequences, so long will Hobbes be denied a 
 fair hearing. He has roused the odium theologkum. It will be 
 long ere that will be appeased. 
 
 Faults he had, unquestionably; short-comings, incomplete 
 views ; and as all error is dangerous in proportion to its plausi 
 bility W e will say that he was guilty of dangerous errors. 
 Let the faults be noted, but not overstrained ; the short-comings 
 and incomplete views, enlarged and corrected ; the errors calmly 
 examined and refuted. We shall be gainers by it ; but by in 
 considerate contempt, by vilifying, no good result can be ob 
 tained. Impartial minds will always rank Hobbes amongst the 
 greatest writers England has produced. He is profound, and he 
 
496 HOBBES. 
 
 is clear; weighty, strong, and sparkling. His style, as mere 
 style, is in its way as fine as any thing in English : it has the 
 clearness as well as the solidity and brilliancy of crystal. Nor 
 is the matter unworthy of the form. It is original, in the sense 
 of having been passed through the alembic of his own brain, 
 even when formerly the property of others. Although little of 
 it would now appear novel, it was novel when he produced it. 
 Haughty, dogmatic, overbearing in manner, he loved Truth, and 
 never hesitated to proclaim her. "Harm I can do none," he 
 says, in the opening of the Leviathan, "though I err no less 
 than they (i. e. previous writers), for I shall leave men but as 
 they are, in doubt and dispute ; but intending not to take 
 any principle upon trust, but only to put men in mind of what 
 they know already, or may know by their experience, I hope to 
 err less ; and when I do, it must proceed from too hasty conclud 
 ing, which I will endeavor as much as I can to avoid."* 
 
 In this passage we see Locke anticipated. It proclaims that 
 Psychology is a science of observation ; that if we would under 
 stand the conditions and operations of our minds, we must 
 patiently look inwards and see what passes there. All the rea 
 soning and subtle disputation in the world will not advance us 
 one step, unless we first get a firm basis on fact. " Man," he 
 says elsewhere, with his usual causticity, " has the exclusive 
 privilege of forming general theorems. But this privilege is 
 alloyed by another, that is, by the privilege of absurdity, to 
 which no living creature is subject but man only. And of men 
 those are of all most subject to it, that profess Philosophy" And 
 the cause of this large endowment of the privilege to Philoso 
 phers we may read in another passage, where he attributes the 
 difficulty men have in receiving Truth, to their minds being pre 
 possessed by false opinions they having prejudged the question. 
 The passage is as follows : " When men have once acquiesced 
 in untrue opinions, and registered them as authenticated records 
 
 * Works, edited by Sir "VV. Moleswortb, iv. 1. 
 
HOBBES. 497 
 
 in their minds, it is no less impossible to speak intelligibly to 
 such men than to write legibly on a paper already scribbled 
 over." 
 
 Hobbes s position in the History of Philosophy is easily as 
 signed. On the question of the origin of our knowledge he 
 takes a decided stand upon Experience : he is the precursor of 
 modern Materialism : 
 
 " Concerning the thoughts of man I will consider them first 
 singly, and afterwards in a train or dependence upon one another. 
 Singly they are every one a representation or appearance of 
 some quality or other accident of a body without us, which is 
 commonly called an object. Which object worketh on the eyes, 
 ears, and other parts of a man s body ; and by diversity of work 
 ing, produceth diversity of appearances. 
 
 " The original of them all is that which we call Sense, for there 
 is no conception in a man s mind which hath not at first, totally 
 or by parts, been begotten upon the organs of sense. The rest 
 are derived from that original." * 
 
 We have here stated, in the broadest manner, the principle 
 of Materialism. It is in direct antagonism to the doctrine of 
 Descartes that there are innate ideas ; in direct antagonism to 
 the old doctrine of the spirituality of Mind. Theoretically this 
 principle may be insignificant ; historically it is important. 
 
 Hobbes s language is plain enough, but we will still further 
 quote from him, to obviate any doubt as to his meaning. 
 
 "According to the two principal parts of man, I divide his 
 faculties into two sorts faculties of the body, and faculties of 
 the mind. 
 
 * Since the minute and distinct anatomy of the powers of the 
 body is nothing necessary to the present purpose, I will only sum 
 them up in these three heads, powet nutritive, power genera 
 tive, and power motive. 
 
 * Leviathan, ch. 1. In the following exposition we shall sometimes cite 
 from the Leviathan, and sometimes from the Human Nature. This genera 
 reference will enable us to dispense with iterated foot-notes. 
 
498 HOBBES. 
 
 " Of the powers of the mind there be two sorts cognitive, im 
 aginative, or conceptive and motive. 
 
 " For the understanding of what I mean by the power cogni 
 tive, we must remember and acknowledge that there be in our 
 minds continually certain images or conceptions of the things 
 without us. This imagery and representation of the qualities of 
 the things without, is that which we call our conception, imagi 
 nation, ideas, notice, or knowledge of them; and the faculty, or 
 power by which we are capable of such knowledge, is that I 
 here call cognitive power, or conceptive, the power of knowing or 
 conceiving." 
 
 The mind is thus wholly constructed out of sense. Nor must 
 we be deceived by the words faculty and power, as if they meant 
 any activity of the mind as if they implied that the mind co 
 operated with sense. The last sentence of the foregoing passage 
 is sufficient to clear up this .point. He elsewhere says : " All 
 the qualities called sensible are, in the object that causeth them, 
 but so many several motions of the matter by which it presseth 
 on our organs diversely. Neither in us that are pressed are they 
 any thing else but divers motions ; for motion produceth nothing 
 but motion. 1 1 
 
 Hobbes, therefore, and not Locke, is the precursor of that 
 school of Psychology which flourished in the eighteenth century 
 (principally in France), and which made every operation of the 
 mind proceed out of transformed sensations ; which ended, logi 
 cally enough, in saying that to think is to feel penser c est 
 sentir. 
 
 It is to Hobbes that the merit is due of a discovery which, 
 though so familiar to us now as to appear self-evident, was yet 
 in truth a most important discovery, and was adopted by Des 
 cartes in his Meditations* it is that our sensations -do not cor 
 respond with any external qualities; that what are called sen- 
 
 * Descartes may possibly have discovered it for himself; but the priority 
 of publication is at any rate due to Hobbes a fact firsi noticed, we believe, 
 by Mr. Ilallum : Literature of Europe, iiL 271. 
 
HOBBES. 499 
 
 sible qualities are nothing but modifications of the sentient 
 being : 
 
 " Because the image in vision, consisting of color and shape, 
 is the knowledge we have of the qualities of the object of that 
 sense ; it is no hard matter for a man to fall into this opinion 
 that the same color and shape are the very qualities themselves; 
 and for the same cause that sound and noise are the qualities of 
 the bell or of the air. And this opinion hath been so long re 
 ceived that the contrary must needs appear a great paradox ; 
 and yet the introduction of species visible and intelligible (which 
 is necessary for the maintenance of that opinion) passing to and 
 fro from the object is worse than any paradox, as being a plain 
 impossibility. I shall therefore endeavor to make plain these 
 points : 
 
 " That the subject wherein color and image are inherent, is not 
 the object or thing seen. 
 
 " That there is nothing without us (really) which we call an 
 image or color. 
 
 "That the said image or color is but an apparition unto us of 
 the motion, agitation, or alteration which the object worketh in the 
 brain, or spirits, or some internal substance of the head. 
 
 " That as in vision, so also in conceptions that arise from the 
 other senses, the subject of their inference is not the object, but 
 the sentient." 
 
 This important principle, which Carneades among the ancients 
 alone seems to have suspected, Hobbes has very clearly and con 
 clusively illustrated. 
 
 Sense furnishes us with conceptions ; but as there are other 
 operations of the mind besides the conceptive, it remains to be 
 seen how sense can also be the original of them. 
 
 And first, of Imagination. Mr. Hallam has noticed the acute- 
 ness and originality which often characterize Hobbes s remarks ; 
 and he instances the opening of the chapter on Imagination in 
 the Leviathan. It is worth quoting : " That when a thing lies 
 still, unless somewhat else stir it, it will lie still forever, is a truth 
 
500 HOBBES. 
 
 no one doubts of. But that when a thing is in motion it will 
 eternally be in motion, unless somewhat else stay it, though the 
 reason be the same, namely that nothing can change itself, is not 
 so easily assented to. For men measure not only other men but 
 all other things by themselves ; and, because they find them 
 selves subject after motion to pain and lassitude, think ^every 
 thing else grows weary of motion, and seeks repose of its own 
 accord ; little considering whether it be not some other motion 
 wherein that desire of rest, they find in themselves, consisteth." 
 Imagination Hobbes defines as a " conception remaining and by 
 little and little decaying from and after the act of sense." . . . 
 "Imagination, therefore, is but decaying sense" The reader must 
 not here understand by imagination any thing more than the re 
 taining of an image of the object, after the object is removed. It 
 is the term used by Hobbes to express what James Mill happily 
 called Ideation. Sense, Sensation ; ideas, Ideation. Hobbes 
 says, sense, Sensation ; images, Imagination. 
 
 The materialism of Hobbes s theory does not consist merely in 
 his language (as is the case with some philosophers Locke, for 
 instance) ; it lies at the very root of the theory. Thus, he says, 
 we have sensations and we have images ideas. Whence those 
 images ? " When a body is once in motion it moveth, unless 
 something hinder it, eternally; and whatsoever hindereth it, can 
 not in an instant, but in time and by degrees, quite extinguish 
 it ; and as we see in the water, though the wind cease, the waves 
 give not over rolling for a long time after : so also it happeneth 
 in that motion which is made in the internal parts of man ; then, 
 when he sees, dreams, etc. For after the object is removed, or 
 the eye shut, we still retain an image of the thing seen, though 
 more obscure than when we see it. ... The decay of sense in 
 men waking is not the decay of the motion made in sense, but 
 an obscuring of it, in such manner as the light of the sun ob- 
 scureth the light of the stars ; which stars do no less exercise 
 their virtue, by which they are visible, in the day than in the 
 night. But becaus e amongst many strokes which our eyes, ears, 
 
HOBBES. 501 
 
 and other organs receive from external bodies, the predominant 
 only is sensible ; therefore the light of the sun being predomi 
 nant, we are not affected with the action of the stars." This illus 
 tration is very happy ; but it only serves to bring out into 
 stronger relief the materialism of the theory. He has told us 
 what Imagination is; let us now learn what is Memory. "This 
 decaying sense, when we would express the thing itself, I mean 
 fancy itself, we call imagination, as I have said before ; but when 
 we would express the decay, and signify that the sense is fading, 
 old, and past, it is called memory. So that imagination and 
 memory are but one thing, which for divers considerations hath 
 divers names." Mr. Hallam objects to this, and says that it is 
 very evident that imagination and memory are distinguished by 
 something more than their names. Truly, by us ; but not by 
 Hobbes ; he evidently uses the word imagination in a more ge- 
 nerical sense than we use it : he means by it Ideation. Thus he 
 calls dreams " the imagination of them that sleep." It is that 
 state of the mind which remains when the objects which agitated 
 it by sensations are removed : the mind is then not so agitated, 
 but neither is it calm ; and he compares that state to the gentle 
 rollino* of the waves after the wind hath ceased. 
 
 O 
 
 Let this be distinctly borne in mind : Hobbes sees nothing in 
 the intellect but what was previously in the sense. Sensations, 
 and the traces which they leave (i. e. images), form the simple 
 elements of all knowledge ; the various commixtures of these ele 
 ments form the various intellectual faculties. We may now open 
 at the third chapter of the Leviathan. In it he propounded, as 
 something quite simple and obvious, the very important law of 
 association of ideas.* He states it with great clearness and 
 thorough mastery, though he evidently was quite unaware of its 
 extensive application. 
 
 " When a man thinketh," he says, " on any thing whatsoever, 
 his next thought after is not altogether so casual as it seems to 
 
 * See Sir \V. Hamilton s Dissertation affixed to Reid s Works, p. 898, for 
 a history of this law of association. 
 
502 HOBBES. 
 
 be. Not every thought to every thought succeeds indifferently. 
 But as we have no imagination whereof we have not formerly 
 had sense in whole or in parts, so we have no transition from 
 one imagination to another whereof we never had the like before 
 in our senses. The reason whereof is this : all fancies (i. e. im 
 ages) are motions within us, relicts of those made in sense ; and 
 those motions that immediately succeed one another in the sense 
 continue also together after the sense ; insomuch as the former 
 coining again to take place and be predominant, the latter fol- 
 loweth by coherence of the matter moved, in such manner as 
 water upon a plain table is drawn which way any one part of it 
 is guided by the finger." 
 
 The materialism here is distinct enough. He continues, in 
 excellent style : "This train of thoughts, or mental discourse, is 
 of two sorts. The first is unguided, without design, and incon 
 stant, wherein there is no passionate thought to govern and di 
 rect those that follow to itself, as the end and scope of some 
 desire or other passion ; in which case the thoughts are said to 
 wander, and seem impertinent one to another, as in a dream. 
 Such are commonly the thoughts of men that are not only with 
 out company, but also without care of any thing ; though even 
 then their thoughts are as busy as at other times, but without 
 harmony ; as the sound which a lute out of tune would yield to 
 any man ; or in tune, to one that could not play. And yet in 
 this wild ranging of the mind, a man may ofttimes perceive the 
 way of it, and the dependence of one thought upon another. 
 For in a discourse of our present civil war, what would seem more 
 impertinent than to ask, as one did, what was the value of a 
 Roman penny ? Yet the coherence to me was manifest enough. 
 For the thought of the war introduced the thought of delivering 
 up the King to his enemies ; the thought of that brought in the 
 thought of the delivering up of Christ; and that again the 
 thought of the thirty pence, which was the price of that treason ; 
 and thence easily followed that malicious question, and all this 
 in a moment of time ; for thought is quick." 
 
HOBBES. 503 
 
 " For thought is quick." This is the simple pregnant com 
 ment, justly deemed sufficient. It is no purpose of this history 
 to dwell upon literary merits ; "but the style," as Buffon says, 
 "is the man,"* and occasionally we are forced to notice it. The 
 plain direct remark with which Hobbes concludes the above 
 passage, would, in the hands of many moderns, have run some 
 what thus: "How wonderful is thought! how mighty! how 
 mysterious! In its lightning speed it traverses all space, and 
 makes the past present." Hobbes, with a few simple, direct 
 words, produces a greater impression than would all the swelling 
 pomp of a passage bristling with notes of exclamation. This is 
 the secret of his style. It is also the characteristic of his specula 
 tions. Whatever faults they may have, they have no vagueness, 
 no pretended profundity. As much of the truth as he has 
 clearly seen he clearly exhibits : what he has not seen he does 
 not pretend to see. 
 
 One important deduction from his principles he has drawn : 
 ." Whatsoever we imagine is finite. Therefore there is no idea, 
 no conception of any thing we call infinite. No man can have 
 in his mind an image of infinite magnitude, nor conceive infinite 
 swiftness, infinite time, or infinite power. When we say that 
 any thing is infinite, we signify only that we are not able to con 
 ceive the ends and bounds of the thing named, having no con 
 ception of the thing, but of our own inability. And therefore 
 the name of God is used not to make us conceive him, for he is 
 incomprehensible, and his greatness and power are inconceivable, 
 but that we may honor him. Also, because whatsoever we con- 
 
 * I leave this passage as it originally stood, for the sake of correcting a 
 universal error. I have since detected it to be an error by the simple pro 
 cess of reading Buffon s actual words, which some French writer misquoted 
 from memory, and which thousands have repeated without misgiving, al 
 though the phrase is an absurdity. The phrase occurs in Buffon s Discours 
 de Reception a VAcademie, where speaking of style as that alone capable of 
 conferring immortality on works, because the matter was prepared by pre 
 ceding ages, and must soon become common property, whereas style re 
 mains a part of the man himself; he adds, " Ces choses sont hors de Vkomme ; 
 le style est de Vkomme meme." There is immense difference between saying 
 le style c est Vhomme, and le style est de Vhomme. 
 
504: HOBBES. 
 
 ceive has been perceived first by sense, either all at once or by 
 parts, a man can have no thought representing any thing not sub 
 ject to Sense" 
 
 This is frank, but is it true ? On Hobbes s principles it is irre 
 sistible. His error lies in assuming that all our thoughts must 
 be images. So far is this from being- true, that not even all our 
 sensations are capable of forming images. "What images are 
 given by the sensations of heat or cold, of music or of taste? 
 
 Every man s consciousness will assure him that thoughts are 
 not always images. It will also assure him that he has the idea, 
 notion, conception, figment (or whatever name he may give the 
 thought) of Infinity. If he attempts to form an image of it, 
 that image will of course be finite : it would not otherwise be an 
 image. But he can think of it ; he can reason of it. It is a 
 thought. It is in his mind ; though how it got there may be a 
 question. The incompleteness of Hobbes s psychology lies in 
 the inability to answer this question. If the maxim he adopts 
 be true, nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu, the 
 question is insoluble ; or rather the question itself is a practical 
 refutation of the maxim. 
 
 We insist upon Hobbes s materialism, the better to prepare the 
 reader for a correct appreciation of Locke, one of the most 
 misrepresented of plain writers. Hobbes, in the sixth chapter 
 of his Human Nature, has very carefully defined what he means 
 by knowledge. "There is a story somewhere," he says, "of one 
 that pretends to have been miraculously cured of blindness, 
 wherewith he was born, by St. Alban or other saints, at the 
 town of St. Albans ; and that the Duke of Gloucester being 
 there, to be satisfied of the truth of the miracle, asked the man, 
 What color is this ? who, by answering it was green, discovered 
 himself, and was punished for a counterfeit : for though by his 
 sight newly received he might distinguish between green and 
 red and all other colors, as well as any that should interrogate 
 him, yet he could not possibly know, at first sight, which of them 
 was called green, or red, or by any other name. 
 
HOBBES. 505 
 
 " By this we may understand there be two kinds of knowl 
 edge, whereof the one is nothing else but sense, or knowledge 
 original, and remembrance of the same; the other is called 
 science, or knowledge of the truth of propositions, and how things 
 are called, and is derived from understanding. Both of these 
 sorts are but experience ; the former being the experience of the 
 effects of things that work upon us from without ; and the latter 
 experience men have from the proper use of names in language : 
 and all experience being, as I have said, but remembrance, all 
 knowledge is remembrance." 
 
 The only ambiguity possible in the above passage is that which 
 might arise from the use of the word understanding. This he 
 elsewhere defines as follows : 
 
 " When a man, upon the hearing of any speech, hath those 
 thoughts which the words of that speech in their connection 
 were ordained and constituted to signify, then he is said to un 
 derstand it; understanding being nothing else but conception 
 formed by speech." 
 
 We must content ourselves with merely alluding to his admi 
 rable observations on language, and with quoting, for the hun 
 dredth time, his weighty aphorism, " Words are wise men s coun 
 ters ; they do but reckon by them ; but they are the money of 
 fools." 
 
 No attempt is here made to do full justice to Hobbes; no 
 notice can be taken of the speculations which made him famous. 
 Our object has been fulfilled if we have made clear to the reader 
 the position Hobbes occupies in modern psychological specu 
 lation. 
 
 22 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 LOCKE. 
 
 I. LIFE OF LOCKE. 
 
 JOHN LOCKE, one of the wisest of Englishmen, was born at 
 Urington, in Somersetshire, on the 29th of August, 1632. Little 
 is known of his family, except that his father had served in the 
 Parliamentary wars ; a fact not without significance in connection 
 with the steady love of liberty manifested by the son. 
 
 His education began at Westminster, where he stayed till he 
 was nineteen or twenty. He was then sent to Oxford. That 
 "University was distinguished then, as it has ever been, by its 
 attachment to whatever is old : the Past is its model ; the Past 
 has its affection. That there is much good in this veneration for 
 the Past, a few will gainsay. Nevertheless, a University which 
 piqued itself on being behind the age, was scarcely the fit place 
 for an original thinker. Locke was ill at ease there. The phi 
 losophy upheld there was Scholasticism. On such food a mind 
 like his could not nourish itself. Like his great predecessor 
 Bacon, he imbibed a profound contempt for the University 
 studies, and in after-life regretted that so much of his time 
 should have been wasted on such profitless pursuits. So deeply 
 convinced was he of the vicious method of college education, 
 that he ran into the other extreme, and thought self-education 
 the best. There is a mixture of truth and error in this notion. 
 It is true that all great men have been mainly self-taught ; all 
 that is most valuable a man must learn for himself, must work 
 out for himself. The error of Locke s position is the assumption 
 that all men will educate themselves if left to themselves. The 
 fact is, the majority have to be educated by force. For those 
 
LIFE OF LOCKE. 507 
 
 who, if left to themselves, would never educate themselves, col 
 leges and schools are indispensable. 
 
 Locke s notion of an educated man is very characteristic of 
 him. Writing to Lord Peterborough, he says, "Your Lordship 
 would have your son s tutor a thorough scholar, and I think it 
 not much matter whether he be any scholar or no : if he but 
 understand Latin well and have a general scheme of the sciences, 
 I think that enough. But I would have him well-bred and 
 well-tempered." 
 
 Disgusted with the disputes which usurped the title of Phi 
 losophy, Locke principally devoted himself to Medicine while at 
 Oxford. His proficiency is attested by two very different per 
 sons, and in two very different ways. Dr. Sydenharn, in the 
 Dedication of his Observations on the History and Cure of 
 Acute Diseases, boasts of the approbation bestowed on his 
 Method by Mr. John Locke, " who examined it to the bottom ; 
 and who, if we consider his genius and penetrating and exact 
 judgment, has scarce any superior, and few equals now living." 
 The second testimony is that afforded by Lord Shaftesbury, 
 when Locke first met him. The Earl was suffering from an 
 abscess in the chest. No one could discover the nature of his 
 disorder. Locke at once divined it. The Earl followed his ad 
 vice, submitted to an operation, and was saved. A close inti 
 macy sprang up between them. Locke accompanied him to 
 London, and resided principally in his house. 
 
 His attention was thus turned to politics. His visits to Hol 
 land delighted him. " The blessings which the people there en 
 joyed under a government peculiarly favorable to civil and 
 religious liberty, amply compensated, in his view, for what their 
 uninviting territory wanted in scenery and climate."* He also 
 visited France and Germany, making the acquaintance of several 
 distinguished men. 
 
 In 1670 he planned his Essay concerning Human Understand- 
 
 * Dugald Stewart. 
 
508 LOCKE. 
 
 ing. This he did not complete till 1687. In 1675 the delicate 
 state of his health obliged him to travel, and he repaired to the 
 south of France, where he met Lord Pembroke. To him the 
 Essay is dedicated. He returned in 1679, and resumed his 
 studies at Oxford. But his friendship for Shaftesbury, and the 
 liberal opinions he was known to hold, drew upon him the dis 
 pleasure of the Court. He was deprived of his studentship by 
 a very arbitrary act.* Nor did persecution stop there. He was 
 soon forced to quit England, and find refuge at the Hague. 
 There also the anger of the king pursued him, and he was 
 obliged to retreat further into Holland. It was there he pub 
 lished his celebrated Letter on Toleration. 
 
 He did not return to England till after the Revolution. Then 
 there was security and welcome. He was pressed to accept a 
 high diplomatic office in Germany, but the state of his health 
 prevented him. In 1690 the first edition of his Essay appeared. 
 He had indeed already (1688) published an abridgment of it in 
 Leclerc s Bibliotheque Universelle. The success of this Essay 
 was immense ; and Warburton s assertion to the contrary falls 
 to the ground on the mere statement of the number of editions 
 which the work rapidly went through. Six editions within four 
 teen years,f and in times when books sold more slowly than they 
 sell now, is evidence enough. 
 
 The publication of his Essay roused great opposition. He 
 soon got involved in the discussions with Stillingfleet, Bishop of 
 Worcester. He was soon after engaged in the political discus 
 sions of the day, and published his Treatise on Government. It 
 was about this time that he became acquainted with Sir Isaac 
 
 * See Macaulay, History of England, i. 545-G. 
 
 t The writer of the article Locke, in the Ency. Brit., says that the fourth 
 edition appeared in 1700. Victor Cousin repeats the statement, and adds 
 that a fifth edition was preparing when death overtook the author ; this 
 fifth edition appearing in 1705. We know not on what authority these 
 writers speak ; but that they are in error may be seen by turning to Locke s 
 Epistle to the Reader, the last paragraph of which announces that the edition 
 then issued by Locke himself is the sixth. 
 
509 
 
 Newton ; and a portion of their very interesting correspondence 
 has been given by Lord King in his Life of Locke. 
 
 Locke s health, though always delicate, had not been disturbed 
 by any imprudences, so that he reached the age of seventy-two 
 a good ripe age for one who had studied and thought. He 
 expired in the arms of his friend, Lady Masham, on the 28th of 
 October, 1704. 
 
 II. ON THE SPIRIT OF LOCKE S WRITINGS. 
 
 It has for many years been the fashion to decry Locke. In 
 direct sneers at his " superficiality " abound in the writings of 
 those who, because their thought is so muddy that they cannot 
 see its shallow bottom, fancy they are profound. Locke s " ma 
 terialism " is also a favorite subject of condolence with these 
 writers ; and they assert that his principles " lead to atheism." 
 Lead whom ? 
 
 Another mode of undervaluing Locke is to assert that he only 
 borrowed and popularized the ideas originated by Hobbes. The 
 late Mr. Hazlitt an acute thinker, and a metaphysician, but a 
 wilful reckless writer deliberately asserted that Locke owed 
 every thing to Hobbes. Dr. Whewell repeats the charge, though 
 in a more qualified manner. He says, " Hobbes had already 
 promulgated the main doctrines, which Locke afterwards urged, 
 on the subject of the origin and nature of our knowledge." 
 
 Again, " Locke owed his authority mainly to the intellectual 
 circumstances of the time. Although a writer of great merit, 
 he by no means possesses such metaphysical acuteness, or such 
 philosophical largeness of view, or such a charm of writing, as 
 to give him the high place he has held in the literature of 
 Europe." 
 
 That Locke did not borrow his ideas from Hobbes will be very 
 apparent in our exposition of Locke ; but meanwhile we may 
 quote the testimony of Sir James Mackintosh, one of the best 
 read of our philosophers, and one intimately acquainted with 
 both these thinkers : 
 
510 LOCKE. 
 
 " Locke and Hobbes agree chiefly on those points in which, 
 except the Cartesians, all the speculators of their age were agreed. 
 They differ on the most momentous questions the sources of 
 knowledge, the power of abstraction, the nature of the will ; on 
 the two last of which subjects, Locke, by his very failures them 
 selves, evinces a strong repugnance to the doctrine of Hobbes. 
 They differ not only in their premises and many of their con 
 clusions, but in their manner of philosophizing itself. Locke 
 had no prejudice which could lead him to imbibe doctrines from 
 the enemy of liberty and religion. His style, with all its faults, 
 is that of a man who thinks for himself; and an original style 
 is not usually the vehicle of borrowed opinions." * 
 
 To this passage we will add another from a still more distin 
 guished judge : 
 
 " Few among the great names in philosophy have met with a 
 harder measure of justice from the present generation than 
 Locke, the unquestioned founder of the analytic philosophy of 
 mind, but whose doctrines were first caricatured, then, when the 
 reaction arrived, cast off by the prevailing school even with con 
 tumely, and who is now regarded by one of the conflicting parties 
 in philosophy as an apostle of heresy and sophistry ; while 
 among those who still adhere to the standard which he raised, 
 there has been a disposition in later times to sacrifice his repu 
 tation in favor of Hobbes a great writer and a great thinker 
 for his time, but inferior to Locke not only in sober judgment, 
 but even in profundity and original genius. Locke, the most 
 candid of philosophers, and one whose speculations bear on every 
 subject the strongest mark of having been wrought out from 
 the materials of his own mind, has been mistaken for an un 
 worthy plagiarist, while Hobbes has been extolled as having an 
 ticipated many of his leading doctrines. He did not anticipate 
 many of them, and the present is an instance in what manner 
 it was generally done. [The writer is speaking of Lockers refu- 
 
 * Edinburgh Review for October, 1821, p. 242. 
 
511 
 
 tation of Essences. ] They both rejected the scholastic doctrine 
 of Essences, but Locke understood and explained what these 
 supposed essences were. Hobbes, instead of explaining the dis 
 tinction between essential and accidental properties, and between 
 essential and accidental propositions, jumped over it, and gave a 
 definition which suits, at most, only essential propositions, and 
 scarcely those, as the definition of Proposition in general."* 
 
 Dugald Stewart indeed says, " that it must appear evident 
 Locke had diligently studied the writings of Hobbes ;" but Sir 
 J. Mackintosh, as quoted above, has explained why Locke appears 
 to have studied Hobbes ; and Stewart is far from implying that 
 Locke therefore gained his principal ideas from Hobbes. In 
 deed he has an admirable note in which he points out how 
 completely Locke s own was the important principle of Re 
 flection. " This was not merely a step beyond Hobbes, but the 
 correction of an error which lies at the very root of Hobbes s 
 system."f 
 
 That Locke never read Hobbes may seem incredible, but is, 
 we are convinced, the truth. It is one among many examples 
 of how few were the books he had read. He never alludes to 
 Hobbes in any way that can be interpreted into having read him. 
 Twice only, we believe, does he allude to him, and then so dis 
 tantly, and with such impropriety, as to be almost convincing 
 with respect to his ignorance. The first time is in his Reply to 
 the Bishop of Worcester, in which he absurdly classes Hobbes 
 and Spinoza together. He says, "I am not so well read in 
 Hobbes and Spinoza as to be able to say what were -their 
 opinions on this matter, but possibly there be those who will 
 think your Lordship s authority of more use than those justly 
 decried writers." The form of expression, " I am not so well 
 read," etc., is obviously equivalent to I have never read those 
 justly decried writers. His second allusion is simply this : 
 
 * Mill s System of Logic, i. 150. 
 
 t Dissertation on the Progress of MetapTi. Philosophy, p. 235 (Hamilton s 
 ed.). The uste is very loiag and curious. 
 
512 LOCKE. 
 
 " A Hobbist would probably say." We cannot at present lay 
 our hands on the passage, but it refers to some moral question. 
 
 The above is only negative evidence. Something like positive 
 evidence however is the fact that Hobbes s doctrine of Association 
 of Ideas a principle as simple of apprehension as it is impor 
 tant was completely unknown to Locke, who, in the fourth or 
 fifth edition, added the chapter on association as it now stands. 
 Moreover, Locke s statement of the law is by no means so satis 
 factory as that by Hobbes : he had not so thoroughly mastered 
 it; yet had he read it in Hobbes, he would assuredly have im 
 proved on it. That he did not at first introduce it into his work 
 is a strong presumption that he had not then read Hobbes, be 
 cause the law is so simple and so evident, when stated, that it 
 must produce instantaneous conviction. 
 
 It is strange that any man should have read Locke, and ques 
 tioned his originality. There is scarcely a writer we could name 
 whose works bear such an indisputable impress of his having 
 " raised himself above the almsbasket, and not content to live 
 lazily on scraps of begged opinions, set his own thoughts to work 
 to find and follow truth." It is still more strange that any man 
 should have read Locke and questioned his power. That patient 
 sagacity which, above all things, distinguishes a philosopher, is 
 more remarkable in Locke than almost any writer. He was also 
 largely endowed with good sense ; a quality, Gibbon remarks, 
 which is rarer than genius. In these two qualities, and in his 
 homely racy masculine style, we see the type of the English 
 mind, when at its best. The plain directness of his manner, his 
 earnestness without fanaticism, his hearty honest love of truth, 
 and the depth and pertinence of his thoughts, are qualities which, 
 though they do not dazzle the reader, yet win his love and respect. 
 In that volume, you have the honest thoughts of a great honest 
 Englishman. It is the product of a manly mind : clear, truthful, 
 direct. No vague formulas no rhetorical flights no base flat 
 tery of base prejudices no assumption of oracular wisdom no 
 word -jugglery. There are so many writers who cover their 
 
SPIKIT OF LOCKE S WRITINGS. 513 
 
 vanity with a veil of words, who seem profound because they are 
 obscure, that a plainness like Locke s deceives the careless reader, 
 who is led to suppose that what is there so plain must have been 
 obvious. 
 
 Locke, though a patient, cautious thinker, was any thing but a 
 timid thinker; and it does great honor to his sagacity, that at 
 a time when all scientific men were exclaiming against the danger 
 of hypotheses, believing that the extravagant errors of Schoolmen 
 and alchemists were owing to their use of hypotheses a time 
 when the great Newton himself could be led into the unphilo- 
 sophical boast hypotheses non jingo, our wise Locke should 
 exactly appreciate them at their true value. He says, 
 
 " Not that we may not, to explain any phenomena of nature, 
 make use of any probable hypotheses whatsoever. Hypotheses, 
 if they are well made, are at least great helps to memory, and 
 often direct us to new discoveries. But we should not take them 
 up too hastily (which the mind that would always penetrate into 
 the causes of things, and have principles to rest on, is very apt 
 to do) till we have very well examined particulars, and made 
 several experiments in that thing which we would explain by 
 our hypothesis, and see whether it will agree to them all ; 
 whether our principles will carry us quite through, and not be as 
 inconsistent with one phenomenon of nature as they seem to 
 accommodate and explain another ; and, at least, that we take 
 care that the name of principles deceive us not nor impose on us, 
 by making us receive that for an unquestionable truth which is 
 really at best but a very doubtful conjecture : such as are most 
 (I had almost said all) of the hypotheses in natural philosophy." 
 
 Locke did not seek to dazzle ; he sought Truth, and wished all 
 men to accompany him in the search. He would exchange his 
 opinions with ease when he fancied that he saw their error. He 
 readily retracted ideas which he had published in an immature 
 form ; " thinking himself," as he says, " more concerned to quit 
 and renounce any opinion of my own than oppose that of another, 
 when truth appears against it." He had a just and incurable 
 
 22* 
 
514: LOCKE. 
 
 suspicion of all "great volumes swollen with, ambiguous words." 
 He knew how much jugglery goes on with words; some of it 
 conscious, some of it unconscious, but all pernicious. "Vague 
 and insignificant forms of speech and abuse of language have for 
 so long passed for mysteries of science ; and hard and misapplied 
 words, with little or no meaning, have, by prescription, such a 
 right to be mistaken for deep learning and height of speculation, 
 that it will not be easy to persuade either those who speak, or 
 those who hear them, that they are but the covers of ignorance 
 and hindrance of true knowledge. To break in upon this sanctu 
 ary of vanity and ignorance will be, I suppose, some service to 
 the human understanding." 
 
 Locke had an analytical mind. He desired to understand and 
 to explain things, not to write rhetorically about them. There 
 were mysteries enough which he was contented to let alone ; he 
 knew that human faculties were limited, and reverentially sub 
 mitted to ignorance on all things beyond his reach. But though 
 he bowed down before that which was essentially mysterious, he 
 was anxious not to allow that which was essentially cognizable 
 to be enveloped in mystery. Let that which is a mystery remain 
 undisturbed : let that which is not necessarily a mystery be 
 brought into the light of day. Know the limits of your under 
 standing beyond those limits it is madness to attempt to pene 
 trate ; within those limits it is folly to let in darkness and 
 mystery, to be incessantly wondering and always assuming that 
 matters cannot be so plain as they appear, and that something 
 lying deeper courts our attention. 
 
 To minds otherwise constituted to men who love to dwell in 
 the vague regions of speculation, and are only at ease in an intel 
 lectual twilight Locke is naturally a disagreeable teacher. He 
 flatters none of their prejudices; he falls in with none of their 
 tendencies. Mistaking obscurity for depth, they accuse him of 
 being superficial. The owls declare the eagle is blind. They 
 want the twilight ; he 
 
 " Wantons in the smile of Jove." 
 
515 
 
 They sneer at his "shallowness." So frequent are the sneers and 
 off-hand charges against him, that I, who had read him in my 
 youth with delight, began to suspect that my admiration had 
 been rash. The proverb says, " Throw but mud enough, some 
 will be sure to stick." It was so with Locke. Reiterated de 
 preciation had somewhat defaced his image in my mind. The 
 time came however when, for the purposes of this history, I had 
 to read the Essay on Human Understanding once more, care 
 fully, pen in hand. The image of John Locke was again revived 
 within me ; this time in more than its former splendor. His 
 modesty, honesty, truthfulness, and directness I had never doubt 
 ed ; but now the vigor and originality of liis mind, the raciness 
 of his colloquial style, the patient analysis by which he has laid 
 open to us such vast tracts of thought, and above all, the manli 
 ness of -his truly practical understanding, are so strongly impressed 
 upon me, that I feel satisfied the best answer to his critics is to 
 say, " Read him" From communion with such a mind as his, 
 nothing but good can result. He suggests as much as he teaches ; 
 and it has been well said, " that we cannot speak of his Essay 
 without the deepest reverence; whether we consider the era 
 which it constitutes in philosophy, the intrinsic value (even at 
 the present day) of its thoughts, or the noble devotion to truth, 
 the beautiful and touching earnestness and simplicity which he 
 not only manifests in himself, but has the power, beyond almost 
 any writer, of infusing into his reader." 
 
 III. LOCKE S METHOD. 
 
 "It may be said that Locke created the science of Meta 
 physics," says D Alembert, " in somewhat the same way as New 
 ton created Physics. ... To understand the soul, its ideas and 
 its affections, he did not study books ; they would have misdi 
 rected him ; he was content to descend within himself, and after 
 having, so to speak, contemplated himself a long while, he pre 
 sented in his Essay the mirror in which he had seen himself. 
 
516 LOCKE. 
 
 In one word, he reduced Metaphysics to that which it ought to 
 be, viz. the experimental physics of the mind."* 
 
 This is great praise, and from high authority, but we suspect 
 that it can only be received with some qualification. Locke made 
 no grand discovery which changed the face of science. He was 
 not even the first to turn his glance inwards. Descartes and 
 Hobbes had been before him. 
 
 Yet Locke had his Method; a Method peculiarly his own. 
 Others before him had cast a hasty glance inwards, and dogma 
 tized upon what they saw. He was the first to watch patiently 
 the operations of his mind, that, watching, he might surprise the 
 evanescent thoughts, and steal from them the secret of their com 
 binations. He is the founder of Modern Psychology. By him 
 the questions of Philosophy are boldly and scientifically reduced 
 to the primary question of the limits of human understanding. 
 By him is begun the history of the development and combination 
 of our thoughts. Others had contented themselves with the 
 thoughts as they found them ; Locke sedulously inquired into 
 the origin of all our thoughts. 
 
 M. Victor Cousin, who, as a rhetorician, is in constant antago 
 nism to the clear and analytical Locke, makes it an especial 
 grievance that Locke and his school have considered the ques 
 tion respecting the origin of ideas as fundamental. " It is from 
 Locke," he continues, "that has been borrowed the custom of 
 referring to savages and children, upon whom observation is so 
 difficult ; for the one class we must trust to the reports of travel 
 lers, often prejudiced and ignorant of the language of the country 
 visited ; for the other class (children), we are reduced to very 
 equivocal signs."! 
 
 We cannot see how Locke should avoid referring to savages 
 and children, if he wanted to collect facts concerning the origin 
 of ideas ; it is a practice inseparable from the psychological 
 
 * " En un mot, il reduisit la metaphysique a cc qu elle doit tre, en effet, 
 la physique experimentale de 1 arne." Discours Prelim, de V Encyclopedic. 
 t Histoire de la Pkilos. 17 le<;on. 
 
517 
 
 Method. Perhaps no source of error has been more abundant 
 than the obstinacy with which men have in all times looked 
 upon their indissoluble associations as irresistible truths as 
 primary and universal truths. A little analysis a little observa 
 tion of minds removed from the influences which fostered those 
 associations, would prove that those associations were not uni 
 versal truths, but simply associations. It is because men have 
 analyzed the mind in its cultivated condition, that they have 
 been led to false results ; had they compared their analysis with 
 that of an uncultivated mind, they might have gained some in 
 sight. The objection against Locke s practice could only pro 
 ceed from men who study psychology without previous acquaint 
 ance with physiology which, though they do not know it, is 
 the same as studying functions without any knowledge of the 
 organs. Locke w r as the first who systematically sought in the 
 history of the development of the mind for answers to many of 
 the fundamental questions of psychology, and he has been blamed 
 for this, in the same spirit as that which dictated the sneers of 
 John Hunter s professional contemporaries, because that admira 
 ble anatomist sought in comparative anatomy for elucidation of 
 many anatomical problems. Now-a-days no well-informed student 
 is ignorant of the fact that Comparative Physiology, and Embry 
 ology, are our surest guides in all biological questions, simply 
 because we therein see the problems gradually removed from 
 many of the complexities which frustrate our research in the 
 higher and more completely developed organisms. Locke saw 
 clearly enough that the philosophers were accustomed to con 
 sider their minds as types of the human mind ; whereas their 
 minds, being filled with false notions and warped by prejudices, 
 could in nowise be taken as types ; for even granting that the 
 majority of their notions were true, yet these true notions were 
 not portions of the furniture of universal minds. He sought for 
 illustrations from such minds as had not been so warped. 
 
 His object was " to inquire into the original, certainty, and 
 extent of human knowledge." He was led to this by a conver- 
 
518 LOCKE. 
 
 sation with some friends, in which, disputes growing warm, " af 
 ter we had puzzled ourselves awhile, without coining any nearer 
 a resolution of those doubts which perplexed us, it came into my 
 thoughts that we took a wrong course ; and that before we set 
 ourselves upon inquiries of that nature, it was necessary to ex 
 amine our own abilities, and see what objects our understandings 
 were or were not jilted to deal with. 91 
 
 The plan he himself laid down is as follows: 
 
 " First, I shall inquire into the original of those ideas, notions, 
 or whatever else you please to call them, which a man observes 
 and is conscious to himself he has in his mind ; and the ways 
 whereby the understanding comes to be furnished with them. 
 
 " Secondly, I shall endeavor to show what knowledge the un 
 derstanding hath by those ideas ; and the certainty, evidence, 
 and extent of it. 
 
 "Thirdly, I shall make some inquiry into the nature and 
 grounds of faith or opinion ; whereby I mean that assent which 
 we give to any proposition as true, of whose truth we have yet 
 no certain knowledge ; and we shall have occasion to examine 
 the reasons and degrees of assent." 
 
 We may here see decisively settled the question so often raised 
 respecting the importance of Locke s Inquiry into Innate Ideas. 
 "For Locke and his school," says M. Cousin, justly, "the study 
 of understanding is the study of Ideas ; hence the recent cele 
 brated name of Ideology for the designation of the science of 
 mind." Indeed, as we have shown, the origin of Ideas was the 
 most important of all questions ; upon it rested the whole prob 
 lem of Philosophy. 
 
 According to the origin of our Ideas may we assign to them 
 their validity. If they are of human growth and development, 
 they will necessarily partake of human limitations. As Pascal 
 well says, " Si rhomme commencoit par s etudier lui-mcme, il 
 verroit combieu il est incapable de passer outre. Comment 
 pourroit-il se faire qu une partie connut le tout?" 
 
 Locke has given us a few indications of the state of opinion 
 
519 
 
 respecting Innate Ideas, which it is worth while collecting. "I 
 have been told that a short epitome of this treatise, which was 
 printed in 1688, was condemned by some without reading, be 
 cause innate ideas were denied in it, they too hastily concluding 
 that if innate ideas were not supposed, there would be little left 
 either of the notion or proof of spirits." Recapitulating the con 
 tents of the chapter devoted to the refutation of innate ideas, he 
 says, " I know not how absurd this may seem to the masters of 
 demonstration, and probably it will hardly down with anybody 
 at first hearing." And elsewhere: "What censure doubting 
 thus of innate principles may deserve from men, who will be apt 
 to call it pulling up the old foundations of knowledge and cer 
 tainty, I cannot tell ; I persuade myself at least that the way I 
 have pursued, being conformable to truth, lays those foundations 
 surer." 
 
 Locke s Method was purely psychological ; although he had 
 been a student of medicine, he never indulges in any physiologi 
 cal speculations, such as his successors, Hartley and Darwin, de 
 lighted in. Ideas, and ideas only, solicited his analysis. Dugald 
 Stewart has remarked, that in the Essay there is not a single 
 passage savoring of the anatomical theatre or of the chemical 
 laboratory. 
 
 We have already spoken of the positivism of Bacon ; that of 
 Locke shall now speak for itself in his own words : " If by this 
 inquiry into the nature of the understanding I can discover the 
 powers thereof, how far they reach, to what things they are in 
 any degree proportionate, and where they fail us, I suppose it 
 may be of use to prevail with the busy mind of man to be more 
 cautious in meddling with the things exceeding its comprehen 
 sion, to stop when it is at the utmost extent of its tether, and sit 
 down in a quiet ignorance of those things which upon examination 
 are found to be beyond the reach of our capacities. We should 
 not then perhaps be so forward, out of an affectation of universal 
 knowledge, to raise questions and perplex ourselves and others 
 about things to which our understandings are not suited, and of 
 
520 LOCKE. 
 
 which we cannot frame in our minds any clear or distinct per 
 ceptions, or whereof (as it has perhaps too often happened) we 
 have not any notions at all. Men have reason to be well satis 
 fied with what God has thought fit for them, since he has given 
 them, as St. Peter says, iravra tfpoj wr,v xcu surfs /Sfjav, whatsoever 
 is necessary for the convenience of life and the information of 
 virtue ; and has put within the reach of their discovery the com 
 fortable provision for this life, and the way that leads to a better. 
 How short soever their knowledge may be of a universal or per 
 fect comprehension of whatever is, it yet secures their great con 
 cernments, that they have light enough to lead them to the 
 knowledge of their Maker and the sight of their own duties. 
 Men may find matter sufficient to busy their heads and employ 
 their hands with variety, delight, and satisfaction, if they will 
 not boldly quarrel with their own constitutions, and throw away 
 the blessings their hands are filled with because they are not big- 
 enough to grasp every thing. 
 
 " We shall not have much reason to complain of the narrowness 
 of our minds, if we will but employ them about what may be of 
 use to us, for of that they are very capable ; and it will be an 
 unpardonable as well as childish peevishness, if we undervalue 
 the advantages of our knowledge, and neglect to improve it to 
 the ends for which it was given us, because there are some things 
 set out of reach of it. It will be no excuse to an idle and unto 
 ward servant who would not attend his business by candlelight, 
 to plead that he had not broad sunshine. The candle that is set 
 up within us shines bright enough for all our purposes. 
 
 " When we know our own strength we shall the better know 
 what to undertake with hopes of success ;* and when we have 
 well surveyed the powers of our minds, and made some estimate 
 what we may expect from them, we shall not be inclined either 
 to sit still, and not set our thoughts on work at all, despairing of 
 
 * " The real cause and root of almost all the evils in science is this : that 
 falsely magnifying and extolling the powers of the mind, we seek not its 
 true helps." Bacon. 
 
521 
 
 knowing* any thing; or, on the other side, question every thing, 
 and disclaim all knowledge because some things are not to be 
 understood. It is of great use to the sailor to know the length 
 of his line, though he cannot with it fathom all the depths of the 
 ocean. It is well he knows that it is long enough to reach the 
 bottom at such places as are necessary to direct his voyage, and 
 caution him against running upon any shoals that may ruin 
 him. . . . This was that which gave the first rise to this Essay 
 concerning the Understanding ; for I thought that the first step 
 towards satisfying several inquiries the mind of man was very 
 apt to run into, was to take a survey of our own understandings, 
 and to see to what things they were adapted. Till that was done 
 I suspected we began at the wrong end, and in vain sought for 
 satisfaction in a quiet and sure possession of truths that most 
 concerned us, whilst we let loose our thoughts into the vast 
 ocean of being ; as if that boundless extent were the natural and 
 undoubted possession of our understandings, wherein there is 
 nothing exempt from its decisions, or that escaped its compre 
 hension. Thus men extending their inquiries beyond their ca 
 pacities, and letting their thoughts wander into those depths where 
 they can find no sure footing, it is no wonder that they raise 
 questions and multiply disputes, which, never coming to any clear 
 resolution, are proper only to continue and increase their doubts, 
 and to confirm them at last in perfect skepticism." 
 
 The decisive manner in which Locke separates himself from 
 the ontologists is not only historically noteworthy, but is also 
 noticeable as giving the tone to his subsequent speculations. 
 We have admired the Portico ; let us enter the Temple. 
 
 IV. THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS. 
 
 Hobbes had said, with Gassendi, that all our ideas are derived 
 from sensations ; nihil est intellectu quod non prius fiterit in sensu. 
 Locke, who is called a mere popularizer of Hobbes, said that there 
 were two sources, not one source, and these two were SENSATION 
 
522 LOCKE. 
 
 and REFLECTION. Separating himself decisively from the up 
 holders of the doctrine of innate ideas of truths independent of 
 experience, he declared that all our knowledge is founded on 
 experience, and from experience it ultimately derives itself. 
 Separating himself no less decisively from the Gassendists, who 
 saw no source of ideas but Sensation, he declared that although 
 SENSATION was the great source of most of our ideas, yet there 
 was "another fountain from which experience furnisheth the 
 understanding with ideas ;" and this source, "though it be not 
 sense, as having nothing to do with external objects, yet it is very 
 like it, and might properly enough be called internal sense :" this 
 he calls REFLECTION. 
 
 After Dugald Stewart s ample exposure of the wide-spread 
 error that Locke was the chief of the so-called Sensational School, 
 we need spend little time in inquiring whether Locke did or did 
 not teach that all knowledge was referable to sensation. The 
 passages which contradict the vulgar error respecting Locke s 
 doctrine are numerous and decisive. Dugald Stewart has se 
 lected several ; but perhaps the one we have quoted above will 
 be considered sufficiently explicit. Reflection, he says, " though 
 it be not sense," may yet analogically be considered as an inter 
 nal sense. To prevent all misconception, however, we will as a 
 decisive example refer to his proof of the existence of God, which 
 he sums up by saying, " It is plain to me that we have a more 
 certain knowledge of the existence of a God than of any thing 
 our senses have not immediately discovered to us. Nay, I pre 
 sume I may say that we may more certainly know that there is 
 a God, than that there is any thing else without us." (Book IV. 
 ch. x.) Locke made the senses the source of all our sensuous 
 knowledge ; our ideal knowledge (so to speak) he derived from 
 Reflection. 
 
 Historians have not accorded due praise to Locke for the im 
 portant advance he made towards a solution of the great question 
 on the origin of knowledge. While Leibnitz has been lauded to 
 the skies for having expressed Locke s doctrine in an epigram, 
 
THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS. 5 23 
 
 Locke has not only been robbed of his due, but has been sacri 
 ficed to his rival. It is commonly said, " Locke reduced all our 
 knowledge to Sensation : Leibnitz came and accepted the old 
 adage of nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu, but 
 he accepted it as only half the truth ; and therefore added, nisi 
 ipse intellectus" Now, firstly, Locke did not accept the adage 
 as the whole truth ; he said that Reflection was a second source 
 of ideas. Secondly, Dugald Stewart has remarked that the 
 addition which Leibnitz made when he said there is nothing in 
 the intellect which was not previously in the sense, except the 
 intellect itself, expresses no more than the doctrine of Locke, who 
 says, " External objects furnish the mind with ideas of sensible 
 qualities; and the mind furnishes the understanding with the 
 ideas of its own operations." Thirdly, although the phrase is 
 epigrammatic, and thereby has had such success in the world as 
 epigrams usually have, it will not bear scrutiny : few epigrams 
 will. Except as a verbal jingle, how trivial is the expression 
 the intellect in the intellect ! Suppose a man to say, " I have no 
 money in my purse, except my purse itself," he would scarcely 
 be less absurd. For when the Schoolmen said, "nothing was in 
 the intellect which was not previously in the sense," they did not 
 mean that the intellect was the same as the sense; they meant 
 that the intellect was furnished with no ideas, notions, or concep 
 tions which had not been furnished them by sense ; they meant 
 that the senses were the inlets to the soul. 
 
 Dr. Whewell approves of the epigram ; and alluding to Mr. 
 Sharpe s objection to it, viz. that we cannot say the intellect is 
 in the intellect, he says, " This remark is obviously frivolous ; for 
 the faculties of the understanding (which are what the argument 
 against the Sensational School requires us to reserve) may be 
 said to be in the understanding with as much justice as we may 
 assert that there are in it the impressions derived from sense." 
 We submit that the "faculties" of the understanding are not 
 " all that must be reserved for the argument against the Sensa 
 tional School " (if the Lockeists be meant, and to them only did 
 
524 LOCKE. 
 
 Leibnitz address himself), for the simple reason that the faculties 
 never were denied.* Opponents have attributed such a notion 
 to Locke s school ; no member of that school ever proposed it. 
 The question never was, Have we an Understanding, and has 
 that Understanding certain Faculties ? No ; the question simply 
 was What is the origin of our Ideas : are they partly innate 
 and partly acquired, or are they wholly acquired, and if so, is 
 Sense the sole inlet? To this plain question some replied plainly, 
 "Sense is the origin of all our ideas." Locke replied, "Sense 
 and Reflection are the sources of all our ideas." Leibnitz re 
 plied, " There is nothing in the intellect which was not previously 
 in the sense; except the intellect itself:" which latter remark is 
 altogether beside the question. And yet this remark has called 
 forth many pages of laudatory declamation; pages in which 
 Locke is cast into the background, and charged with having 
 overlooked the important fact that man has an intellect as well 
 as senses. This notion, once started, continued its triumphant 
 course. Men are for the most part like sheep, who always follow 
 the bell-wether : what one boldly asserts, another echoes boldly ; 
 a third transmits it to a fourth, and the assertion becomes con 
 solidated into a traditional judgment. Some one more serious, 
 or more independent than the rest, looks into the matter, sees 
 an error, exposes it ; but tradition rolls on its unimpeded course. 
 I do not expect to shake the traditional error respecting Locke ; 
 I was bound, however, to signalize it. Locke does not derive all 
 our knowledge from sensation ; Leibnitz has not made any ad 
 dition by his too famous nisi ipse intellectus.\ 
 
 By Sensation, Locke understands the simple operation of exter- 
 
 * Locke often speaks of the operations of the mind as proceeding from 
 powers intrinsical and proper to itself. He says also : " Thus the first capacity 
 of human intellect is, that the mind is fitted to receive the impressions made 
 on it; either through the senses by outward objects, or ly its own operations 
 when it reflects on them. 1 1 Essay, b. ii. c. i. 24. 
 
 t Leibnitz himself says, when making the distinction, " Cela c accorde 
 assez avec votre auteur de 1 Essai, que cherche unc bonne partie des Idees 
 dans la reflexion de 1 esprit sur sa propre nature." Nouveaux Essais, ii. c. i. 
 
THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS. 525 
 
 nal objects through the senses. The mind is herein wholly pas 
 sive. The senses, therefore, may be said to furnish the mind 
 with one portion of its materials. By Reflection he understands 
 that internal sense, by means of which the mind observes its own 
 operations. Thj^ furnishes the second and last portion of the 
 materials out of which the mind frames knowledge. " If it shall 
 be demanded," he says, " when a man begins to have any ideas, 
 I think the true answer is, when he first has any sensation. For 
 since there appear not to be any ideas in the mind before the 
 senses have conveyed any in, I conceive that ideas in the under 
 standing are coeval with sensation." This is making a decisive 
 stand against the upholders of innate ideas ; but it is a very rude 
 and incomplete view. 
 
 Deeply considered, not only are ideas not coeval with sensa 
 tions, but sensations themselves are not coeval with the opera 
 tion of external objects on our organs. Our senses have to be 
 educated, i. e. to be drawn out, developed. We have to learn to 
 see, to hear, and to touch. Light strikes on the infant retina, 
 waves of air pulsate on the infant tympanum : but these as yet 
 produce neither sight nor hearing : they are only the prepara 
 tions for sight and hearing. Many hundred repetitions are 
 necessary before what we call a sensation (i. e. a distinct feeling 
 corresponding to that which the object will always produce upon 
 the developed sense) can be produced. Many sensations are 
 necessary to produce a perception : a perception is a cluster of 
 sensations with an ideal element added. On the educated 
 Sense objects act so as instantaneously to produce what we call 
 their sensations ; on the uneducated Sense they act only so as to 
 produce a vague impression, which becomes more and more defi 
 nite by repetition.* 
 
 Plato finely compares the soul to a book, of which the senses 
 
 * See this growth of sensation treated in detail in Beneke s Lehrbuch 
 der Psychologie. See also the chapters on Hartley and Darwin fur 
 ther on. 
 
526 LOCKE. 
 
 are the scribes.* Accepting this comparison, writing is only pos 
 sible after a series of tentatives ; the hand must practise, before it 
 can steady itself sufficiently to trace letters ; so also must the 
 senses learn by repetition to trace intelligible figures on the 
 tabula rasa of the mind. % 
 
 Locke continues his account of the origin of all our knowledge 
 thus: "In time the mind comes to reflect on its own operations 
 about the ideas got by sensation, and thereby stores itself with a 
 new set of ideas, which I call ideas of reflection. These are the 
 impressions which are made on our senses by outward objects 
 that are extrinsical to the mind, and its own operations proceed 
 ing from powers intrinsical and proper to itself; which when 
 reflected on by itself, becoming also objects of its contemplation, 
 are, as I have said, the original of all knowledge. Thus the first 
 capacity of the human intellect is, that the mind is fitted to re 
 ceive the impressions made on it ; either through the senses by 
 outward objects, or by its own operations when it reflects on 
 them. This is the first step that a man makes towards the dis 
 covery of and the groundwork whereon to build all those notions 
 which ever he shall have naturally in this world. All those 
 sublime thoughts which tower above the clouds, and reach as 
 high as heaven itself, take their rise and footing here : in all that 
 good extent wherein the mind wanders, in those remote specu 
 lations it may seem to be elevated with, it stirs not one jot 
 beyond those ideas which sense or reflection have offered for its 
 contemplation." 
 
 The close of this passage is an answer to the ontologists ; not 
 one, however, which they will accept. They deny that sensation 
 and reflection are the only sources of materials. But we will 
 continue to hear Locke : " When the understanding is once 
 stored with these simple ideas, it has the power to repeat, com 
 pare, and unite them, even to an almost infinite variety, and so 
 
 * Philelu*, p, 192. Plato s words are not given in the text, but the 
 sense is. 
 
ELEMENTS OF IDEALISM AND SKEPTICISM IN LOCKE. 527 
 
 can make at pleasure new complex ideas. But it is not in the 
 power of the most exalted wit, or enlarged understanding, by 
 any quickness or variety of thought, to invent or frame one new 
 simple idea in the mind not taken in by the ways aforementioned." 
 This is very explicit and, we believe, very true. If true, 
 what becomes of Philosophy ? 
 
 V. ELEMENTS OF IDEALISM AND SKEPTICISM IN LOCKE. 
 
 The passage last quoted naturally leads us to consider Locke s 
 position in the great debate carried on respecting our knowledge 
 of things per se. 
 
 Can we know things as they are ? Descartes and his followers 
 suppose that we can : their criterion is the clearness and distinct 
 ness of ideas. Locke admirably said, " Distinct ideas of the 
 several sorts of bodies that fall under the examination of our 
 senses, perhaps we may have ; but adequate ideas I suspect we 
 have not of any one amongst them." Our ideas, however clear, 
 are never adequate ; they are subjective. But Locke only went 
 half-way towards the conception of knowledge as purely subjec 
 tive. He did not think that all our ideas were images, copies 
 of external objects ; but he expressly taught that our ideas of 
 what he calls primary qualities, are resemblances of what really 
 exist in bodies ; adding, that " the ideas produced in us by second 
 ary qualities have no resemblance of them at all. There is 
 nothing like our ideas existing in the bodies themselves. They 
 are, in the bodies we denominate from them, only a power to 
 produce those sensations in us." 
 
 It is remarkable that the last sentence did not lead him to the 
 conclusion that all the qualities which we perceive in bodies are 
 but the powers to produce sensations in us ; and that it is we 
 who attribute to the causes of these sensations a form analogous 
 to their effects. He himself warned us " that so we may not 
 think (as perhaps usually is done) that they (ideas) are exactly 
 the images and resemblances of something inherent in the subject ; 
 most of those of sensation being in the mind no more the like- 
 
528 LOCKE. 
 
 ness of something existing without us, than the names that stand 
 for them are likenesses of our ideas, which yet upon hearing they 
 are apt to excite in us." And elsewhere, " It being no more im 
 possible to conceive that God should annex such ideas to such 
 motions (i. e. the motions of objects affecting the senses) with 
 ivhich they have no similitude, than that he should annex the 
 idea of pain to the motion of a piece of steel dividing our flesh, 
 with which that idea hath no resemblance." 
 
 From these passages it will be seen how clearly Locke under 
 stood the subjective nature of one portion of our knowledge. 
 He did not carry out the application of his principles to primary 
 qualities, owing, perhaps, to inveterate association having too 
 firmly established the contrary in his mind. Every one is willing 
 to admit that color, light, heat, perfume, taste, etc., are not qual 
 ities in the bodies which produce in us those effects, but simply 
 conditions of our sensibility, when placed in certain relations with 
 certain bodies. But few are willing to admit indeed only phi 
 losophers (accustomed as they are to undo their constant associ 
 ations) can conceive the primary qualities, viz. extension, solidity, 
 motion, and number, to be otherwise than real qualities of bodies 
 copies of which are impressed upon us by the relation in which 
 we stand to the bodies. And yet these qualities are no less sub 
 jective than the former. They do not belong at all to bodies, 
 except as powers to produce in us the sensations. They are de- 
 monstrably as much the effects produced in us by objects, as the 
 secondary qualities are ; and the latter every one admits to be 
 the effects, and not copies. Wherein lies the difference ? wherein 
 the difficulty of conceiving primary qualities not to belong to 
 bodies ? In this : the primary qualities are the invariable condi 
 tions of sensation. The secondary qualities are the variable con 
 ditions. We can have no perception of a body that is not ex 
 tended, that is not solid (or the reverse), that is not simple or 
 complex (number), that is not in motion or rest. These are in 
 variable conditions. But this body is not necessarily of any 
 particular color, taste, scent, heat, or smoothness ; it may be color- 
 
ELEMENTS OF IDEALISM AND SKEPTICISM IN LOCKE. 529 
 
 less, tasteless, scentless. These secondary qualities are all vari 
 able. Consequently the one set, being invariable, have occasioned 
 indissoluble associations in our minds, so that it is not only im 
 possible for us to imagine a body, without at the same time im 
 agining it as endowed with these primary qualities; but also we 
 are irresistibly led to believe that the bodies we perceive do cer 
 tainly possess those qualities quite independently of us. Hence 
 it has been said that the Creator himself could not make a body 
 without extension : for such a body is impossible. The phrase 
 should be, "such a body it is impossible for us to conceive." But 
 our indissoluble associations are no standards of reality. 
 
 That toe cannot conceive body without extension is true ; but 
 that, because we cannot conceive it, the contrary must be false, 
 is preposterous. All our assertion in this matter can amount to 
 is, that knowledge must be subordinate to the conditions of our 
 nature. These conditions are not conditions of things, but of 
 our organizations. If we had been so constituted as that all 
 bodies should affect us with a sensible degree of warmth, we 
 should have been irresistibly led to conclude that warmth was a 
 quality inherent in body ; but because warmth varies with dif 
 ferent bodies and at different times, there is no indissoluble asso 
 ciation formed. And so of the rest. 
 
 To return to Locke : he has very well stated the nature of 
 our knowledge of external things, though he excepts primary 
 qualities. " It is evident," he says, " that the bulk, figure, and 
 motion of several bodies about us, produce in us several sen 
 sations, as of colors, sounds, tastes, smells, pleasure and pain, 
 etc. These mechanical affections of bodies having no affinity at 
 all with those ideas they produce in us (there being no conceiv 
 able connection between any impulse of any sort of body 
 and any perception of a color or smell which we find in our 
 minds) we can have no distinct knowledge of such operations be 
 yond our experience and can reason about them no otherwise 
 than as the effects produced by an infinitely wise Agent, which 
 perfectly surpass our comprehensions." 
 
 23 
 
530 LOCKE. 
 
 He shortly after says, " The things that, as far as our observa 
 tion reaches, we constantly find to proceed regularly, we may 
 conclude do act by a law set them ; but yet by a law that we 
 know not : whereby, though causes work steadily, and effects 
 constantly flow from them, yet their connections and dependencies 
 being not discoverable in our ideas, we can have but an experimen 
 tal knowledge of them? Here we have Hume s doctrine of 
 Causation anticipated. 
 
 To prove the subjective nature of our knowledge is but one 
 step towards the great question. The second step, which it is 
 vulgarly supposed was only taken by Berkeley and Hume, was 
 also taken by Locke. Hear him : " Since the mind in all its 
 thoughts and reasonings hath no other immediate object but its 
 own ideas, which it alone does or can contemplate, it is evident 
 that our knowledge is only conversant about them. Knowledge, 
 then, seems to me nothing but the perception of the connection 
 and agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy, of any one of 
 our ideas." 
 
 This is the great stronghold of Idealism and Skepticism. 
 Locke foresaw the use which would be made of it; and he 
 stated the problem with remarkable precision. * It is evident 
 that the mind knows not things immediately, but only by the 
 intervention of ideas it has of them. Our knowledge therefore 
 is real, only so far as there is a conformity between our ideas and 
 the reality of things. But what shall be here the criterion ? 
 How shall the mind, when it perceives nothing but its own ideas, 
 know that they agree with the things themselves ?" 
 
 Thus has he stated the problem which was solved by Idealism 
 on the one hand, and by Skepticism on the other. Let us see 
 how he will solve it. There are two sorts of ideas, he says, the 
 simple and the complex ; or, to use more modern language, per 
 ceptions and conceptions. The first " must necessarily be the 
 product of things operating on the mind in a natural way, and 
 producing those perceptions which by the wisdom and will of 
 our Maker they are ordained and adapted to. From whence it 
 
ELEMENTS OF IDEALISM AND SKEPTICISM IN LOCKE. 531 
 
 follows that simple ideas are not fictions of our fancies, but the 
 natural arid regular productions of things without us really oper 
 ating upon us / and so carry with them all the conformity which 
 is intended, or which our state requires: for they represent 
 things to its under those appearances which they are fitted to 
 produce in us" 
 
 This leaves the question of Idealism unanswered, though it 
 cuts the Gordian knot of Skepticism. It is a plain and explicit 
 avowal of the subjectivity of our knowledge ; of the impossi 
 bility of our ever transcending the sphere of our consciousness 
 and penetrating into the essences of things. Complex ideas 
 being made out of simple ideas, we need not examine their pre 
 tensions to infallibility. All human certainty is therefore only a 
 relative certainty. Ideas may be true for us, without being at 
 all true when considered absolutely. Such is Locke s position. 
 He stands upon a ledge of rock between two yawning abysses. 
 He will stand there, and proceed no further. Why should he 
 move when he knows that a single step will precipitate him 
 into some fathomless gulf? No; he is content with his ledge 
 of rock. " The notice we have by our senses," he says, " of the 
 existence of things without us, though it be not altogether so 
 certain as our intuitive knowledge or the deductions of our rea 
 son, employed about the clear, abstract ideas of our own minds ; 
 yet it is an assurance that deserves the name of knowledge. If 
 we persuade ourselves that our faculties act and inform us right 
 concerning the existence of those objects that affect them, it 
 cannot pass for an ill-grounded confidence ; for I think nobody 
 can in earnest be so skeptical as to be uncertain of the existence 
 of those which he sees and feels. At least he that can doubt 
 so far (whatever he may have with his own thoughts) will never 
 have any controversy with me, since he can never be sure I 
 say any thing contrary to his own opinions. As to myself, I 
 think God has given me assurance enough as to the existence of 
 things without me ; since by their different application I can 
 produce in myself both pleasure and pain, which is one great 
 
532 LOCKE. 
 
 concernment of my present state. We cannot act by any thing 
 but our faculties ; nor talk of knowledge but by the help of 
 those faculties which are fitted to apprehend even what knowl 
 edge is." 
 
 Again, anticipating the objection that " all we see, hear, feel, 
 and taste, think and do, during our whole being, is but the 
 series and deluding appearances of a long dream, and therefore 
 our knowledge of any thing be questioned ; I must desire him to 
 consider that if all be a dream, then he doth but dream that 
 makes the question ; and so it is not much matter that a waking- 
 man should answer him. But yet, if he pleases, he may dream that 
 I make him this answer, That the certainty of things existing in 
 in rerum natura, when we have the testimony of our senses for it, 
 is not only as great as our frame can attain to, but as our con 
 dition needs" This leaves Idealism unansAvered ; but it pro 
 nounces Skepticism to be frivolous : "for our faculties," he con 
 tinues, " being not suited to the full extent of being, nor to a per 
 fect, clear, comprehensive knowledge of things free from all doubt 
 and scruple, but to the preservation of us, in whom they are, 
 and accommodated to the use of life ; they serve our purpose 
 well enough, if they will but give us certain notice of those 
 things which are convenient or inconvenient to us." 
 
 That this is very good common-sense every one will admit. 
 But it is no answer to Skepticism. Hume, as we shall see here 
 after, proclaimed the very same opinions : but the difference be 
 tween him and Locke was, that he knew such opinions had no 
 influence whatever upon the philosophical question, but simply 
 upon the practical affairs of life ; whereas Locke, contenting 
 himself with the practical, disdained to answer the philosophical 
 question.* 
 
 We may sum up the contents of this Section by saying that 
 Locke distinctly enough foresaw the Idealistic and Skeptical 
 
 * Dr. Reid conjectures that " Locke had a glimpse of the system which 
 Berkeley afterwards advanced, though he thought proper to suppress it 
 within his own breast." Not to suppress, but to disdain it. 
 
533 
 
 arguments which might be drawn from his principles. lie did not 
 draw them, because he thought them frivolous. Aware that all 
 human certitude could only be relative certitude that human 
 knowledge could never embrace the nature of things, but only 
 the nature of their effects on us he was content with that 
 amount of truth, and " sat down in quiet ignorance of those 
 things which are beyond the reach of our capacities." The 
 grand aim of the Essay was to prove that all knowledge is 
 founded on experience. That proved, he was aware that Expe 
 rience never could be other than relative it could only be our 
 Experience of things ; and our Experience could be no absolute 
 standard ; it could only be a standard for us. 
 
 VI. LOCKE S CRITICS. 
 
 We cannot leave the great Englishman without adverting to 
 the tone adopted by many of his critics. This tone has been 
 any thing but considerate. The sincerest and least dogmatic of 
 thinkers has, for the most part, met with insincere and shallow 
 criticism. 
 
 That men should misrepresent Spinoza, Hobbes, or Hume, is 
 intelligible enough ; men are frightened, and in their terror ex 
 aggerate and distort what they see. That they should misrep 
 resent Kant, Fichte, or Hegel, is also intelligible ; the remote 
 ness of the speculations, and the difficulty of the language, are 
 sufficient excuses. But that they should misrepresent Locke is 
 wholly inexcusable. He was neither an audacious speculator, 
 nor a cloudy writer. His fault was that he spoke plainly and 
 honestly. He sought the truth ; he did not wish to mystify any 
 one. He endeavored to explain the Chemistry of the Mind (if 
 the metaphor be permissible), renouncing the vague, futile 
 dreams of Alchemy. All those men who still seek to penetrate 
 impenetrable mysteries, and refuse to acknowledge the limits of 
 man s intelligence, treat Locke with the same superb disdain as 
 the ambitious alchemists treated the early chemists. The tone 
 in which most modern Frenchmen and Germans speak of Locke 
 
534 LOCKE. 
 
 is painful ; the tone in which many Englishmen speak of him is 
 disgraceful. To point out any error is honorable ; but to ac 
 cuse him of errors which are not to be found in his work, to 
 interpret his language according to your views, and then accuse 
 him of inconsistency and superficiality ; to speak of him with 
 superciliousness, as if he were some respectable but short-sighted 
 gentleman dabbling with philosophy, and not one of the great 
 benefactors of mankind, deserves the severest reprobation.* 
 
 There is no excuse for not understanding Locke. If his lan 
 guage be occasionally loose and wavering, his meaning is always 
 to be gathered from the context. He had not the lucidity of 
 Descartes or Hobbes ; but he was most anxious to make himself 
 intelligible, and to this end he varied his expressions, and stated 
 his meaning in a variety of forms. He must not be taken liter 
 ally. No single passage is to be relied on, unless it be also 
 borne out by the w r hole tenor of his speculations. Any person 
 merely " dipping into " the Essay, will find passages which seem 
 very contradictory ; any person carefully reading it through will 
 find all clear and coherent. 
 
 The most considerable of Locke s modern critics is Victor 
 Cousin. He has undertaken an examination and refutation of 
 all Locke s important positions. The eminence of his name and 
 the popular style of his lectures have given great importance to 
 his criticism ; but if we are to speak out our opinion frankly, we 
 must characterize this criticism as very unfair, and extremely 
 shallow. We cannot here examine his examination : a volume 
 would not suffice to expose all his errors. Let one example of 
 his unfairness, and one of his shallowness, suffice. 
 
 Speaking of the principle of reflection, he says : " In the first 
 place, remark that Locke here evidently confounds reflection 
 with consciousness. Reflection, strictly speaking, is doubtless a 
 faculty analogous to consciousness, but distinct from it, and which 
 
 * On this point, consult Dr. Vaughan s vigorous defence of Locke against 
 his critics in the Essays on History, Philosophy, eta. 
 
535 
 
 more particularly belongs to philosophers, whereas consciousness 
 belongs to every man." 
 
 We answer, that in the first place, so for from its being evi 
 dent that Locke confounds reflection with consciousness, his 
 whole Essay proves the contrary. In the second place, M. 
 Cousin, using the word reflection in a peculiar sense (viz. as tan 
 tamount to speculation), forces that sense upon Locke, and thus 
 makes the contradiction ! If M. Cousin had interpreted Locke 
 fairly, he could never have thus " caught him on the hip." 
 
 It is quite true that in the passage quoted by M. Cousin, the 
 faculty of reflection is limited to the operations of the mind ; but, 
 as we said, to pin Locke down to any one passage is unfair ; and 
 his whole Essay proves, in spite of some ill-worded definitions, 
 that by reflection he meant very much what is usually meant by 
 it, viz. the activity of the mind in combining the materials it re 
 ceives through sense, and becoming thus a source of ideas. 
 
 This leads us to the second example. M. Cousin wishing to 
 prove, against Locke, that we have ideas from some other source 
 besides sensation and reflection, instances the idea of space, and 
 examines how it was possible to obtain that idea through sensa 
 tion and reflection. That the idea of pure space could not have 
 been obtained through the senses he seems to think is satisfac 
 torily proved by proving that the idea has nothing sensuous in 
 it; that it could not have been obtained through reflection, 
 because it has nothing to do with the operations of our under 
 standing, is equally evident to him. Hence, as both sources fail, 
 he pronounces Locke s account of the origin of our knowledge 
 " incomplete and vicious." 
 
 This argument, which extends to several pages, is deemed by 
 M. Cousin triumphant. Locke indeed says that " we get the idea 
 of space both by our sight and touch." Any honest inquirer 
 would never quibble upon this would never suppose Locke 
 meant to say that space is a sensation. He would understand that 
 Locke meant to say, " the idea of space is an abstraction : the 
 primary materials are obtained through our touch and sight." 
 
536 LOCKE. 
 
 Locke did not anticipate any quibbling objection, so did not 
 guard against it ; but in his explanation of our idea of substance 
 he has given an analogous case ; although his antagonists have 
 also frequently objected that the idea of substance never could 
 have been obtained through sense. It has been thought an irre 
 sistible argument against Locke s theory : the very fact that we 
 have an idea of substance is supposed to be sufficient proof of 
 some other source of knowledge than sensation and reflection. 
 This is an example of how carelessly Locke has been read. He 
 expressly tells us, in more places than one, that the idea of sub 
 stance (and by idea he does not here mean image, but a thought) 
 is an inference grounded upon our experience of external things. 
 True it is that we perceive nothing but phenomena, but our 
 minds are so constituted that we are forced to suppose these 
 phenomena have substances lying underneath them. 
 
 "If any one will examine himself," he says, "concerning his 
 notion of pure substance in general, he will find he has no other 
 idea of it at all, but only a supposition of he knows not what 
 support of such qualities which are capable of producing simple 
 ideas in us, which qualities are commonly called accidents. If 
 any one should be asked what is the subject wherein color or 
 weight inheres, he would have nothing to say but the solid ex 
 tended parts; and if he were demanded what is it that solidity 
 and extension inhere in, he would not be in a much better case 
 than the Indian who, saying that the world was supported by a 
 great elephant, was asked what the elephant rested on, to which 
 his answer was, A great tortoise; but being again pressed to 
 know what gave support to the great broad-backed tortoise, re 
 plied, Something, he knew not what." 
 
 The same course of argument will apply to space. Space is 
 an idea suggested by place, which is surely one derived from the 
 senses ; but M. Cousin declaims away at a great rate, and brings 
 forward many arguments and illustrations, all utterly trivial, to 
 show that the idea of space could never have been a sensation. 
 A little more attention in reading the author he attacks would 
 
537 
 
 have saved him all this trouble. Locke never for an instant 
 supposed that the idea of space could have been a sensation : on 
 the fact that it could not, he grounds his position that the idea 
 is vague, and is a mere " supposition." 
 
 The German critics we may pass over in silence. The whole 
 tenor of their speculations unfits them for judging Locke. But 
 let us hear an Englishman, who is also an historian : " We need 
 not spend much time in pointing out the inconsistencies into 
 which Locke fell," says Dr. Whewell, " as all must fall into in 
 consistencies who recognize no source of knowledge except the 
 senses." Let us remark, in the first place, that it is surely a 
 questionable procedure thus to pass over so great a man as 
 Locke, whose influence has been so general and lasting, and 
 whose "inconsistencies" it behooved Dr. Whewell, more than 
 most men, to refute, inasmuch as Locke s principles refute his 
 whole philosophy. Secondly, it is a misrepresentation to assert 
 Locke s having recognized " no source of knowledge except the 
 senses." On reconsideration he must admit that Locke did 
 recognize another source. " Thus he maintains," continues Dr. 
 Whewell, " that our idea of space is derived from the senses of 
 sight and touch our idea of solidity from the touch alone. 
 Our notion of substance is an unknown support of unknown 
 qualities, and is illustrated by the Indian fable of the tortoise 
 which supports the elephant which supports the world." 
 
 Space we have already considered in answering M. Cousin. 
 As to solidity, if the idea be not derived from the sensation, from 
 whence is it derived ? And as to substance, we must here again 
 notice a misrepresentation of Locke, who does not define it as 
 " an unknown support of unknown qualities," but as an unknown 
 support of known qualities : from our knowledge of the qualities 
 we infer the existence of some substratum in which they inhere. 
 We are, with respect to substance, somewhat in the condition of 
 a blind man, who, whenever he moved in a certain direction, 
 should receive a blow from some revolving wheel. Although 
 unable to see the wheel, and so understand the cause of the pain 
 
538 LOCKE. 
 
 lie received, he would not hesitate to attribute that cause to 
 something without him. All he could ever know, unassisted, 
 would be the fact of his being struck when he moved in a cer 
 tain direction ; he could have no other knowledge of the wheel, 
 yet he would be quite certain that there was something besides his 
 pain, and that unknown something would stand to him in a rela 
 tion somewhat similar to that in which the unknown support 
 of known accidents of bodies stands to us. This is Locke s 
 meaning. 
 
 " Our notion of power or cause," continues the historian, " is 
 in like manner got from the senses ; and yet, though these ideas 
 are thus mere fragments of our experience, Locke does not hesi 
 tate to ascribe to them necessity and universality when they 
 occur in propositions. Thus he maintains the necessary truth of 
 geometrical properties ; he asserts that the resistance arising from 
 solidity is absolutely insurmountable ; he conceives that nothing 
 short of Omnipotence can annihilate a particle of matter ; and 
 he has no misgivings in arguing upon the axiom that every 
 thing must have a cause. He does not perceive that upon his 
 own account of the origin of our knowledge, we can have no 
 right to make any of these assertions. If our knowledge of the 
 truths which concern the external world were wholly derived 
 from experience, all that we could venture to say would be, that 
 geometrical properties of figures are true as far as we have tried 
 them ; that we have seen no example of a solid body being re 
 duced to occupy less space by pressure, or of a material substance 
 annihilated by natural means ; and that, wherever we have exam 
 ined, we have found that every change has had a cause." 
 
 This is only one among many instances of Dr. Whewell s want 
 of accurate interpretation of Locke. The fallacy on which his 
 argument rests, we shall examine at some length when we come 
 to treat of Kant. Meanwhile let the following passage prove 
 that he has misconceived Locke, who certainly did not hesitate 
 to ascribe necessity and universality to certain ideas when they 
 " occur in propositions," but who very clearly explained the na- 
 
539 
 
 ture of this necessity in a masterly passage: "There is one sort 
 of propositions concerning the existence of any thing answerable 
 to such an idea ; as having the idea of an elephant, phoenix, mo 
 tion, or angle, in my mind, the first and natural inquiry is, 
 whether such a thing does anywhere exist. And this knowledge 
 is only of particulars. No existence of any thing without us, 
 except God, can certainly be known further than our senses in 
 form us. 
 
 " There is another sort of propositions, wherein is expressed 
 the agreement or disagreement of our abstract ideas and their 
 dependence on one another. Such propositions may be universal 
 and certain. So, having the idea of God and of myself, of fear 
 and obedience, I cannot but be sure that God is to be feared and 
 obeyed by me : and this proposition will be certain concerning 
 man in general, if I have made an abstract idea of such species 
 whereof I am one particular. But yet this proposition, how cer 
 tain soever, that men ought to fear and obey God, proves not to 
 me the existence of men in the world, but will be true of all 
 such creatures wherever they do exist : which certainty of such 
 general propositions depends on the agreement or disagreement 
 to be discovered in those abstract ideas. In the former case our 
 knowledge is the consequence of the existence of things pro 
 ducing ideas in our minds by our senses ; in the latter, knovvl- 
 edge is the consequence of the ideas (be they what they will) 
 that are in our minds producing their general certain proposi 
 tions. 
 
 " Many of these are called ceternce, veritates j and all of them 
 indeed are so ; not from being written in the minds of all men, 
 or that they were any of them propositions in any one s mind 
 till he, having got the abstract ideas, joined or separated them 
 by affirmation or negation. But wheresoever we can suppose 
 such a creature as man is, endowed with such faculties, and 
 thereby furnished with such ideas as we have, we must conclude 
 he must needs, when he applies his thoughts to the consideration 
 of his ideas, know the truth of certain propositions that will arise 
 
540 LOCKE. 
 
 from the agreement or disagreement which he will perceive in 
 his own ideas. Such propositions therefore are called eternal 
 truths, not because they are eternal propositions actually formed 
 and antecedent to the understanding that makes them ; nor be 
 cause they are imprinted on the mind from any patterns that 
 are anywhere of them out of the mind and existed before ; but 
 because being once made about abstract ideas so as to be true, 
 they will, whenever they can be supposed to be made again at 
 any time by a mind having those ideas, always actually be true."* 
 This passage is sufficient to exonerate him from the charge of 
 inconsistency ; sufficient also, we believe, to show the error of 
 Dr. Whewell s own conception of the necessity of certain truths. 
 The foregoing are samples of the style in which the great mas 
 ter of Psychology is spoken of by his most modern critics. Let 
 them be sufficient warning to the reader of what he is to expect 
 from the partisans of the reaction against Locke, and his follow 
 ers ; and stimulate him to the careful study of that author who 
 " professes no more than to lay down, candidly and freely, his 
 own conjectures concerning a subject lying somewhat in the 
 dark, without any other design than an unbiased inquiry after 
 truth." 
 
 * Book iv. ch. xi. 13, 14. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 LEIBNITZ. 
 
 LEIBNITZ was the first and last of Locke s great critics. He 
 had studied the Essay on the Human Understanding, though he 
 could not accept its principles. His arguments have formed the 
 staple of objection against Locke ; and from him they come with 
 peculiar force, because they are parts of his system. 
 
 Leibnitz has a great reputation in philosophy and mathemat 
 ics ; but the nature of this work forbids our entering into any 
 detailed examination of his claims, inasmuch as he introduced no 
 new ideas, no new extension of old methods. All that can here 
 be done is to indicate the line of opposition which he took with 
 respect to Locke s theory of the origin of Knowledge. 
 
 At first he answered Locke in a few paragraphs of a somewhat 
 supercilious tone. He evidently looked upon the Essay as not 
 destined to achieve any influential reputation.* This opinion he 
 lived to alter ; and in his Nouveaux Essais sur VEntendemeni 
 Humain, he brought all his forces to bear upon the subject ; he 
 grappled with the Essay, and disputed the ground with it inch 
 by inch. This remarkable work was not published till many 
 years after his death, and is not included in M. Dutens edition. 
 Dugald Stewart was not aware of its existence ; and this fact will 
 explain a passage in his Dissertation, where he says that Leib 
 nitz always speaks coldly of Locke s Essay. Leibnitz does so in 
 his earlier works ; but in the Neu> Essays he treats his great ad 
 versary with due respect ; and in the Preface, speaks of him with 
 eulogy. "The Essay concerning Human Understanding, writ- 
 
 * See deflexions sur VEssai de M. Loclce, in the Eecueil of Desmaizeaux, 
 vol. ii. 
 
542 LEIBNITZ. 
 
 ten by an illustrious Englishman, being one of the finest and 
 most esteemed works of our time, I have resolved to make some 
 comments on it. ... Thus I shall procure a favorable introduc 
 tion for my thoughts by placing them in such good company. 
 ... It is true that I am often of a different opinion ; but so far 
 from detracting on that account from the merit of this celebrated 
 writer, that I do him justice in making known in what and 
 wherefore I differ from him, when I judge it necessary to pre 
 vent his authority from prevailing over reason on some important 
 points. In fact, although the author of the Essay says a thou 
 sand things which I must applaud, yet our systems greatly differ. 
 His has greater affinity to that of Aristotle, mine, to that of 
 Plato." This is the spirit in which the Homeric heroes regard 
 their adversaries ; an interchange of admiration for each other s 
 prowess does not deaden one of their blows, but it makes the 
 combat more dignified. 
 
 Leibnitz belonged to the Cartesians ; but he also mingled with 
 the doctrines of Descartes certain ideas which he had gathered 
 from his commerce with antiquity. Plato, and Democritus espe 
 cially, influenced him. To a mind thus furnished, the doctrines 
 of Locke must needs have been unwelcome ; indeed they could 
 not be expected to gain admission. Moreover, as F. Schlegel 
 well observed, every man is born either a Platonist or an Aris 
 totelian.* Leibnitz and Locke were examples of this antago 
 nism : "Our differences," says Leibnitz, "are important. The 
 question : .between us is whether the soul in it 
 
 ike tablets upon which nothing has been written (tabula rasa), 
 according to Aristotle and the author of the Essay ; and whether 
 alTlbat is there traced comes wholly from the senses_ aja 
 
 ence ; or whether the soul originally contains the piiruiiples of - 
 several notions and doctrines, which the external objects only_ 
 awaken on occasions, as I believe with Plato." 
 
 * Coleridge used to pass off this aphorism as his own. It is to be found 
 however in Schlegel s Geschichte der Lite rat >.ir. 
 
LEIBNITZ. 543 
 
 The nature of the problem is well stated here ; and Leibnitz 
 sides with Plato in his solution of it. The main arguments by 
 which he supports his view are those so often since repeated of 
 the Unigfirsality and Necessity of certain tmths ; and of the in 
 capacity of experience to furnish us with any thing beyond a 
 knowledge of individual cases. " For if any event can be foreseen 
 before it has been tried, it is manifest that we contribute some 
 thing for our own parts." Ergo, mere experience, it is argued, 
 does not constitute all our knowledge. " The senses, although 
 necessary for all actual knowledge, are not sufficient to give us all 
 of it ; since the senses never can give but examples, that is to say 
 particular or individual truths. But all the examples which con 
 firm a general truth, however numerous, do not suffice to establish 
 the universal necessity of that truth ; for it does not follow that 
 that which has once occurred will always occur in the same way." 
 
 Leibnitz continues : " Whence it appears that necessary truths, 
 such as we find in mathematics, and particularly in arithmetic 
 and geometry, must have principles of which the proof does not 
 depend upon examples, nor consequently upon the senses, al 
 though without the senses one would never have thought of 
 them. So also logic, metaphysics, and morals are full of such 
 truth a 1 jand_consequently their proofs can only come from those 
 internal principles which are called innate? 
 
 Locke would perfectly have agreecl with these premises, but 
 the conclusion he would rightly have rejected. That the senses 
 alone could not furnish us with any general truth, he taught as 
 expressly as Leibnitz did ; but this in no way affects his system, 
 for he did not build his system upon the senses alone. 
 
 Leibnitz however seems to have been misled by Locke s lan 
 guage in the first definition of Reflection ; for he says, " Perhaps 
 the opinions of our able author are not so far from mine as 
 they appear to be. For after having employed the whole of his 
 first book against innate knowledge taken in a certain sense, he 
 acknowledges in the beginning of the second that there are 
 ideas which do not originate from the senses, but arise from Re- 
 
544: LEIBNITZ. 
 
 flection. Now reflection is nothing but attention to that which 
 passes within us ; and the senses do not convey to us ivhat we 
 already possess within ourselves. Can it then be denied that 
 there is much innate in the mind ?" 
 
 The passage in italics is a curious instance of how the mind, 
 preoccupied with its own opinions, sees them reflected in the 
 expressions of others. Leibnitz here assumes the very point at 
 issue ; assumes that the mind has innate ideas which the senses 
 cannot convey to it ; and this assumption he supposes to be 
 contained in Locke s words. Locke taught precisely the con 
 trary. "The mind is itself innate," continues Leibnitz (to 
 which we reiterate our objection: innate VOL what? In itself? 
 or in us ? To say that it is innate in itself is a quibble ; that it 
 is innate in us is a displacement of the question : no one ever 
 doubted that the mind of man was born in man born with 
 man ; the question was, Are there any klpas horn with tkft- 
 rmml, or are all ideas acquired by the mind ?) " The mind is 
 itself innate, and there are included in it substance, duration, 
 change, action, perception, pleasure, and a thousand other ob 
 jects of our intellectual ideas. . . . I have used the comparison^ 
 of a block of marble which has certain veins in it, rather than 
 a plain piece of marble such as the philosophers call tabula rasa ; 
 because if the soul resembled tablets unwritten on, truths would 
 be in us like the figure of Hercules in the block of marble, 
 when that marble may receive indifferently one figure or another. 
 But if there are veins in the marble which mark the figure of 
 Hercules rather than any other figure, that marble would be 
 more determinate, and the figure of Hercules would in some 
 way be innate, although labor would be necessary to discover 
 the veins, and to free them from their envelopment of marble. 
 Thus are ideas and truths innate in us." 
 
 This is an ingenious statement of the theory : unfortunately 
 for it, the very existence of these veins in the marble is an as 
 sumption, and an assumption not made for the facilitating of 
 inquiry, but simply for the proof of the theory assumed ; it is 
 
LEIBNITZ. 545 
 
 an hypothesis framed for the sake of explaining what? the 
 hypotheses itself! Ideas are first assumed to be innate; to 
 prove this assumption, another assumption the existence of 
 innate ideas is made; and the theory is comolete. 
 
 The real force of Leibnitz s theory lies in his distinction be 
 tween contingent and necessary truths, and in his position that 
 experience alone could never furnish ns with necessary truths. 
 The examination of this we must delay till we come to Kant. 
 
 A brief view of the celebrated scheme of Pre-established Har 
 mony will be all that is necessary to complete what we have 
 here to say of Leibnitz. It was in those days an axiom univer 
 sally admitted that "Like could only act upon Like." The 
 question then arose : how does body act upon mind : how does 
 mind act upon body? The two were utterly unlike: how 
 could they act upon each other ? In other words : how is Per 
 ception possible ? All the ordinary explanations of Perception 
 were miserable failures. If the mind perceives copies of things, 
 how are these copies transmitted ? Effluvia, eidola, images, motions 
 in spirits, etc., were not only hypotheses, but hypotheses which 
 bore no examination : they did not get rid of the difficulty of 
 two unlike substances acting upon each other. 
 
 Leibnitz borrowed this hypothesis from Spinoza whom, by 
 the way, he always abuses: The human mind and the human 
 body are two independent but corresponding machines. They 
 are so adjusted that they are like two unconnected clocks con 
 structed so that at the same instant one should strike the hour 
 and the other point it. "I cannot help coming to this notion," 
 he says, " that God created the soul in such a manner at first, 
 that it should represent within itself all the simultaneous changes 
 in the body ; and thut he has made the body also in such a 
 manner as that it must of itself do what the soul wills : so that 
 the laws which make the thoughts of the soul follow each other 
 in regular succession, must produce images which shall be coin 
 cident with the impressions made by external objects upon our 
 organs of sense ; while the laws by which the motions of the 
 
546 SUMMARY OF THE THIRD EPOCH. 
 
 body follow each other are likewise so coincident with the 
 thoughts of the soul as to give to our volitions and actions the 
 very same appearance as if the latter were really the natural 
 and the necessary consequences of the former."* 
 
 This hypothesis has been much ridiculed by those unaware of 
 the difficulties it was framed to explain. It is so repugnant how 
 ever to all ordinary views, that it gained few, if any, adherents. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 SUMMAKY OF THE THIRD EPOCH. 
 
 THE result of the speculations we have been considering spec 
 ulations begun by Gassendi and Hobbes, and further developed 
 by Locke was to settle, for a long while, the dispute respecting 
 Experience, and to give therefore a new direction to inquiry. 
 
 It was considered as established, 1st. That we could have no 
 knowledge not derived from experience. 2d. That experience 
 was of two kinds, viz. of external objects and of internal opera 
 tions ; therefore there were two distinct sources sensation and 
 reflection. 3d. That all knowledge could only consist in the 
 agreement or disagreement of our ideas. 4th. Finally, that we 
 could never know things in themselves, but only things as they 
 affect us ; in other words, we could only know our ideas. 
 
 To this had Locke brought Philosophy. Rightly interpreted, 
 it was a denial of all Philosophy a demonstration of its im 
 possibility ; but this interpretation Locke did not put upon his 
 doctrines. That remained for Hume. Locke s system produced 
 three distinct systems : Berkeley s Idealism, Hume s Skepticism, 
 and Condillac s Sensationalism. 
 
 * The best edition of Leibnitz s works is that by Erdmann Leibnitii 
 Opera Philosophica: Berlin, 1839. The Nouveaux Ensa is are there for the 
 second time published (the first was in Easpe s edition, Leipzig, 1765) ; and 
 they have been since republished in a cheap and convenient form by M. 
 Jacques : Paris, 1845. 
 
FOURTH EPOCH. 
 
 THE SUBJECTIVE NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE LEADS TO 
 IDEALISM. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 BEKKELEY. 
 
 I. LIFE OF BERKELEY. 
 
 THERE are few men of whom England has better reason to be 
 proud than of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne. To extra 
 ordinary merits as a writer and thinker, he united the most ex 
 quisite purity and generosity of character; and it is still a 
 moot-point whether he was greater in head or heart. 
 
 He was born on the 12th of March, 1684, at Kilkrin, in the 
 county of Kilkenny ; and educated at Trinity College, Dublin, 
 where, in 1707, he was admitted as a Fellow. In 1709, he pub 
 lished his Neio Theory of Vision, which made an epoch in / 
 Science ; and the year after, his Principles of Human Knowledge, 
 which made an epoch in Metaphysics. After this he came to 
 London, where he was received with open arms. "Ancient 
 learning, exact science, polished society, modern literature, and 
 the fine arts, contributed to adorn and enrich the mind of this 
 accomplished man. All his contemporaries agreed with the 
 Satirist in ascribing 
 
 To Berkeley every virtue under heaven. 
 
 Adverse factions and hostile wits concurred only in loving, admi 
 ring, and contributing to advance him. The severe sense of 
 
548 BERKELEY. 
 
 Swift endured his visions ; the modest Addison endeavored to 
 reconcile Clarke to his ambitious speculations. His character 
 converted the satire of Pope into fervid praise. Even the dis 
 cerning, fastidious, and turbulent Atterbury said, after an inter 
 view with him, * So much learning, so much knowledge, so much 
 innocence, and such humility, I did not think had been the por 
 tion of any but angels, till I saw this gentleman. "* 
 
 His acquaintance with the wits led to his contributing to the 
 Guardian. He became chaplain and afterwards secretary to the 
 Earl of Peterborough, whom he accompanied on his embassy to 
 Sicily. He subsequently made the tour of Europe with Mr. 
 Ashe, and at Paris met Malebranche, with whom he had an ani 
 mated discussion on the ideal theory. In 1724 he was made 
 Dean of Deny. This was worth eleven hundred pounds a year 
 to him ; but he resigned it in order to dedicate his life to the 
 conversion of the North American savages, stipulating only with 
 the Government for a salary of one hundred pounds a year. On 
 this romantic and generous expedition he was accompanied by 
 ; his young wife. He set sail for Rhode Island, carrying with him 
 a valuable library of books, and the bulk of his property. But, 
 to the shame of the Government, be it said, the promises made 
 him were not fulfilled, and after seven years of single-handed 
 endeavor, he was forced to return to England, having spent the 
 greater part of his fortune in vain. 
 
 He was made Bishop of Cloyne in 1734. When he wished 
 to resign, the King would not permit him ; and being keenly 
 alive to the evils of non-residence, he made an arrangement be 
 fore leaving Cloyne, whereby he settled 200 a year, during his 
 absence, on the poor. In 1752, he removed to Oxford, where, 
 in 1753, he was suddenly seized, while reading, with palsy of the 
 heart, and died almost instantaneously. 
 
 Of his numerous writings we cannot here speak; two only 
 belong to our subject : the Principles of Knowledge, and the 
 
 * Sir J. Mackintosh. 
 
LIFE OF BERKELEY. 549 
 
 Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous. We hope to remove some 
 of the errors and prejudices with which his name is incrusted. 
 We hope to show that, even in what are called his wildest moods, 
 Berkeley was a plain, sincere, deep-thinking man, not a sophist, 
 playing with paradoxes to display his skill. 
 
 II. BERKELEY AND COMMON SENSE. 
 
 All the world has heard of Berkeley s Idealism ; and innumer 
 able " coxcombs " have vanquished it " with a grin."* Ridicule 
 has not been sparing. Argument has not been wanting. Ideal 
 ism has been laughed at, written at, talked at, shrieked at. That 
 it has been understood is not so apparent. In reading the criti 
 cisms upon his theory it is quite ludicrous to notice the constant 
 iteration of trivial objections, which, trivial as they are, Berkeley 
 had already anticipated. In fact the critics misunderstood him, 
 and then reproached him for inconsistency inconsistency, not 
 with his principles, but with theirs. They forced a meaning upon 
 his words which he had expressly rejected ; and then triumphed 
 over him because he did not pursue their principles to the extrav 
 agances which would have resulted from them. 
 
 When Berkeley denied the existence of matter, he meant by 
 "matter" that unknown substratum, the existence of which 
 Locke had declared to be a necessary inference from our knowl 
 edge of qualities, but the nature of which must ever be altogether 
 hidden from us. Philosophers had assumed the existence of 
 Substance, i. e. of a noumenon lying underneath all phenomena 
 a substratum supporting all qualities a something in which all 
 accidents inhere. This unknown Substance, Berkeley rejects. It 
 is a mere abstraction, he says. If it is unknown, unknowable, 
 it is a figment, and I will none of it ; for it is a figment worse 
 than useless ; it is pernicious, as the basis of all atheism. If by 
 matter you understand that which is seen, felt, tasted, and touch 
 ed, then I say matter exists : I am as firm a believer in its exist- 
 
 * " And coxcombs vanquish Berkeley with a grin." Pope. 
 
550 BERKELEY. 
 
 ence as any one can be, and herein I agree with the vulgar. If, 
 on the contrary, you understand by matter that occult substratum 
 which is not seen, not felt, not tasted, and not touched that of 
 which the senses do not, cannot, inform you then I say I believe 
 not in the existence of matter, and herein I differ from the phi 
 losophers and agree with the vulgar. 
 
 " I am not for changing things into ideas," he says, " but rather 
 ideas into things ; since those immediate objects of perception, 
 which, according to you (Berkeley might have said according to 
 all philosophers) are only appearances of things, I take to be the 
 real things themselves. 
 
 " Hylas. Things ! you may pretend what you please ; but it 
 is certain you leave us nothing but the empty forms of things, 
 the outside of which only strikes the senses. 
 
 " Philonous. What you call the empty forms and outside of 
 things seem to me the very things themselves. . . . We both 
 therefore agree in this, that we perceive only sensible forms ; but 
 herein we differ : you will have them to be empty appearances ; 
 I, real beings. In short, you do not trust your senses ; I do? 
 
 Berkeley is always accused of having propounded a theory 
 which contradicts the evidence of the senses. That a man who 
 thus disregards the senses must be out of his own, was a ready 
 answer ; ridicule was not slow in retort ; declamation gave itself 
 elbow-room, and exhibited itself in a triumphant attitude. It 
 was easy to declare that " the man who seriously entertains this 
 belief, though in other respects he may be a very good man, as 
 a man may be who believes he is made of glass ; yet surely he 
 hath a soft place in his understanding, and hath been hurt by 
 much thinking."* 
 
 Unfortunately for the critics, Berkeley did not contradict the 
 evidence of the senses ; did not propound a theory at variance 
 in this point with the ordinary belief of mankind. His pecu 
 liarity is, that he confined himself exclusively to the evidence of 
 
 * Reid, Inquiry. 
 
BERKELEY AND COMMON SENSE. 551 
 
 the senses. What the senses informed him of, that, and that 
 only, would he accept. He held fast to the facts of conscious 
 ness; he placed himself resolutely in the centre of the instinctive 
 belief of mankind : there he took his stand, leaving to philoso 
 phers the region of supposition, inference, and of occult sub 
 stances. 
 
 The reproach made to him is really the reproach he made to 
 philosophers, namely, that they would not trust to the evidence 
 of their senses ; that over and above what the senses told them, 
 they imagined an occult something of which the senses gave no 
 indication. " Now it was against this metaphysical phantom of 
 the brain," says an acute critic, " this crotchet-world of philoso 
 phers, and against it alone, that all the attacks of Berkeley were 
 directed. The doctrine that the realities of things were not made 
 for man, and that he must rest satisfied with mere appearances, 
 was regarded, and rightly, by him, as the parent of skepticism 
 with all her desolating train. He saw, that philosophy, in giving 
 up the reality immediately within her grasp, in favor of a reality 
 supposed to be less delusive, which lay beyond the limits of ex 
 perience, resembled the dog in the fable, who, carrying a piece 
 of meat across a river, let the substance slip from his jaws, while 
 with foolish greed he snatched at the shadow in the stream. 
 The dog lost his dinner, and philosophy let go her secure hold 
 upon truth. He therefore sided with the vulgar, who recognize 
 no distinction between the reality and the appearance of objects, 
 and, repudiating the baseless hypothesis of a world existing un 
 known and unperceived, he resolutely maintained that what are 
 called the sensible shows of things are in truth the very things 
 themselves."* 
 
 True it is that, owing to the ambiguities of language, Berke 
 ley s theory does seem to run counter to the ordinary belief of 
 mankind, because by Matter men commonly understand the 
 
 * Blackwood 1 a Mag., June, 1842, p. 814, art. Berkeley and Idealism; under 
 stood to have been written by Professor Ferrier. 
 
552 BERKELEY, 
 
 Seen, the Tasted, the Touched, etc. ; therefore when the exist 
 ence of matter is denied, people naturally suppose that the exist 
 ence of the Seen, the Tasted, and the Touched is denied, never 
 suspecting that Matter, in its philosophical sense, is the not seen, 
 not tasted, not touched. Berkeley has not, it must be confessed, 
 sufficiently guarded against all ambiguity. Thus he says in one 
 of the opening sections of his Principles of Human Knowledge, 
 that " it is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing amongst men 
 that houses, mountains, rivers, and, in a word, all sensible objects, 
 have an existence, natural or real, distinct from their being per 
 ceived by the understanding." This is striking a false key 
 note. It rouses the reader to oppose a coming paradox. Yet 
 Berkeley foresaw and answered the objections which Wimpey, 
 Beattie, Reid, and others brought forward. He was not giving 
 utterance to a caprice ; he was not spinning an ingenious 
 theory, knowing all the while that it was no more than an inge 
 nuity. He was an earnest thinker, patient in the search after truth. 
 Anxious therefore that his speculations should not be regarded 
 as mere dialectical displays, he endeavored on various occasions 
 to guard himself from misapprehension. 
 
 " I do not argue against the existence of any one thing that 
 we can apprehend either by sensation or reflection. That the 
 things I see with my eyes and touch with my hands do exist, 
 really exist, I make not the least question. The only thing 
 whose existence I deny is that which philosophers call Matter, or 
 corporeal substance. And in doing this there is no damage 
 done to the rest of mankind, who, I dare say, will never miss 
 it. ... 
 
 " If any man thinks we detract from the reality or existence of 
 things, he is very far from understanding what has been pre 
 mised in the plainest terms I could think of. ... It will be 
 urged that thus much at least is true, viz. that we take away all 
 corporeal substances. To this my answer is, that if the word 
 substance be taken in the vulgar sense for a combination of sen 
 sible qualities, such as extension, solidity, weight, etc., this we 
 
BERKELEY AND COMMON SENSE. 553 
 
 cannot be accused of taking away.* But if it be taken in the 
 philosophic sense, for the support of accidents or qualities 
 without the mind ; then, indeed, I acknowledge that we take it 
 away, if one may be said to take away that which never had 
 any existence, not even in the imagination.! But say what we 
 can, some perhaps may be apt to reply, he will still believe his 
 senses, and never suffer any arguments, however plausible, to 
 prevail over the certainty of them. Be it so : assert the evi 
 dence of sense as high as you please, we are willing to do the 
 same. That what I see, hear, and feel, doth exist, i. e. is per 
 ceived by me, I no more doubt than I do of my own being ; but 
 I do not see how the testimony of sense can be alleged as a proof 
 of any thing which is not perceived by sense ."J 
 
 After reading these passages (and more of a similar cast 
 might be quoted), in what terms shall we speak of the works 
 written to refute Idealism ? Where was the acuteness of the 
 Reids and Beatties, when they tauntingly asked why Berkeley 
 did not run his head against a post, did not walk over preci 
 pices, etc., as, in accordance with his theory, no pain, no broken 
 limbs could result ? Where was philosophical acumen, when 
 writers could imagine they refuted Berkeley by an appeal to 
 common sense when they contrasted the instinctive beliefs of 
 mankind with the speculative paradoxes of a philosopher, who 
 
 * An answer to Pr. Johnson s peremptory refutation of Berkeley, viz. 
 kicking a stone ; us if Berkeley ever denied that what we call stones ex 
 isted ! 
 
 t This is not well said. That substance was imagined to exist (as a sup 
 port of accidents) Berkeley s argument supposes : it is against such an ima 
 ginary existence he directs his attacks. Perhaps he means that no image of 
 substance could be formed in the mind ; which no one disputes. 
 
 J Principles of Human Knowledge, sections 35, 36, 37, 40. 
 
 " But what is the consequence? I resolve not to believe my senses ? I 
 break my head against a post that comes in my way ; I step into a dirty 
 kennel ; and after twenty such wise and rational actions I am taken up and 
 clapt into a madhouse. Now I confess I had rather make one of those credu 
 lous fools whom nature imposes upon, than of those wise and rational phi 
 losophers who resolve to withhold assent at all this expense." Reid s 
 Inquiry, ch. 4, 20. This one passage is as good as a hundred. 
 
 24 
 
554: BERKELEY. 
 
 expressly took his stand beside common sense against philoso 
 phers ? 
 
 Men trained in metaphysical speculations may find it difficult 
 to conceive the non-existence of an invisible unknowable sub 
 stratum ; but that the bulk of mankind find it almost impossible 
 to conceive any such substratum, is a fact which the slightest 
 inquiry will verify. We remember a discussion which lasted an 
 entire evening, in which by no power of illustration, by no force 
 of argument, could the idea of this substance, apart from its 
 sensible qualities^ be rendered conceivable to our antagonist. 
 
 Berkeley therefore, in denying the existence of matter, sided 
 with common sense. He thought, with the vulgar, that matter 
 was that of which his senses informed him ; not an occult some 
 thing of which he could have no information. The table he 
 saw before him certainly existed : it was hard, polished, colored, 
 of a certain figure, and cost some guineas. But there was no 
 phantom table lying underneath the apparent table there was 
 no invisible substance supporting that table. What he per 
 ceived was a table, and nothing more ; what he perceived it to 
 be, he would believe it to be, and nothing more. His starting- 
 point was thus what the plain dictates of his senses, and the 
 senses of all men, furnished. 
 
 III. IDEALISM. 
 
 The first step which a philosopher takes in any inquiry is a 
 departure from Common Sense. Reflecting upon what his 
 senses convey to him, he seeks an explanation of phenomena : 
 and it is in proportion to the care with which he analyzes the 
 facts to be explained, that he is usually supposed to be free 
 from the mere extravagances of speculation. And yet Berke 
 ley s rigorous analysis of the facts of consciousness has obtained 
 for him the reputation of being one of the most extravagant of 
 speculators ! 
 
 This is the problem : our senses inform us of the existence of 
 
IDEALISM. 555 
 
 certain sensible qualities, such as extension, color, solidity, etc. 
 But our reason tells us that these qualities must be qualities of 
 something : they cannot exist as mere extension, color, etc. : 
 there must be something extended, colored, etc. What is that 
 something? The solution given by the philosophers was uni 
 formly this : what that substance is we can never know, because 
 it lies beyond our apprehension ; but we are forced to admit it, 
 as a support to the qualities which we do apprehend, as a sub 
 stance in which sensible qualities inhere. So that, deeply con 
 sidered, the only reason for inferring the existence of Matter is 
 the necessity for some synthesis of attributes. 
 
 Now, what did Berkeley ? With very subtle perception of 
 the difficulties of the problem, he boldly solved it by making the 
 synthesis a mental one. Thus was matter wholly got rid of; it 
 had no longer the excuse of being an inference. 
 
 The nature of human knowledge is the first objeet of his in 
 quiry. " It is said that the faculties we have are few, and those 
 designed by nature for the support and pleasure of life, and not 
 to penetrate into the inward essence and constitution of things. 
 Besides, the mind of man, being finite, when it treats of things 
 which partake of infinity, it is not to be wondered at if it run 
 into absurdities and contradictions, out of which it is impossible 
 it should ever extricate itself, it being of the nature of infinite 
 not to be comprehended by that which is finite." 
 
 This is plainly enough launched at Locke ; but the worthy 
 Bishop has no such disposition " to sit down in quiet ignorance." 
 He suspects that " we may be too partial in placing the fault 
 originally in our faculties, and not rather in the wrong use we 
 make of them." He believes that God is too bountiful not to have 
 placed knowledge within our reach, of which he has given us the 
 desire. Berkeley here forgets the lesson man was taught in Para 
 dise, where the Tree of Knowledge was placed within his reach, 
 but the fruits thereof forbidden him. " Upon the whole," con 
 tinues Berkeley, " I am inclined to think that the far greater 
 part, if not all the difficulties which have hitherto amused philoso- 
 
556 BERKELEY. 
 
 phers and blocked up the way to knowledge, are entirely owing 
 to themselves. That we have first raised a dust, and then com 
 plain we cannot see." 
 
 The pretension on which all philosophy is founded is here 
 openly proclaimed. The consequences of Locke s doctrine are 
 rejected ; the premises are retained. Berkeley s account of the 
 origin of knowledge is the same as Locke s, only somewhat 
 more explicitly defined. " It is evident to any one who takes a 
 survey of the objects of human knowledge that they are either 
 ideas actually imprinted on the senses, or else such as are per 
 ceived by attending to the passions and operations of the mind ; 
 or, lastly, ideas formed by help of memory and imagination, 
 either compounding, dividing, or barely representing those origi 
 nally perceived in the aforesaid ways." 
 
 Remark, firstly, that the objects of knowledge are said to be 
 ideas. This has a paradoxical air to those unaccustomed to 
 metaphysics, yet it is the simple expression of the facts of con 
 sciousness. All that the mind can be conversant about is ob 
 viously its ideas : we are conscious of nothing but the changes 
 that take place in our minds. Whether these ideas are the 
 copies or representatives of any things whether changes in our 
 state are to be attributed to any external cause : this is a question 
 of philosophy, a question which common sense makes no scruple of 
 begging. You see before you a flower, and you assume that an 
 external thing resembling that flower exists, and that your sensa 
 tion is produced by it, as a reflection in a mirror is produced by 
 an object out of the mirror. But dive deeper into consciousness ; 
 interrogate yourself, and you will find that the comparison of the 
 mirror is an assumption made only to explain the facts of con 
 sciousness, not given in those facts. Moreover, granting the as 
 sumption, you will then make the mind immediately conversant 
 with its ideas only / for assuming that objects reflect themselves 
 in the mirror, the mirror itself knows only the reflections : these 
 it knows immediately; the objects it knows mediately, i.e. 
 through the reflections. Thus is Berkeley keeping rigorously to 
 
IDEALISM. 557 
 
 the facts of consciousness when he says that the " objects of 
 knowledge are ideas." 
 
 Secondly, remark on Berkeley s use of the word idea, which 
 stands both for sensation and idea. We cannot but regard this 
 confusion of language as the cause of no little misapprehension 
 of his doctrines. R is well therefore to warn the reader thereof. 
 Now to consequences. u That neither our thoughts, nor pas 
 sions, nor the ideas formed by our imagination, exist without the 
 mind, is what everybody will allow ; and to me it is no less evi 
 dent that the various sensations or ideas imprinted on the sense, 
 however blended or combined together (that is, whatever objects 
 they compose), cannot exist otherwise than in a mind perceiving 
 them. . . . The table I write on, I say exists, i. e. I see it and feel it, 
 and if I were out of my study I should say it existed ; meaning 
 thereby that if I was in my study I might perceive it, or that 
 some other spirit actually does perceive it. As to what is said 
 about the existence of unthinking things, without any relation to 
 their being perceived, that is to me perfectly unintelligible. 
 Their esse is percipi j nor is it possible they should have any 
 existence out of the minds or thinking things which perceive 
 them." 
 
 It is in this last paragraph that the kernel of his system lies. 
 He had identified objects with ideas : having done so, it was easy 
 to prove that objects could not exist without a perceiving mind 
 in which to exist as ideas. " For what are the objects but the 
 things which we perceive by sense ?" Realism assents : objects 
 are what we perceive. "And what, I pray you," continues 
 Berkeley, " do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations ?" 
 Realism hesitates ; certainly the mirror has nothing immediately 
 present to it, besides the reflections. " And is it not plainly re 
 pugnant," triumphantly continues Idealism, " that any one of 
 these ideas, or any combination of them, should exist unper- 
 ceived ?" Realism has no answer to offer. It is in a dilemma 
 from which there is apparently no escape. 
 
 The supposition of the existence of matter is founded on the 
 
558 BERKELEY. 
 
 doctrine of abstract ideas (against which Berkeley wages war). 
 " For can there be a nicer strain of abstraction than to distin 
 guish the existence of sensible objects from their being perceived, 
 so as to conceive them existing unperceived ? Light and colors, 
 heat and cold, extension and figures in a word, the things we 
 see and feel what are they but so many sensations, notions, 
 ideas, or impressions on the sense ; and is it not impossible to 
 separate, even in thought, any of these from perception ? For my 
 part, I might as easily divide a thing from itself. I may indeed 
 divide in my thoughts, or conceive apart from each other, those 
 things which perhaps I never perceived by sense so divided. 
 Thus I imagine the trunk of the human body without the limbs, 
 or conceive the smell of a rose without thinking of the rose itself. 
 So far I will not deny that I can abstract, if that be properly 
 called abstraction which extends only to the conceiving sepa 
 rately such objects as it is impossible may really exist, or be ac 
 tually perceived asunder ; but my conceiving or imagining power 
 does not extend beyond the possibility of real existence or per 
 ception. Hence, as it is impossible for me to see or feel any 
 thing without an actual sensation of that thing, so it is impossi 
 ble for me to conceive in my thoughts any sensible thing or ob 
 ject distinct from the sensation or perception of it. In truth, the 
 object and the sensation are the same thing, and cannot there 
 fore be abstracted from one another. . . . 
 
 " In a word, all the choir of heaven and furniture of earth 
 all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world 
 have not any subsistence without a mind : their esse is to be per 
 ceived or known ; and consequently, so long as they are not ac 
 tually perceived by me, or do not exist in my mind, or that of 
 any other created spirit, they must either have no existence at 
 all, or else subsist in the mind of some eternal spirit. . . . 
 
 "Though we hold indeed the objects of sense to be nothing 
 else but ideas which cannot exist unperceived, yet we may not 
 hence conclude they have no existence except only while they 
 are perceived by us, since there may be some other spirit that 
 
IDEALISM. 559 
 
 perceives them, though we do not. Whenever bodies are said to 
 have no existence without the mind, I would not be understood to 
 mean this or that particular mind, but all minds whatsoever. It 
 does not therefore follow that bodies are annihilated and created 
 every moment, or exist not at all during the intervals between 
 our perception of them. . . . 
 
 " I am content to put the whole upon this issue : if you can 
 but conceive it possible for one extended movable substance, or 
 in general for any one idea, or any thing like an idea, to exist 
 otherwise than in a mind perceiving it, I shall readily give up 
 the cause ; I shall grant you its existence, though you cannot 
 either give me a reason why you believe it exists, or assign any 
 use to it when it is supposed to exist. I say the bare possibility 
 of your opinion being true, shall pass for an argument that it 
 is so. 
 
 " But, say you, surely there is nothing easier than for me to 
 imagine trees in a park, or books in a closet, and nobody by to 
 perceive them. I answer, you may so: there is no difficulty in 
 it. But what is all this, I beseech you, more than framing in 
 your mind certain ideas which you call books and trees, and at 
 the same time omitting to frame the idea of any one perceiving 
 them ? 
 
 " But do not you yourself perceive or think of them all the 
 while ? This therefore is nothing to the purpose : it only shows 
 you have the power of imagining or framing ideas in your mind, 
 but it does not show that you can conceive it possible the objects 
 of your thought may exist without the mind. To make out this, 
 it is necessary that you conceive them existing unperceived or 
 unthought of, which is a manifest repugnancy. When we do 
 our utmost to conceive the existence of external bodies, we are all 
 the while only contemplating our own ideas"* 
 
 The last very remarkable passage must have been overlooked 
 
 * The foregoing passage^ are all taken from the Principles of Human 
 Knowkdge, sections 5, 6, 6, 22 and 23. 
 
560 BERKELEY. 
 
 by the critic before mentioned, otherwise he would not have said 
 that the "knot which Berkeley loosened, but which he certainly 
 died not explicitly untie," was to be resolved, for the first time, 
 by the arguments he there brings forward. Berkeley had untied 
 the knot, explicitly, satisfactorily ; and that too in the same way 
 as his critic.* 
 
 The distinction between primary and secondary qualities, 
 Berkeley easily refutes, and shows that the same arguments 
 which make the secondary qualities to be only affections of the 
 mind may be applied to the primary qualities. 
 
 Having battered down almost every objection, trivial or seri 
 ous, that could be offered, Idealism iterates its fundamental prin 
 ciple : All our knowledge of objects is a knowledge of ideas ; 
 objects and ideas are the same. Ergo, nothing exists but what 
 is perceived. 
 
 Realism espies a loophole. These ideas, with which we admit 
 the mind to be solely conversant, are but the ideas (images) of 
 certain things : these things exist independently of being per 
 ceived, though their ideas cannot. Berkeley foresaw this also. 
 " But, say you, though the ideas themselves do not exist without 
 the mind, yet there may be things like them whereof they are 
 copies or resemblances, which things exist without the mind in 
 an unthinking substance. I answer, an idea can be like nothing 
 but an idea ; a color or figure can be like nothing but another 
 color or figure. Again, I ask whether those supposed originals 
 or external things, of which our ideas are the pictures or repre 
 sentations, be themselves perceivable or no ? If they are, then 
 they are ideas, and we have gained our point ; but if you say 
 they are not, I appeal to any one whether it be sense to assert a 
 color is like something which is invisible ; hard or soft, like some 
 thing which is intangible ?" (Sect. 8.) 
 
 Realism is without a shadow of an answer. The philosophers 
 are powerless against a theory so defended., No wonder that 
 
 * See the article- in B&ackwood, p. 8-17, et seg. 
 
IDEALISM. 561 
 
 Idealism should have been pronounced irrefutable ; the weapons 
 were not forged, or, at any rate, were not in the armory of phi 
 losophy, which could successfully assail a fortress built on such a 
 position. Dr. Reid s attempt we shall examine by and by. 
 
 As far as the simple facts of Consciousness extend, the analysis 
 given by Berkeley is unimpeachable, unless we deny that Con 
 sciousness is immediately affected by sensations, and assert that 
 it is immediately affected by external objects ; but no metaphysi 
 cian ever took up this position, for it would lead him to maintain 
 that Consciousness is nothing but these very sensations, which 
 are produced in the organism by the action of external influ 
 ences ; and this would be getting rid of the substratum Mind, 
 in order to rescue the substratum Matter. No metaphysician 
 therefore ever did o-r could, logically, object to Berkeley s funda 
 mental position ; but only tried to elude it, or make it open into 
 other issues. 
 
 Given, however, the facts, there comes the question of infer 
 ences. It has been well said by Mr. Herbert Spencer that the 
 denial of an external world " consists of a series of dependent 
 propositions, no one of which possesses greater certainty than 
 the single proposition to be disproved."* If the grounds of our 
 belief in an external world are questionable, what better grounds 
 have we for the belief that the external world is a mere subjec 
 tive phenomenon ? 
 
 We are to settle whether it is a more plausible hypothesis that 
 ideas are proximately produced in us by the mere Will of the 
 Creator, whose will is effectuated by certain laws ; or whether the 
 ideas are proximately produced in us by external objects, which 
 exist quite independently of us. This question, remember, is one 
 which admits of no proof. It is- not a question of fact, but of 
 plausibility. It is not to be decided by common sense, but by 
 analogical reasoning. Our knowledge extends no further than 
 our ideas.. Our inferences can be- nothing more tha-n inferences. 
 
 * O 
 
 * Principles of Psychology, p. 38, 
 040 
 
562 BERKELEY. 
 
 Berkeley has far better reasons for his inference than his critics 
 imagine. He could not see the force of the argument which 
 made Matter a necessary postulate. That we could have sensa 
 tions and ideas without the presence of objects, is manifest from 
 the fact that we do often have them so, in dreams and frenzies. 
 If, therefore, matter is not always necessary for the production 
 of ideas if ideas can be sometimes produced without the pres 
 ence of external objects the pretended necessity, which alone 
 forms the argument for the existence of matter, is done away with. 
 
 " But though," he says, " we might possibly have all our sen 
 sations without bodies, yet perhaps it may be thought easier to 
 conceive and explain the manner of their production by suppos 
 ing external bodies in their likeness rather than otherwise, and 
 so it might at least be probable there are such things as bodies 
 that excite ideas in our minds. But neither can this be said, for 
 though we give the Materialists their external bodies, they, by 
 their own confession, are never nearer the knowing how our ideas 
 are produced, since they own themselves unable to comprehend 
 in what manner body can act upon spirit, or how it is possible it 
 should imprint an idea in the mind." 
 
 We have here the difficulty stated, which most Dualists 
 (those who maintain the existence of spirit and matter, as dis 
 tinct-substances) have not been sufficiently alive to; and one 
 which gave rise to Leibnitz s theory of pre-established harmony, 
 and to Malebranche s theory of our seeing all things in God. 
 This difficulty is indeed insuperable. It is easy to talk of the 
 spirit being a mirror in which the universe reflects itself. Try 
 for an instant to imagine a substance, such as matter, reflecting 
 itself in, or acting upon, another substance having no one prop 
 erty in common with it. You cannot. Nor is this all: you 
 cannot even imagine two substances so distinct as matter and 
 spirit are defined to be. 
 
 Berkeley then is right in triumphing over Realism and Dual 
 ism. Right in saying, that if he were to accord them the exist 
 ence of matter, they could make no use of it. The subject would 
 

 IDEALISM. 563 
 
 remain as dark as before : matter throws no light on it. He 
 maintains that our ideas are produced in us in conformity with 
 the laws of Nature. These laws have been ordained by God. 
 To suppose that matter is the mere occasional cause the vehicle 
 through which the laws of Nature operate is gratuitous. The 
 agency of the Creator is more simple and direct. He had no 
 need of creating first laws, and afterwards matter, through which 
 these laws should come into effect. He created the laws alone ; 
 they act upon us as they were destined to act, and without the 
 superfluous aid of matter, which is a mere go-between. 
 
 Now, as an inference as a scientific hypothesis few thor 
 oughly acquainted with the question, and with the data on which 
 it was founded, can, we think, deny that this of Berkeley is many 
 degrees superior to the hypothesis of Dualism. While philoso 
 phers teach that there are two distinct eternal substances, which 
 they name Spirit and Matter, Berkeley teaches that there is only 
 one substance, viz. Spirit. With this one substance he can con 
 struct the world. According, therefore, to the fundamental rule 
 in philosophy, that " Entities or existences are not to be multi 
 plied unless upon necessity" (entia non sunt multiplicanda prce- 
 ter necessitatem), the introduction of a second substance, viz. 
 matter, is superfluous, or worse. Of the existence of matter we 
 have no proof whatever : it is a mere inference ; it is inferred, 
 in order to explain the phenomena : and what phenomena ? 
 those of perception i. e. the phenomena of the thinking sub 
 stance. 
 
 If, then, Berkeley is more rigorous in his analysis of facts, and 
 more ingenious and plausible in his hypothesis, than his antago 
 nists suppose, shall we pronounce his Idealism satisfactory and 
 true ? 
 
 Hume said of it, that it admitted of no answer, but produced 
 no conviction. And we have met with no final refutation of it. 
 Yet, inasmuch as it is the irresistible belief of mankind that ob 
 jects are not dependent either upon our perception of them, or 
 upon the perception of any other mind, for their existence that 
 
564 BERKELEY. 
 
 objects exist per se, and would continue to exist if all minds were 
 annihilated Berkeley s theory never can produce conviction. 
 Reid, therefore, was right in standing by this universal and irre 
 sistible belief. He was egregiously wrong, however, in supposing 
 that he answered Berkeley by an appeal to this irresistible belief. 
 It does not follow that a belief which is irresistible must be true. 
 This maxim, so loudly proclaimed by the Scotch school,* is re 
 futed by several well-known facts in philosophy. Thus to take 
 the most striking example the belief that the sun revolved round 
 the earth, was for many centuries irresistible, and false. Why may 
 not Berkeley have been a metaphysical Copernicus, who, by rig 
 orous demonstration, proved the believe of mankind in the exist 
 ence of matter to be irresistible and false ? Reid has no answer 
 to give. He can merely say, "I side with the vulgar;" but he 
 might have given the same answer to Copernicus. Many illus 
 trious men (Bacon among them) ridiculed the Copernican theory; 
 but all the dogmatism, ridicule, and common sense in the world 
 could not affect that theory. Why, we repeat, may not Berkeley 
 have been a metaphysical Copernicus ? 
 
 To prove that he was not, you must prove his reasoning de 
 fective ; to prove this, you must show wherein his error lies, and 
 not wherein his theory is at variance with your belief. All that 
 your irresistible belief amounts to, is that of a strong, a very 
 strong, presumption against the truth of that which opposes it. 
 Reid, in accepting this presumption as a proof, was in the right 
 so long as Berkeley s reasoning was not strong enough to over- 
 
 * Especially by Dr. Brown, who says that the ".skeptical argument for the 
 non-existence of an external world, as a mere play of reasoning, admits of 
 no reply." The only reply he makes is, that the belief is irresistible,. Hume 
 had already admitted that the belief was irresistible ; the whole scope of his 
 philosophy was to prove it both irresistible &nd false. How absurd, then, to 
 appeal to the belief! Kant truly observes, in the Preface to his Kritik, " Ad 
 mitting Idealism to be as dangerous as it really is, it would still remain a 
 shame to philosophy and reason to be forced to ground the existence of an 
 external world on the (mere) evidence of belief." The more so as the fact 
 of belief had never been questioned. The question was, Is the belief well 
 grounded ? 
 
IDEALISM. 565 
 
 come it ; but singularly wrong in supposing that the presumption 
 was a refutation. 
 
 Berkeley s main position is, that the objects of knowledge . are 
 ideas, and nothing but ideas. The position is incontrovertible. 
 The conclusion therefore, all human knowledge can only be the 
 knowledge of ideas, and of nothing but ideas, is equally incontest 
 able. Not less so the second conclusion : objects being identified 
 ivith ideas, and we having no idea of an object but as it is per 
 ceived, the ESSE of objects to us is PERCIPI. 
 
 In admitting all this, what do we admit? Simply that human 
 knowledge is not the " measure of all things." Objects to us can 
 never be more than ideas; but are we the final measure of all 
 existence ? It was the dogma of the Sophist that Man is the 
 measure of all things. It should not be the dogma of the sober 
 thinker. Because we can only know objects as ideas, is it a 
 proper conclusion that objects only exist as ideas? For this 
 conclusion to be rigorous, we must have some proof of our knowl 
 edge being the absolute standard of truth, instead of the stand 
 ard of the relation things bear to our intellect. 
 
 The Idealist will say, " If you cannot know any thing beyond 
 your ideas, why do you infer that there is any thing ? A ques 
 tion not easily answered. He will moreover say, " I defy you 
 to conceive any thing existing unperceived. Attempt to imagine 
 the existence of matter when mind is absent. You cannot, for 
 in the very act of imagining it, you include an ideal percipient. 
 The trees and mountains you imagine to exist away from any 
 perceiving mind, what are they but the very ideas of your mind, 
 which you transport to some place where you are not ? In fact, 
 to separate existence from perception is radically impossible. It 
 is God s synthesis, and man cannot undo it."* 
 
 To this we answer, it is very true that, inasmuch as our knowl 
 edge of objects is identical with our ideas, we can never, by any 
 
 * See this argued in a masterly manner by the critic in Blackwood before 
 quoted. 
 
566 BERKELEY. 
 
 freak of thought, imagine an object apart from the conditions 
 under which we know it. We are forced by the laws of our na 
 ture to invest objects with the forms in which we perceive them.* 
 We cannot therefore conceive any thing which has not been 
 subject to the laws of our nature, because in the very act of con 
 ception those laws come into play. But is it not a very differ 
 ent proposition to say, "I cannot conceive things otherwise than 
 according to the laws of my nature," and to say, "I cannot con 
 ceive things otherwise, consequently they cannot exist otherwise?" 
 The Idealist here assumes that knowledge is absolute, not rela 
 tive that man is the measure of all things. 
 
 Perception is the identity (in the metaphysical sense of the 
 woi d) of the ego and the non-ego the tertium quid of two uni 
 ted forces; as water is the identity of oxygen and hydrogen. 
 The ego can never have any knowledge of the non-ego, in which 
 it (the ego) is not indissolubly bound up ; as oxygen never can 
 unite with hydrogen to form water, without mero-ino- itself and 
 
 v O SO 
 
 the hydrogen in a tertium quid. Let us suppose the oxygen 
 endowed with a consciousness of its changes. It would attribute 
 the change not to hydrogen, which is necessarily hidden from it, 
 but to ivater, the only form under which hydrogen is known to 
 it. In its consciousness it would find the state named water (per 
 ception), which would be very unlike its own state (the ego) ; 
 and it would suppose that this state, so unlike its own, was a rep 
 resentation of that which caused it. We say then, that although 
 the hydrogen can only exist for the oxygen (in the above case) 
 in the identity of both as water, this is no proof that hydrogen 
 
 * " When in perception," says Schelling, " I represent an object, object 
 and representation are one and the same. And simply in this our inability to 
 discriminate the object from the representation daring the act, lies the con 
 viction which the common sense of mankind has of the reality of external 
 things, although these become known to it only through the representa 
 tions." (Ideen zu einer Philos. der Natur, Einlditung, p. xix., quoted by Sir 
 W. Hamilton.) This is indisputable, but it is only saying that our knowl 
 edge of things is subject to the conditions of knowledge. Because we cannot 
 discriminate between the object and the representation, it is no proof that 
 there is no distinction between them. 
 
IDEALISM. 567 
 
 does not exist under some other relations to other forces. In like 
 manner, although the non-ego cannot exist in relation to mind 
 otherwise than in the identity of the two (perception) ; this is 
 no sort of proof that it does not exist in relation to other beings 
 under quite different conditions. 
 
 In conclusion, we admit, with the Idealists, that all our knowl 
 edge of objects consists in our ideas. But we cannot admit that 
 all existence is limited by our knowledge, merely on the ground 
 that when we would conceive any thing existing, we are forced 
 to conceive it in accordance with the laws of our conceptive fac 
 ulties. We admit, with the Idealists, that all our knowledge is 
 subjective. But we do not admit that what is true subjectively, is 
 true objectively. We believe in the existence of an external 
 world quite independent of any percipient ; not because such is 
 the obvious and universal belief, but because the arguments by 
 which Idealism would controvert it are vitiated by the assump 
 tion of knowledge being a criterion of all existences. Idealism 
 agrees with Realism in placing reliance on the evidence of sense ; 
 it argues however that inasmuch as our knowledge is confined to 
 ideas, we have no right to assume any thing beyond ideas. Yet 
 it also is forced to assume something as the cause of ideas : this 
 cause it calls the Wi^ of the Creator; and this is an assumption. 
 The real dispute therefore should be concentrated on this point : 
 Which, assumption is more consonant with our irresistible belief, 
 the assumption of an external matter unlike our sensations, 
 yet the cause of them ; or the assumption of a providential 
 scheme, in which our sensations are the effects of the operation 
 of Divine laws, and in which matter plays no part ? The answer 
 cannot be dubious. The former assumption, as more consonant 
 with universal belief, must be accepted. 
 
 Berkeley, we believe, failed as a metaphysical Copernicus, be 
 cause the assumption which he opposed to the universal belief 
 was less consonant with that belief than the assumption it was 
 meant to replace. Had Copernicus not started an hypothesis 
 which, however contradictory to the senses, nevertheless afforded 
 
568 BERKELEY. 
 
 a much better explanation of celestial phenomena than was pos 
 sible on the old hypothesis, he would not have been listened to. 
 Berkeley s assumption, if conceded, carries him no deeper than 
 the old assumption. Idealism explains nothing. To accept it 
 would be to renounce a universal belief for a mere hypothesis. 
 But that Berkeley was a deep and remarkable thinker must be 
 readily conceded ; and he failed, as the greatest Philosophers of 
 all times have failed, not because he was weak, but because Phi 
 losophy was impossible. 
 
 Those who have followed the course of this History with at 
 tention to its moral (so to speak) will not fail to observe how 
 Berkeley s Idealism is at bottom but the much decried system of 
 Spinoza, who taught that there was but one essence in the uni 
 verse, and that one was Substance. Berkeley also taught that 
 there was but one, and that one was Thought. Now call this 
 One what you will, the result is the same : speculatively or prac 
 tically. You may have certain degrading associations attached 
 to the idea of substance ; or certain exalted associations attached 
 to that of spirit. But what difference can your associations make 
 with respect to the real nature of things ? 
 
 One great result of Berkeley s labors was the lesson he taught 
 of the vanity of ontological speculations. He paved the way to 
 that skepticism which, gulf-like, yawns as the terminal road of 
 all consistent Metaphysics. 
 
FIFTH EPOCH. 
 
 THE ARGUMENTS OF IDEALISM CARRIED OUT INTO 
 SKEPTICISM. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 HUME. 
 
 I. LIFE OF HUME. 
 
 MR. BURTON S ample and excellent biography* would furnish 
 us with materials for a pleasant memoir, could we here afford 
 the requisite space ; but we must content ourselves with refer 
 ring the reader to that work, and with merely recording the 
 principal dates and events of an uneventful life. 
 
 David Hume was born at Edinburgh, 26th April, 17 11 ; the 
 youngest child of a poor laird of good blood. He was an orphan 
 before his education was completed. His guardians first thought 
 of the profession of law, but, owing to his repugnance, he was 
 absolved from that career, and was placed in a Bristol counting- 
 house, where he did not remain long. On coming of age he 
 found himself in possession of a small property, too small for 
 honorable subsistence in England, but large enough for France, 
 and to Rheirns he went ; from thence to La Fleche, where the 
 Jesuits college and library were great attractions to the studious 
 youth ; and there he passed several years in solitary study. 
 
 * The Life and Correspondence of David Hume, from the Papers bequeathed 
 to the Royal Society of Edinburgh. By John Hill Burton. 2 vols. 
 
570 HUME. 
 
 A great ambition moved him : he was to accomplish for moral 
 science a revolution analogous to that which Bacon had effected 
 in physical science. His Treatise on Human Nature, which ap 
 peared in 1737, and which fell still-born from the press, was an 
 nounced as an attempt to introduce the experimental method 
 into reasonings on moral science. We need scarcely point out 
 the profound misconception of the Experimental Method here 
 implied ; nor is it necessary to show at any length that there 
 was no novelty whatever in Hume s attempt to test psychology 
 by experience. 
 
 In 1741 appeared the first part of his immortal Essays ; and 
 in 1747 he accompanied General St. Clair, as secretary, in the 
 embassy to Vienna and Turin. In 1752 he published his Po 
 litical Discourses and the Inquiry concerning the Principles of 
 Morals. The appointment of Librarian to the Faculty of Ad 
 vocates in Edinburgh the salary of which he generously gave 
 to the poor poet Blacklock placed at his disposal a fine collec 
 tion of books ; and this suggested the undertaking which has 
 long been held his greatest title to fame the History of Eng 
 land, the first volume of which appeared in 1754. 
 
 For the literary historian there are two piquant episodes in the 
 life of Hume. The first is the ovation given to the philosopher 
 in Paris, whither he had accompanied the Marquis of Hertford ; 
 the second is his friendship and quarrel with Rousseau. We 
 cannot pause to dwell on either. 
 
 Hume died in the spring of 1776, leaving a name imperish 
 able in our literature, although it is a name attached to opinions 
 which have roused, and will continue to rouse, the most vehe 
 ment opposition. It should never be forgotten, moreover, that, 
 in spite of Hume s opinions, so wise and good a man as Adam 
 Smith could publicly write of him, " Upon the whole, I have 
 always considered him, both during his lifetime and since his 
 death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise 
 and virtuous man, as perhaps the nature of human frailty will 
 permit." 
 
571 
 
 8 II. HUME S SKEPTICISM. 
 
 The marvellous acuteness and subtlety of Hume have never 
 been denied ; and his influence upon speculation has been aided 
 as much by the alarm his doctrines excited, as by the ingenuity 
 with which they were upheld. If Berkeley met with no refu- 
 ters, Hume could meet with none. Antagonists have generally 
 been compelled to admit that the skeptical reasoning was un 
 answerable. 
 
 Locke had shown that all our knowledge was dependent upon 
 experience. Berkeley had shown that we had no experience of 
 an external world independent of perception ; nor could we have 
 any such experience. He pronounced matter to be a figment. 
 Hume took up the line where Berkeley had cast it, and flung it 
 once more into the deep sea, endeavoring to fathom the myste 
 ries of being. Probing deeper in the direction, Berkeley had 
 taken, he found that not only was Matter a figment, Mind was a 
 figment also. If the occult substratum, which men had inferred 
 to explain material phenomena, could be denied, because not 
 founded on experience; so also, said Hume, must we deny the 
 occult substratum (mind) which men have inferred to explain 
 mental phenomena. All that we have any experience of, is im 
 pressions and ideas. The substance of which these are supposed 
 to be impressions, is occult is a mere inference ; the substance 
 in which these impressions are supposed to be, is equally occult 
 is a mere inference. Matter is but a collection of impressions. 
 Mind is but a succession of impressions and ideas.* 
 
 Thus was Berkeley s dogmatic Idealism converted into Skep 
 ticism. Hume, speaking of Berkeley, says, " Most of the wri 
 tings of that very ingenious philosopher form the best lessons of 
 skepticism which are to be found either among the ancient or 
 
 * Locke luid already shown that AVG are as ignorant of spirit as of sub 
 stance. We know mind only in its manifestation; we cannot know it per se 
 as a substratum. Hume s argument therefore had a firm foundation in phi 
 losophy. He only concluded from admitted premises. 
 
572 HUME. 
 
 modern philosophers, Bayle not excepted. He professes, how 
 ever, in his title-page (and undoubtedly with great truth) to 
 have composed his book against the Skeptics, as well as against 
 the Atheists and Free-thinkers. But that all his arguments, 
 though otherwise intended, are in reality merely skeptical, ap 
 pears from this, that they admit of no answer, and produce no 
 conviction." 
 
 Remark, also, that Hume s skepticism, though it reduces phi 
 losophy to a singular dilemma, viz. that of either refuting the 
 skeptical arguments, or of declaring itself and its pretensions to 
 be vain and baseless, nevertheless affects in no other way the or 
 dinary judgments or actions of mankind. Much stupid ridicule 
 and frivolous objection have been, and probably will continue to 
 be, brought against Hume. Reid, from whom one might have 
 expected something better, is surprised at Hume s pretending to 
 construct a science upon human nature, " when the intention of 
 the whole work is to show that there is neither human nature 
 nor science in the world. It may, perhaps, be unreasonable to 
 complain of this conduct in an author who neither believes his 
 own existence nor that of his reader ; and therefore could not 
 mean to disappoint him, or laugh at his credulity. Yet I can 
 not imagine that the author of the Treatise on Human Nature 
 is so skeptical as to plead this apology. He believed, against his 
 principles, that he should be read, and that he should retain his 
 personal identity, till he reaped the honor and reputation justly 
 due to his metaphysical acumen." He continues further in this 
 strain, dragging in the old error about Pyrrho having incon 
 sistently been roused to auger by his cook, " who probably had 
 not roasted his dinner to his mind," and compares this forgetful- 
 ness to Hume s every " now and then relapsing into the faith of 
 the vulgar."* 
 
 If this was meant for banter, it was very poor banter ; if for 
 argument, it was pitiable. But if such arguments appeared 
 
 * Inquiry, Introd. i. 5. 
 
HUME S SKEPTICISM. 573 
 
 valid to a thinker of Reid s reputation, it is reasonable to sup 
 pose that inferior men may also receive them as conclusive. 
 Hume shall, therefore, be allowed to speak for himself; and he 
 shall speak in the language of that very Treatise on Human 
 Nature to which Reid alludes : 
 
 " Should it be here asked me whether I sincerely assent to this 
 argument which I seem to take such pains to inculcate, and 
 whether I be really one of those skeptics who hold that all is 
 uncertain, and that our judgment is not in any thing possessed 
 of any measures of truth and falsehood, I should reply that this 
 question is entirely superfluous, and that neither I nor any other 
 person was ever sincerely and constantly of that opinion. Na 
 ture, by an absolute and uncontrollable necessity, has determined 
 us to judge as well as to breathe and feel ; nor can we any more 
 forbear viewing certain objects in a stronger and fuller light 
 upon account of their customary connection with a present im 
 pression, than we can hinder ourselves from thinking as long as 
 we are awake, or seeing the surrounding bodies when we turn 
 our eyes towards them in broad sunshine. Whoever has taken 
 the pains to refute the cavils of this total skepticism, has really dis 
 puted without an antagonist, and endeavored by arguments to 
 establish a faculty which Nature has antecedently implanted in 
 the mind and rendered unavoidable. 
 
 "My intention, then, in displaying so carefully the arguments 
 of that fantastic sect, is only to make the Reader sensible of the 
 truth of my hypothesis, that all our reasonings concerning causes 
 and effects, are derived from nothing but custom ; and that be 
 lief is more properly an act of the sensitive than of the cogitative 
 
 part of our natures If belief were a simple act of the 
 
 thought, without any peculiar manner of conception, or the ad 
 dition of force and vivacity, it must infallibly destroy itself, and 
 in every case terminate in a total suspense of judgment. But 
 as experience will sufficiently convince any one, that although he 
 finds no error in my arguments, yet he still continues to believe 
 and think and reason as usual, he may safely conclude that his 
 
574 
 
 HUME. 
 
 reasoning and belief is some sensation or peculiar manner of con 
 ception, which tis impossible for mere ideas and reflections to 
 destroy."* 
 
 It has always struck us as an illustration of the great Avant of 
 candor displayed by Hume s opponents, that they never quoted 
 this very significant and explicit passage ; indeed, Ave never re 
 member to have seen the passage quoted by any one. Let us 
 ask, Avhat does the foregoing declaration amount to, if not to the 
 boasted " common-sense view," that our belief in the existence of 
 matter is instinctive, fundamental ? Does not Dr. Brown s ad 
 mission that the skeptical argument is unanswerable as a mere 
 play of reasoning, concede all that Hume requires 1 Does not 
 Dr. Brown s conclusion, that Ave are thrown upon "irresistible 
 belief" as our only refuge against skepticism, equally accord 
 with Hume s explicit declaration that we do believe and cannot 
 help believing, though Ave can give no reason for the belief? 
 
 "Thus the skeptic," Hume adds a little further on, "still con 
 tinues to reason and believe, even though he asserts that he can 
 not defend his reason by reason ; and by the same rule he must 
 assent to the principle concerning the existence of body, though 
 he cannot pretend by any arguments of philosophy to maintain 
 its veracity. Nature has not left this to his choice, and has 
 doubtless esteemed it an affair of too great importance to be 
 trusted to our uncertain reasonings and speculations. We may 
 well ask, what causes induce us to believe in the existence of body? 
 but tis in vain to ask whether there be body or not ? that is a 
 point Avhich AVC must take for granted in all our reasonings." 
 
 After this let no more be said about Hume s practical incon 
 sequences. Locke before him had clearly enough seen and sig 
 nalized the impotence of the attempt to penetrate beyond phe 
 nomena, and had, with his usual calm wisdom, counselled men to 
 "sit down in quiet ignorance." He knew the task was hopeless ; 
 he knew, also, that it was trivial. God has given us the means 
 
 * Human Nature, part iv. i. p. 250. 
 
575 
 
 of knowing all that directly concerns us, a certainty which suf 
 fices for all our wants. With that, reasonable men will be con 
 tent. If they seek more, they seek the impossible ; if they push 
 their speculations deeper, they end in skepticism. It was the 
 philosophical mission of Hume (to adopt a phrase in vogue) to 
 show how inevitably all such speculations, if consistent, ended in 
 skepticism. 
 
 " Men," he says, " are carried by a natural instinct or prepos 
 session to repose faith in their senses. When they follow this 
 blind and powerful instinct of nature, they always suppose the 
 very images presented to the senses to be the external objects, 
 and never entertain any suspicion that the one are nothing but 
 representatives of the other. But this universal and primary 
 opinion of all men is soon destroyed by the slightest philosophy, 
 which teaches us that nothing can ever be present to the mind 
 but an image or perception. So far, then, we are necessitated by 
 reasoning to contradict the primary instincts of Nature, and to 
 embrace a new system with regard to the evidence of our senses. 
 But here philosophy finds herself extremely embarrassed, when 
 she would obviate the cavils and objections of the skeptics. She 
 can no longer plead the infallible and irresistible instinct of na 
 ture, for that led us to quite a different system, which is ac 
 knowledged fallible, and even erroneous; and to justify this pre 
 tended philosophical system by a chain of clear and convincing 
 argument, or even any appearance of argument, exceeds the 
 power of all human capacity. 
 
 "Do you follow the instinct and propensities of nature in as 
 senting to the veracity of the senses ? But these lead you to 
 believe that the very perception or sensible image is the external 
 object (Idealism). 
 
 " Do you disclaim this principle in order to embrace a more 
 rational opinion, that the perceptions are only representations of 
 something external ? You here depart from your natural pro 
 pensities and more obvious sentiments ; and yet are not able to 
 satisfy your reason, which can never find any convincing argu- 
 
576 HUME. 
 
 ment from experience to prove that the perceptions are connected 
 with external objects" (Skepticism). 
 
 This is the dilemma to which Philosophy is reduced : out of 
 it there is no escape ; and Hume deserves the gratitude of man 
 kind for having brought philosophy to this pass. Mankind, how 
 ever, has paid him with reprobation. As the whole course of 
 this History has been occupied in tracing the inevitable result of 
 all Philosophy to be precisely this much abused skepticism, our 
 readers will be prepared for a different appreciation of Hume. 
 Let us, therefore, endeavor to define the nature of this skepticism, 
 which has caused such great alarm. Skepticism, meaning doubt, 
 and being frequently used to signify religious doubt, has alarm 
 ing associations attached to it. To call a man a skeptic is to call 
 him a heretic. And, unfortunately for Hume s philosophical 
 reputation, he was a skeptic in religion as well as in philosophy, 
 and mankind have consequently identified the former with the 
 latter. 
 
 Now, philosophical skepticism can only mean a doubt as to 
 the possibility of Philosophy ; in other words, a doubt only on 
 one particular subject. If I accept the consequences to which 
 the doctrine of Hume leads me, am I forced to suspend my 
 judgment, and to pronounce all subjects uncertain ? or am I only 
 to pronounce some subjects uncertain ? The latter is clearly the 
 only opinion I can entertain. What then are the questions on 
 which I must be content to remain in darkness ? Locke, no less 
 than Hume, has told us : All which relate to Philosophy which 
 pretend to discuss the nature and essences of things. 
 
 This skepticism, the reader must acknowledge, has nothing 
 very alarming in it, except to Philosophy. It is maintained by 
 the vast majority of thinking men some from conviction, others 
 from a vague sense of the futility of ontological speculation. 
 Only the bad passions roused in discussion could pretend to con 
 found it with heresy. This Skepticism indicates the boundaries 
 of inquiry. It leads us from impossible attempts to fly, to in 
 struct us how securely we may run. It destroys Philosophy 
 
577 
 
 only to direct all our energies towards positive Science. In the 
 words of Goethe, " Let us not attempt to demonstrate what can 
 not be demonstrated ! Sooner or later we shall otherwise make 
 our miserable deficiencies more glaring to posterity by our so- 
 called works of knowledge." 
 
 Hume was a skeptic ; and, consequently, early in life ceased 
 devoting his marvellous acuteness to any of the questions agi 
 tated in the schools. His Essays and his History were excellent 
 products of this change of direction ; and although he did devote 
 a portion of the Essays to philosophy, yet it was but a portion, 
 and one which gave a more popular and elegant exposition of 
 the principles of his first work. 
 
 III. HUME S THEORY OF CAUSATION. 
 
 It is customary to speak of "Hume s theory of Causation," 
 and to bestow no inconsiderable acrimony upon him on its ac 
 count. But, in the first place, the theory is not peculiarly his ; 
 in the second place, his application of it to the question of Mir 
 acles, which has excited so much vehement controversy, reduces 
 itself to "this very plain and harmless proposition, that what 
 ever is contradictory to a complete induction is incredible. That 
 such a maxim as this should be either accounted a dangerous 
 heresy, or mistaken for a recondite truth, speaks ill for the state 
 of philosophical speculation on such subjects."* 
 
 The theory may be thus briefly stated. All our experience of 
 causation is simply that of a constant succession. An antece 
 dent followed by a sequent one event followed by another : 
 this is all that we experience. We attribute indeed to the an 
 tecedent, a power of producing or causing the sequent ; but we 
 can have no experience of such a power. If we believe that the 
 fire which has burned us will burn us again, we believe this from 
 habit or custom. ; not from having perceived any power in the 
 
 * Mill s System of Logic, vol. ii. p. 183. 
 
578 HUME. 
 
 fire. We believe the future will resemble the past, because cus 
 tom has taught us to rely "upon such a resemblance. " When 
 we look about us towards external objects, and consider the 
 operation of causes, we are never able in a single instance to 
 discover any power or necessary connection any quality which 
 binds the effect to the cause, and renders the one an infallible 
 consequence to the other. We only find that the one does ac 
 tually in fact follow the other. The impulse of one billiard-ball 
 is attended with motion in the second. This is the whole that 
 appears to the outward senses. The mind feels no sentiment or 
 inward impression from this succession of objects ; consequently 
 there is not, in any single instance of cause and effect, any thing 
 which can suggest the idea of power or necessary connection."* 
 This is the whole of his theory. His explanation of our belief 
 in power, or necessary connection, is that it is a matter of habit. 
 I know not whether Hume ever read Glanvill s Scepsis Scien- 
 tifica. The title was one to attract him. At any rate, Glanvill 
 had clearly enough stated Hume s theory, e. g. " All knowledge 
 of causes is deductive ; for we know of none by simple intuition, 
 but through the mediation of their effects. So that we cannot 
 conclude any thing to be the cause of another but from its con 
 tinually accompanying it / for the causality itself is insensible" 
 Malebranche had also anticipated it ; and so had Hobbes. The 
 language indeed of the latter is so similar to the language em 
 ployed by Hume, that I agree with Dugald Stewart in believing 
 Hume to have borrowed it from Hobbes. " What we call ex 
 perience," says Hobbes, "is nothing else but remembrance of 
 what antecedents have been followed by what consequents. . . . 
 No man can have in his mind a conception of the future, for the 
 future is not yet ; but of our conceptions of the past \ve make a 
 future, or rather call past future relatively. Thus, after a man 
 has been accustomed to see like antecedents followed by like 
 consequents, whensoever he seeth the like come to pass to any 
 
 * ssayx, sect. vii. 
 
HUME S THEORY OF CAUSATION. 579 
 
 thing he had seen before, he looks there shall follow it the same 
 that followed then." 
 
 This theory of Causation has been hotly debated, partly be 
 cause of the " consequences" which some have seen, with alarm, 
 to be deducible from it (for opinions are judged of more by their 
 supposed consequences than by their presumed truth) ; partly 
 also because Hume has not stated it with the clearness which 
 prevents misunderstanding. It is only to the latter point we can 
 here attend. 
 
 When Hume asserts that experience gives no intimation of 
 any connection between two events, but only of their invariable 
 conjunction, when he says that the mind cannot perceive a 
 causal nexus, but only an invariableness of antecedence and se 
 quence, he is contradicted, or seems to be, by the consciousness 
 of his readers. They declare that, over and above the fact of 
 sequence, there is always an intimation of power given in every 
 causation, and this it is which distinguishes causal from casual 
 sequence, connection from mere conjunction. The fire burns 
 paper because there is some power in the fire to effect this 
 change. Mere antecedence, even if invariable, cannot be suffi 
 cient, or else day would be the cause of night, the flash of light 
 ning would be the cause of the thunder-peal. Swallows fly close 
 to the earth some little while before the rain falls ; but no one 
 supposes the flight of the swallows causes the fall of the rain. 
 In every case of causation there must be an element of power a 
 pacity of producing the observed change a nexus of some kind, 
 over and above the mere juxtaposition of bodies. If diamond 
 will cut glass, it has a power to do so ; the sharpest knife is with 
 out this power. 
 
 So reason Hume s antagonists. Nor do I think they are 
 finally answered by resolving the idea of power into mere invari 
 ableness of antecedent and sequent ; for they may reply that the 
 " invariableness" itself is deduced from the idea of power; we be 
 lieve the fire will invariably burn the paper because it has the 
 power to do so, because there is a real nexus between fire and 
 
580 HUME. 
 
 the combustion of paper ; only on such a belief can our expecta 
 tion of the future resembling the past be securely founded. 
 
 The ordinary belief of mankind in the existence of something 
 more than mere antecedence and consequence, is therefore a fact. 
 This fact Hume and others omit. Because they cannot perceive 
 the power, they declare that we have no belief in it. Hume in 
 sists upon the impossibility of our perceiving power of our per 
 ceiving any necessary connection between two events. But, say 
 those who oppose this theory, " Although we cannot perceive the 
 power, we are forced to believe in it ; and this belief is not a mat 
 ter of custom, but is given in the very facts of consciousness. 
 We perceive that some power is at work producing effects ; the 
 precise nature of this power, indeed, we cannot perceive, because 
 we never can know things per se. When a spark ignites gun 
 powder, we perceive a power in the spark to ignite "gunpowder : 
 what that power is, we know not ; we only know its effects. But 
 our ignorance is equally great of the gunpowder : what it is we 
 know not ; we only know its appearances to us. It might as 
 well be said that we believe in the gunpowder from custom 
 (since we really know nothing of it per se), as that we believe in 
 the power of the spark to ignite gunpowder from custom, since 
 we really know nothing of power per se. We know nothing 
 per se" 
 
 I have marshalled the arguments, with as much force as I 
 could muster, into so small a field, in order to bring into appre 
 ciable distinctness the source of the opposition to Hume s theory 
 on the part of many who have no doctrinal distrust towards it. 
 Before attempting an elucidation of the difficulty, it will be need 
 ful to consider the grounds of our belief in causation* As it is a 
 fact that all men believe in some power involved in every causal 
 act, we have to ask, Is that belief well founded ? 
 
 Two schools at once present themselves. The one (that of 
 Hume) declares that the belief has no good grounds ; it is a 
 matter of custom. If I believe the sun will rise to-morrow, it is 
 because it has always risen. If I believe that fire will burn in 
 
581 
 
 future, it is because it has always burned. From habit I expect 
 the future will resemble the past : "I have no proof of it. 
 
 The other school declares that this belief in causation " is an 
 intuitive conviction that the future will resemble the past." This 
 is the language of Reid and Stewart. Dr. Whewell would have 
 us admit the belief as a fundamental idea a necessary truth in 
 dependent of and superior to all experience. 
 
 Both explanations we take to be very incompetent. Custom 
 or habit can essentially have nothing whatever to do with it, be 
 cause our belief is as strong from a single instance as from a 
 thousand. " When many uniform instances appear," says Hume, 
 " and the same object is always followed by the same event, we 
 then begin to entertain the notion of cause and connection. We 
 then feel a new sentiment, to wit, a customary connection in the 
 thought between one object and its usual attendant ; and this 
 sentiment is the original of that idea which we seek for." This 
 is manifestly wrong. A single instance of one billiard-ball mov 
 ing another, suffices to originate the "sentiment," without further 
 repetition. Nor is there more truth in the assertion that the be 
 lief depends on " conviction of the future resembling the past ;" 
 this explanation assumes that the general idea precedes the par 
 ticular idea. If we believe that similar effects will follow when 
 ever the same causes are in operation if we believe that fire will 
 burn, or that the sun will rise to-morrow we are simply believing 
 in our experience, and nothing more. We cannot hejp .Relieving 
 in our experience ; that is irresistible : but in this belief, the idea 
 of either past or future does not enter. I do not believe that 
 fire will burn because I believe that the future will resemble the 
 past, but simply Because my experience of fire is that it burns 
 that it has the power to burn. Take a simple illustration, trivial, 
 if you will, but illustrative : A child is presented with a bit of 
 sugar : the sugar is white, of a certain shape, and is solid ; his 
 experience of the sugar is confined to these properties : he puts 
 it in his mouth ; it is sweet, pleasant : his experience is extend 
 ed ; the sugar he now believes (knows) to be sweet and pleasant, 
 
582 HUME. 
 
 as well as white and solid.* Thus far experience is not tran 
 scended. Some days later, another piece of sugar is given him. 
 Is it now necessary for him to have any " intuitive conviction 
 that the future will resemble the past" any fundamental idea 
 independent of experience to make him believe that if he puts 
 the sugar in his mouth it will taste sweet ? Not in the least : 
 he believes it is sweet, because he knows it is sweet because 
 his experience of sugar is that it is sweet. By no effort could 
 he divest himself of the idea of its sweetness, because sweetness 
 forms an integral part of his idea of the sugar. So we may say 
 of the sun s rising : it is part and parcel of our idea of the 
 sun. So of one billiard-ball putting a second in motion : our 
 experience of billiard-balls is that they put each other in mo 
 tion. 
 
 Custom has primarily nothing to do with the belief. If we 
 had only one experience of fire if we saw it only once applied 
 to a combustible substance we should believe that it would 
 burn, because our idea of fire would be the idea of a thing which 
 burns. Custom has however, secondarily, some influence in cor 
 recting the tendency to attribute properties to things. Thus, a 
 child sees a friend who gives him an apple. The next time the 
 friend comes he is asked for an apple, because the idea of this 
 friend is of a man who, amongst other properties, has that of 
 giving apples. No apple is given, and this idea is destroyed. 
 Similarly, when all our experience of things is confirmatory of 
 our first experience, we may say that habit or custom induces us 
 to attribute certain effects to certain causes. When our subse 
 quent experience contradicts our first experience, we cease to at 
 tribute those effects to those causes which we "first experienced ; 
 
 * It will perhaps seem strange that we should select sweetness as an ex 
 ample of causation. We selected it for its simplicity. No one will deny 
 that the taste of sweetness is as much an effect caused by the sugar as pain 
 is an effect caused by fire. But people are apt to overlook that causation is 
 the result of the properties of one body acting upon the properties of an 
 other. They would call sweetness a quality in sugar : but the motion of a 
 billiard-ball they say is caused by another ball. 
 
583 
 
 this is only saying that our subsequent experience has destroyed 
 or altered the idea we formed at first. 
 
 Remark how much confusion is spread over this subject by 
 the inconsiderate introduction of the word belief. It is incor 
 rect to say that a man believes that fire, will burn him if he puts 
 his finger in it ; he knows it. He will believe that it has burned 
 some one else he will believe in a proposition you make about 
 fire, because belief is the assent to propositions : but to talk of 
 his believing that sugar will be sweet, when he knows it is sweet, 
 when he cannot think of it otherwise than as sweet ; or that fire 
 will burn when he knows it burns, is as improper as to say that 
 he believes himself cold when he is cold. 
 
 Only from this improper use of the word belief could the 
 theory of fundamental ideas, or of "an intuitive conviction that 
 the future will resemble the past," have stood its ground for a 
 moment. If the proposition "Fire will burn paper" were put to 
 any one, he would unquestionably believe it, because he has no 
 other knowledge of the fire under those circumstances. The 
 proposition is as evident to him as that two and two make four. 
 Although, therefore, he may be said to believe in the proposition, 
 " Fire will burn paper," he cannot properly be said to act upon 
 belief when he attempts to light paper : he acts upon his knowl 
 edge. Metaphysicians argue as if the belief in the immediate 
 result of an action were a belief in some implied proposition about 
 the course of nature. It is really a reliance upon experience ; 
 nothing more. 
 
 It is necessary to distinguish between belief in existence, and 
 belief in propositions. It is inaccurate to say a man believes in 
 his own existence, as if that were similar to his belief in a propo 
 sition. But though a man cannot believe in his own existence, 
 simply because it is impossible for him to conceive himself as 
 non-existent, he may believe that he will exist eternally, because 
 that is a proposition, the converse of which is conceivable and 
 maintainable. 
 
 The primordial act of all thinking whatever, is, as I have ex- 
 
584: HUME. 
 
 plained in the Introduction to this History, the making present 
 to the mind of what is absent from the sense ; and this, which 
 connects all intellectual phenomena into one class, renders the 
 accurate demarcation of them sometimes impossible^ so insensi 
 bly does the one pass into the other. Thus when I say, " I see 
 it has rained," because the wet streets make me infer that the 
 wetness was caused by rain, my assertion is grounded on a men 
 tal re-presentation of the absent occurrence, precisely analogous 
 to that which takes place when I infer the sweetness of the sugar 
 before me, or perceive that the flower in Julia s hair is a rose, or 
 believe that the paper she holds close to the candle will infallibly 
 ignite if paper and flame come in contact. In each case the in 
 ference, perception, or belief, is the re-presentation of facts form 
 erly present in my experience of rain, sugar, roses, and candles. 
 Whenever I forget any of the attendant facts, i. e. fail to make 
 them present, I can only form an incomplete conception of the 
 thing about which I reason, or infer. Bad logic is imperfect re 
 presentation. In proportion to the complexity of a proposition 
 will be the liability to error, because of the liability to suffer 
 some of the attendant facts to drop out of sight. Thus the prop 
 osition "Fire will burn paper" is so simple, and accordant with 
 daily experience, that assent to it is instantaneous ; but the prop 
 osition " Human life may extend over two centuries" is one im 
 plying so many facts which cannot be made present to the mind, 
 because not lying within familiar experience, that instead of as 
 sent it produces denial, or at least doubt, which is suspension of 
 belief, which again is the confessed inability to make all the facts 
 present to the mind. That " two and two make four" is the im 
 mediate and irresistible conclusion of every educated man ; never 
 theless, this very man would pause before assenting to the prop 
 osition " Eight times three hundred and ninety-six, make three 
 thousand one hundred and sixty-eight," because he would have 
 to make present to his mind the successive steps of the calcula 
 tion, and this would demand an effort, great in proportion to his 
 want of familiarity with calculations. 
 
HUME S THEORY OF CAUSATION. 585 
 
 In spite of this identity of belief and perception, it is necessary 
 for the perspicuity of discussion to discriminate the two, and I 
 propose therefore to restrict the term belief to the assent to prop 
 ositions, and demarcate it from those direct inferences which 
 are made in the presence of objects and have reference to them. 
 I would say, we believe in the proposition " Fire burns," but 
 know the fact that the paper about to be thrust into flame will 
 ignite. Such a discrimination of terms will be found useful in 
 discussing causation. We shall thus see in what respect assent 
 to a proposition, complex in its elements, differs from the " prac 
 tical belief" of mankind in particular facts we shall separate 
 the belief of the philosopher in the proposition "Every effect 
 must have a cause," from the belief of the child that the fire, 
 which yesterday burned paper, will burn it to-day. Both beliefs 
 are grounded on and limited by experience ; but the experience 
 of the philosopher is distinguished from that of the child by its 
 greater accumulation of analogous facts. The " necessity" and 
 "universality" which, according to Kant and Dr. Whewell, dis 
 tinguish the philosophical conception, and raise it above experi 
 ence, will be considered hereafter. For the present it is enough 
 if we have reduced belief in causation (or in power) to experience 
 of a direct kind, not separable from any other intellectual act, 
 but allied to all other acts in being the mental re-presentation of 
 phenomena formerly present in experience. And this will help 
 us, perhaps, to reconcile the combatants who quarrel over the 
 idea of " power" in causation. 
 
 Thus while it will be admitted by the one party that between 
 two events, named respectively cause and effect, no nexus is per 
 ceived by us, over and above the mere fact of antecedence and 
 sequence ; and that therefore Hume is right in saying we only 
 perceive this antecedence, and do not perceive the causal link ; 
 on the other hand it must be maintained, that between those 
 two events there is a specific relation, a something which makes 
 the one succeed the other, causing this particular effect rather 
 than another ; and this subtle link it is which is the nexus con- 
 
 25* 
 
586 HUME. 
 
 tended for ; this relation it is which distinguishes a casual act 
 from one of accidental sequence. There must be a peculiar rela 
 tion, or property, existing between oxygen and metals, otherwise 
 metals never could be oxidized. The oxidation of iron is an 
 effect like the ignition of paper ; but it is an effect producible 
 only through a specific relation or cause. To say that we can 
 not know this cause, cannot perceive this relation, and that 
 antecedence and sequence are all that we can perceive, is only 
 saying that we cannot penetrate beyond phenomena and their 
 successions ; but this is no more a ground for the denial of a 
 causal nexus, than it is for the denial of an external world. 
 
 All things necessarily stand related to all other things : some 
 times these relations are obtruded on our notice, because they 
 pass from relations of coexistence into relations of succession, and 
 we name them causes and effects ; at other times they remain in 
 the background of unremarked coexistence, and our unsolicited 
 attention overlooks them ; we do not then name them cause and 
 effect. The carbonate of lime, which I see before me as marble, 
 suggests to me in its inaction, no conception of power, or caus 
 ation, because my attention is not solicited by any successive re 
 lations ; yet, if I had witnessed the action of the carbonic acid 
 on the lime, which originally caused the two substances to unite 
 and form marble, the passage from one state to another would 
 have suggested the idea of some power at work. It is clear that 
 there must be relations existing between the carbonic acid and 
 the lime, which cause the two to remain united, as we see them 
 in marble. We do not see these relations we do not, therefore, 
 see the cause but we know the cause must be in operation all 
 the while, although, in consequence of no changes taking place, 
 we are not solicited to observe the operation. Hence it is that 
 only successive phenomena are named causal ; and hence is it 
 that Hume was right in saying that en dcrniere analyse, invari- 
 ableness of antecedence and sequence is all that experience tells 
 us of causation ; although he aid not, I think, state his position 
 clearly, nor discern its real basis. 
 
587 
 
 This conception of causation, as the direct relation between 
 any two phenomena, whether coexistent or successive, accords 
 with the fact that what is called the effect is itself but the union 
 of two causes the oxygen and the metal co-operate to form an 
 oxide ; the group of facts which we designate as the antecedent, 
 combines with the group of facts called the sequent ; as when we 
 say that " Henry I. died of eating lampreys ;" by which we mean, 
 that in a certain condition of his organism the introduction of 
 lampreys was the antecedent to a whole series of sequences ter 
 minating in death; although we are perfectly aware that the 
 salmon was not the " cause," but only one integer in the sum of 
 causes. The difficulty in fixing upon a true cause is this very 
 complexity of relations : only when we can be said to know all 
 the elements of a group, can we isolate one to estimate its in 
 fluence. 
 
 I have endeavored to reconcile the two contending parties on 
 this perplexing question, and for all further discussion must refer 
 to John Mill s chapter in his System of Logic, where, however, 
 there is a passage which seems to me quite contrary to the doc 
 trine he upholds. I allude to his strictures on the dogma cessante 
 causa cessat et effectus. " A coup de soleil gives a man a brain- 
 fever : will the fever go off as soon as he is moved out of the 
 sunshine ? A sword is run through his body : must the sword 
 remain in his body in order that he may continue dead ?"* 
 Surely this argument is tenable only by those who confound a 
 cause with the whole group of conditions which precede, and the 
 effect with the whole group of conditions which succeed; and 
 is not tenable by those who hold that cause and effect are simply 
 antecedent and sequent. The solar rays striking on the man s 
 head produce a disturbance in the circulation, which in its turn 
 becomes the antecedent to a congestion of the blood-vessels in the 
 brain, which becomes a brain-fever ; instead of one succession of 
 cause and effect, we have here a series of such successions ; and 
 
 * Vol. i. p. 413. 
 
588 HUME. 
 
 if we could analyze the various stages of the sun-stroke, we 
 should find that each effect did cease on the cessation of the 
 cause ; indeed, if an effect be nothing but the sequent of an an 
 tecedent and not the product of some creative power in the 
 cause it must depend for its existence on the presence of the 
 antecedent. 
 
 Hume s theory of causation set Kant speculating on the con 
 stituent elements of cognition ; but before we follow out the de 
 velopment of Philosophy in that direction, it will be necessary to 
 trace the further development of Locke s influence in other di 
 rections. 
 
SIXTH EPOCH. 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF KNOWLEDGE REFERRED TO SENSATION BY 
 THE CONFUSION OF THOUGHT WITH FEELING : THE SEN 
 SATIONAL SCHOOL. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 CONDILLAC. 
 
 I. LIFE OF CONDILLAC. 
 
 ETIENNE DE CONDILLAC was born at Grenoble, in 1715. His 
 life was passed mainly in study, and was not varied by any of 
 those incidents which give interest and romance to biography. 
 He published his first work, Essai sur F Origine des Connoissances 
 Humaines, in 1746. Three years after, his Traite des Systemes. 
 His other works followed rapidly ; and established for him such 
 a reputation, that he was appointed tutor to the Prince of Parma, 
 and for whose instruction he wrote the Cours d Etudes. In 
 1768 the capricious doors of the Academie Franchise were 
 opened to him ; but once elected a member, he never after at 
 tended any of its sittings. He published his Logique in his old 
 age, and left behind him his Langue des Calculs, He died in 
 1780. 
 
 II. CoNDiLLAc r s SYSTEM. 
 
 We have seen how Idealism and skepticism grew out of the 
 doctrines respecting the origin of knowledge. We have now to 
 see the growth of the " Sensational School." 
 
 The success which Locke met with in France is well known. 
 
590 CONDILLAC. 
 
 For a whole century the countrymen of Descartes extolled the 
 English philosopher, little suspecting how that philosopher would 
 have disclaimed their homage, could he have witnessed it. Con- 
 dillac is the acknowledged representative of Locke in France. 
 When his first work, entitled Essai sur V Oriyine des Connois- 
 sances Humaines, appeared, he had no notion of simplifying 
 Locke by reducing all Knowledge to Sensation. He was a 
 modest Lockeist, and laid down as the fundamental principle, 
 that " sensations and the operations of the mind are the mate 
 rials of all our knowledge materials which reflection sets in ac 
 tion by seeking their combinations and relations." (Chap. i. 5.) 
 In 1754 appeared his celebrated work, the Traite des Sensa 
 tions. In it he quits Locke s principle for that of Gassendi and 
 Hobbes. " The chief object of this work," he says, " is to show 
 how all our knowledge and all our faculties are derived from the 
 senses ; or, to speak more accurately, from sensations." The in 
 clusion of "our faculties," as well as our ideas, in this sensuous 
 origin, is, however, due entirely to Condillac. Ilobbes never 
 thought of such a " simplification." The divergence from Locke 
 is obvious : instead of the two sources of ideas, recognized in the 
 Essay on Human Understanding, it assumes one source only 
 Sensation ; instead of mind, with certain elementary faculties, it 
 assumes one elementary faculty that of Sensibility out of 
 which all the faculties are evolved by the action of external ob 
 jects on the senses. Nor was this a mere slip of Condillac s pen : 
 the error is radical ; it constitutes the peculiarity of his system. 
 Speaking of various philosophers, and quoting, with praise, the 
 maxim attributed to Aristotle, that "Nothing is in the intellect 
 which was not previously in the senses," he adds, " Immediately 
 after Aristotle comes Locke ; for the other philosophers who have 
 written on this subject are not worthy of mention. This Eng 
 lishman has certainly thrown great light on the subject, but he 
 has left some obscurity. . . . All the faculties of the soul ap 
 peared to him to be innate qualities, and he never suspected they 
 might be derived from sensation itself." 
 
CONDILLAC S SYSTEM. 591 
 
 Certainly, Locke never suspected any thing of the kind, and 
 would loudly have repudiated it, had any one suggested such a 
 simplification of the psychological problem. He might have 
 asked Condillac, why is it no Ape having the five senses of Man 
 has ever yet been educated as a Man ? and if faculties are noth 
 ing but sensations, why are the faculties of the Ape so remark 
 ably inferior, when the senses, some of them at least, are so 
 remarkably superior to those of Man ? We find, on the one 
 hand, animals having senses like those of man, but not having 
 the faculties of man ; we find, on the other hand, men deficient 
 in certain senses sight, hearing, taste, or smell who, so far 
 from being deficient in mental faculties, are remarkable for their 
 high endowments : a striking example of which is the case of 
 Laura Bridgman, born blind, deaf, and dumb. Nay, among men 
 having all the senses in activity, we find the greatest disparities 
 in mental faculty; and we do not find that the men whose sen 
 ses are the most susceptible and active, are the men whose intel 
 lectual faculties are the most developed ; which is strange, if the 
 faculties are nothing but sensations. How does Condillac ex 
 plain the familiar fact of Idiots being in full possession of their 
 senses ? When he makes his famous Statue grow into an Intel 
 ligence, by the gradual evolution of one sense after the other, it 
 never occurs to him that he tacitly admits the presence of the 
 very mind which is said to be evolved ; since in the absence of 
 that mind the senses will not elevate the statue one inch above 
 idiocy. 
 
 Had Condillac been surveying the animal series, and endeavor 
 ing to trace the gradual development of Sensibility throughout 
 that series, he might have maintained, with some philosophical 
 cogency, that the various faculties were the derivative products 
 of sensation. But he had no such conception. He looked upon 
 the mind as a tabula rasa, a blank page on which sensations wrote 
 certain characters; and instead of regarding the mind in the 
 light of an organism, the food of which was furnished by the 
 senses, he regarded it as a simple granary, in which the grain, on 
 
592 CONDILLAC. 
 
 entering, "transformed itself" into bread, oven, and baker. He 
 thought the senses created the faculties and were the faculties. 
 He might as well have said that exercise creates the faculty of 
 running. The child cannot run till he has exercised his limbs; 
 but the exercise does not give him the limbs, it only calls them 
 into action. 
 
 Condillac is right in saying that we are not born with the 
 mental faculties developed (a point to be touched upon here 
 after), but he is wrong in saying that these faculties are only 
 sensations. And when he endeavored to construct the mind and 
 its faculties out of transformed sensations, he never once sus 
 pected that the faculty of transformation that which transforms 
 could not be itself a sensation. It is very easy to imagine 
 transformed sensations ; but the sensations do not, we presume, 
 transform themselves. What is it that transforms them ? The 
 mind? Not so. The mind is the aggregate of our mental 
 states, faculties, etc. ; the mind is made up of " transformed sen 
 sations," and cannot, therefore, be the transforming power. We 
 return to the charge, and demand, What is it which trans 
 forms? Condillac has no answer. All he can say is, what he 
 says over and over again, that our faculties are transformed sen 
 sations. Hear him : 
 
 " Locke distinguishes two sources of ideas, sense and reflection. 
 It would be more exact to recognize but one ; first, because re 
 flection is, in its principle, nothing but sensation itself; secondly, 
 because it is less a source of ideas than a canal through which 
 they flow from sense. 
 
 " This inexactitude, slight as it may seem, has thrown much 
 obscurity over his system. He contents himself with recognizing 
 that the soul perceives, thinks, doubts, believes, reasons, wills, 
 reflects ; that we are convinced of the existence of these opera 
 tions, because we find them in ourselves, and they contribute to 
 the progress of our knowledge; but he did not perceive the ne 
 cessity of discovering their origin and the principle of their gen 
 eration he did not suspect that they might only be acquired 
 
593 
 
 habits ; lie seems to have regarded them as innate, and lie says 
 only that they may be perfected by exercise."* 
 
 This is far enough from Locke,f who would have been amazed 
 to hear that "judgment, reflection, the passions, in a word, all 
 the faculties of the mind, are nothing but sensation which trans 
 forms itself differently (qui se transforme differemment)." 
 
 As it is curious to see how sensation transforms itself into these 
 faculties, we will translate Condillac s account. "If a multitude 
 of sensations operate at the same time with the same degree of 
 vivacity, or nearly so, man is then only an animal that feels ; ex 
 perience suffices to convince us that then the multitude of im 
 pressions takes away all activity from the mind. But let only 
 one sensation subsist, or without entirely dismissing the others, 
 let us only diminish their force ; the mind is at once occupied 
 more particularly with the sensation which preserves its vivacity, 
 and that sensation becomes attention, without its being necessary 
 for us to suppose any thing else in the mind. If a new sensation 
 acquire greater vivacity than the former, it will become in its 
 turn attention. But the greater the force which the former had, 
 the deeper the impression made on us, and the longer it is pre 
 served. Experience proves this. Our capacity of sensation is 
 therefore divided into the sensation we have had, and the sensa 
 tion which we now have ; we perceive them both at once, but 
 we perceive them differently : the one seems as past, the other 
 as present. The name of sensation designates the impression 
 actually made upon our senses; and it takes that of memory 
 when it presents itself to us as a sensation which has formerly 
 been felt. Memory, therefore, is only the transformed sensation. 
 When there is double attention, there is comparison ; for to be 
 
 * E.ctrait raissonne du, Traite des Sensations : CEuvres de Gondlllac (1803), 
 iv. 13. 
 
 t It would be idle to refute here the vulgar notion that Condillac perfected 
 Locke s principles ; or, as M. Cousin absurdly says, that Locke s Essay was 
 the rough sketch (ebaudie) of which the Traite dcs Sensations is the per 
 fected picture ; such a notion can be entertained only by those who blindly 
 accept traditionary judgments. The brief exposition we shall give of Coii- 
 dillac is a sufficient answer to all svsch assertion*. 
 
594 CONDILLAC. 
 
 attentive to two ideas or to compare them, is the same thing. 
 But we cannot compare them without perceiving some difference 
 or some resemblance between them : to perceive such relations, 
 is to judge. The acts of comparing and judging are therefore 
 only attention ; it is thus that sensation becomes successively at 
 tention, comparison, judgment." 
 
 The other faculties are explained in a similar way, but we 
 need quote no more. That such a system should ever have at 
 tained the favor it did, is a striking example of the facility with 
 which men may be misled by an artful use of words. 
 
 Condillac said that science is only a well-constructed language 
 (une langue bien faite) ; so much did he rely upon precision in 
 words. Nor is this inexplicable in a man who fancied he had re 
 duced the analysis of mind to its simplest elements by merely 
 naming them differently. It is, however, as absurd to call ideas 
 sensations because the ideas were originated by sensations, as it 
 would be to call reasoning observation, because reasoning is 
 founded on observation. The only excuse for the error is in the 
 common, but false, supposition that ideas are faint impressions. 
 They are not impressions at all. Condillac says that an idea is 
 a remembered sensation, and this remembrance is only a lesser 
 degree of vivacity in the sensation. We answer that the idea is 
 nothing of the kind ; so far from being the sensation in a lesser 
 degree, it is not the sensation at all ; it is altogether different 
 from the sensation. Although every man who has experienced 
 toothache, can have a very distinct idea of it (in other words, he 
 can think of, and talk of toothache), we defy him to detect in 
 his idea any repetition of the sensation. Nor is this wonderful ; 
 sensation is the product of a distinct part of the nervous system, 
 the senses; ideas are the product of another distinct part of 
 the nervous system, the cerebrum : sensation is feeling, thought 
 is thinking. To suppose feeling and thinking are the same (al 
 though both may come under the term feeling, by giving the 
 word some new general signification), is an absurdity reserved 
 for the Sensational School, the last and not the least illustrious 
 
595 
 
 of whom, M. Destutt de Tracy, consolidated it into an aphorism : 
 penser c est sentir. 
 
 The ambiguities of language have in this case been assisted 
 by the nature of our sensations. Thus all our visual ideas, inas 
 much as they assume shape, do seem like faint sensations ; the 
 reason is, that although it is a very different thing to look at the 
 sun and to think of it, yet in thinking, our idea corresponds, in 
 some measure, with our sensation : the idea is of a round, yellow, 
 luminous body, and is not improperly called an image of the sun. 
 If it is an image of the sun, we easily conclude that it is a faint 
 copy of our sensation. But in the case of other senses, there is 
 no difficulty in detecting the error. When we say that we can 
 recall the sensation of hunger, we verbally confound our power of 
 thinking a thing, with our power of feeling it. There is, in truth, 
 a generic distinction between Thought and Sensation, which it 
 is fatal to overlook ; nor could it have been overlooked but for 
 the introduction and adoption of that much-abused word " idea," 
 instead of thought. 
 
 I do not believe we can recover any sensation at all, but only 
 the ideal effect of the sensation. Mr. Bain, who of all psychol 
 ogists, as it appears to me, has approached nearest to the truth, 
 here remarks, that the " exact tone of feeling, the precise inward 
 sensation due to a state of hunger, is almost irrecoverable and 
 unimaginable in a state of comfortable repletion." I believe it 
 to be utterly irrecoverable. "But," he adds, "the uneasy move 
 ments, the fretful tones, the language of complaint, are all easy 
 to recall ; they belong to the more intellectual part of the sys 
 tem ; and by these we can recover some portion of the total fact, 
 which is also just about as much as we can communicate to a 
 second person. The digestive state for the time being, rules the 
 tone of sensation so effectually, that we cannot, by any effort, 
 restore the currents due to an entirely opposite state ; we can 
 only recover the more revivable accompaniments."* The reason 
 
 * The Senses and the Intellect, p. 337. 
 
596 CONDILLAC. 
 
 of this I take to be simply the impossibility of displacing a sen 
 sation (e. g. that of repletion) by an idea. The sensation of hun 
 ger was due to a peculiar stimulus of the nervous system ; so 
 long as that stimulus was present, the sensation was present ; 
 when another stimulus replaced it, another sensation succeeded, 
 and in the presence of that stimulus no other sensation is recov 
 erable. The "revivable accompaniments" were not sensations, 
 but the sequences of sensations, ideal elements. When Mr. Bain 
 contrasts the sense of sight with the sense of hunger, and says 
 "that we can recover a picture or vision of fancy almost as ex 
 actly as we saw it, though not so strongly," and thinks that this 
 gives to the sense of sight its " intellectual character," he appears 
 to me to overlook the generic distinction between Sensation and 
 Thought, a distinction which Condillac and his school systemat 
 ically set aside. "We can repossess ourselves," he adds, "of the 
 exact scene as it lay to the eye; \\\fact the sensation itself is the 
 most retainable part of the whole" I cannot but think that, if 
 Mr. Bain will reconsider this statement, he will admit that the 
 sensation itself is precisely the part which is not retainable, not 
 recoverable; for although the image of the landscape beheld in 
 memory is like the actual scene which we gazed upon or, in 
 more accurate language, although we are similarly affected by 
 the remembrance- as by the original stimulus yet a psychologist 
 of Mr. Bain s rank does not need to be told that the landscape 
 in perception is constituted by a variety of intellectual inferences 
 all its relations of space, form, solidity, etc., being purely in 
 tellectual elements, and these only are the elements present in 
 the remembrance, the actual sensations not being present at all. 
 What therefore is recoverable, is the purely intellectual part of 
 the whole ; what is irrecoverable, the sensational ; precisely as 
 in the case of hunger: we can recall the effects of hunger, even 
 when quietly digesting dinner, but we cannot recall the sensation 
 of hunger. 
 
 The point in dispute is so important, and is so intimately 
 bound up with the whole doctrine of the Sensational School, 
 
CONDILLAC S SYSTEM. 597 
 
 forming indeed the battle-ground of all psychological doctrine, 
 that we must consider it with more than a passing attention. 
 The confusion of Sensation with Ideation, or Thought, is Cou- 
 dillac s systematic error ; but it is an error from which few, if 
 any writers, even of the spiritualist schools, have been free. Ex 
 plicitly, or implicitly, these two phenomena have been regarded 
 as two aspects of the same thing. The rigorous demarcation of 
 Sensation as one process, from Ideation as another process, 
 each dependent on its separate nervous centre, will be found in 
 no psychological treatise. Nevertheless, Comparative Anatomy 
 has succeeded in demonstrating the independence of the organs 
 of Sense, and the Brain-proper ; although no one has yet suc 
 ceeded in detecting the true relations which connect these inde 
 pendent centres, and make them act together. We know that 
 the brain is as much an addition to the organs of Sense as these 
 organs are additions to the nervous system of the simpler ani 
 mals. Low down in the animal scale we can detect no trace at 
 all of a nervous system ; ascending a few steps, we detect a sim 
 ple ganglion with its prolongations ; ascending higher, we detect 
 a more complex arrangement of ganglia, and rudimentary organs 
 of Sense ; ascending still higher and higher, we detect more 
 complex organs of Sense, and a rudimentary Brain ; till at last 
 we arrive at man, with his complex organs and his complex 
 Brain. But so independent is the Brain, that even in the 
 human species cases occur of " anencephalous monsters," that 
 is to say, children born without any Brain whatever; and 
 these children breathe, suck, cry, and struggle, like other 
 children. 
 
 Further, it is ascertained that the function of this Brain (or 
 Cerebrum) is Thought or, as James Mill, with a nice sense of 
 utility, proposed to call it, Ideation. Granting this, we grant 
 that the functions Sensation and Ideation are as independent as 
 the organs of which they are the functions ; and although Idea 
 tion is organically connected with Sensation, yet not more so 
 than muscular motion is connected with Sensation. Neither the 
 
598 CONDILLAC. 
 
 anatomical nor the psychological connections of the two have 
 been accurately discriminated, but the broad tact of their inde 
 pendence suffices for my present argument ; which is merely to 
 establish the position that the organs of Sense are competent 
 to Sensation, without the addition of a Brajn ; and that the 
 Brain, although constantly set into action by the organs of 
 Sense, is in itself a separate centre, and the seat of specific 
 actions.* 
 
 It is customary to speak of the organs of Sense as if they were 
 simple organs ; we must not therefore innovate in this matter, 
 although we find it needful to remind the reader that each spe 
 cial sense is really the function of a complex apparatus of organs. 
 The apparatus of Sight, for example, may be separated into at 
 least three parts : 1st, for the reception of impressions of light ; 
 2d, for the transmission of those impressions ; 3d, for the sensa 
 tion. Of these the last need only here be specially considered, 
 and may be called the Sensational Centre.^ In this centre the 
 external stimulus becomes a sensation ; from this centre the sen 
 sation is generally (not always) propagated to the cerebrum, 
 which in turn may propagate the influence to the centre of mus 
 cular motion, or elsewhere. 
 
 Every sense, whether it be one of the five special senses, or of 
 the so-called " organic senses" (such as those of the alimentary 
 canal or of muscular activity), has its own special centre, or sen- 
 sorium ; but there seems to be no ground for assuming, with 
 Unzer and Prochaska, the existence of any one general sensori- 
 um, to which these all converge ; and I shall speak therefore of 
 the Sensational Centres as the seats of sensations derived from 
 
 * See this point illustrated in detail by Unzer and Prochaska, in their 
 treatises translated for the Ray Society by Dr. Laycock. 
 
 t I would call it sensory ganglion, if that did not presuppose the existence 
 of a distinct ganglion, anatomically separable in the higher animals, as it is 
 in those lower animals which have nothing but sensory ganglia. At present, 
 however, science does not warrant such a statement otherwise than as an 
 hypothesis. Besides, I include the spinal chord among the general Sensa 
 tional Centres. Compare Prochaska, p. 430. 
 
599 
 
 the stimuli which act on the organs of sense. Considered as 
 Sensational Centres, they are perfectly independent of the Brain ; 
 they may and do act without implicating the Brain, for they will 
 act when the Brain is absent : a bird deprived of its cerebrum 
 manifests unequivocal symptoms of being sensitive to light, sound, 
 etc. But in the normal state of the organism these centres are 
 intimately connected with the Brain ; and the stimuli which 
 affect them directly, indirectly affect the Brain. Light, imping 
 ing on the retina, determines a change in the optic Sensational 
 Centre ; this change is usually propagated to the cerebrum ; and 
 as the first change was a sensation, so is the second an idea : this 
 idea may excite other ideas, or it may be so faint in its influence 
 as to be almost immediately absorbed, and then we are said to 
 be " scarcely conscious" of the sensation meaning that we 
 thought very little about it : an example of which is the little 
 attention we pay to the clock striking when we are engaged in 
 study, if the fact is indifferent to us ; we hear it, but think not 
 of it the next moment ; if on the other hand the striking of the 
 clock is not indifferent to us, the various thoughts which it 
 awakens make us eminently " conscious of the sensation." In 
 the heat of battle, a sword passes through a man s arm, and 
 nevertheless the wound is followed by no pain or " conscious 
 ness ;" the stimulus which under ordinary circumstances would 
 have been propagated from a Sensational Centre, and thence 
 radiating to the cerebrum, would have roused up manifold ideas, 
 namely, of consequences, what was necessary to be done, etc., is 
 prevented from so radiating, and is not carried beyond the Sen 
 sational Centre. 
 
 Not only can we have sensations without being conscious of 
 them i. e. without thinking about them ; we can also think with 
 perfect freedom when all the Sensational Centres (except those 
 of organic life) are unaffected by any stimulus, i. e. when we have 
 no sensations. We do so when awake in bed during the stillness 
 of night : the senses are in repose, the Brain is active. 
 
 Thus is the independence of Ideation and Sensation proved 
 
600 CONDILLAC. 
 
 psychologically and anatomically ; and with this proof we de 
 stroy the basis of Condillac s doctrine. But even on purely 
 metaphysical grounds we may reject his theory of the origin of 
 knowledge. It rests on two positions ; the first is the reduction 
 of all knowledge to sensation ; the second is the dogma of our 
 faculties not being innate. The first is the doctrine of Gassendi 
 and Ilobbes. It is thus stated by Diderot, one of Condillac s 
 most celebrated pupils : " Every idea must necessarily, when 
 brought to its state of ultimate decomposition, resolve itself into 
 a sensible representation or picture ; and since every thing in 
 our understanding has been introduced there by the channel of 
 sensation, whatever proceeds out of the understanding is cither 
 chimerical or must be able, in returning by the same road, to re 
 establish itself according to its sensible archetype. Hence an 
 important rule in philosophy, That every expression which can 
 not find an external and a sensible object to which it can thus 
 establish its affinity, is destitute of signification."* 
 
 Those who maintain sensuous experience to be the basis of all 
 knowledge, will of course assent to the position that every one 
 of our ideas can be decomposed into sensuous elements ; but 
 ideas themselves are not sensations, they are formed from sensa 
 tions, and are not sensible pictures. The least experience is suf 
 ficient to convince us that we have many ideas which cannot be 
 reduced to any sensible picture whatever ; or, to prevent any of 
 the ambiguity which belongs to the word " idea," let us rather 
 say we have many thoughts which cannot be reduced to any 
 sensible picture. We can think of a sound without any power 
 of forming a picture of sound ; we can think of virtue or good 
 ness, of patriotism or scoundrelism, without being able to form 
 mental pictures of these ideas. 
 
 Now for the second point : Condillac, we believe, was the first 
 to catch a glimpse of the important truth that our faculties are 
 not innate are not even connate ; but he bungled in attempting 
 
 * Quoted by Dugald Stewart, Philosophical Essays, p. 16 G. 
 
CONDILLAC S SYSTEM. G01 
 
 to trace the genesis of these faculties. That men are not born 
 with the powers of reasoning, remembering, imagining, is a prop 
 osition which will meet with very little credit at first. A little 
 experience and reflection however show us that as the child cer 
 tainly cannot reason, remember, or imagine, these being faculties 
 subsequently and slowly developed, we must conclude that the 
 mental faculties are only potentially in the new-born child. The 
 baby can no more reason than he can talk. He learns to do 
 both ; and, before he can learn them, the powers of his mind no 
 less than the muscles of his vocal organs must grow, be devel 
 oped, and strengthened by exercise. Man is no more born with 
 reason than an acorn is born an oak. The grown man has rea 
 son, as every oak has branches and foliage. But the infant and 
 the acorn, though they contain that within them which, under 
 fitting circumstances, will be developed into reason in the one, 
 and foliage in the other, cannot be said to have as yet either 
 reason or foliage. 
 
 This is an important discovery, and yet one which is appa 
 rently obvious, and obtruded upon our experience by the daily 
 observation of children. Condillac has the merit of having first 
 seen it ; but he saw it very imperfectly, and failed altogether to 
 make any good use of it. As an example : He who told us 
 that our faculties were not innate, but were acquired habits," 
 tells us, when he comes to the genesis of those faculties, that 
 they spring into existence at once are born full-grown the 
 acorn suddenly leaps into an oak. Thus his famous statue has 
 Memory, Judgment, Desire, etc., as soon as it has Sensations. 
 This is enough to show that if Condillac discovered an important 
 feet, he only stumbled over it, and knew not its significance.* 
 Let us hope that, if England is to produce any new system of 
 Psychology, this most important point will not be overlooked : 
 the growth and development of our faculties is as much a part 
 
 * The only person who, to our knowledge, has made any use of this fact, 
 is Dr. Beneke, who has made it the basis of his whole philosophy. See his 
 Aetie Psycliolotjie, also the Lelirluch der Psychologic (Berlin, 1845). 
 
602 CONDILLAC. 
 
 of Psychology, as the growth and development of our organs is 
 a part of Biology.* 
 
 Condillac has made but a poor figure in our pages ; let us 
 hasten to add, that although his fundamental positions are erro 
 neous, his works display considerable merits both in manner and 
 matter. Many valuable remarks, and some good analyses, may 
 be found in his writings ; and the style is admirably clear. He 
 departed so widely from Locke, that it seems strange he should 
 ever have been considered as a disciple. But we have express 
 testimony to the fact that he was Locke s disciple ; and if we 
 consider for a moment the great stress which Locke always placed 
 upon the sensuous origin of our knowledge that being the point 
 he wished to bring prominently forward, because his precursors 
 had neglected it we shall easily conceive how Condillac might 
 have been more impressed with that part of the system than 
 with the other, which Locke had rather indicated than developed. 
 Moreover it was Locke s object to prove the mind to be a tabula 
 rasa, in order to disprove innate ideas. This once being granted, 
 it was easy to fall into the error of Condillac s " simplification." 
 
 Condillac was clear, but much of his clearness was owing to 
 his shallowness ; much of the simplicity was owing to meagre- 
 ness. He tried to construct Psychology upon no firmer basis 
 than that adopted by the metaphysicians whom he opposed. 
 Analysis of mental operations and merely verbal distinctions had 
 been powerless in the hands of his precursors, nor were they 
 powerful in his. In many subordinate matters he improved on 
 them ; some of his analyses were better ; many of his verbal dis 
 tinctions were useful; but he had no true psychological Method, 
 and could found no desirable system. The idea of connecting 
 Psychology with Biology had not yet been distinctly conceived. 
 Although the brain was universally held to be the " organ" of 
 the mind, the mind was, by the strangest of oversights, not re- 
 
 * Since this was written Mr. Herbet Spencer has expounded the develop 
 ment of the faculties in his very remarkable Principles of Psychology 
 (1855). 
 
LIFE. 603 
 
 garded as the function of that organ ;* consequently no one 
 thought of connecting the study of the mind with the study of 
 the nervous system ; no one thought of a physiological basis as 
 indispensable to psychological science. We shall see hereafter 
 what attempts have been made in this direction. The first step 
 may be said to have been taken by Hartley. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 HARTLEY. 
 
 I. LIFE OF HARTLEY. 
 
 DAVID HARTLEY, the son of a Yorkshire clergyman, was born 
 on the 30th of August, 1705. He went to Cambridge at fifteen, 
 and became a Fellow of Jesus College. Originally destined for 
 the Church, he had scruples about signing the Thirty-nine Arti 
 cles, and gave up the Church for Medicine, which he subsequently 
 practised with great success. 
 
 When only twenty-five years of age he conceived the design 
 and commenced the execution of his celebrated Observations on 
 Man, his Frame, his Duty, and his Expectations, led thereto, as 
 he tells us in the Preface, by hearing that " the Rev. Mr. Gay 
 had asserted the possibility of deducing all our intellectual 
 pleasures and pains from association." Mr. Gay published his 
 views in a dissertation prefixed to Law s translation of King On 
 the Origin of Evil ; but although Hartley acknowledges having 
 
 * I may here enter a brief caveat against the conclusion that I hold the 
 "mind to be the function of the brain." This is no place to argue so wide 
 a question ; and I content myself with saying, that in the crude form in 
 which that opinion is frequently presented, I do not agree. Ideation I hold 
 to be one function of the brain; but Mind is something more general than 
 this special function of Ideation ; and the brain has other functions besides 
 Ideation, other functions than any usually called mental. 
 
604 HARTLEY. 
 
 derived the suggestion from Gay, it is clear to all readers of his 
 work, that he had thoroughly mastered, and made his own, the 
 principle of Association as the primary law of intellectual com 
 bination. Hartley did not publish his Observations till 1748, 
 eighteen years after the scheme was first laid. The year before, 
 according to Dr. Parr, he published a small treatise as a precur 
 sor to this work. "You will be astonished to hear," Dr. Pan- 
 writes to Dugald Stewart,* " that in this book, instead of the 
 Doctrine of Necessity, Hartley openly declares for the indifference 
 of the will, as maintained by Archbishop King." And the reader 
 will be astonished to hear that Hartley does no such thing! 
 Dugald Ste wart, who had not seen the work referred to, remarks 
 that " it is curious that, in the course of a year, Hartley s opin 
 ions on so very essential a point should have undergone a com 
 plete change ;" still more curious, however, that Dr. Parr should 
 have read the work and discovered in it such a mare s-nest. The 
 tract in question is reprinted in the volume of Metaphysical 
 Tracts by English Philosophers of the Eighteenth Century. Pre 
 pared for the Press by the late Rev. Samuel Parr, D.D. London, 
 1837 a volume precious to metaphysical students, because it con 
 tains Collier s Clavis Universalis and Specimen of True Philosophy. 
 If the reader will turn to the third of these tracts, Conjectural 
 qucedam de Sensu, Motu, et Idearum Generatione, without date, 
 he will find that it is nothing more nor less than an abstract, in 
 Latin, of the first part of Hartley s Observations ; and that the 
 question of Free-will is nowhere opened in it. I can only sup 
 pose that Dr. Parr, unacquainted with physiological speculations, 
 was misled by the admirable discussion of automatic and volun 
 tary actions (pp. 31-35), into the notion that Hartley there es 
 poused the doctrine of free-will ; but I am surprised that Sir W. 
 Hamilton should have allowed the error to pass uncorrected in 
 his edition of Stewart s Dissertation. 
 
 Hartley died on the 25th of August, 1757, aged fifty-two, and 
 
 * Stewart s Dissertation, part ii. p. 355 of Hamilton s edition. 
 
605 
 
 left a name so distinguished for piety and goodness, that it in a 
 great measure shielded his doctrines from the reprobation they 
 have often incurred when promulgated by others. 
 
 II. HARTLEY S SYSTEM. 
 
 Combining a suggestion thrown out by Newton at the end of his 
 Principia, and in the questions annexed to his Optics, respecting 
 vibrations of an ether as the cause of sensation, with the doctrine 
 of Locke respecting Association of Ideas, Hartley produced a 
 system of Psychology, which is historically curious as the first 
 attempt to explain psychological phenomena on physiological 
 principles. If not worth much as a contribution to Philosophy, 
 it is very noticeable as an effort to connect intellectual with phys 
 ical phenomena ; and, however subsequent writers may have rid 
 iculed, not without excuse, the vibrations and vibratiuncles which 
 Hartley substituted for the old metaphysical conceptions, it 
 is certain that his attempt to explain the phenomena physio 
 logically, has very much influenced the thoughts of succeeding 
 speculators. 
 
 " Man," he says, " consists of two parts, body and mind." 
 Does he mean by this to proclaim the existence of a distinct, 
 immaterial entity superadded to the body? According to the 
 terms of his definition, on the first page of his work, this seems 
 to be his intention; for he defines it as "that substance, agent, 
 principle, etc., to which we refer the sensations, ideas, pleasures, 
 pains, and voluntary motions." Yet the whole system of vibra 
 tions seems to imply the contrary ; and at the close of the first 
 part of his work, he declares that he holds himself aloof from 
 the question altogether. He will not deny the immateriality of 
 mind : " On the contrary, I see clearly, and acknowledge readily, 
 that matter and motion, however subtly divided, yield nothing 
 more than matter and motion still. But then neither would I 
 affirm that this consideration affords a proof of the soul s imma 
 teriality." He thinks, with Locke, that it is quite possible the 
 Creator should have endowed matter with sensation ; but he will 
 
606 HARTLEY. 
 
 not undertake to affirm it as a truth. " It is sufficient for me 
 that there is a certain connection, of one kind or other, between 
 the sensations of the soul, and the motions excited in the medul 
 lary substance of the brain."* A more rigorous logic would 
 have forced him into a more decided opinion ; for this question 
 of the soul s immateriality is one vitally affecting- the system of 
 vibrations ; and his adversaries have had little difficulty in show 
 ing the insufficiency of " vibrations" to explain the phenomena 
 of an immaterial mind. Between the immaterial principle and 
 these material vibrations, there is an impassable gulf; let the 
 other vibrate never so rhythmically, it always remains " vibrating 
 ether," it cannot become " sensation," " thought ;" nor does Hart 
 ley bridge over the gulf by the assumption of an " infinitesimal 
 elementary body intermediate between the soul and the gross 
 body," to which, and from which, the vibrations of the nerves 
 are communicated ; the radical difficulty remains the same. 
 
 It may be objected, perhaps, that those who point out the de 
 fect in Hartley s hypothesis are themselves open to a similar 
 charge, since they assume an immaterial principle to be effected 
 by a material change, and assume the mind to be in connection 
 with the body, following its alterations. But there is this differ 
 ence between them and Hartley : they do not pretend to explain 
 how mind is affected by body ; he does. They accept, as an ulti 
 mate fact, what he attempts to elucidate ; and it is his elucida 
 tion which they refuse to acknowledge. 
 
 And we must agree with them in rejecting the hypothesis 
 which Hartley proposes ; for it is not only incompetent to ex 
 plain the phenomena, but it is also one of those ingenuities inca 
 pable of really serving the purpose of a good hypothesis, because 
 in itself wholly incapable of verification. 
 
 His first proposition is that " The white medullary substance 
 of the brain, spinal marrow, and the nerves proceeding from 
 
 * Compare also Scholium to Prop. 5 (vol. i. p. 33) and Conjecturcequadam, 
 dc Sensuj etc., p. 41. 
 
GOT 
 
 them, is the immediate instrument of sensation and motion." 
 Modern physiologists maintain precisely the reverse of this, de 
 claring the gray matter to be the specific seat of sensation and 
 intelligence. I may say, in passing, that both these positions 
 seem to me erroneous in their exclusiveness ; and that the white 
 as well as the gray substance must be preseut, just as the zinc 
 and copper plates must both be present in the galvanic battery. 
 
 Hartley continues: "External objects impressed upon the 
 senses occasion, first in the nerves on which they are impressed, 
 and then in the brain, Vibrations of the small or, as any one 
 may say, infinitesimal medullary particles. These Vibrations 
 are motions backwards and forwards, of the same kind as the 
 oscillation of pendulums, and the tremblings of the particles of 
 sounding bodies. They must be conceived to be exceedingly 
 short and small, so as not to have the least efficacy to disturb or 
 move the whole bodies of the nerves or brain. For that the 
 nerves themselves should vibrate like musical strings is highly 
 absurd." 
 
 It appears from a passage in the Contemplation de la Nature 
 of the Genevese naturalist, Charles Bonnet, who published, al 
 most contemporaneously with Hartley, a doctrine almost indis 
 tinguishable from Hartley s, that certain physiologists had already 
 entertained the idea of sensation being the result of a nervous 
 oscillation. " Us vouloient faire osciller les nerfs pour rendre 
 raison des sensations ; et les nerfs ne peuvent pas osciller. Us 
 sont mous, et nullement elastiques."* Not the nerves, but the 
 elastic ether which penetrates the nerves, is the seat of these os 
 cillations, according to Hartley and Bonnet. 
 
 The greatest defect of this hypothesis is that it explains noth 
 ing, while seeming to explain every thing. Sensation remains 
 as mysterious as before. If we call sensations by the new name 
 of vibrations, we have done nothing but change the name ; and 
 if we say sensations are vibrations, or are produced by them, 
 then the onus of proof rests on our shoulders. 
 
 * Partie vii. ch. i. 
 
608 HARTLEY. 
 
 While acknowledging the defect of Hartley s system, let us 
 not forget its excellence. If the doctrine of Association was not 
 first applied by him, it was by him first made a physiologi co- 
 psychological basis. He not only applied it to the explanation 
 of mental phenomena ; he applied it, and with great ingenuity, 
 to those physiological phenomena which still interest and per 
 plex philosophers, namely the voluntary and involuntary actions. 
 His twenty-first proposition, and the elucidations which follow, 
 deserve to be read, even in the present day ; and the following 
 passage from the abstract published in Parr s Tracts, is, in its 
 pregnant brevity, worth quoting here. " Discentes pulsare in- 
 strumenta musica, primo movcnt digitos actione voluntaria, con- 
 nectentes interea Ideas, imperiaque Aniime, hos motus lente 
 excitantia, cum aspectu characterum musicorum. Contimiato hoc 
 processu, accedunt indies, propius propiusque ad se invicem, 
 motus digitorum, et impressiones characterum, et tandem, Ideis 
 et imperils Animse in infinitum quasi diminutis, coalescunt. Fi- 
 dicen igitur peritus chordas digitis percurrit citissime, et ordine 
 justo, ex mero aspectu characterum musicorum, animo interim 
 alienis cognitationibus intento ; atque proinde characteres musici 
 idem illi pnestant officium, ac Sensationes impressa3 receus natis, 
 in motibus eorum automaticis. Migrant itaque ope Associations 
 tarn Motus voluntarii in automaticos, quam automatici in volun 
 taries."* 
 
 So little dependent is the psychological doctrine of Association 
 on the physiological doctrine of Vibrations, that Priestley, in his 
 Abridgment of Hartley, omits the latter hypothesis altogether. 
 The principle of Association passed into the Scotch school ; and 
 Hartley thus historically forms the transition to Reid and his 
 followers, who studiously avoided any thing like a physiological 
 explanation of mental phenomena. Before passing to Reid, how 
 ever, it will be well to glance at Darwin. 
 
 * Conjecture, p. 34. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 DARWIN. 
 
 ALTHOUGH even more neglected than Hartley by the present 
 generation, Darwin, once so celebrated, deserves mention here 
 as one of the psychologists who aimed at establishing the physio 
 logical basis of mental phenomena. 
 
 Erasmus Darwin was born at Elton, near Newark, on the 12th 
 December, 1731. After studying at St. John s College, Cam 
 bridge, and taking his degree of Doctor of Medicine at Edin 
 burgh, he established himself as a physician in Lichfield, mar 
 ried twice, had three sons, and died in the seventieth year of his 
 age, 18th April, 1802. As a poet, his Botanic Garden (1781) 
 by its tawdry splendor gained him a tawdry reputation ; as a 
 philosopher his Zoonomia ; or, Laws of Organic Life (2 vols. 
 4to, 17946), gained him a reputation equally noisy and fleeting. 
 
 Although couched in different language, Darwin s theory is 
 substantially the same as Hartley s ; instead of " vibrations" he 
 substitutes " sensorial motions." By the sensorium Darwin means 
 " not only the medullary part of the brain, spinal marrow, nerves, 
 organs of sense, and of the muscles ; but also at the same time 
 that living principle, or spirit of animation, which resides through 
 out the body without being cognizable to our senses, except by 
 its effects." The changes which occasionally take place in the 
 sensorium, as during the exertions of volition, or the sensations 
 of pleasure or pain, are termed sensorial motions* 
 
 The medullary substance, he thinks, passes along the nerves 
 and mingles with the muscular fibres. The " organs of sense 
 consist in like manner of moving fibres enveloped in the medul 
 lary substance." The word idea has various meanings, he says, 
 
 * Zoonomia, vol. i. p. 10. 
 
 265* 
 
610 DARWIN. 
 
 and to give it precision he defines it as " a contraction or mo 
 tion, or configuration of the fibres which constitute the imme 
 diate organ of sense. Synonymous with the word idea we shall 
 sometimes use the words sensual motion, in contradistinction to 
 muscular motion. 1 
 
 He then undertakes to prove the existence of these sensual 
 motions, and deduces from this proof the fact that as we advance 
 in life all the parts of our bodies become rigid, and are conse 
 quently less susceptible of new habits of motion, though they 
 retain those already established. Hence only the young can 
 learn ; hence the aged forget the events of yesterday and remem 
 ber those of infancy.* 
 
 " If our recollection, or imagination, be not a repetition of 
 animal movements, I ask, in my turn, What is it ? You tell me 
 it consists of images or pictures of things. Where is this exten 
 sive canvas hung up ? or where the numerous receptacles in 
 which these are deposited ? or to what else in the animal sys 
 tem have they any similitude ? That pleasing picture of objects, 
 represented in miniature on the retina of the eye, seems to have 
 given rise to this illusive oratory ! It was forgot that this rep 
 resentation belongs rather to the laws of light than to those of 
 life ; and may with equal elegance be seen in the camera ob- 
 scura as in the eye ; and that the picture vanishes forever when 
 the object is withdrawn."! 
 
 Had Darwin left us only the passage just cited, we should 
 have credited him with a profounder insight into Psychology 
 than any of his contemporaries, and the majority of his succes 
 sors, exhibit ; and although the perusal of Zoonomia must con 
 vince every one that Darwin s system is built up of absurd hypoth 
 eses, Darwin deserves a place in history for that one admirable 
 conception of psychology as subordinate to the laws of life. So 
 
 * Zoonomia, vol. i. p. 27. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 29. In Bain s Senses and the Intellect, p. GO sq., the reader will 
 find the old theory of a sensorium, or chamber of images, which Darwin 
 here pushes aside, satisfactorily refuted from the physiological point of view. 
 
DARWIN. 611 
 
 little has this conception been appreciated, that not only are sys 
 tems of Psychology constructed in serene indifference to Physi 
 ology, but many of the questions agitated in mental Physiology 
 are hopelessly entangled because men will not, or cannot, dis 
 criminate between problems of Physics and problems of Physi 
 ology ; between phenomena regulated by laws of inorganic mat 
 ter, and phenomena regulated by laws of organic matter. Thus 
 the questions, Why with two eyes do we see objects single ? and, 
 Why do we not see objects inverted, since their images are in 
 verted on the retina ? have puzzled thousands ; and not one of 
 the attempted solutions has recognized the important fact that 
 the problems are psychological, not optical nor anatomical, con 
 sequently cannot be settled by optics or anatomy ; angles of 
 incidence, and discussation of optic nerves, have nothing to do 
 with the phenomena the moment after the Sensational Centre 
 has been affected. We might as well attempt to deduce the as 
 similation of sugar from the angles of its crystals, or from the 
 sand-like disposition of its grains, as to deduce the perception 
 of an object from the laws of optics : the crystals and grains of 
 sugar must first be destroyed, and the sugar made soluble, before 
 it can be assimilated ; the retinal images must, in like manner, 
 first be transformed in the Sensational Centre before they can, 
 through the sensational centre, affect the cerebrum. 
 
 That this is no gratuitous hypothesis of mine, but expresses 
 the actual process of perception, in as far as that process has 
 been ascertained, may perhaps be made clear from the following 
 considerations. When I say that the perception of a visual ob 
 ject is a psychological act, not in any way explicable by the laws 
 of optics, or by any investigation of the anatomical structure of 
 the optic apparatus, I ground that assertion on certain authorita 
 tive facts ; for example, I take up the vexed question of our per 
 ceiving an object as single, although two images are formed on 
 the two retinas ; and instead of endeavoring to explain it by del 
 icate anatomy of the retina, or the decussating fibres of the optic 
 nerves, I at once remove it from that circle of discussion by class- 
 
612 DAEWIN. 
 
 ing it with phenomena precisely analogous. We see objects 
 single with two eyes ; true, but we also hear sounds as single 
 with two ears, we smell odors as single with two nostrils, we feel 
 objects as single with five fingers. How is it that no physiolo 
 gist has reflected on the bearing of these facts ? If the ordinary 
 explanations of optical perception are correct, why do not audi 
 tory and olfactory nerves decussate ? Why do not the waves of 
 sound affect similar points of the tympanum and so the whole 
 mystery be cleared up ? No sooner is attention called to the 
 fact of single hearing and single smelling, with two auditory and 
 two olfactory nerves, than we at once cease to regard single 
 vision with two optic nerves as any thing special, and we try if 
 a psychological explanation will not avail. I believe the ex 
 planation to be very simple. We cannot have two precisely simi 
 lar sensations at precisely the same instant; the simultaneousness 
 of the two sensations renders them indistinguishable. Two sounds 
 of precisely the same pitch and intensity, succeeding each other 
 by an appreciable interval, will be heard as two sounds ; but if 
 they succeed each other so rapidly that the interval is inappre 
 ciable, no distinction will be felt, and the two will be heard as 
 one, because heard simultaneously. As I am forced to be very 
 brief here, the reader will not expect, any development of this 
 theory, but will pass with me to tho consideration of other psy 
 chological aspects of perception. 
 
 The fact of our being able to see an image reflected on the 
 retina of an animal, and of our being able to explain on optical 
 principles the formation of that image, has very much misled 
 physiologists in their efforts to comprehend sensation ; they have 
 naturally imagined that in vision we see the retinal image; 
 whereas, unless I am altogether mistaken, we see nothing of the 
 kind we are affected by that retinal image, as in hearing we are 
 affected by a wave of air, but do not perceive the wave ; or as in 
 smelling we are affected by the action of volatile substances on 
 the olfactory nerve, but do not perceive the substances. We 
 only perceive the changes effected in us by these agents. 
 
DARWIN. 613 
 
 The various Sensational Centres (see p. 598) are variously 
 affected by the same stimuli : electricity giving to the gustatory 
 nerve the stimulus of savorous bodies, to the auditory nerve the 
 stimulus of sonorous vibrations, to the optic nerve the stimulus 
 of luminous bodies, to the tactile nerves the stimulus of touch. 
 Pressure on the eye causes luminous spots to be seen ; we seem 
 to see fire-flies. The pressure of over-distended blood-vessels 
 produces spectral illusions, and we see daggers in the air as 
 vividly as any at our sides. Unhappy students well know the 
 " singing in the ears" produced by over-study. Nor is this all : 
 narcotics introduced into the blood excite in each Sensational 
 Centre the specific sensation normally excited by its external 
 stimuli ; giving the appearance of luminous spots to the eyes, of 
 singing in the ears to the auditory nerves, and of " creeping sen 
 sations" to the nerves of touch. 
 
 The reason of this is that each Sensational Centre has its spe 
 cific manner of being affected, no matter what the specific nature 
 of the thing affecting it. While only certain things affect it sen 
 sationally, all those which do affect it, do so in a specific manner. 
 Light, for instance, affects the optic centre, but produces no ap 
 preciable effect on the auditory, gustatory, or tactile centres ; 
 nevertheless the optic centre may be affected by pressure, by 
 narcotics, or by electricity, precisely in the same way as by 
 light. The vibrations of a tuning-fork, which affect the auditory 
 centre as sound, affect the tactile centre as " tickling," not 
 " sound." 
 
 From these indubitable facts it is not difficult to elicit a con 
 clusion, namely, that sensation depends on the Sensational Centre 
 and not on the external stimulus, that stimulus being only the 
 cause of the sensational change. Whether the retina be directly 
 affected by rays of light issuing from an object, or the optic cen 
 tre be affected by the pressure of congested blood-vessels, in each 
 case we see, in each case the optic centre is affected in that spe 
 cific manner in which alone it is capable of being affected. Con 
 sequently inasmuch as the visual sensation depends on the optic 
 
614 DARWIN. 
 
 centre being affected, and does not depend on the formation of 
 an image on the retina, we have no alternative but to admit that 
 the retinal affection is transformed by the Sensational Centre, and 
 there the impression first becomes a sensation. 
 
 It may be added as confirmation of the foregoing doctrine re 
 specting the centre as the seat of sensation, that Miiller has cited 
 examples of luminous spectra being excited by internal causes 
 after the complete destruction of the retina ; and " Luicke relates 
 the case of a patient who, after the extirpation of the eye for fun 
 goid disease, perceived all kinds of luminous appearances inde 
 pendently of external objects."* 
 
 When therefore it is asked, Why do we see objects erect, 
 when they throw inverted images on the retina ? the answer is, 
 Because we do not see the retinal image at all ; we see, or are 
 affected by, the object ; and our perception of the erectness of 
 that object does not depend on vision, but on our conceptions of 
 space and the relations of space which are not given in the 
 visual sensation, but are ideal conceptions : conceptions which 
 are acquired in a complicated series of inferences, according to 
 most philosophers ; which are "forms of thought," according to 
 Kant ; but which are by no school held to be immediate ele 
 ments of sensation. 
 
 We thus return to the position that in every act of conscious 
 ness the impression on the nerve becomes transformed into a 
 sensation only in the Sensational Centre ; and the old theories 
 of " eidola," " images," " impressions," are seen to be untenable. 
 Just as the crystals of sugar have to be decomposed, and the 
 sugar transformed into glucose, the glucose transformed into 
 lactic acid, before sugar can be assimilable in the organism, so 
 have the retinal images to be decomposed in the optic centre be 
 fore a visual sensation can be produced. Attempt a more direct 
 process, and failure is inevitable : cane-sugar injected into the 
 veins is expelled in the urine as a foreign substance, not assimila- 
 
 * Miiller, Physiology, Eng. Trans, i. 1072. 
 
DARWIN. 615 
 
 ble ; and, in like manner, the most dexterous adjustment of rays 
 of light falling immediately on the optic ganglion, not transmit 
 ted thereto by the optic nerve, would produce no visual sensation. 
 
 Does not this demonstrate the purely subjective nature of all 
 our knowledge, and the necessary admixture of the ideal element 
 in all perception ? It also demonstrates the futility of the theory 
 adopted by Hartley and Darwin, which attempts to explain men 
 tal phenomena by " vibrations" and " motions." Motion can 
 only be motion, it cannot be the specific phenomena we name 
 sensation. To call sensations and ideas by the vague name of 
 motions, is to violate the conditions of philosophic language, and 
 to mislead those who accept it into the belief that an explanation 
 has been given in the change of term. That Darwin was by it 
 misled into absurdity will be apparent in the following attempt 
 to explain perception : 
 
 " No one will deny," he says, " that the medulla of the brain 
 and nerves has a certain figure ; which, as it is diffused through 
 nearly the whole of the body, must have nearly the figure of 
 that body. Now it follows that the spirit of animation, or living 
 principle, as it occupies this medulla and no other part, has also 
 the same figure as the medulla . . . which is nearly the figure 
 of the body. When the idea of solidily is excited, a part of the 
 extensive organ of touch is compressed by some external body, 
 and this part of the scnsorium so compressed exactly resembles 
 in figure the figure of the body that compressed it. Hence 
 when we acquire the idea of solidity we acquire at the same time 
 the idea of figure j and this idea of figure, or motion of a part 
 of the organ of touch, exactly resembles in its figure the figure 
 of the body that occasions it ; and thus exactly acquaints us with 
 this property of the external world."* 
 
 He is thus brought back to the old conception of the mind 
 being "impressed" by the exact forms of objects as wax is im 
 pressed by a seal. As he proceeds he gets more and more ab- 
 
 * Zoonomia, pp. 111-2. 
 
616 DARWIN. 
 
 surd. Thus he says, although " there may exist beings in the 
 universe that have not the property of solidity ; that is, which 
 can possess any part of space at the same time that it is occupied 
 by other bodies ; yet there may be other beings that can assume 
 this property of solidity or disrobe themselves of it occasionally, as 
 we are taught of spirits and of angels ; and it would seem that 
 the spirit of animation must be endued with this property, other 
 wise how could it occasionally give motion to the limbs of ani 
 mals ? or be itself stimulated into motion by the obtrusions of 
 surrounding bodies, as of light or odor ?"* He is led to this by 
 the Spinozistic axiom, that " no two things can influence or affect 
 each other which have not some property common to both of 
 them," which axiom destroys the possibility of spirit acting on 
 body. Hartley, as we saw, tried to get over this difficulty by 
 assuming the existence of a substance intermediate between body 
 and spirit. Darwin finds it easy to assume that the spirit has 
 the power of putting on or putting off the properties of matter 
 just as it pleases. "Hence the spirit of animation at the time 
 it communicates or receives motion from solid bodies must itself 
 possess some property of solidity. And at the time it receives 
 other kinds of motion from light, it must possess that property 
 which light possesses to communicate that motion named Visi 
 bility. In like manner it possesses Saporosity, Odorosity, Tangi 
 bility, and Audibility."! 
 
 This is enough to show how little Darwin understood the real 
 value of his luminous idea respecting Psychology based on the 
 laws of life ; enough also to make every one understand how 
 philosophers rebelled against such " materialism" as issued from 
 the explanation of mental phenomena by " sensory motions." 
 Before finally quitting the Zoonomia we must pause a moment 
 over the explanation of our feeling for Beauty. He describes the 
 sensations of the babe when " soon after it is born into this cold 
 world it is applied to its mother s warm bosom," and the agree- 
 
 * Zoonomia, p. 114. t Hid., i. 115. 
 
DARWIN. 617 
 
 able influences which thus grow up in the mind associated with 
 the form of* the bosom "which the infant embraces with its 
 hands, presses with its lips, and watches with its eyes ; and thus 
 acquires more accurate ideas of the form than of the odor, and 
 flavor, or warmth, which it perceives by its other senses. And 
 hence in our maturer years, when any object of vision is presented 
 to us, which, by its waving or spiral lines, bears any similitude 
 to the form of the female bosom, whether it be found in a 
 landscape with soft gradations of rising and descending surface, 
 or in the form of some antique vases, or in the works of the 
 pencil or chisel, we feel a general glow of delight which seems 
 to influence all our senses ; and if the object be not too large, 
 we experience an attraction to embrace it with our arms, and 
 to salute it with our lips, as we did in our early infancy the bosom 
 of our mother."* 
 
 One of the happiest illustrations of ridicule being the test of 
 truth, is the reply of Sheridan to this theory of Beauty. " I sup 
 pose," said he, " that the child brought up by hand, would feel 
 all these emotions at the sight of a wooden spoon !" 
 
 Zoonomia, i. 145. 
 
SEVENTH EPOCH. 
 
 SECOND CRISIS : IDEALISM, SKEPTICISM, AND SENSATIONAL 
 ISM PRODUCING THE REACTION OF COMMON SENSE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 EEID. 
 
 DUGALD STEWART opens his Account of the Life and Writings 
 of Thomas Reid with remarking that the life was " uncommonly 
 barren of those incidents which furnish materials for biography ;" 
 and as our space is scanty, we will content ourselves with a bare 
 enumeration of such facts as may be useful for reference. Thomas 
 Reid was born in 1710, at Strachan in Kincardineshire. He 
 was educated at Marischal College, Aberdeen. In 1752 he occu 
 pied the chair of Moral Philosophy in Aberdeen. In 1764 ap 
 peared his Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of 
 Common Sense. "In 1763* the Inquiry received a still more 
 substantial testimony of approbation from the University of 
 Glasgow," in the offer of the chair of Moral Philosophy, vacant 
 by the resignation of Adam Smith. In 1780 Reid resigned his 
 office, and passed the remaining years of his life in retirement 
 and study. In 1785 appeared his Essays on the Intellectual 
 Powers. He died in Glasgow iu 1796, having survived four of 
 his children. 
 
 * We follow Stewart ; but there must be some error here. If the Inquiry 
 was not published till 1764, Reid could not in 1763 have been offered the 
 chair at Glasgow as a " testimony of approbation." 
 
REID. 619 
 
 Reid s philosophy made a great stir at first, but has for some 
 years past been sinking into merited neglect. The appeal to 
 Common Sense as arbiter in Philosophy, is now pretty well un 
 derstood to be on a par with Dr. Johnson s kicking a stone as a 
 refutation of Berkeley. Indeed Dugald Stewart himself was fully 
 alive to the inconsequence of such an argument, and endeavored 
 to shield his master by saying that the phrases "Common Sense" 
 and " Instinct" were unhappily chosen. Unfortunately they were 
 not mere phrases with Reid ; they were principles. It is impos 
 sible to read the Inquiry and not see that Reid took his stand 
 upon Common Sense ;* and Beattie and Oswald, his immediate 
 disciples, are still more open to the charge. 
 
 It would carry us to great lengths if we were to examine all 
 the questionable tenets contained in the Philosophy of Common 
 Sense. We cannot however pass the supposed triumph over 
 Locke, who said that personal identity consists in Consciousness ; 
 " that is," continues Reid, " if you are conscious you did such a 
 thing a twelvemonth ago, this consciousness of what is past can 
 signify nothing else but the remembrance that I did it; so 
 Locke s principle must be, that Identity consists in remembrance ; 
 and, consequently, a man must lose his personal identity with 
 regard to every thing he forgets." Here Locke is altogether 
 misstated. Consciousness does not resolve itself into any single 
 act of memory, as Reid would here have us believe, nor can per 
 sonal identity be limited to any one act. I have the conscious 
 ness of a certain mental state, therewith is connected the re 
 membrance of some anterior state, which was also connected 
 with an anterior state, and so on. The chain is made up of 
 many links, and although some of these may be out of sight, not 
 one is broken. I am connected with my boyhood by a regular 
 series of transmitted acts of consciousness. I may have forgotten 
 
 * " I despise Philosophy, and renounce its guidance : let my soul dwell 
 with Common Sense." (Inquiry, ch. i. 3.) Let it be observed in passing, 
 that by Reid s disciples the Inquiry is always regarded as his best work j 
 the Essays were written in old age. 
 
620 REID. 
 
 a thousand things, but I have not forgotten myself : if one act 
 performed yesterday is forgotten to-day, all are not forgotten ; 
 and to remember one, however indistinctly, is sufficient to keep 
 up the continuity of consciousness. Let those who fancy the 
 sentiment of personal identity does not consist in the conscious 
 ness of personal identity, show us in what it does consist. 
 
 We come now to Reid s great achievement, that upon which 
 he declared his philosophical fame to rest : the refutation of 
 Berkeley and Hume by the refutation of the Ideal theory. This 
 he considered as his contribution to philosophy ; this has been 
 made the monument of his glory. It appears to us, after a long 
 acquaintance with his writings, and a careful perusal of what his 
 critics and admirers have advanced, that his sole merit in this 
 respect is that of having called attention to some abuses of lan 
 guage, and to some examples of metaphors mistaken for facts. 
 How much confusion the word " idea" has always created need 
 scarcely be alluded to ; and any attempt to destroy the accepta 
 tion of the word as tantamount to image, must be welcomed as 
 salutary. So far let us be grateful to Reid. Locke s use of the 
 word " idea" as signifying " a thought" instead of an " image," 
 has misled thousands. But whatever abuses may have crept in 
 with the use of the word idea, it seems to us quite clear that 
 Berkeley and Hume are not to be refuted by refuting the hy 
 pothesis of ideas, as Reid and his school suppose. 
 
 Let us, to avoid useless discussion, take it for granted that 
 philosophers did adopt the theory of ideas which Reid combats ; 
 let us also grant that Reid has overturned that theory. What 
 advance is made towards a solution of the problem ? Not one 
 step. The dilemma into which Hume threw Philosophy remains 
 the same as ever. As I cannot transcend the sphere of my Con 
 sciousness, I can never know things except as they act upon me 
 as they affect my Consciousness. In other words, a knowledge 
 of an external world otherwise than as it appears to my Sense, 
 which transforms and distorts it, is impossible. 
 
 This proposition may be said to form the ground of Skepti- 
 
REID. 621 
 
 cism. Now, we ask, how is that proposition affected by over 
 throwing the ideal theory ? What does it signify whether the 
 "affections of my consciousness" be regarded as "images" or 
 not ? They do not remain less purely subjective which ever way 
 we regard them. They are changes in me. The main position 
 of Skepticism is precisely this subjectivity of knowledge. Be 
 cause we cannot transcend consciousness, we can never know 
 things per se. Reid acknowledges that we cannot know things 
 per se ; but he says that we must believe in them, because in 
 what we do know their existence is suggested. This is exactly 
 the opinion of Locke ; nay more, it is the doctrine of Hume : for 
 he says that we do believe in an external world, though we have 
 no good reason for doing so. Sir J. Mackintosh relates, that he 
 once observed to Dr. Thomas Brown that he thought Reid and 
 Hume differed more in words than opinions : Brown answered, 
 " Yes, Reid bawled out we must believe in an outward world ; 
 but added, in a whisper, we can give no reason for our belief. 
 Hume cries out we can give no reason for such a notion ; and 
 whispers, I own we cannot get rid of it." 
 
 Reid ought to have seen that his refutation of the ideal theory 
 left Idealism and Skepticism untouched :* for either doctrine it 
 matters little how the knowledge be acquired, so that it be en 
 tirely subjective. The argument brought forward by Dugald 
 Stewart that the belief in the existence of an external world 
 is one of the Fundamental Laws of Human Belief is more phil 
 osophical ; but when he says that Berkeley s Idealism was owing 
 to the unhappy and unphilosophical attempt of Descartes to 
 prove the existence of the world, he forgets that Idealism was 
 known in the ancient schools long before any one thought of 
 proving the existence of matter. Moreover, although Stewart s 
 formula is not open to the same objections as Reid s, yet it leaves 
 the vital question untouched. 
 
 No one doubts that we believe in the existence of an external 
 
 * In fact, Malebranche s Idealism, which is very similar to Berkeley s, is 
 founded on a theory of Perception almost identical with Reid s. 
 
622 REID. 
 
 world. Idealism never questions the fact. The only doubt is, 
 whether that belief be objectively as well as subjectively true. 
 To say that the belief in objective existence is a Fundamental 
 Law, is simply saying that we are so constituted that we are 
 forced to attribute external reality to our sensations. As well 
 say we are so constituted that fire applied to our bodies will give 
 us pain. We are so constituted. What then ? Does this ad 
 vance us one step ? Not one. We have still to seek some proof 
 of the laws of our constitution being the measure of the laws of 
 other existences still to seek how what is true of the subjective 
 must necessarily be true of the objective. 
 
 Thus, granting to Stewart all he claims, we see that he does 
 not attain to the heart of the question ; and, strictly speaking, 
 he does not touch Berkeley at all ; he only touches Hume. 
 For what answer can it be to Berkeley, to say that our Belief in 
 matter is a Fundamental Law, not to be questioned ? Berkeley 
 would reply: "Exactly; I said as much. I said that men be 
 lieved their senses, and believed that what they saw was out of 
 them. This is the law of human nature : God has so ordained 
 it. But that which men do not believe, is the existence of an 
 occult substance, an imaginary world lying underneath all ap 
 pearances. You do not mean to assert that the belief in this sub 
 stance is a Fundamental Law ? If you do, you must be mad." 
 Stewart s answer is thus shown to be quite beside the mark. 
 
 Reid constantly declares that no reason can be given for our 
 belief; it must be referred to an original instinctive principle of 
 our constitution, implanted in us for that express purpose. If 
 this be so, we ask, upon what pretence does Reid claim the 
 merit of having refuted Idealism and Skepticism by refuting the 
 ideal hypothesis? If instinct and not reason is to settle the 
 question, then has the ideal hypothesis nothing to do with it ; if 
 the refutation of the ideal hypothesis sufficed, then has instinct 
 nothing to do with it, " To talk of Dr. Reid," said the Quar 
 terly, in its review of Stewart s Second Dissertation, " as if his 
 writings had opposed a barrier to the prevalence of Skeptical 
 
KEID. 623 
 
 philosophy, is an evident mistake. Dr. Reid successfully refuted 
 the principles by which Berkeley and Hume endeavored to 
 establish their conclusions; but the conclusions themselves he 
 himself adopted as the very premises from which he reasons. 
 The impossibility of proving the existence of a material world 
 from * reason, or experience, or instruction, or habit, or any other 
 principle hitherto known to philosophers, is the argument and 
 the only argument by which he endeavors to force upon us his 
 theory of instinctive principles." 
 
 It appears, then, that inasmuch as Reid declares instinct to be 
 the only principle upon which we can found our belief in an ex 
 ternal world, his argument against Berkeley is trebly vicious. 
 First, because the belief was never questioned ; secondly, because 
 although we must act according to our instincts, such a neces 
 sity is no proof that our beliefs are true ; thirdly, because if in 
 stinct, and not reason, is to be the arbiter, the attack on the 
 ideal hypothesis is utterly beside the question. 
 
 Thus we see that, granting to Reid the glory he claims of 
 having destroyed the ideal hypothesis, he has only destroyed an 
 outpost, fancying it to be the fortress. A few words on his own 
 theory of perception may not be out of place here. 
 
 He justly enough declared the ideal hypothesis to be gratui 
 tous. We have no reason for supposing that the mind perceives 
 images of things instead of the things themselves. But he over 
 looks, or rather denies, the fact that we perceive things mediate 
 ly ; he says we perceive them immediately. His explanations 
 are contradictory and confused, but he repeats the assertion so 
 often, that there can be no doubt he meant to say we perceive 
 things immediately : the mind stands face to face with the thing, 
 and perceives it immediately, without any medium of ideas, 
 images, eidola, or the like. In this we believe him utterly in the 
 wrong ; his battle against " ideas" carried him too far. It is one 
 thing to say that ive are affected by the things, and not by images 
 of things ; and another thing to say that we perceive things im 
 mediately. The former is correct ; the latter is in direct contra- 
 
624: REID. 
 
 diction with, all we know of perception ; and Reid constantly 
 contradicts himself on the point. 
 
 "When I attend," he says, "as carefully as I can to what 
 passes in my mind, it appears evident that the very thing I saw 
 yesterday, and the fragrance I smelled, are now the immediate 
 objects of my mind when I remember it. ... Upon the strictest 
 attention, memory appears "to me to have the things that are 
 past, and not present ideas for its objects." 
 
 This is his position against the ideal hypothesis, which as 
 sumes that nothing is perceived but what is in the mind which 
 perceives it; that we do not really perceive things which are 
 external, but only certain images and pictures of them imprinted 
 on the mind. The position is untenable. The very thing, the 
 rose, of which he thinks, is not an immediate object at all : it is 
 elsewhere. The fragrance cannot even be recalled ; that is to 
 say, cannot befelt again, but only thought. All we can remem 
 ber is the fact of having been affected by the rose in a certain 
 manner : that affection we call fragrance ; we cannot recall the 
 affection. Reid could hardly, therefore, have meant what his 
 words literally express. Perhaps he meant, that when we think 
 of the rose and the fragrance, the object of which we think is 
 the rose, not an idea of the rose. But what a truism ! He 
 says, that " in memory the things that are past, and not present 
 ideas, are the objects of the mind." This is either a needless 
 truism or a falsism. Let us alter the sentence thus " In mem 
 ory the things thought of are not themselves present to the mind, 
 but the thoughts only are present to it." Reid would not dis 
 pute this could not dispute it : yet it is only a more guarded 
 statement of the ideal hypothesis ; it substitutes " thoughts" for 
 "ideas." He was misled by the ambiguity of the word " object," 
 which he uses as if meaning simply what the mind is thinking 
 of ; and of course the mind thinks of the thing, and not of the 
 idea. But the ideal hypothesis takes " object" to be that which 
 is immediately present to face to face with the mind, viz., an 
 idea, or thought ; and of course the mind thinks by its thoughts : 
 
REID. 625 
 
 it may think about the thing, but it is through the medium of 
 thought. 
 
 The difference is this : The Idealist says, that when things 
 affect us, our sensations are what we perceive, and not the things 
 producing those sensations. Reid says, we feel our sensations, 
 but therewith also we perceive the things. The Idealist further 
 says, that when we think of things, the immediate object face to 
 face with the mind is not a thing but an idea (thought). Reid 
 says the object is the very thing : which is either an absurdity, 
 or else does not differ from the ideal hypothesis. 
 
 We are quite ready to admit that the pretended separation 
 of thoughts from thinking, and the making thoughts "objects," 
 is vicious ; and therefore Reid s language is perhaps less objec 
 tionable. But we must confess that we see no other advantage 
 he gains over his adversaries. He does not pretend that our 
 sensations are at all like their causes ; nay, he fancies that he 
 destroys the ideal hypothesis by insisting on the want of resem 
 blance between matter and our sensations. He says, over and 
 over again, that the external world is in no respect like our sen 
 sations of it. " Indeed, no man can conceive any sensation to 
 resemble any known quality of bodies. Nor can any man show, 
 by any good argument, that all our sensations might not have 
 been as they are, though no body, nor quality of body, had ever 
 existed."* This granted, the question arises, How do you know 
 any thing of the external world ? Reid answers, " It is owing to 
 an original instinct implanted in us for that purpose." Push the 
 question further, drive him into a corner, and bid him tell you 
 what that instinct enables you to know of matter, and he will 
 answer, " In sensation there is suggested to us a cause of that 
 sensation in the quality of a body capable of producing it. This 
 is Locke s view. 
 
 The great point in Reid s theory is, that with our sensations 
 are joined perceptions. "The senses have a double province," he 
 
 Inquiry, ch. v. 2. 
 
 27 
 
626 REID. 
 
 says ; " they furnish us with a variety of sensations, some pleas 
 ant, others painful, and others indifferent; at the same time they 
 give us a conception, and an invincible belief of the existence of 
 external objects. This conception and belief, which nature pro 
 duces by means of the senses, we call perception"* This, upon 
 which so much stress is laid that philosophers are said to have 
 been always in error because they overlooked it, we regard as a 
 remarkable instance of Reid s want of subtlety. Neither Berke 
 ley nor Hume denied the fact of our belief in the externality of 
 the causes of sensations : Berkeley denied that these causes had 
 an occult substratum ; Hume denied that any reason could be 
 given for our belief in their externality. What force then has 
 " Perception ?" It is nothing more than that " belief," accord 
 ing to Reid ; though to call perception a belief is, to say the 
 least, a somewhat inaccurate use of language. But grant all he 
 wishes, and you grant that with our sensations there is an ac 
 companying belief in the existence of an external cause of those 
 sensations. Berkeley would answer, " Very true ; but that cause 
 is not unthinking matter." Hume would answer, " Very true ; 
 but we can give no reason for our belief; we can know nothing 
 of the cause." Reid can only retort, " Perception is belief :" a 
 retort which has been deemed satisfactory by his school ; which 
 really is only an abuse of language ; and which moreover has 
 the further disadvantage of being available only as an argument 
 against Hume ; for against Berkeley it is powerless. If percep 
 tion is belief, and we perceive an external world, Hume may be 
 answered when he says we have no grounds for our belief. But 
 Berkeley is not answered. He says that we do believe in an ex 
 ternal world ; but that world is not a world of unthinking mat 
 ter it is a world of divine agency. Reid would not pretend 
 that in sensation or perception we can distinguish the nature of 
 the causes which affect us ; he constantly tells us that we can 
 not know what those causes are, but only that there are causes. 
 
 Essays on Intellectual Powers, ii. ch. xvii. 
 
REID. 627 
 
 As long as the noumenal world is removed from our inspection, 
 so long must Berkeley remain unrelated by any theory of per 
 ception. The error of his system, as we endeavored to show, is 
 in the gratuitousness of his assumption with respect to the imme 
 diate agency of the Deity. 
 
 Reid says, that if we grant Berkeley s premise viz. " we can 
 have no conception of any material thing which is not like some 
 sensation in our minds" then are the conclusions of Idealism 
 and Skepticism unanswerable. This premise therefore he dis 
 putes. Now attend to his challenge : " This I would therefore 
 humbly propose, as an experiment um crucis, by which the ideal 
 system must stand or fall ; and it brings the matter to a short 
 issue : Extension, figure, and motion may, any one or all of them, 
 be taken for the subject of this experiment. Either they are 
 ideas of sensation, or they are not. If any one of them can be 
 shown to be an idea of sensation, or to have the least resemblance 
 to any sensation, I lay my hand upon my mouth and give up all 
 pretence to reconcile reason to common sense in this matter, 
 and must suffer the ideal skepticism to triumph."* It was not 
 till after repeated perusals that we caught the significance of 
 this passage ; and are not quite positive that we have understood 
 it now. To admit it to have any force at all, we must understand 
 " ideas of sensation" as " images of sensation." Certainly, exten 
 sion is no copy of any one sensation. But if Reid means to say 
 that the idea of extension is not the result of complex sensations 
 which a body excites in us if he means to say that the idea 
 of extension is not an abstract idea by which we express a cer 
 tain property of bodies, a property known to us only through sen 
 sation then must we cease all dispute, and leave him in pos 
 session of his wonderful discovery. 
 
 Reid s theory of perception may be thus stated : External 
 objects occasion certain sensations in us ; with these sensations 
 we perceive the existence of certain qualities capable of producing 
 
 * Inquiry, ch. v. 7. 
 
628 REID. 
 
 them : these he distinguishes into primary and secondary. The 
 primary, he says, we perceive immediately j the second, mediately. 
 
 And this is the theory by which, with the aid of an " original 
 instinct" (some instincts then are acquired ?), he is supposed to 
 have refuted Idealism. Any one may see that Berkeley might 
 readily have relinquished his ideal hypothesis, and accepted 
 Reid s, with perfect security for Idealism. The "unknown 
 causes," which Reid calls "qualities," Berkeley calls "divine 
 laws." The difference is merely nominal. 
 
 This much with respect to Idealism. With respect to Hume, 
 the theory is almost as harmless. Hume would say, "All that 
 is given in sensation is sensation ; your " perception" (which you 
 call belief) of qualities amounts to nothing more than a suppo 
 sition a necessary one, I admit; but I have always said that 
 our belief in external causes of sensation was an irresistible preju 
 dice ; and my argument is, that we have nothing but the preju 
 dice as a proof reason, we have none." 
 
 Finally, with respect to Locke, it will in the first place be seen 
 that Reid s solution is neither more nor less than that given by 
 Locke ; in the second place, the boasted refutation of the ideal 
 hypothesis is always supposed by Reid s school to be a refutation 
 of Locke s view of the origin of knowledge ; and this is a very 
 great mistake. Because Berkeley and Hume pushed Locke s 
 system to conclusions from which he wisely shrank, it has been 
 generally supposed that his account of the origin of our knowl 
 edge is indissolubly bound up with the ideal hypothesis, by it to 
 stand or fall. This probably is the meaning of the vulgar error 
 that Locke s view of knowledge leads to atheism. It led to 
 Hume. In disproof of Reid s supposition we answer, firstly, 
 Idealism is not iudissolubly bound up with the ideal hypothesis, 
 although Berkeley may have adopted that hypothesis ; secondly, 
 Locke s system is altogether independent of the hypothesis, and 
 in his Review of the doctrines of Malebranche he very distinctly 
 and emphatically denies it. The force of this observation will 
 better be appreciated when it is remembered that although 
 
REID. 629 
 
 Locke s language is notoriously unguarded and wavering, all his 
 reasonings are founded on the use of the word " ideas" as synony 
 mous with " notions" or thoughts." 
 
 In conclusion, although we think it has been shown that the 
 Common-Sense Philosophy egregiously failed in answering 
 Berkeley and Hume, it was not without service by directing the 
 attention of mankind more exclusively to Psychol6gy. The 
 phrases so complacently used by Dugald Stewart to express the 
 nature of his inquiries, namely " inductive metaphysics" and 
 " experimental philosophy of the mind," are perhaps objection 
 able ; but few will deny the value of his Elements, and of Brown s 
 Lectures, works so popular as to need no further mention here. 
 The Analysis of the Mind, by the late James Mill, which may 
 be regarded as the development of Hartley s doctrine, stripped 
 of its physical hypothesis, is less known ; but it is a work of 
 great value, and would long ago have been as popular had it 
 been written in a more engaging manner. No one interested in 
 these inquiries should omit studying it.* 
 
 The philosophy of the Scotch School was a protest against 
 Skepticism. It failed ; but another protest was made in Ger 
 many, and on philosophical principles. That also failed, but in 
 another way ; and the attempt was altogether more worthy of 
 Philosophy. The reader foresees that we allude to Kant. 
 
 * Since the first edition of this work, Sir W. Hamilton has published an 
 edition of Eeid, illustrated and enriched by notes and dissertations of incom 
 parable erudition and acuteness. Respecting the interpretation Sir William 
 gives to Reid s doctrines, I will only say that he has shown what a subtle 
 mind can read into the philosophy of common sense ; but he has not in the 
 least produced the conviction in me of Reid s having meant what the illus 
 trious successor supposed him to have meant. At the same time I will add 
 that the limits of my work having restricted me to the consideration of Reid s 
 contributions to Philosophy (in the narrow sense of the term), I have not 
 done justice to his many excellent qualities as a teacher. His works are well 
 worthy of diligent study, and their spirit is eminently scientific. 
 
EIGHTH EPOCH. 
 
 RECURRENCE TO THE FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION RESPECTING 
 THE ORIGIN OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 KANT. 
 
 I. LIFE OF KANT. 
 
 IMMANUEL KANT was born at Konigsberg, in Prussia, 22d 
 April, 1724. His family was originally Scotch, a circumstance 
 which, when taken in conjunction with his philosophical con 
 nection with Hume, has some little interest. His father was a 
 saddler, a man of tried integrity. His mother was somewhat 
 severe, but upright, speaking the truth, and exacting it. Kant 
 was early bred in a love of truth, and had before him such ex 
 amples of moral worth as must materially have contributed to 
 form his own inflexible principles. 
 
 Madame de Stael has remarked, that there is scarcely another 
 example, except in Grecian history, of a life so rigorously philo 
 sophical as that of Kant. He lived to a great age, and never 
 once quitted the snows of murky Konigsberg. There he passed 
 a calm and happy existence, meditating, professing, and writing. 
 He had mastered all the sciences; he had studied languages, 
 and cultivated literature. He lived and died a type of the Ger 
 man Professor : he rose, smoked, drank his coffee, wrote, lec 
 tured, took his daily walk always at precisely the same hour. 
 The cathedral clock, it was said, was not more punctual in its 
 movements than Immanuel Kant* 
 
 * He mentions having once been kept two or three days from his pro 
 menade by reading Rousseau s Ernile, which had just appeared. 
 
LIFE OF KANT. 631 
 
 He was early sent to the University. There he began and 
 there he ended his career. Mathematics and physics principally 
 occupied his attention at first; and the success with which he 
 pursued these studies soon manifested itself in various publica 
 tions. He predicted the existence of the planet Uranus ; and 
 Herschel himself, after discovering it, admitted Kant s having 
 first announced it. 
 
 But none of these publications attracted much attention till 
 the renown of his Critique of Pure Reason had made every 
 thing produced by him a matter of interest. Nor did the 
 Critique itself attract notice at first. The novelty of its views, 
 the repulsiveness of its terminology and style, for some time ob 
 scured its real value. This value was at length discovered and 
 made known. All Germany rang with praises of the new phi 
 losophy. Almost every " chair" was filled by a Kantist. Num 
 berless books, and not a few pamphlets, came rapidly from the 
 press, either attacking or defending the principles of the Critical 
 Philosophy. Kant had likened himself to Copernicus. The 
 disciples likened him both to Copernicus and Newton ; for he 
 had not only changed the whole science of Metaphysics, as 
 Copernicus had changed the science of Astronomy, but had also 
 consummated the science he originated. 
 
 The Critique was, he tells us, the product of twelve years 
 meditation. It was written in less than five months. These 
 two facts sufficiently explain the defects of its composition. In 
 his long meditations he had elaborated his system, divided and 
 subdivided it, and completed its heavy and useless terminology. 
 In the rapidity of composition he had no time for the graces of 
 style, nor for that all-important clearness of structure which (de 
 pending as it does upon the due gradation of the parts, and upon 
 the clearness with which the parts themselves are conceived) 
 may be regarded as the great desideratum of a philosophical 
 style. 
 
 But in spite of these defects defects which would have been 
 pardoned by no public but a German public the Critique be- 
 
632 KANT. 
 
 came celebrated, and its author had to endure the penalty of 
 celebrity. He was pestered with numerous calls of curious 
 strangers, who would not leave Konigsberg without having seen 
 him. To the curious were added the admiring. Enthusiastic 
 scholars undertook long journeys to see their great master. 
 Professor Reuss one day walked into his study, saying brusquely 
 that "he had travelled a hundred and sixty miles to see and 
 speak with Kant." The visits became so numerous, that in the 
 latter part of his life he contented himself with merely showing 
 himself at the door of his study for a few minutes. 
 
 Kant never spoke of his own system, and from his house the 
 subject was entirely banished. He scarcely read any of the at 
 tacks on his works : he had enough of Philosophy in his study 
 and lecture-room, and was glad to escape from it to the topics of 
 the day. 
 
 He died on the 12th of February, 1804, in the eightieth year 
 of his age, retaining his powers almost to the last. He latterly, 
 during his illness, talked much of his approaching end. "I do 
 not fear death," he said, " for I know how to die. I assure you 
 that if I knew this night was to be my last, I would raise my 
 hands and say, * God be praised ! The case would be far differ 
 ent if I had ever caused the misery of any of his creatures." 
 
 For a picture of Kant s daily habits, and many interesting 
 traits of his character, the reader will do well to look at De 
 Quincey s " Last Days of Immanuel Kant," in the third volume 
 of his Miscellanies. I cannot find space for such details; nor 
 for more than a passing mention of Kant s relation to Sweden- 
 borg, of which such unjustifiable use is often made by the ad 
 mirers of the latter, who proclaim, with emphasis, that Kant 
 testified to the truth of Swedenborg s clairvoyance. He did 
 nothing of the kind. In his Letter on Swcdcnborg* he narrates 
 two of the reported cases of Swedeuborg s clairvoyance, and says 
 
 * Kkine AnfhropologiscJie ScJiriften (Theil vii. p. 5, of Rosenkrantz and 
 Schubert s ed.). 
 
KANT S HISTORICAL POSITION. 633 
 
 he knows not how to disprove them, they being supported by 
 such respectable testimony ; but he nowhere testifies to them 
 himself; and in the Anthropologic, 35 and 37,* his energetic 
 contempt for Swedenborgianisin and all other Schwdrmerei is 
 unequivocally expressed. 
 
 II. KANT S HISTORICAL POSITION. 
 
 There is a notion, somewhat widely spread through England, 
 that Kant was a " dreamer." He is regarded as a sort of Mystic ; 
 and the epithet " transcendental" is made to express the superb 
 contempt which common sense feels for the vagaries of philoso 
 phers. The -"dreams of the Kantian philosophy," and "tran 
 scendental nonsense," are phrases which, once popular, now less 
 so, are still occasionally to be met with in quarters where one 
 little expects to find them. 
 
 We are bound to say that, whatever the errors of Kantism, 
 " dreaminess" or " mysticism" are the last qualities to be predi 
 cated of it. If its terminology render it somewhat obscure and 
 repulsive, no sooner is the language comprehended, than all ob 
 scurity falls away, and a system of philosophy is revealed, which 
 for rigor, clearness, and, above all, intelligibility, surpasses by 
 many degrees systems hitherto considered easy enough of com 
 prehension. 
 
 Convinced that the system of Kant is plainly intelligible, and 
 finding that neither Kant himself, nor the generality of his ex 
 positors, have succeeded in overcoming the repulsiveness of neol 
 ogisms and a cumbrous terminology,! our task must obviously 
 
 * Kleine Anthropologisclie Scliriften, zweite Abtheil. p. 89 sq. 
 
 t Since this was written, we have read the work of Victor Cousin, Lemons 
 sur Kant, vol. i. Paris, 1842. (Translated into English by Mr. Henderson, 
 London, 1854.) It is not only one of the best expositions we have seen ; it 
 is also the most intelligible. The chapter on Kant in M. Barchou de Pen- 
 hoen s useful work, Histoire de la Philos. AlUmande depuis Leibnitz jusqti a 
 Hegel, 2 vols. Paris, 1836, may also be read with advantage ; though incom 
 plete, it is intelligible. Also Morell s History of Speculative Philos. in the 
 Nineteenth Century. Headers of German will do well to read Chalybaus s 
 Historische Entwickelung der Spcatlativen Philos. wn Kant bis Hegel (Dres- 
 
 27* 
 
634: KANT. 
 
 be to give an exposition of the system, as far as possible, in ordi 
 nary philosophical language ; and, by exhibiting the historical 
 position which it occupies, connect with it speculations already 
 familiar to the reader. 
 
 From Spinoza to Kant the great question had been this : 
 Have we, or have we not, any Ideas which can be called necessa 
 rily, absolutely true ? A question which resolved itself into this : 
 Have we, or have we not, any Ideas independent of Experience ? 
 
 The answer given by the majority of thinkers was, that we 
 had no ideas independent of Experience ; and Hume had shown 
 that Experience itself was utterly incompetent to assure us of 
 any truth not simply relative. 
 
 Experience irresistibly led to Skepticism. The dilemma, there 
 fore, which we signalized in the First Crisis of modern Philoso 
 phy, again presented itself: Spinozism or Skepticism ? The 
 labors of so many thinkers had only brought the question round 
 to its starting-point. But Spinozism was alarming Skepticism 
 scarcely less so. Before submitting to be gored by either horn 
 of the dilemma, men looked about to see if there was no escape 
 possible. A temporary refuge was found by the Scotch School 
 in Common Sense, and by Kant in Criticism. 
 
 Kant called his system the Critical Philosophy. His object 
 was to examine into the nature of this Experience which led to 
 Skepticism. While men were agreed that Experience was the 
 source of all knowledge, Kant asked himself, What is this Ex 
 perience ? What are its Elements ? 
 
 The problem he set himself to solve was but a new aspect of 
 
 den, 1843). (It has been twice translated into English : by Mr. Tulk and by 
 Mr. Edersheim.) Miohelet s Geschichte der letzten Systeme der Philos. in 
 Deutschland von Kant bis Hegel (Berlin, 1837), is a learned and valuable 
 work, but can be read only by the initiated. More generally useful than 
 any of these is the Hist, de la Philos. Allemande depnis Kant jusqtSa Hegel, 
 by J. Wilm, Paris, 1856. Kant s Critique of Pure Reason has been trans 
 lated by Mr. Meiklejohn (Bohris Philosophical Library, 1855) with so much 
 accuracy and ability that the translation may be read with entire confidence; 
 which can rarely be said of translations from the German. 
 
KANT S HISTORICAL POSITION. 635 
 
 the problem of Locke s Essay. On this deep and intricate ques 
 tion of human knowledge two opposite parties had been formed 
 the one declaring that all our knowledge was given in Expe 
 rience, and that all the materials were derived from Sensation, 
 and Reflection upon those materials ; the other declaring that 
 Sensation only furnished a portion of our Experience. This sec 
 ond party maintained that there were Elements of knowledge 
 which not only were never derived from Sensation, but which 
 absolutely transcended all sensation. Such, for instance, is the 
 idea of Substance. Experience only informs us of qualities : to 
 these qualities we add a substratum which we call Substance ; 
 and this idea of a substratum, which we are compelled to add, 
 Locke himself confesses we never gained through any sensation 
 of matter. Other ideas, such as Causality, Infinity, Eternity, 
 etc., are also independent of Experience : ergo, says this school, 
 antecedent to it. 
 
 In the course of inquiry, the untenableness of the theory of 
 innate ideas had become apparent. Descartes himself, when 
 closely pressed by his adversaries, gave it up. Still the fact of 
 our possessing ideas apparently not derivable from experience, 
 remained ; and this fact was to be explained. To explain it, 
 Leibnitz asserted that although all knowledge begins with Sensa 
 tion, it is not all derived from Sensation ; the mind furnishes its 
 quota ; and what it furnishes has the character of universality, 
 necessity, consequently of truth, stamped on it. This doctrine, 
 slightly modified, is popularly known as the doctrine of " original 
 instincts" of " Fundamental Laws of Belief." 
 
 Kant also recognized the fact insisted on by the adversaries 
 of the Sensational School ; and this fact he set himself carefully 
 to examine. His first object was therefore a Criticism of the 
 operations of the mind. 
 
 Kant considered that his conception of a purely critical phi 
 losophy was entirely original.* No one before him had thought 
 
 * And Sir W. Hamilton repeats the statement : Discussions, p. 15. 
 
636 KANT. 
 
 of thus subjecting Reason itself to a thoroughly critical investi 
 gation, in order to reach answers to such questions as : Are a 
 priori synthetic judgments possible ? Is a science of Metaphys 
 ics possible ? Certainly no one had isolated the a priori ele 
 ments of knowledge from those given in Experience, as Kant 
 isolated them, to build a system thereon ; but the whole tend 
 ency of speculative development since Hobbes, had been, as 
 we have seen, towards the investigation of the grounds of cer 
 titude. 
 
 On interrogating his Consciousness, Kant found that neither 
 of the two ordinary explanations would account for the phenom 
 ena : the abstract Ideas we have, such as Time, Space, Causal 
 ity, etc., could not be resolved into Experience alone : nor, on 
 the other hand, although a priori, could they be supposed ab 
 solutely independent of Experience, since they are, as it were, 
 only the forms (necessary conditions) of our Experience. 
 
 There are not two sources of Knowledge, said he : on the one 
 side, external objects, and on the other, human understanding. 
 Knowledge has but one source, and that is the union of object 
 and subject. Thus, water is the union of oxygen and hydrogen ; 
 but you cannot say that water has two causes, oxygen and hy 
 drogen ; it has only one cause, namely, the union of the two. 
 
 In this conception the existence of two distinct factors is as 
 sumed. " That all our knowledge begins with Experience," he 
 says, "there can be no doubt. For how is it possible that the 
 faculty of cognition should be awakened into exercise otherwise 
 than by means of objects which affect our senses, and partly of 
 themselves produce representations ( Vorstellungeri), partly rouse 
 our powers of understanding into activity, to compare, to con 
 nect, or to separate these, and so to convert the raw material of 
 our sensuous impressions into a knowledge of objects which is 
 called Experience ? In respect of time, therefore, no knowledge 
 of ours is antecedent to Experience, but begins with it. But 
 although all our knowledge begins with Experience, it by no 
 means follows that all arises out of Experience. For, on the con- 
 
KANT S HISTORICAL POSITION. 637 
 
 trary, it is quite possible that our empirical knowledge (Erfahr- 
 unyserkenntniss) is a compound of that which we receive through 
 impressions, and that which the faculty of cognition supplies 
 from itself (sensuous impressions giving merely the occasion), an 
 addition which we cannot distinguish from the original element 
 given by sense, till long practice has made us attentive to and 
 skilful in separating it. It is therefore a question which requires 
 close investigation, and is not to be answered at first sight 
 whether there exists a knowledge altogether independent of Ex 
 perience, and even of all sensuous impressions."* 
 
 To investigate this is the purpose of Criticism. 
 
 The whole world is to us a series of Phenomena. Are these 
 Appearances the production of the Mind to which they appear ; 
 or are they the pure presentation of the things themselves ? 
 Idealism or Realism ? Neither ; yet both. The Mind and the 
 object co-operating produce the Appearance or sensuous impres 
 sion. In their union Perception is effectuated. 
 
 The Mind has certain materials furnished it, and on these 
 materials it imposes certain forms or conditions of its own. These 
 forms alone make perception possible, since they constitute the 
 modes of the mind s operation. If we had only sensations that 
 is, supposing objects acted upon us, and we did not also act upon 
 them the result would be no more than that of the wind play 
 ing on the ^Eolian harp ; Experience would be impossible. To 
 make Experience possible, the mind must grasp objects in a syn 
 thesis of the objects and the forms of the perceptive power. 
 
 Kant s Criticism was directed against Locke on the oiie hand, 
 in establishing that we have ideas independent of Experience ; 
 and against Hume on the other, in establishing that these ideas 
 have a character of universality, necessity, and irresistibility. 
 But and the point is important his Criticism proved that 
 these ideas, although universal and certain, could not be called 
 absolutely true : they were only subjectively true. This was fall- 
 
 * Kritilc, Einleitung (Translation, p. 1). 
 
638 KANT. 
 
 ing back into Hume s position ; since although Hume called be 
 lief in causality the effect of habit, and Kant called it a law of 
 the mind, yet both agreed in denying to it any objective truth ; 
 both agreed that a knowledge of things per se was impossible. 
 
 We regard the result of Kant s investigation of the elements 
 of Thought as nothing less than a scientific basis for Skepticism. 
 He likens his philosophical reform to the reform introduced into 
 Astronomy by Copernicus.* Finding the labors of men unsatis 
 factory, Copernicus bethought him that perhaps success might 
 crown his efforts if he shifted his ground, if, instead of assuming 
 that the sun turned round the earth, he were to assume that the 
 earth turned round the sun. So Kant says, that the ordinary 
 assumption of our knowledge following the order of external ob 
 jects seemed to him better if reversed, and if we were to assume 
 that the objects obeyed the laws of our mental constitution. And 
 he calls his system critical, because it is founded on an examina 
 tion of our cognitive faculties. Both the name and the compar 
 ison appear to us erroneous. An examination of the cognitive 
 faculties was, as we have often said, the great topic of philo 
 sophical speculation, and although the examination of Kant 
 differed somewhat from every other in result, it in nowise differ 
 ed in method. Copernicus positively changed the point of view. 
 Kant did nothing of the kind : his attempt to deduce the laws of 
 the phenomenal world from the laws of mind, was little more 
 than the attempt of Descartes to deduce the world from Con 
 sciousness ; it is the same as the attempts of Leibnitz and Berke 
 ley in method ; and the result is very much the result obtained 
 by Hume, namely, that we can know nothing but our own ideas, 
 we can never know things per se. Kant, after analyzing the 
 operations of the mind, discovered indeed certain principles of 
 certitude ; but he admitted that those principles could not be 
 applied to things beyond the Mind ; and that all within the 
 sphere of our cognition was no more than phenomena]. He re- 
 
 * See the celebrated second Preface to the JfrUik. 
 
639 
 
 views his investigation, and then, declaring that he has gone the 
 round of the domain of human Understanding and measured it 
 exactly, he is still forced to admit that that domain is only an 
 island. Nature has assigned to it invariable limits. It is the 
 empire of Truth ; but it is surrounded by a stormy and illimita 
 ble sea, upon which we discover nothing but illusions. There, 
 on that sea, the navigator, deceived by masses of ice which ap 
 pear and disappear successively before him, believing that at 
 every moment he is about to discover land, wanders without re 
 pose, guided only by one hope ; he is the plaything of the stormy 
 waves, always forming new plans, always preparing himself for 
 new experiences, which he cannot renounce, and yet which he 
 can never obtain.* 
 
 To the Skeptic Kant says, " No : experience is not a deceit ; 
 human Understanding has its fixed laws, and those laws are true." 
 
 To the Dogmatist he says, " But this Understanding can never 
 know Things per se. It is occupied solely with its own Ideas. 
 It perceives only the Appearances of Things. How would it be 
 possible to know Noumena ? By stripping them of the forms 
 which our Sensibility and Understanding have impressed upon 
 them (i. e. by making them cease to be Appearances). But to 
 strip them of these forms, we must annihilate Consciousness we 
 must substitute for our Sensibility and Understanding, a faculty, 
 or faculties, capable of perceiving Things per se. This, it is obvi 
 ous, we cannot do. Our only means of communication with 
 objects are precisely this Sensibility and this Understanding, 
 which give to objects the forms under which we know them." 
 
 To the Dogmatist, therefore, Kant s reply is virtually the same 
 as Hume s. He proves that the Understanding, from the very 
 nature of its constitution,, cannot know Things per se. The 
 question then arises, Have we any other Faculty capable of 
 knowing Things per se ? The answer is decisive, We have no 
 such Faculty. 
 
 * Kritik, b. i. cap. iii. 
 
640 KANT. 
 
 The difference between Hume and Kant, when deeply consid 
 ered, is this : Hume said that the Understanding was treach 
 erous, and, as such, it rendered Philosophy impossible. Kant 
 said that the Understanding was not treacherous, but limited ; 
 it was to be trusted as far as it went, but it could not go far 
 enough ; it was so circumscribed, that Philosophy was impos 
 sible. 
 
 This difference, slight as it may appear, led to important dif 
 ferences in the application of Kant s principles. The mendacity 
 of Consciousness maintained by Hume, led him to utter Skep 
 ticism in Philosophy and in Religion, as subjects on which reason 
 could not pronounce. The veracity of Consciousness (as far as 
 it went) maintained by Kant, was a firm and certain basis, though 
 a limited one, on which to build Religion and Morals, as we shall 
 see hereafter. Kant s critics do not in general appear to be aware 
 of the consequences resulting from his exposition of the veracity 
 of the Understanding. Yet, as the battle was confessedly between 
 him and Hume, it might have been suspected that he would not 
 have left the field entirely to his antagonist. 
 
 The reader is, we trust, now prepared to follow with interest 
 the leading points of Kant s analysis of the mind. In giving an 
 indication of the result of that analysis, before giving the anal 
 ysis itself, we hope to have so far interested the reader, that he 
 will read the analysis with sharpened attention ; seeing whither 
 dry details are leading, he will not deem them dry. 
 
 And first of the famous question : How are synthetic judg 
 ments, a priori, possible ? This is the nut Kant has to crack with 
 Hume. But first let us understand Kant s language. He divides 
 all our judgments into two classes, analytic and synthetic. The 
 analytic judgment is, as it were, but a writing out of our expe 
 rience. When we say that a triangle is a figure with three sides, 
 or that a body is extended, we are judging analytically ; i. e. we 
 are adding nothing to our conception of body or triangle, we are 
 only analyzing it. The synthetic judgment, on the contrary, is 
 when we predicate some attribute of a thing, the conception oi 
 
KANTS HISTORICAL POSITION. 
 
 which does not involve that attribute : such as that a straight 
 line is the shortest road between two points. 
 
 There are two classes of synthetic judgments : those a pos 
 teriori and those a priori. The former result from experience : 
 e. g. gold is ductile. We must absolutely know that gold is 
 ductile, before we can predicate ductility ^f gold. But the 
 a priori judgments are independent of experience : e. g. a straight 
 line is the shortest road between two points ; which experience 
 may confirm, but which is recognized as true, independent of 
 experience ; above all, it has a character of universality which 
 experience could not- bestow; for though experience may show 
 us how a straight line is, in many instances, the shortest road 
 between two points, it cannot prove that there is, absolutely, no 
 shorter road in any case. 
 
 Hume declared that our experience of Cause and Effect was 
 simply an experience of antecedence and sequence ; and that our 
 attributing a cause to any effect was a mere matter of habit. 
 
 True, replied Kant, in the fact of antecedence and sequence, 
 causation is not given ; but inasmuch as causation is irresistibly 
 believed in, the idea must have some source. If it is not given 
 in the things observed, then must we seek it in the observer. In 
 this fact of causation what have we ? We have first antecedence 
 and sequence ; we have next an attribute of causation predicated 
 of them. The first is given in our experience ; the second is 
 not given in our experience, but is independent of it. This sec 
 ond is therefore an a priori synthetic judgment. " It must either 
 have an a priori basis in the understanding, or be rejected as a 
 chimera. For it demands that something, A, should be of such 
 a nature that something else, B, should follow from it necessarily, 
 and according to an absolutely universal law. We may certainly 
 collect from phenomena a law, according to wm ch this or that 
 usually happens, but the element of necessity is not to be found 
 in it. Hence it is evident, that to the synthesis of cause and 
 effect belongs a dignity which is utterly wanting in any empir 
 ical synthesis *, for it is no mere mechanical synthesis, by means 
 
642 KANT. 
 
 of addition, but a dynamical one ; that is to say, the effect is not 
 to be cogitated as merely annexed to the cause, but as posited by 
 and through the cause, and resulting from it."* This, therefore, 
 is an a priori judgment. By means of such judgments we are 
 not only able to say that one thing is the cause of another, but 
 also we are enabled to make this wide generalization : Every ef 
 fect must have a cause. Here, as in the proposition of a straight 
 line being the shortest road between two points, we have an idea 
 not given in experience, and an idea, the universality of which, 
 experience could never verify. 
 
 We are thus led to assert that the Mind does add something 
 to sense-experience ; and that what it adds is not only inde 
 pendent of experience, but has the further character of certi- 
 titude and universality, which experience can never claim. The 
 certainty of experience is always limited ; it never can have 
 the character of universality, however rich it may be ; for after 
 a thousand years it may be proved erroneous. Thus, it was uni 
 versally believed that all crows were black : a wide experience 
 had established it yet white crows were found ; and experience 
 was forced to acknowledge it had been in error. So with the 
 motion of the sun, once universally believed, because founded 
 upon experience. That which is to be held as irresistibly true, 
 which shall be universally and necessarily maintained by all 
 men, cannot have its origin in Experience, but in the constitution 
 of the Mind. Hence the truth of Mathematics ; not, as is so often 
 said, because it is an abstraction of Forms and Relations, but 
 because it is founded on the necessary laws of our mental con 
 stitution. 
 
 In these synthetic judgments, a priori, there is a ground of 
 Certitude. The veracity of human reason reposes on that Cer 
 titude. Although therefore, says Kant, we can never know 
 whether our conceptions of things, per sc, are adequate, we can 
 know what conceptions all men must form of them ; although 
 
 * Kritik, b. i c. ii. 9 (Transl., p. 76). 
 
643 
 
 we cannot know if our knowledge has any objective truth, we 
 can be certain of its subjective truth. 
 
 A principle of Certitude having been found, nothing further 
 was necessary for its confirmation than to ascertain in how far 
 this principle could be the basis of a science. Kant showed 
 that it formed the basis of all science. People do not dispute, 
 said he, respecting Mathematics or Logic, or the higher branches 
 of Physics ; and if they do dispute, they end by agreeing. But 
 in Metaphysics, disputes are endless. Why is this ? Simply 
 because Logic, Mathematics, and the higher branches of Physics 
 are Sciences of Generalities; they do not occupy themselves 
 with variable and contingent, but with the invariable and uni 
 versal properties. Logic is composed of rules which are reduci 
 ble to certain self-evident propositions. These propositions, re 
 duced to their principles, are nothing more than the laws of the 
 human mind. These laws are invariable because human nature 
 is invariable. Mathematics is, in the same way, the study of 
 certain invariable properties, which do not exist in nature, but 
 which are conceptions of the mind, upon data furnished by na 
 ture, abstraction being made of all that is variable and uncertain 
 in those data : e. g. the essential properties of an equilateral tri 
 angle, abstraction being made of any body which is triangular, 
 and only the properties themselves being considered. 
 
 In physics, since the time of Galileo, men have seen that they 
 are judges, not the passive disciples, of nature. They propose an 
 a priori problem ; and, to solve this problem, they investigate 
 nature, they make experiments, and these experiments are di 
 rected by reason. It is reason that they follow, even when oper 
 ating on nature; it is the principle of that reason which they 
 seek in nature, and it is only in becoming rational that physics 
 become a science. Again we find science reposing on the laws 
 of the mind ! 
 
 Thus, the laws which form the basis of logic, mathematics, 
 and physics, are nothing less than the laws of the human mind. 
 It is, therefore, in the nature of the human mind that the certi- 
 
644 KANT. 
 
 tude of all the sciences is to be found ; and the principles of 
 this certitude are universality and necessity. 
 
 Psychology thus becomes the groundwork of all Philosophy ; 
 to Kant s Psychology we now address ourselves. 
 
 III. KANT S PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 It has been shown that experience does not furnish the whole 
 of our knowledge ; 
 
 That what it does furnish has the character of contingency 
 and variability ; 
 
 That the mind also furnishes an element, which element is an 
 inseparable condition of all knowledge; without it knowledge 
 could not be ; 
 
 That this element has the character of universality and necessity. 
 
 And that the principle of all certitude is precisely this univer 
 sality and necessity. 
 
 It now remains for us to examine the nature of the mind, and 
 to trace the distinctive characters of each element of knowledge, 
 the objective and the subjective. Instead of saying, with the 
 Sensational School, All our knowledge is derived from the senses, 
 Kant said, Half of all our knowledge is derived from the senses : 
 and the half which has another origin, is indissolubly bound up 
 with the former lialf. Thus, instead of saying with the Carte 
 sians, that, besides the ideas acquired through the sense, we have 
 also certain ideas which are innate, and irrespective of sense ; 
 Kant said all our ideas have a double origin, and this twofold 
 co-operation of object and subject is indispensable to all knowl 
 edge. 
 
 Let us clearly understand Kant s object. He calls his great 
 work the Critique of the Pure Reason. It is an examination of 
 the mind, with a view to detect itsjz jon ori. principles. He calls 
 these pure because they are a priori, because they are above and 
 beyond experience. Having demonstrated that the mind has 
 some pure principles has some ideas which were never given in 
 experience, and must therefore be h priori he was led to inquire 
 
645 
 
 how many the mind possessed. In his Critique therefore we 
 are only to look for the exposition of a priori principles. He 
 does not trouble himself with investigating the nature of percep 
 tion ; he contents himself with the fact that we have sensations, 
 and with the fact that we have ideas whose origin is not sensuous. 
 
 The Non-ego and the Ego, the objective world and the sub 
 jective mind, being placed face to face, the two co-operate to. 
 produce knowledge. We are however here only concerned with 
 the subject. What do we discover in it? First, a Sensibility 
 a power of being affected by objects ; this is what Kant calls 
 the Receptivity of the mind : it is entirely passive. By it the 
 representations of objects (i. e. sensations) are received. Second 
 ly, an understanding (Verstand^a. faculty of knowing objects 
 by means of the representations furnished by our Sensibility : 
 this is an active faculty ; in antithesis to Sensibility, it is a 
 Spontaneity. 
 
 But our Sensibility, although passive, has its laws or con 
 ditions ; and, to discover these conditions, we must separate that 
 which is diverse and multiple in our sensations from that which 
 remains invariably the same. The objects are numerous and 
 various ; the subject remains invariable. Kant calls the multi 
 ple and diverse element by the name of material ; the invariable 
 element by the name of form. If therefore we would discover 
 the primary conditions of our Sensibility, we must discover the 
 invariable elements in all sensations. 
 
 There are two invariable elements Space and Time. They 
 are the forms of our Sensibility. Space is the form of our Sen 
 sibility, as external; Time the form both as internal and ex 
 ternal. 
 
 Analyze sensations of external things as you will, you can 
 never divest them of the form of Space. You cannot conceive 
 bodies without Space; but you can conceive Space without 
 bodies. If all matter were annihilated, you must still conceive 
 Space to exist. Space therefore is the indispensable condition 
 of sensation : the form of external Sensibility. It is not given 
 
646 KANT. 
 
 in the materials of sensation ; since you may conceive the objects 
 annihilated, but cannot conceive the annihilation of Space. Not 
 being given in the material, it must therefore constitute the form. 
 
 Similar reasoning proves that Time is also the form of our 
 Sensibility, considered both as internal and as external. We 
 cannot conceive things as existing, except as existing in Time ; 
 but we can conceive Time as existing, though all things were 
 annihilated. Things subjected to our Sensibility are subjected 
 to it in succession ; that is the form of our Sensibility. 
 
 Such then are the two indispensable conditions of all sensa 
 tion the two forms with which we invest all the varied mate 
 rials presented to us. It is evident that these two ideas of Space 
 and Time_cannot have been given in the materials, consequently 
 are not deducible from experience ; ergo, they are a priori, or, 
 as Kant calls them, pure intuitions. 
 
 Having settled this point, he enters into his celebrated ex 
 amination of the question, Have Space and Time any objective 
 reality ? 
 
 We need not reproduce his arguments, which however may 
 be studied as fine dialectical exercises, but content ourselves \vith 
 giving the result. That result is easily foreseen : If Space and 
 Time are the forms of our Sensibility, and are not given in ex 
 perience, not given in the materials presented, we may at once 
 assume that they have no existence out of our Sensibility. Kant s 
 reduction of Space and Time to formal elements of thought 
 without corresponding objective reality, has been refuted by 
 Herbert Spencer,* who has shown that the experience-hypothe 
 sis better explains the genesis of these conceptions. I must not 
 venture to interrupt the exposition of Kant by any quotations, 
 but will add my own conviction that Space and Time are 
 objective realities in the sense that solidity, color, etc., are 
 objective realities ; in other words, although, as we conceive 
 them, they are purely subjective, and do not exis t externally a,s 
 
 Principles of Psychology, pp. 52-58. 
 
647 
 
 the Space and Time which exist in us, nevertheless some external 
 reality there is, corresponding to our subjective state ; precisely 
 as there must be some corresponding objects of solidity, color, 
 etc., otherwise the conceptions of solidity, color, etc., would 
 never have been formed. 
 
 Returning now to the exposition, we must follow Kant s 
 analysis of the forms of the Understanding. The forms of Sensi 
 bility being those of Space and Time, we must pass onwards to 
 the higher operations of the mind. The function of the Under 
 standing is to judge. It is eminently an active faculty ; and by 
 it the perceptions furnished through our Sensibility are elevated 
 into conceptions (Begriffe}. If we had only Sensibility, we 
 should have sensations, but no knowledge. - It is to the Under 
 standing that we are indebted for knowledge. And how are we 
 indebted to it ? Thus : the variety of our sensations is reduced 
 to unity they are linked together and made to interpret each 
 other by the understanding. A sensation in itself can be noth 
 ing but a sensation : many sensations can be nothing but many 
 sensations, they can never alone constitute conceptions. But 
 one sensation linked to another by some connecting faculty the 
 diversity of many sensations reduced to unity the resemblances, 
 existing amidst the diversity, detected and united together is 
 the process of forming a conception, and this is the process of 
 the Understanding, by means of imagination, memory, and con 
 sciousness. 
 
 Our senses, in contact with the external world, are affected by 
 objects in a certain determinate manner. The result Kant calls 
 a representation ( Vorstellung] in reference to the object repre 
 sented ; an intuition (Anschauung] in reference to the affection 
 itself. These intuitions are moulded by the Understanding into 
 conceptions ; the sensation is converted into a thought. 
 
 The Understanding is related to Sensibility in the same way 
 as Sensibility is related to external things. It imposes certain 
 forms on the materials furnished it by Sensibility, in the same 
 way as Sensibility imposed the forms of space and time upon 
 
64:8 KANT. 
 
 objects presented to it. These forms of the Understanding are 
 the laws of its operation. 
 
 To discover these forms we must ask ourselves, What is the 
 function of the Understanding ? Judgment. How many classes 
 of judgments are there ? In other words, What are the invari 
 able conditions of every possible judgment? They are four: 
 quantity, quality, relation, modality. Under one of these heads, 
 every judgment may be classed. 
 
 A subdivision of each of these classes follows : 1. In judging 
 of any thing under the form of quantity, we judge of it as unity 
 or as plurality; or, uniting these two, we judge of it as totality. 
 2. So of quality : it may be reality, negation, or limitation. 3. 
 Relation may be that of substance and accident, cause and effect, 
 or action and reaction. 4. Modality may be that of possibility, 
 existence, or necessity. 
 
 Such are Kant s famous Categories. They are little better 
 than those of Aristotle, which we before declared to be useless. 
 For although the object of Kant was different from that of Aris 
 totle, as Sir W. Hamilton points out ;* the result was nothing 
 but a cumbrous machinery incompetent to aid our investigations, 
 although very seductive to the lovers of verbal distinctions. 
 
 In those Categories Kant finds the pure forms of the Under 
 standing. They render thought possible ; they are the invaria 
 ble conditions of all conception; they are the investitures bestow 
 ed by the understanding on the materials furnished by sense. 
 
 By the Categories, he declares he has answered the second 
 half of the question, How are synthetic judgments, a priori, pos 
 sible? The synthetic judgments of the Categories are all a 
 priori. But we have not yet exhausted the faculties of the 
 mind. Sensibility has given us intuitions (perceptions), Un 
 derstanding has given us conceptions, but there is still another 
 faculty the crowning faculty of Reason ( Vernunft), the pure 
 forms of which we have to seek. 
 
 * Discussions, p. 25. 
 
649 
 
 Understanding is defined, the faculty of judging ( Vermogen 
 der Urtheile) ; Reason is the faculty of ratiocination of draw 
 ing conclusions from given premises ( Vermogen der Schlvsse). 
 Reason reduces the variety of conceptions to their utmost unity. 
 It proceeds from generality to generality till it reaches the 
 unconditional. Every conception must be reduced to some 
 general idea, that idea again reduced to some still more general 
 idea, and so on till we arrive at an ultimate and unconditional 
 principle, such as God. 
 
 Reason not only reduces particulars to a general, it also de 
 duces the particular from the general : thus, when I say, " Peter 
 is mortal," I deduce this particular proposition from the general 
 proposition, " All men are mortal ;" and this deduction is evi 
 dently independent of experience, since Peter being now alive, I 
 can have no experience to the contrary. These two processes 
 of reducing a particular to some general, and of deducing some 
 particular from a general, constitute ratiocination. 
 
 Reason has three pure forms ; or, as Kant calls them, borrow 
 ing the term from Plato, ideas. These are wholly independent 
 of experience ; they are above Sensibility above the Under 
 standing ; their domain is Reason, their function that of giving 
 unity and coherence to our conceptions. 
 
 The Understanding can form certain general conceptions, 
 such as man, animal, tree ; but these general conceptions them 
 selves are subordinate to a still more general idea, embracing all 
 these general conceptions, in the same way as the conception of 
 man embraces several particulars of bone, blood, muscle, etc. 
 The idea is that of the universe. 
 
 In the same way all the modifications of the thinking being 
 all the sensations, thoughts, and passions require to be em 
 braced in some general idea, as the ultimate ground and possi 
 bility for these modifications, as the noumenon of these phe 
 nomena. This idea is that of an ego of a personality of a 
 soul, in short. 
 
 Having thus reduced all the varieties of the ego to an uncon- 
 
 28 
 
650 KANT. 
 
 ditional unity, viz., soul, and having also reduced all the varieties 
 of the non-ego to an unconditional unity, viz., the world, his task 
 would seem completed ; yet, on looking deeper, he finds that 
 these two ideas presuppose a third a unity still higher, the 
 source of both the world and of the ego viz., God. 
 
 God, the soul, and the world, are therefore the three ideas of 
 reason, the laws of its operation, the pure forms of its existence. 
 They are to it what Space and Time are to Sensibility, and what 
 the categories are to Understanding. 
 
 But these ideas are simply regulative : they operate on con 
 ceptions as the Understanding operates upon sensations ; they 
 are discursive, not intuitive ; they are never face to face with 
 their objects : hence Reason is powerless when employed on 
 matters beyond the sphere of Understanding ; it can draw noth 
 ing but false, deceptive conclusions. If it attempts to operate 
 beyond its sphere if it attempts to solve the question raised re 
 specting God and the world it falls into endless contradictions. 
 
 " While we regard as conclusive Kant s analysis of Time and 
 Space into conditions of thought," says Sir W. Hamilton, " we 
 cannot help viewing his deduction of the Categories of the Un 
 derstanding and the Ideas of speculative Reason as the work of 
 a great but perverse ingenuity ;" and we, who do not even regard 
 the analysis of Space and Time as conclusive, may echo this 
 judgment with greater emphasis. 
 
 IV. CONSEQUENCES OF KANT S PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 We have given briefly the leading points in Kant s analysis 
 of the mind. We have now to trace the consequences of that 
 analysis. 
 
 The o^reat question at issue was : Have we, or have we not, any 
 ideas which are absolutely, objectively true ? Before this could 
 be answered, it was necessary to answer this other question : 
 Have we, or have we not, any ideas independent of experience ? 
 Because if we have not such ideas, we can never pretend to 
 solve the first question : our experience can only be of that 
 
CONSEQUENCES OF KANT s PSYCHOLOGY. 651 
 
 which is relative, contingent, subjective ; and to solve the ques 
 tion, \ve must be in possession of absolute, necessary, objective 
 truth. 
 
 Kant answered the second question affirmatively. His Critique 
 was a laborious demonstration of the existence of ideas not de 
 rived from experience, and in no way resolvable into experience. 
 But he answered the first question negatively. He declared that 
 our ideas are essentially subjective, and cannot therefore have 
 objective truth. He did not deny the existence of an external 
 world ; on the contrary, he affirmed it, but he denied that we 
 can know it : he affirmed that it was essentially unknowable. 
 
 The world exists, that is to say, the noumena of the various 
 phenomena which we perceive, exist. The world is not known 
 to us as it is per se, but as it is to us as it is in our knowledge 
 of it. It appears to us ; only the appearance therefore can be 
 known; the world must ever remain unknown, because, before 
 being known, it must appear to us, i. e. come under the condi 
 tions of our Sensibility, and be invested with the forms of Space 
 and Time, and come under the conditions of our Understanding, 
 and be invested with the categorical forms. 
 
 Suppose object and subject face to face. Before the subject 
 can be affected by the object that is to say, before a sensation 
 is possible the object must be modified in the sensation by the 
 forms of our Sensibility : here is one alteration. Then before 
 sensation can become thought, it must be subjected to the cate 
 gories of the Understanding : here is another alteration.* 
 
 Now, to know the object per se {. e. divested of the modifi 
 cations it undergoes in the subject is obviously impossible ; for 
 it is the subject itself which knows, and the subject knows only 
 under the conditions which produce these modifications. 
 
 Knowledge, in its very constitution, implies a purely subjec 
 tive, ergo, relative character. To attempt to transcend the sphere 
 
 * Compare what was said on the transformation of impressions into sensa 
 tions, pp. 611, sq. 
 
652 
 
 KANT. 
 
 of the subjective is vain and hopeless ; nor is it wise to deplore 
 that we are " cabin d, cribb d, confined" within that sphere from 
 which we never can escape. As well might the bird, when feel 
 ing the resistance of the air, wish that it were in vacuo, thinking 
 that there it might fly with perfect ease. Let us therefore con 
 tent ourselves with our own kingdom, instead of crossing peril 
 ous seas in search of kingdoms inaccessible to man. Let us 
 learn our weakness.* 
 
 FIRST RESULT. A knowledge of things per se (Dinge an sick) 
 is impossible, so long as knowledge remains composed as at 
 present ; consequently Ontology, as a science, is impossible. 
 
 But, it may be asked, if we never knew noumena (Dinge an 
 sick), how do we know that they exist? Their existence is a 
 necessary postulate. Although we can only know the appear 
 ances of things, we are forced to conclude that the things exist. 
 Thus, in the case of a rainbow, we discover that it is only the 
 appearance of certain drops of water : these drops of water again, 
 although owing their shape, color, etc., to us, nevertheless exist. 
 They do not exist as drops of water, because drops of water are 
 but phenomena; but there is an unknown something which, 
 when affecting our Sensibility, appears to us as drops of water. 
 Of this unknown something we can affirm nothing, except that 
 it necessarily exists because it affects us. We are conscious of 
 being affected. We are conscious also that that which affects us 
 must be something different from ourselves. This the law of 
 causation reveals to us. 
 
 A phenomenon, inasmuch as it is an appearance, presupposes 
 a noumenon a thing ivhick appears, but this noumenon, which 
 is a necessary postulate, is only a negation to us. It can never 
 be positively known; it can only be known under the conditions 
 of sense and understanding, ergo, as a phenomenon. 
 
 SECOND RESULT. The existence of an external world is a 
 necessary postulate, but its existence is only logically affirmed. 
 
 * Compare Kant s fine passage at the close of the Einleitung. 
 
CONSEQUENCES OF KANT s PHILOSOPHY. 653 
 
 From the foregoing it appears that we are unable to know any 
 thing respecting things per se ; consequently we can never 
 predicate of our knowledge that it has objective truth. 
 
 But our knowledge being purely subjective and relative, can 
 we have no certainty ? are we to embrace skepticism ? No. 
 
 THIRD RESULT. Our knowledge, though relative, is certain. 
 We have ideas independent of experience; and these ideas have 
 the character of universality and necessity. Although we are 
 not entitled to conclude that our subjective knowledge is com 
 pletely true as an expression of the objective fact, yet we are 
 forced to conclude that within its own sphere it is true. 
 
 FOURTH RESULT. The veracity of consciousness is established. 
 
 FIFTH RESULT. With the veracity of consciousness, is estab 
 lished the certainty of morals. 
 
 It is here we see the importance of Kant s analysis of the 
 mind. Those who reproach him with having ended, like Hume, 
 in skepticism, can only have attended to his Critique of the Pure 
 Reason, which certainly does, as we said before, furnish a scien 
 tific basis for skepticism. It proves that our knowledge is rela 
 tive ; that we cannot assume things external to us to be as we 
 conceive them : in a \vord, that Ontology is impossible. 
 
 So far Kant goes with Hume. This is the goal they both at 
 tain. This is the limit they agree to set to the powers of the 
 mind. But the different views they took of the nature of mind 
 led to the difference we before noted respecting the certainty of 
 knowledge. Kant having shown that consciousness, as far as it 
 extended, was veracious ; and having shown that in conscious 
 ness certain elements were given which were not derived from 
 experience, but which were necessarily true; it followed that 
 whatever was found in consciousness independent of experience, 
 was to be trusted without dispute. 
 
 If in consciousness I find the ideas of God, the world, and 
 virtue, I cannot escape believing in God, the world, and virtue. 
 This belief of mine is, I admit, practical, not theoretical ; it is 
 founded on a certainty, not on a demonstration ; it is an ultimate 
 
654 KANT. 
 
 fact, from which I cannot escape it is not a conclusion deduce^ 
 by reason. 
 
 The attempt to demonstrate the existence of God is an impos 
 sible attempt. Reason is utterly incompetent to the task. The 
 attempt to penetrate the essence of things to know things per 
 se to know noumena is also an impossible attempt. And 
 yet that God exists, that the world exists, are irresistible con 
 victions. 
 
 There is another certitude, therefore, besides that derived from 
 demonstration, and this is moral certitude, which is grounded 
 upon belief. I cannot say, " It is morally certain that God ex 
 ists," but I must say, " I am morally certain that God exists." 
 
 Here then is the basis for a Critique of the Practical Reason, 
 an investigation into the Reason, no longer as purely theoretical, 
 but as practical. Man is a being who acts as well as knows. 
 This activity must have some principle, and that principle is 
 freedom of will. 
 
 As in the theoretical part of Kant s system we saw the super- 
 sensual and unconditioned presupposed as existent (under the 
 name of things per se~), but not susceptible of being known or 
 specified; so in this practical part of the system we find the 
 principle of freedom altogether abstract and indeterminate. It 
 realizes itself in acts. 
 
 In the very constitution of his conscience, man discovers the 
 existence of certain rules which he is imperatively forced to im 
 pose upon his actions ; in the same way as he is forced by the 
 constitution of his reason to impose certain laws upon the mate 
 rials furnished him from without. These moral laws have like 
 wise the character of universality and necessity. The idea of 
 virtue never could be acquired in experience, since all we know 
 of virtuous actions falls short of this ideal which we are com 
 pelled to uphold as a type. The inalterable idea of justice is 
 likewise found, a priori, in the conscience of men. This, indeed, 
 has been denied by some philosophers ; but all a priori truths 
 have been denied by them. They cite the cruel customs of some 
 
655 
 
 savage races as proofs that the idea of justice is not universal.* 
 Thus, some tribes are known to kill their old men when grown 
 too feeble ; and they test their strength by making these old men 
 hold on to the branch of a tree, which is violently shaken, and 
 those that fall are pronounced too weak to live. But even here, 
 in spite of the atrocity, we see the fundamental ideas of justice. 
 Why should they not abandon these aged men to all the horrors 
 of famine and disease ? and why put them to a test ? Look 
 where you will, the varied customs of the various nations peo 
 pling the earth will show you different notions of what is just 
 and what is unjust ; but the a priori idea of justice the moral 
 law from which no conscience can be free that you will find 
 omnipresent. 
 
 We regret that our space will not permit us to enter further 
 into Kant s system of morality, and his noble vindication of the 
 great idea of duty. But enough has been said to show the de 
 pendence of his Critique of the Practical Reason upon the prin 
 ciples of his Critique of the Pure Reason ; a dependence which 
 some hasty critics have pronounced an unphilosophical compro 
 mise. 
 
 V. EXAMINATION OF KANT S FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES. 
 
 Kant s system presents three important points for our consid 
 eration : 
 
 1. It assigns a limit to the powers of reason, and clearly marks 
 out the domain of scientific inquiry. In this it is skeptical, and 
 furnishes skepticism with terrible weapons. 
 
 2. It proclaims that knowledge has another origin besides ex 
 perience ; and that the ideas thus acquired are necessarily true. 
 In this the veracity of consciousness is established, and skep 
 ticism is defeated. 
 
 3. It founds upon this veracity of consciousness a system of 
 morals ; the belief in a future state, and in the existence of God. 
 
 * Kant alludes to Locke. 
 
656 KANT. 
 
 In the course of our exposition we abstained from criticism 
 certain that it would lead us far beyond our limits to venture on 
 an examination of any but the fundamental principles. The 
 three points above mentioned will, if closely examined, be found 
 to present only one calling for discussion here, and that one is 
 the second. 
 
 For the admission contained in the first viz. that we are un 
 able to know things in themselves gives up Philosophy as a 
 matter beyond the reach of human intelligence. Skepticism is 
 made the only result of ontological speculation. But we are 
 guarded against such a conclusion entering deeply into practical 
 life, by the demonstration of our having ideas independent of ex 
 perience. This is the second point. Were this second point to 
 fall to the ground, nothing but skepticism could remain. With 
 the second point must stand or fall the third. 
 
 The second point, therefore, becomes the central and vital 
 point of Kant s system, and must engage our whole attention. 
 All such subsidiary criticism as is current in Germany and 
 France, respecting the impossibility of separating the objective 
 from the subjective elements of a knowledge which is confessedly 
 both subject and object in one, may be safely set aside. Let the 
 possibility be granted ; the vital question is not connected with 
 it. The same may be said of the illogicality of Kant s assuming 
 for the practical reason that which he denies to the pure reason. 
 The vital point in his system is, we repeat, the question as to 
 whether we have ideas independent of experience. This is all- 
 important. 
 
 And what gives it its importance? The conviction, that if 
 we are sent into this world with certain connate principles of 
 truth, those principles cannot be false ; that if, for example, the 
 principle of causality is one which is antecedent to all experience, 
 and is inseparable from the mind, we are forced to pronounce it 
 an ultimate truth. 
 
 Let us meditate on this question. As Kant confessedly was 
 led to his own system by the speculations of Hume on causation, 
 

 657 
 
 and as that is the most important of all the a priori ideas with 
 which the mind is supposed to be furnished, we will content our 
 selves with examining it. If that be found dependent on expe 
 rience, all the a priori ideas must be likewise given up. This is 
 the nut we have to crack ; its kernel is the kernel of the whole 
 question. Let us first consider these Necessary Truths, as Dr. 
 Whewell calls a priori ideas. 
 
 That two parallel lines can never meet, is a Necessary Truth. 
 That is to say, it necessarily follows from the definition of a 
 straight line. To call it, however, an a priori truth, a truth in 
 dependent of experience, seems to us a very imperfect analysis 
 of the mind s operations. An attempt is made to prove that the 
 idea could never have been gained through experience, because 
 it commands universal assent, and because experience itself could 
 never give it necessity. Dr. Whewell s argument is, that let us 
 follow two parallel lines out as far as we can, we are still unable 
 to follow them to infinity : and, for all our experience can tell 
 us to the contrary, these lines may possibly begin to approach 
 immediately beyond the farthest point to which we have followed 
 them, and so finally meet. Now what ground have we for be 
 lieving that this possibility is not the fact ? In other words, 
 how do we know the axiom to be absolutely true ? Clearly not 
 from experience, says Dr. Whewell, following Kant. 
 
 We answer, Yes ; clearly/rowi experience. For our experience 
 of two parallel lines is precisely this : they cannot inclose space. 
 Dr. Whewell says that, for all our experience can tell us to the 
 contrary, the lines may possibly begin to approach each other at 
 some distant point ; and he would correct this imperfect expe 
 rience by a priori truth. The case is precisely the reverse. The 
 tendency of the mind unquestionably is, to fancy that the two 
 lines will meet at some point ; it is experience which corrects this 
 tendency. There are many analogies in nature to suggest the 
 meeting of the two lines. It is only our reflective experience 
 which can furnish us with the proof which Dr. Whewell refers 
 to ideas independent of all experience. What proof have we 
 
 28 
 
658 KANT. 
 
 that two parallel lines cannot inclose space ? Why this : as 
 soon as they assume the property of inclosing space, they lose the 
 property of parallelism they are no longer straight lines, but bent 
 lines. In carrying out imaginatively the two parallel lines into 
 infinity, we have a tendency to make them approach ; we can 
 only correct this by a recurrence to our experience of straight 
 lines : we must call up a distinct image of a straight line, and 
 then we see that two such lines cannot inclose space. 
 
 The whole difficulty lies in the clearness or obscurity with 
 which the mind makes present to itself past experience. " Re 
 frain from rendering your terms into ideas," says Herbert Spen 
 cer, "and you may reach any conclusion whatever. The whole 
 is equal to its part, is a proposition that may be quite comfort 
 ably entertained so long as neither wholes nor parts are ima 
 gined."* But no sooner do we make present to our minds the 
 meaning of parallel lines, than in that very act we make present 
 the impossibility of their meeting, and only as the idea of these 
 lines becomes wavering, does the idea of their meeting become 
 possible. 
 
 " Necessary truths," says Dr. Whewell, " are those in which 
 we not only learn that the proposition is true, but see that it must 
 be true ; in which the negation is not only false, but impossible ; 
 in which we cannot, even by an effort of the imagination, or in 
 a supposition, conceive the reverse of that which is asserted. 
 That there are such truths, cannot be doubted. We may take, 
 for example, all relations of Number. Three and two make five. 
 We cannot conceive it otherwise. We cannot by any freak of 
 thought imagine that three and two make seven." 
 
 That Dr. Whewell cannot by any freak of thought now ima 
 gine three and two to make seven, is very likely ; but that he 
 could never imagine this, is untrue. If he had been asked the 
 question before he had learned to reckon, he would have ima 
 gined seven quite as easily as five : that is to say, he would not 
 
 * Principles of Psychology, p. 49. 
 
KANTS FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES. 659 
 
 have known the relation of three and two. Children have no 
 intuitions of numbers: they learn them as they learn other 
 things. " The apples and the marbles," says Herschel, " are put 
 in requisition, and through the multitude of gingerbread-nuts 
 their ideas acquire clearness, precision, and generality." But 
 though, from its simplicity, the calculation of three added to 
 two, is with a grown man an instantaneous act; yet if you ask 
 him suddenly how many are twice 365, he cannot answer till he 
 has reckoned. He might, certainly, by a very easy " freak of 
 thought" (i. e. by an erroneous calculation), imagine the sum- 
 total to be 720 ; and although when he repeats his calculation, 
 he may discover the error, and declare 730 to be the sum-total, 
 and say, "It is a Necessary Truth that 365 added to 365 make 
 730," we should not in the least dispute the necessity of the 
 truth, but presume that he himself would not dispute that he 
 had arrived at it through experience, namely, through his knowl 
 edge of the relations of numbers, a knowledge which he remem 
 bers to have laboriously acquired when a boy at school. 
 
 The foregoing remarks having, we trust, established that the 
 truths of Geometry and Arithmetic, which form one class of the 
 so-called Necessary Truths, are not obtained a priori, independ 
 ently of Experience, we pass on to the other class, which we 
 would call Truth of Generalization. 
 
 Our example shall be that chosen by Kant : " Every effect 
 must have a cause." This is not a mere writing out of our con 
 ceptions : it is not a mere explanation, in different terms, of what 
 we mean. It is a wide generalization. Experience can only be 
 experience of individual causes and effects ; and although in our 
 conception of an effect the conception of a cause is certainly in 
 volved, and in so far the judgment may be supposed an analytic 
 judgment, yet if we look closer, the ambiguity will disappear. 
 The word effect implies as a correlative the word cause. But 
 the Thing we see before us does not imply the existence of some 
 other Thing which caused it ; and our judgment that it must 
 have had an antecedent cause, is purely synthetic. 
 
660 KANT. 
 
 When we assert that every effect must have a cause, we assert 
 that which no experience can have warranted. Is the idea there 
 fore acquired through some other channel ? No ; and the up 
 holders of the doctrines of Innate Ideas, Fundamental Laws of 
 Belief, Categories of the Understanding, and Necessary Truths, 
 appear to us to labor under a confusion of thought which a very 
 little well-directed analysis might have cleared up. The con 
 fusion is this : Our experience is obviously incapable of guaran 
 teeing the truth of any universal and necessary idea. But to 
 assume therefore that the idea is independent of experience, is to 
 forget that what experience may not guarantee, it may suggest; 
 and the universality and necessity of our ideas, is nothing more 
 nor less than the suggestions of the understanding, which by the 
 law of its operation generalizes from particulars, and converts 
 them into universals. We will presently explain this more fully ; 
 let us now hear Kant, who distinguishes a pure cognition from 
 an empirical cognition by this mark of necessity and universality. 
 " Experience no doubt teaches us that this or that object is con 
 stituted in such and such a manner, but not that it could not 
 possibly exist otherwise." ..." Empirical universality is only 
 an arbitrary extension of the validity from that which may be 
 predicated of a proposition valid in most cases to that which is 
 asserted of a proposition which holds good in all. When, on the 
 contrary, strict universality characterizes a judgment, it necessa 
 rily indicates another peculiar source of knowledge, namely, a 
 faculty of cognition a priori. Necessity and strict universality, 
 therefore, are infallible tests for distinguishing pure from empiri 
 cal knowledge, and are inseparably connected with each other."* 
 And elsewhere : kt If we thought to free ourselves from the labor 
 of these investigations by saying, Experience is constantly offer 
 ing us examples of the relation of cause and effect in phenomena, 
 and presents us with abundant opportunity of abstracting the 
 conception of cause, and so at the same time of corroborating the 
 
 * JEinleitung f ii. (Transl. p. 8). 
 
661 
 
 objective validity of this conception" we should in this case be 
 overlooking the fact that the conception of cause cannot arise in 
 this way at all ; that on the contrary it must either have a basis 
 in the Understanding, or be rejected as a mere chimera. For 
 this conception demands that something (A) should be of such a 
 nature that something else (B) should follow from it necessarily, 
 and according to an absolutely universal law. We may certain 
 ly collect from phenomena a law, according to which this or that 
 usually happens, but the element of necessity is not to be found 
 in it. Hence it is evident that to the synthesis of cause and 
 effect belongs a dignity which is utterly wanting in any empiri 
 cal synthesis."* 
 
 Referring to what was said in discussing Hume s theory of 
 causation, we may pass on to Dr. Whewell s re-statement of 
 Kant s views : 
 
 " That this idea of cause is not derived from experience, we 
 prove (as in former cases) by this consideration : that we can 
 make assertions, involving this idea, which are rigorously neces 
 sary and universal ; whereas knowledge derived from experience 
 can only be true as far as experience goes, and can never contain 
 in itself any evidence whatever of its necessity. We assert that 
 " every Event must have a Cause f and this proposition we 
 know to be true, not only probably and generally and as far as 
 we can see ; but we cannot suppose it to be false in any single 
 instance. We are as certain of it as we are of the truths of 
 arithmetic and geometry. We cannot doubt that it must apply 
 to all events, past, present, and to come, in every part of the 
 universe, just as truly as to those occurrences which we have 
 ourselves observed. What causes produce what effects ; what 
 is the cause of any particular event ; what will be the effect of 
 any peculiar process ; these are points on which experience 
 may enlighten us. But that every event must have some cause, 
 Experience cannot prove any more than she can disprove. She 
 
 * Transcendental. Logik, 9 (Transl. p. 76). 
 
662 
 
 KANT. 
 
 can add nothing to the evidence of the truth, however often she 
 may exemplify it. This doctrine then cannot have been acquired 
 by her teaching : and the Idea of Cause which the doctrine in 
 volves, and on which it depends, cannot have come into our 
 minds from the region of observation."* 
 
 There is one minor point in this argument which we must no 
 tice first. Dr. Whewell says that the proposition "Every event 
 must have a cause" cannot possibly be false in any one instance. 
 We think there is one, which he himself would admit ; but to 
 make it clear, we must substitute an equivalent for " event." 
 The abstract formula of causation is this : " Every existence pre 
 supposes some Cause of its existence : ex nihilo nihil fit? And 
 this formula is employed against the atheists, to prove that the 
 world could not have made itself out of Nothing, ergo it must 
 have had a Cause. Now the obvious answer has often been 
 given, namely, that the Cause itself must have had a Cause, and 
 so on ad infinitum. Nevertheless, as reason repugns such an 
 argument, and as it declares that somewhere the chain of causes 
 and effects must stop, in that very declaration it falsifies the 
 formula of causation " Every existence must have a cause." 
 
 Let not this be thought quibbling ; it is only an exposure of 
 the weakness of the theory of causation. If that theory be cor 
 rect if the formula is a necessary Truth, objectively as well as 
 subjectively, the argument against atheism falls to the ground. 
 For, would the atheist argue, this is the dilemma : either the 
 chain of causes and effects must be extended to infinity ; or you 
 must stop somewhere, and declare that the ultimate Existence 
 has no cause. In the first case you fall into unlimited skepti 
 cism ; in the second you fall into atheism, because the world is 
 an Existence of which we are assured : why, then, is not it the 
 ultimate Existence ? You have no right to assume any prior 
 cause ; if you must stop somewhere, it is more rational to stop 
 there. 
 
 * Philos. Ind. etc., vol. i. p. 159. 
 
663 
 
 This dilemma admits of but one escape-hole, namely, the denial 
 of the formula " Every existence presupposes a cause" being any 
 thing more than a psychological law. Curiously enough, the 
 only loophole is in the doctrine maintained by David Hume a 
 doctrine for so many years supposed to be the inlet of theologi 
 cal skepticism ! 
 
 Our belief in the formula " Every event must have a cause" is 
 founded entirely on experience : is, indeed, nothing more than 
 our experience generalized. 
 
 To prove this, we will consider a single case of causation. A. 
 child burns his finger in the candle ; he then believes that a 
 candle will always burn his fingers. Now we are asked how it 
 is that the child is led to believe that the candle will always 
 burn his finger ; and the answer usually afforded is, that " he is 
 irresistibly led to believe in the uniformity of nature ;" in other 
 words, the idea of causality is & fundamental idea. 
 
 We answer, The child believes the candle will burn, because 
 the experience he has of a candle is precisely this experience of 
 its burning properties. Before he had burnt his finger, his ex 
 perience of a candle was simply of a bright thing which set 
 paper alight. Having now extended his experience, the candle is 
 to him a bright thing which sets paper alight, and which causes 
 pain to his finger when placed in contact with it.* 
 
 According to the well-known law of association, the flame of a 
 candle, and pain to the finger applied to it, are united, and form 
 one experience. This particular act of causation is therefore 
 nothing but a simple experience to the child ; and for the per 
 fection of this experience it is in nowise needful to assume that 
 the child has any belief in the " connection of events," or in the 
 " uniformity of the laws of Nature." No fundamental idea is 
 necessary for the particular belief.f Is it then necessary for the 
 
 * See p. 486 sq., where the argument is stated more fully. 
 t This is denied by the thinkers whom we are now combating : they 
 assume that the fundamental idea is necessary ; but this is a mere assump- 
 
664: KANT. 
 
 belief in the general proposition " Every effect must have a 
 cause ?" 
 
 When Kant and the Kantists say that no particular act of 
 causation can be inferred a priori (such, for example, as that fire 
 will melt the solid wax) ; but that nevertheless causality itself 
 can be inferred a priori, i. e. we are constrained to believe that 
 something will follow the application of fire to the wax, and this 
 a priori judgment is independent of experience, they seem to 
 me to foil into the error of confounding the general with the 
 particular. No general proposition is possible except as an ex 
 pression of particular propositions ; and all particular proposi 
 tions are the expression of particular experiences. " That all 
 lions are carnivorous" is only intelligible as a general proposition 
 after one or more lions have been recognized as carnivorous ; 
 that " every effect must have a cause" is only conceivable after 
 many particular experiences of causes and effects. No particular 
 act of causation can be inferred a priori, because for each par 
 ticular inference we need the basis of particular experience ; but 
 general causation seems possible to be inferred a priori, because 
 in the full-statured mind general causation has a basis of general 
 experience. I must know that fire does melt wax, before I can 
 infer that it will melt wax ; but I can infer that fire will do 
 something to wax, after my general experience of fire is, that it 
 has always done something to bodies. This general inference is 
 founded on and limited by general experience, in the same way 
 as particular inferences are founded on particular experience. 
 The uncultured mind will be as powerless to deduce the general 
 inference, as the cultured mind is, to deduce the particular in 
 ference, a priori ; and so true is this, that only philosophical 
 thinkers are capable of steadily believing in that causality which 
 Dr. Whewell designates as a fundamental idea. 
 
 Thus, belief in particular laws of causation is no more than 
 belief in our experience; and if we are asked why we believe 
 
 tion made for the purpose of saving their theory, an assumption of the very 
 point at issue. 
 
KANT S FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES. 665 
 
 that our future experience will resemble the past, we answer, be 
 cause we have no other possible belief of things than that which 
 is formed by experience : we cannot possibly believe the candle 
 as not burning us in future, because our experience of a candle 
 has been, that it does burn, and our beliefs cannot transcend the 
 experience which made them. 
 
 As to the belief in universal causation, we may prove in vari 
 ous ways that it is the result of a mere act of generalization ; and 
 this very act itself is strictly limited by experience : that is to 
 say, we are led by the laws of our mind to judge of the unknown 
 according to the known. Thus, having found every event which 
 has come under our cognizance produced by, some cause, we con 
 clude that every possible event must have a cause. We judge 
 of the unknown by the known. Familiar illustrations of this 
 generalizing tendency are those rash judgments formed of na 
 tions and of classes, and founded on the experience of a single 
 fact. Thus we once heard it gravely asserted, that " all French 
 babies had long noses." The person asserting it had seen a 
 French baby with a long nose. Now the only conception of a 
 French baby in this person s mind was that of a baby with a 
 long nose. That was the type according to which all unseen, 
 unknown babies were judged. Not being a very reflective per 
 son, he could not divest himself of his conception, and he could 
 not believe that his conception was not true of all French babies. 
 Had he never seen other French babies, he would perhaps have 
 died in the belief that they all had long noses; unless some 
 better-informed person had corrected this conception by his 
 larger experience. So, if we had only the experience of one fact 
 of causation, we should always believe in that fact we should 
 always believe that all candles would burn. To make many 
 similar experiences of the conjunction of cause and effect, is not 
 only to have many beliefs in particular acts of causation, it is 
 also to collect materials for a wide generalization, and from these 
 known conjunctions to pronounce that formula of universal con 
 junction applied to unknown and yet unborn events. 
 
666 KANT. 
 
 This latter process, however, is performed by few. All believe 
 irresistibly in particular acts of causation. Few believe in uni 
 versal causation ; and those few not till after considerable reflec 
 tion. Philosophers, indeed, assure us that this belief is univer 
 sal ; that it is an instinct ; a law of the mind ; a Fundamental 
 Idea. If philosophers would take the trouble to inquire amongst 
 intelligent people, they would find that, so far from the belief in 
 question being instinctive and irresistible, the great majority 
 have no consciousness at all of such an instinct the belief never 
 having once presented itself to their minds the proposition re 
 quiring a great deal of explanation and argument before it can 
 be received ; and amongst those persons many would absolutely 
 refuse to admit the truth of the proposition. Those who live 
 only amongst philosophers will doubt this. We can, however, 
 declare that it has more than once come within our experience. 
 We have argued with a student of chemistry, whom we found 
 it impossible to convince that the law " Every event has some 
 cause" is universal. He not only could conceive it to be other 
 wise in the moon ; but he looked upon our argument as an un 
 warrantable assumption. The mystery of this was, that he had 
 never read any metaphysics, and had but mediocre powers of 
 ratiocination. What shall we say to an instinctive belief, which, 
 unlike all other instinctive beliefs, does not spontaneously present 
 itself to our consciousness ; and when presented, is with the ut 
 most difficulty accepted ; and accepted only by some ? Com 
 pare this with any other instinctive belief that in the existence 
 of an external world, for instance and see what characters the 
 two have in common. Ask a boor if he believe in the existence 
 of the world, and he will think you mad to ask him. Ask an 
 ordinary man if he believe that every effect must have a cause, 
 and the chances are that he will tell you he does not know ; you 
 will find it difficult to make him understand the necessity. 
 
 Nay, to leave ordinary men, and to confine ourselves to phi 
 losophers, amongst them we shall find that, with respect to one 
 class of phenomena, more than one-half of the thinking world 
 
KANT S FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES. 667 
 
 is firmly convinced that every effect does not imply a cause : the 
 class of phenomena referred to are those of human volitions. All 
 those who espouse the doctrine of Freedom of the Will declare 
 that all our volitions are self-caused, that is to say, our volitions 
 are not caused by any thing external to themselves, not deter 
 mined by any prior fact. 
 
 If, then, speculative men can be led to believe that one large 
 class of phenomena is not amenable to the law of cause and ef 
 fect, what becomes of the universality of causation ? And if 
 speculative men can conceive the laws of cause and effect to be 
 absent from some phenomena, and ordinary men do not con 
 ceive these laws to be universally applicable, what becomes 
 of the necessity? And if the mass of mankind require a con 
 siderable quantity of argument and explanation to make them 
 understand the proposition, what becomes of the instinctive 
 belief? 
 
 It is argued that a belief in a particular act of causation is 
 only possible on the assumption of a fundamantal idea of causal 
 ity inherent in the mind ; that, although a child may never have 
 had the formula " Every effect must have a cause" presented to 
 his mind, nevertheless this formula is implicitly in his mind, 
 otherwise he would have no reason for believing in the particu 
 lar act ; it must exist as a fundamental idea. We might as 
 rationally argue that a child cannot have an idea of a man with 
 out previously having a fundamental idea of humanity. 
 
 The fallacy lies in this : the fundamental idea of causality is a 
 generalization. Now, of course, the general includes the partic 
 ulars ; but, though it includes, yet it does not precede them, and 
 the error is in supposing that it must and does precede them. A 
 boy, as Locke says, knows that his whole body is larger than his 
 finger ; but he knows this from his perceptions of the two. not 
 from any knowledge of the axiom that the " whole is greater 
 than a part." Dr. W T hewell would say that he could not have 
 such knowledge unless he had the fundamental idea ; whereas, 
 we side with Locke in asserting that the mind in such cases 
 
668 KANT. 
 
 never begins with generalities, but ends with them ; and to say, 
 that because the general axiom implies the particular instance, 
 or that the particular instance implies the general axiom, there 
 fore the axiom is independent of experience, is to cheat one s self 
 with words. 
 
 The belief in causation is belief founded upon the experience 
 of particular acts of causation. 
 
 The irresistible tendency we have to anticipate that the future 
 course of events will resemble the past, is simply that we have 
 experience only of the past, and, as we cannot transcend our ex 
 perience, we cannot conceive things really existing otherwise 
 than as we have known them. From this we draw a conclusion 
 strikingly at variance with the doctrine maintained by Kant and 
 Dr. Whewell. We say, that the very fact of our being com 
 pelled to judge of the unknown by the known of our irresisti 
 bly anticipating that the future course of events will resemble 
 the past of our incapacity to believe that the same effects 
 should not follow from the same causes this very fact is a 
 triumphant proof of our having no ideas not acquired through 
 experience. If we had a priori ideas, these, as independent of, 
 and superior to, all experience, would enable us to judge the un 
 known according to some other standard than that of the known. 
 But no other standard is possible for us. We cannot by any 
 effort believe that things will not always have the properties we 
 have experienced in them ; as long as they continue to exist, we 
 must believe them to exist as we know them. 
 
 Although belief in particular acts of causation is irresistible 
 and universal, yet belief in the general proposition " Every effect 
 must have a cause" is neither irresistible nor universal, but is 
 entertained only by a small portion of mankind. Consequently 
 the theory of a priori ideas independent of all experience, re 
 ceives no support from the idea of Causality. 
 
 In a " Letter to the Author of the Prolegomena Logica" Dr. 
 Whewell has restated his views, to meet the objections of his 
 critics; and as this is the latest development of the Kantian 
 
669 
 
 doctrine which I have seen, it may not be uninstructive to con 
 sider it. 
 
 Dr. Whewell s main positions are, that Necessary Truths, or 
 Fundamental Ideas, are independent of experience, and are in 
 tuitions, which are seen not only to be true, but necessarily true, 
 because their contraries are inconceivable. The only condition 
 presupposed is, that the Ideas be clearly conceived. He says : 
 "I lay stress on the condition that the Ideas must be clearly and 
 distinctly possessed. The Idea of Space must be quite clear in 
 the mind, or else the Axioms of Geometry will not be seen to be 
 true : there will be no intuition of their truth ; and for a mind 
 in such a state, there can be no Science of Geometry. A man 
 may have a confused and perplexed, or a vacant and inert state 
 of mind, in which it is not clearly apparent to him, that two 
 straight lines cannot inclose a space. But this is not a frequent 
 case. The Idea of Space is much more commonly clear in the 
 minds of men than the other Ideas on which science depends, as 
 Force or Substance. It is much more common to find minds in 
 which these latter Ideas are not so clear and distinct as to make 
 the Axioms of Mechanics or of Chemistry self-evident. Indeed, 
 the examples of a state of mind in which the Ideas of Force or 
 of Substance are so clear as to be made the basis of science, are 
 comparatively few. They are the examples of minds scientifi 
 cally cultivated, at least to some extent. Hence, though the 
 Axioms of Mechanics or of Chemistry may be, in their own na 
 ture, as evident as those of Geometry, they are not evident to so 
 many persons, nor at so early a period of intellectual or scientific 
 culture. And this being the case, it is not surprising that some 
 persons should doubt whether these Axioms are evident at all ; 
 I should think that it is an error to assert that there exist, in 
 such sciences as Mechanics or Chemistry, Fundamental Ideas fit 
 to be classed with Space, as being, like it, the origin of Axioms." 
 
 Aware that many of these intuitive ideas are so far from being 
 universally acknowledged that many persons can conceive the 
 contraries, he adds : 
 
670 KANT. 
 
 " This difficulty has been strongly urged by Mr. Mill, as sup 
 porting his view, that all knowledge of truth is derived from ex 
 perience. And in order that the opposite doctrine, which I have 
 advocated, may not labor under any disadvantages which really 
 do not belong to it, I must explain, that I do not by any means 
 assert that those truths which I regard as necessary, are all 
 equally evident to common thinkers, or evident to persons in all 
 stages of intellectual development. I may even say, that some 
 of those truths which I regard as necessary, and the necessity of 
 which I believe the human mind to be capable of seeing, by due 
 preparation and thought, are still such, that this amount of prep 
 aration and thought is rare and peculiar ; and I Avill willingly 
 grant, that to attain to and preserve such a clearness and subtlety 
 of mind as this intuition requires, is a task of no ordinary diffi 
 culty and labor." 
 
 What, it may be asked, is all this preparation, and labor, but 
 experience ? If these Fundamental Ideas are " Intuitions" which 
 cannot be given by experience, but are above and beyond it, 
 how is all this experience needed before these Necessary Truths 
 can be seen to be true? Dr. Whewell is ready with his 
 answer : 
 
 " That some steady thought, and even some progress in the 
 construction of Science, is needed in order to see the necessity 
 of the Axioms thus introduced, is true, and is repeatedly asserted 
 and illustrated in the History of the Sciences. The necessity of 
 such Axioms is seen, but it is not seen at first. It becomes 
 clearer and clearer to each person, and clear to one person after 
 another, as the human mind dwells more and more steadily on 
 the several subjects of speculation. There are scientific truths 
 ivhich are seen by intuition, but this intuition is progressive. This 
 is the remark which I wish to make, in answer to those of my 
 critics who have objected that truths which I have propounded 
 as Axioms, are not evident to all." 
 
 That this is no answer at all, but is virtually a concession of 
 the very point in dispute, will be seen by an attentive perusal of 
 
KANT S FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES. 671 
 
 the following passage, wherein he brings his new form of the 
 doctrine into greater distinctness: 
 
 "An able writer in the Edinburgh Review (No. 193, p. 29) 
 has, in like manner, said, Dr. Whewell seems to us to have gone 
 much too far in reducing to necessary truths what assuredly the 
 generality of mankind will not feel to be so. It is a fact which 
 I do not at all contest, that the generality of mankind will not 
 feel the Axioms of Chemistry, or even of Mechanics, to be ne 
 cessary truths. But I had said, not that the generality of man 
 kind would feel this necessity, but (in a passage just before quoted 
 by the Reviewer) that the mind, under certain circumstances, 
 attains a point of view from which it can pronounce mechanical 
 (and other) fundamental truths to be necessary in their nature, 
 though disclosed to us by experience and observation" 
 
 If these truths, said to be intuitive and independent of expe 
 rience, are by Dr. Whewell confessed to be " disclosed by expe 
 rience," there can be but one point of separation between him 
 and his critics ; and, if I have understood him aright, that point 
 is the character of " necessity," which, in common with Kant, he 
 ascribes to these truths. The fundamental ideas, when seen, are 
 seen to be not only true, but necessarily true ; and in this neces 
 sity lies their distinctive characteristic. 
 
 I conceive that no such distinction whatever can be made out 
 between truths which are necessary and truths which are contin 
 gent. All truth is necessary truth. Although all opinions are 
 by no means of one character, some being evident, some prob 
 able, some very uncertain ; yet all truths are true. That " fire 
 burns" is a truth as " necessary" as that two parallel lines cannot 
 inclose space. That sulphur has a greater affinity for iron 
 than for lead, is a truth as "necessary" as that the whole is 
 greater than a part. That iron-rust is owing to the action of 
 oxygen, is as " necessary" a truth as that two and two make 
 four. It is our knowledge which is contingent, not the truth 
 itself. We may be in error when we believe the fact of sul 
 phur s greater affinity for iron than for lead ; in matters so ill- 
 
672 KANT. 
 
 understood as chemical actions, error is very conceivable, and 
 our supposed truth may turn out a misconception ; but if the re 
 lation be truly stated, the truth is as " necessary" as that two and 
 two make four. The whole question, therefore, that can be 
 raised, is : Is the asserted relation true ? and not, Is the truth 
 necessary ? 
 
 To make this clearer, let us, instead of the proposition " two 
 and two make four," substitute " seventy-two and one hundred 
 and forty make two hundred and twelve." In the one case error 
 is impossible ; by no freak of thought can we conceive two and 
 two as making five ; the truth is perceived directly, and the in 
 conceivability of the contrary is confessed. In the latter case 
 error is very possible ; unless a careful calculation be made, the 
 mind may fall into error, i. e. conceive the contrary of what is 
 true. But in each case the truth expressed is the relation of 
 numbers, which we ascertain by experience. So also the prop 
 osition "fire burns" is a necessary truth, the contrary to which 
 is as inconceivable as the contrary of "two parallel lines can 
 never inclose space." For although we can imagine it "possible" 
 that fire, under some circumstances, should not burn, we can 
 only imagine it by mentally substituting for fire some otlier thing 
 called by that name, just as we can only imagine parallel lines 
 inclosing space by mentally bending the lines, and making them 
 other than parallel. 
 
 Truths are nothing but perceived relations ; some of these re 
 lations are so simple, are so universally presented to our expe 
 rience, that we cannot conceive them to be otherwise ; and thus 
 no freak of thought will enable us to conceive fire not burning, 
 two and two making five, or parallel lines inclosing space ; while 
 other relations are so complicated, or so unfamiliar, that we very 
 easily conceive the possibility of their being otherwise. The 
 oxidation of substances is so familiar to the chemist, that he can 
 not conceive what to the general public is very conceivable ; the 
 relations of lines and surfaces are so familiar to the geometer, 
 that he cannot conceive the contrary of Euclid s propositions : 
 
KANT S FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES. 673 
 
 to him they are irresistible truths ; but he can remember the 
 time when they were by no means irresistible. Dr. Whewell 
 explains this difference by the difference in the clearness with 
 which the geometer "possesses the Idea of Space," a clearness 
 only to be obtained through great labor and training of the mind ; 
 and we think no philosopher ever propounded any other expla 
 nation, certainly no philosopher belonging to the school which 
 derives all our ideas from experience. 
 
 The distinction, then, between the so-called Necessary and 
 Contingent Truths, is not that the former are independent of ex 
 perience, and are truths seen to be necessarily true, while the latter 
 are seen to be contingently true, the contraries being conceiv 
 able. All truths are seen to be necessarily true, if they are seen 
 to be true at all ; and the character of contingency is not appli 
 cable to the relations expressed in certain formulas, but solely to 
 the modes in which we got at those formulas : the contingency 
 of "seventy-two and one hundred and forty making two hundred 
 and twelve," is the liability of our miscalculating; and the prop 
 osition is a contingent one until we have so checked our calcu 
 lation as to be certain we have ascertained the true relations. 
 Thus it is held that all animals with incisor teeth are carnivorous ; 
 we have ascertained it by our universal experience of carnivorous 
 animals ; but, strong as the presumption is that the relation is 
 true, we are forced to consider it a contingent truth, because 
 there is a possibility of our experience some day detecting an 
 exception; just as exceptions have been detected to the general 
 relation between comparative length of the intestine in herbiv 
 orous, and shortness of it in carnivorous, animals, but we never 
 call the proposition " a whole is greater than its part" a contin 
 gent truth, because no extension of experience could alter rela 
 tions so simple and so universal; we cannot call "fire burns pa 
 per" a contingent truth, because no extension of experience can 
 alter relations so simple : if, by way of exception, a case of in 
 combustible paper be exhibited, we know that the original prop 
 osition meant ordinary paper, and not paper of different prop- 
 
 29 
 
674 KANT. 
 
 erties. We cannot call the truth " sugar is sweet" contingent, be 
 cause any extension of our experience which made us acquainted 
 with sugar not sweet, would bring forward some other kind of thing 
 than that which we designate by the name of sugar. We can 
 not call the truth " iron is heavy" contingent. We can call no 
 truths contingent except those which express relations either 
 complicated or unfamiliar; simplicity of relation implying di 
 rectness of perception, and universality of experience coercing 
 the mind into uniformity of expectation. The Fundamental 
 Ict eas which Dr. Whewell distinguishes as Necessary Truths, are 
 nothing more than ideas framed in our minds by the uniformity 
 of our experience. And thus we return to the old position, that 
 experience, and experience alone, is the source of all ideas. 
 
 If the foregoing arguments are valid, what becomes of Kant s 
 system ? We are forced to conclude, that inasmuch as his 
 stronghold the existence of a priori ideas cannot sustain at 
 tack, the entrance of the enemy Skepticism is inevitable. Kant 
 was not a skeptic ; but he deceived himself in supposing that his 
 system was any safeguard from Skepticism. 
 
 The veracity of Consciousness, which he had so laboriously 
 striven to establish, and on which his Practical Reason was 
 based, is only a relative, subjective veracity. Experience is the 
 only basis of Knowledge ; and Experience leads to Skepticism. 
 
NINTH EPOCH. 
 
 ONTOLOGY RE- ASSERTS ITS CLAIM. THE DEMONSTRATION 
 OF THE SUBJECTIVITY ONCE MORE LEADS TO IDEALISM. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 FICHTE. 
 
 I. LIFE OF FICHTE. 
 
 JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE was born at Rammenau, a village 
 lying between Bischofswerda and Pulsniz, in Upper Lusatia, on 
 the 19th May, 1762.* 
 
 His childhood, of which many touching anecdotes are related, 
 was signalized by extraordinary intellectual capacity and great 
 moral energy. He was a precocious child, and long before he 
 was old enough to be sent fo school he learned many things 
 from his father, who taught him to read, and taught him the 
 pious songs and proverbs w r hich formed his own simple stock of 
 erudition. With these various studies was mixed an enchanting 
 element the stories of his early wanderings in Saxony and 
 Franconia, stories to which young Johann listened with never- 
 tiring eagerness. It was probably the vague longings \vhich 
 these recitals inspired, that made him wander into the fields, 
 quitting his companions, boisterous in mirth, to roam away and 
 enjoy the luxury of solitude, there to give vent to the indul- 
 
 * See the biography by Fichte s son Fichte s Leben und literarischer 
 riefwechsel, 2 vols., 1836. 
 
676 FICHTE. 
 
 gence of those unspeakable longings. This pale and meditative 
 child is at ease in solitude. He stands for hours, gazing in the 
 far distance, or in mournful yearning at the silent sky over 
 arching him. The sun goes down, and the boy returns home 
 melancholy with the twilight. He does this so constantly that 
 neighbors remark it ; comment on it ; and, in after-years, when 
 that boy has become a renowned man, they recur to it with sud 
 den pleasure, not forgetting also that they had " always said 
 there was something remarkable in the boy." 
 
 Fichte s progress was so rapid that he was soon intrusted with 
 the office of reading family prayers ; and his father cherished 
 the hope of one day seeing him a clergyman. An event curious 
 in itself, and very important in its influence on his subsequent 
 career, soon occurred, which favored that hope, and went far to 
 realize it. But before we relate it we must give a touching 
 anecdote, which exhibits Fichte s heroic self-command in a very 
 interesting light.* 
 
 The first book which fell into his hands after the Bible and 
 Catechism, w r as the renowned history of Siegfried the Horned, 
 and it seized so powerfully on his imagination, that he lost all 
 pleasure in any other employment, became careless and neglect 
 ful, and, for the first time in his life, was punished. Then, in 
 the spirit of the injunction which tells us to cut off our right 
 hand if it cause us to offend, Fichte resolved to sacrifice the be 
 loved book, and, taking it in his hand, walked slowly to a stream 
 flowing past the house, with the intention of throwing it in. Long 
 he lingered on the bank, ere he could muster courage for this first 
 self-conquest of his life ; but at length, summoning all his reso 
 lution, he flung it into the water. His fortitude gave way as he 
 saw the treasure, too dearly loved, floating away forever, and he 
 burst into a passionate flood of tears. Just at this moment the 
 father arrived on this spot, and the weeping child told what he 
 
 * For both anecdotes we are indebted to a very interesting article on 
 Fichte which appeared in the Foreign Quarterly Review, No. 71. We have 
 abridged the passages ; otherwise the narrative is unaltered. 
 
LIFE OF FICHTE. 677 
 
 had done ; but either from timidity or incapacity to explain his 
 feelings, was silent as to his true motive. Irritated at this treat 
 ment of his present, Fichte s father inflicted upon him an un 
 usually severe punishment, and this occurrence formed a fitting 
 prelude to his after-life, in which he was so often misunderstood, 
 and the actions springing from the purest convictions of duty, 
 were exactly those for which he had most to suffer. When a 
 sufficient time had elapsed for the offence to be in some measure 
 forgotten, the father brought home another of these seducing 
 books ; but Fichte dreaded being again exposed to the tempta 
 tion, and begged that it might rather be given to some of the 
 other children. 
 
 It was about this time that the other event before alluded to 
 occurred. The clergyman of the village, who had taken a fancy 
 to Gottlieb and often assisted in his instruction, happened one 
 day to ask him how much he thought he could remember of the 
 sermon of the preceding day. Fichte made the attempt, and, to 
 the astonishment of the pastor, succeeded in giving a very toler 
 able account of the course of argument, as well as of the texts 
 quoted in its illustration. The circumstance was mentioned to 
 the Count von Hoffmansegg, the lord of the village, and one day 
 another nobleman, the Baron von Mittiz, who was on a visit at 
 the castle, happening to express his regret at having been too 
 late for the sermon on the Sunday morning, he was told, half in 
 jest, that it was of little consequence, for that there was a boy in 
 the village who could repeat it all from memory. Little Gott 
 lieb was sent for, and soon arrived in a clean smock-frock and 
 bearing a large nosegay, such as his mother was accustomed to 
 send to the castle occasionally as a token of respect. He an 
 swered the first questions put to him with his accustomed quiet 
 simplicity ; but when asked to repeat as much as he could recol 
 lect of the morning s sermon, his voice and manner became more 
 animated, and, as he proceeded, entirely forgetting the presence 
 of the formidable company, he became so fervid and abundant 
 in his eloquence, that the Count thought it necessary to interrupt 
 
678 FICHTE. 
 
 him, lest the playful tone of the circle should be destroyed by 
 the serious subjects of the sermon. The young preacher had 
 however made some impression on his auditory ; the Baron 
 made inquiries concerning him, and the clergyman, wishing for 
 nothing more than an opportunity to serve his favorite, gave such 
 an account that the Baron determined to undertake the charge 
 of his education. He departed, carrying his protege with him, 
 to his castle of Siebeneichen, in Saxony, near Meissen, on the 
 Elbe ; and the heart of the poor village boy sank, as he beheld 
 the gloomy grandeur of the baronial hall, and the dark oak for 
 ests by which it was surrounded. His first sorrow, his severest 
 trial, had come in the shape of what a misjudging world might 
 regard as a singular piece of good fortune, and so deep a dejec 
 tion fell on him, as seriously to endanger his health. His patron 
 here manifested the really kindly spirit by which he had been 
 actuated ; he entered into the feelings of the child, and removed 
 him from the lordly mansion to the abode of a country clergy 
 man in the neighborhood, who was passionately fond of children, 
 and had none of his own. Under the truly paternal care of this 
 excellent man, Fichte passed some of the happiest years of his 
 life, and to its latest day looked back to them with tenderness 
 and gratitude. The affectionate care of this amiable couple, who 
 shared with him every little domestic pleasure, and treated him 
 in every respect as if he had been indeed their son, was always 
 remembered by him with the liveliest sensibility, and certainly 
 exercised a most favorable influence on his character. 
 
 In this family, Fichte received his first instruction in the lan 
 guages of antiquity, in which, however, he was left much to his 
 own efforts, seldom receiving what might be called a regular les 
 son. This plan, though it undoubtedly invigorated and sharpened 
 his faculties, left him imperfectly acquainted with grammar, and 
 retarded, in some measure, his subsequent progress at Schul- 
 pforte. His kind preceptor soon perceived the inefficiency of his 
 own attainments for advancing the progress of so promising a 
 pupil, and urged his patron to obtain for Fichte what appeared 
 
LIFE OF FICHTE. 679 
 
 to him the advantages of a high school. He was accordingly 
 sent, first to Meissen, and afterwards to the seminary at Schul- 
 pforte. 
 
 There the system of fagging existed in full force, and with its 
 usual consequences, tyranny on the one side, dissimulation and 
 cunning on the other. Even Fichte, whose native strength of 
 character in some measure guarded him from evil influences that 
 might have been fatal to a mind of a feebler order, confesses that 
 his life at Schulpforte was any thing but favorable to his integ 
 rity. He found himself gradually reconciled to the necessity of 
 ruling his conduct by the opinion of the little community around 
 him, and compelled to practice occasionally the same artifices as 
 others, if he would not with all his talents and industry be al 
 ways left behind. 
 
 Into this microcosm of contending forces the boy of thirteen, 
 nurtured amidst lonely hills and silent forests, now found himself 
 thrown. The monastic gloom of the buildings contrasted, at 
 first, most painfully with the joyous freedom of fields and woods, 
 where he had been accustomed to wander at \vill ; but still more 
 painfully, the solitude of the moral desert. Shy and shrinking 
 within himself he stood, and the tears which furnished only sub 
 jects of mockery to his companions, were forced back, or taught 
 to flow only in secret. Here, however, he learned the useful les 
 son of self-reliance, so well, though so bitterly taught by want of 
 sympathy in those around us, and from this time to the close of 
 his life it was never forgotten. It was natural that the idea of 
 escape should occur to a boy thus circumstanced, but the dread 
 of being retaken and brought back in disgrace to Schulpforte, 
 occasioned hesitation. While brooding over this project, it hap 
 pened that he met with a copy of Robinson Crusoe, and his en 
 thusiasm, the enthusiasm of thirteen, was kindled into a blaze. 
 The desert should be his dwelling-place ! On some far-off island 
 of the ocean, beyond the reach of men and the students of 
 Schulpforte, he would pass golden days of freedom and happi 
 ness. It was a common bovish notion, but the manner in which 
 
680 FICHTE. 
 
 it was carried into execution, shows traces of the character of the 
 individual. Nothing could have been easier than for him to 
 have taken his departure unperceived on one of the days when 
 the scholars were allowed to go to the playground ; but he 
 scorned to steal away in secret ; he would have this step appear 
 as the result of necessity and deliberate determination. He 
 therefore made a formal declaration to his superior, a lad who 
 had made a cruel and oppressive use of the brief authority in 
 trusted him, that he would no longer endure the treatment he 
 received, but would leave the place at the first opportunity. As 
 may be supposed, the announcement was received with sneers 
 and laughter, and Fichte now considered himself in all honor 
 free to fulfil his resolution. It was easy to find an opportunity, 
 and accordingly, having taken the precaution to study his pro 
 posed route on the map, he set off, and trudged on stoutly on 
 the road to Nauinberg. As he walked, however, he bethought 
 himself of a saying of his beloved old pastor, that one should 
 never begin an important undertaking without a prayer for Di 
 vine assistance ; he turned, therefore, and kneeling down on a 
 green hillock by the roadside, implored, in the innocent sincerity 
 of his heart, the blessing of Heaven on his wanderings. As he 
 prayed, it occurred to the new Robinson that his disappearance 
 must occasion grief to his parents, and his joy in his wild scheme 
 was gone in a moment. "Never, perhaps, to see his parents 
 again !" This terrible thought suddenly presented itself with 
 such force that he resolved to retrace his steps, and meet all the 
 punishments that might be in store for him, "that he might 
 look once more on the face of his mother." 
 
 On his return, he met those who had been sent in pursuit of 
 him ; for as soon as he had been missed, the " Obergesell" had 
 given information of what had passed between them. When 
 carried before the Rector, Fichte immediately confessed that he 
 had intended to escape, and at the same time related the whole 
 story with such straightforward simplicity and openness, that the 
 Rector became interested for him, and not only remitted his 
 
LIFE OF FICIITE. 681 
 
 punishment, but chose for him, among the elder lads, another 
 master, who treated him with the greatest kindness, and to whom 
 he became warmly attached. 
 
 Fichte had become a Candidatus Theologia) when his patron 
 died, and with him died all hopes of being a clergyman. His 
 prospects were gloomy in the extreme; but he was relieved from 
 anxiety by being offered the situation of private tutor in a family 
 in Switzerland. lie soon after made acquaintance with Lavater 
 and some other literary men. He also formed an attachment, 
 which was to last him through life, with a niece of Klopstock. 
 
 Fichte s tutorship was remarkable. The parents of his pupils, 
 although neither perfectly comprehending his plans, nor approv 
 ing of that part which they did comprehend, were nevertheless 
 such admirers of his moral character they stood in such re 
 spectful awe of him that they were induced to submit their own 
 conduct with respect to their children to his judgment. We 
 presume that all well-meaning tutors occasionally make sugges 
 tions to parents respecting certain points in their conduct tow 
 ards the children ; but Fichte s plan is, we fancy, quite unexam 
 pled in the history of such relations. He kept a journal which 
 he laid before them every week, and in which he had noted the 
 faults of conduct of which they had been guilty. This lets us 
 into the secret of Fichte s firm and truthful character, as much 
 as any thing we know about him. It was from such a soil that 
 we might expect to find growing the moral doctrines which af 
 terwards made his name illustrious. But this domestic censor 
 ship could not last long; it lasted for two years; and that it 
 should have lasted so long is, as has been remarked, strong ev 
 idence of the respect in which his character was held. But it 
 was irksome, insupportable, and ended at length in mutual dis 
 satisfaction. He was forced to seek some other mode of subsist 
 ence. He went to Leipzig, where he gave private lessons in 
 Greek and Philosophy, and became acquainted with the writings 
 of Kant. This was an important event to him. Hear in what 
 terms he speaks of it : 
 
 29<> 
 
682 
 
 FICHTE. 
 
 "I have been living, for the last four or five mouths, in Leip 
 zig, the happiest life I can remember. I came here with my 
 head full of grand projects, which all burst one after another, 
 like so many soap-bubbles, without leaving me so much as the 
 froth. At first this troubled me a little, and, half in despair, I 
 took a step which I ought to have taken long before. Since I 
 could not alter what was without me, I resolved to try to alter 
 what was within. I threw myself into Philosophy the Kantian, 
 videlicet and here I found the true antidote for all my evils, 
 and joy enough into the bargain. The influence which this phi 
 losophy, particularly the ethical part of it (which, however, is 
 unintelligible without a previous study of the Kritik der reinen 
 Vemunft) has had upon my whole system of thought, the revo 
 lution which it has effected in my mind, is not to be described. 
 To you especially I owe the declaration, that I now believe, with 
 my whole heart, in free will, and that I see that under this sup 
 position alone can duty, virtue, and morality have any existence. 
 From the opposite proposition, of the necessity of all human 
 actions, must flow the most injurious consequences to society ; 
 and it may, in fact, be in part the source of the corrupt morals 
 of the higher classes which we hear so much of. Should any 
 one adopting it remain virtuous, we must look for the cause of 
 his purity elsewhere than in the innocuousness of the doctrine. 
 With many it is their want of logical consequence in their actions. 
 
 " I am furthermore well convinced, that this life is not the land 
 of enjoyment, but of labor and toil, and that every joy is granted 
 to us but to strengthen us for further exertion ; that the manage 
 ment of our own fate is by no means required of us, but only self- 
 culture. I trouble myself, therefore, not at all concerning the 
 things that are without; I endeavor not to appear, but to be. 
 And to this, perhaps, I owe the deep tranquillity I enjoy ; my 
 external position, however, is well enough suited to such a frame 
 of mind. I am no man s master, and no man s slave. As to 
 prospects, I have none at all, for the constitution of the church 
 here does not suit me, nor, to say the truth, that of the people 
 
LIFE OF FICHTE. 683 
 
 either. As long as I can maintain my present independence I 
 shall certainly do so. I have been for some time working at an 
 explanatory abridgment of Kant s Kritik der Urtheilskraft (Crit 
 ical Inquiry into the Faculty of Judgment), but I am afraid I 
 shall be obliged to come before the public in a very immature 
 state, to prevent being forestalled by a hundred vamped-up pub 
 lications. Should the child ever make its appearance, I will send 
 it to you."* 
 
 It was in consequence of his admiration of Kant, that, after 
 several ineffectual attempts to settle himself he went to Konings- 
 berg. Instead of a letter of introduction, Fichte presented Kant 
 with a work, written in eight days, and which bore the title of 
 A. Critique of every possible Revelation. Kant at once recognized 
 his peer, and received him warmly. But Kant himself, though 
 celebrated, was neither rich nor influential. Fichte s affairs were 
 desperate. We have his own confession in the fragment of a 
 journal which he kept at the time. 
 
 " 28^ August. I yesterday began to revise my Critique. In 
 the course of my meditation some new and excellent ideas were 
 excogitated, which convinced me that my work was superficial. 
 I endeavored to carry out my investigation to-day ; but my im 
 agination led me so far away, that I could do nothing. I have 
 reckoned my finances, and find that I have just enough to sub 
 sist on for a fortnight. It is true this is not the first time in my 
 life that I have found myself in such an embarrassment, but I 
 was then in my own country ; besides, in growing older, one s 
 sense of honor becomes more delicate, and distress is more and 
 more of a hardship. ... I have not been able to make any res 
 olution. I certainly shall not speak on the subject to M. Bor- 
 owsky, to whom Kant has given me an introduction. If I speak 
 to any one, it shall be to Kant himself. 
 
 " 1st Sept. I have made a resolution which I must commu- 
 
 * It was never printed ; probably because, as lie here anticipates, he 
 forestalled. 
 
684: FICHTE. 
 
 fticate to Kant. A situation as tutor, however reluctantly I 
 might accept it, does not even offer itself; while, on the other 
 hand, the incertitude in which I am placed does not allow me to 
 work. I must return home. I can perhaps borrow from Kant 
 the small sum necessary for my journey. I went to him to-day 
 for that purpose, but my courage failed me ; I resolved to write 
 to him. 
 
 " 2d Sept. I finished my letter to Kant, and sent it. 
 
 " 3d Sept. Received an invitation to dinner from Kant. He 
 received me with his usual cordiality ; but informed me that it 
 would be quite out of his power to accede to my request for an 
 other fortnight. Such amiable frankness ! 
 
 " I have done nothing lately ; but I shall set myself to work, 
 and leave the rest to Providence. 
 
 " 6th Sept. Dined with Kant, who proposed that I should 
 sell the MS. of my Critique to Ilartung the bookseller. * It is 
 admirably written, said he, when I told him I was going to re 
 write it. Is that true ? It is Kant who says so. 
 
 " 12th Sept. I wanted to work to-day; but could do noth 
 ing. How will this end ? What will become of me a week 
 hence ? Then all my money will be gone." 
 
 These extracts will not be read without emotion. They paint 
 a curious picture in the life of our philosopher : a life which was 
 little more than a perpetual and energetic combat. 
 
 The Critique was published anonymously, and gained immense 
 applause ; partly, no doubt, because it was generally mistaken 
 for the production of Kant himself. The celebrity he acquired 
 when the authorship was disclosed, was the means of procuring 
 him the chair of Philosophy at Jena, the offer of which was made 
 him towards the end of 1793. 
 
 Jena was then the leading University of Germany ; and 
 Fichte might flatter himself that at length he had a settled posi 
 tion, in which he might calmly develop his scientific views. 
 But his was a Fighter s destiny. Even here, at Jena, he found 
 himself soon opposing and opposed. His endeavors to instil a 
 
LIFE OF FICHTE. 685 
 
 higher moral feeling into the students his anxiety for their bet 
 ter culture only brought on him the accusation of endeavoring 
 to undermine the religious institutions of his country ; and his 
 speculative views brought on him the charge of atheism. 
 
 Atheism is a grave charge, and yet how lightly made ! The 
 history of opinion abounds in instances of this levity ; yet scarce 
 ly ever was a charge more groundless in appearance than that 
 against Fichte, whose system was atheistic only in superficial ap 
 pearance. Nevertheless the cry was raised, and he had to battle 
 against it. It is understood that the Government would have 
 been willing to overlook the publication of the work which 
 raised this cry, if Fichte had made any sort of explanatory modi 
 fication ; but he would not hear of it, tendered his resignation, 
 and soon afterwards found an asylum in Prussia, where he occu 
 pied the Chair at Eiiangen, and afterwards at Berlin. From 
 his career at Berlin we will select one incident typical of his 
 character. 
 
 The students are assembled in crowds to hear their favorite 
 professor, who is to lecture that day upon duty, on that duty 
 whose ideal grandeur his impassioned eloquence has revealed to 
 them. Fichte arrives, calm and modest. He lectures with his 
 usual dignified calmness, rising into fiery bursts of eloquence, but 
 governed by the same marvellous rigor of logic as before. He 
 leads them to the present state of affairs. On this topic he grows 
 still more animated ; the rolling of drums without frequently 
 drowning his voice, and giving him fresh spirit. He points to 
 the bleeding wounds of his country ; he warms with hatred 
 against oppressors ; and enforces it as the duty of every one to 
 lend his single arm to save his country. 
 
 " This course of lectures," he exclaims, " will be suspended till 
 the end of the campaign. We will resume them in a free coun 
 try, or die in the attempt to recover her freedom." Loud shouts 
 respondent ring through the hall ; clapping of hands and stamp 
 ing of feet make answer to the rolling drums without ; every 
 German heart there present is moved, as at the sound of a 
 
686 FICHTE. 
 
 trumpet. Fichte descends ; passes through the crowd ; and 
 places himself in the ranks of a corps of volunteers then depart 
 ing for the army. It is the commencement of the memorable 
 compaign of 1813. 
 
 In another year he was no more ; he fell, not by a French 
 bullet, but by the fever caught while tending his loved wife, who 
 herself had fallen a victim to her attendance on unknown suffer 
 ers. On the 28th of January, 1814, aged fifty-two, this noble 
 Fichte expired. 
 
 There are few characters which inspire more admiration than 
 that of Fichte ; we must all admire " that cold, colossal, ada 
 mantine spirit standing erect and clear, like a Cato Major among 
 degenerate men ; fit to have been the teacher of the Stoa, and 
 to have discoursed of beauty and virtue in the groves of Aca 
 deme ! So robust an intellect, a soul so calm, so lofty, massive, 
 and immovable has not mingled in philosophical discussion since 
 the time of Luther. For the man rises before us amid contra 
 diction and debate like a granite mountain amid clouds and 
 winds. Ridicule of the best that could be commanded has been 
 already tried against him ; but it could not avail. What was 
 the wit of a thousand wits to him ? The cry of a thousand choughs 
 assaulting that old cliff of granite ; seen from the summit, these, 
 as they winged the midway air, showed scarce so gross as bee 
 tles, and their cry was seldom even audible. Fichte s opinions 
 may be true or false ; but his character as a thinker can be 
 slightly valued only by those who know it ill ; and as a man ap 
 proved by action and suffering, in his life and in his death, he 
 ranks with a class of men who were common only in better ages 
 than ours."* 
 
 II. FICHTE S HISTORICAL POSITION. 
 
 Kant s Criticism, although really leaving skepticism in posses 
 sion of the field, was nevertheless believed to have indicated a 
 
 * Carlyle. 
 
FICHTE S HISTORICAL POSITION. 687 
 
 new domain, in which a refuge might be found. The thought 
 soon suggested itself that on this domain an indestructible tem 
 ple might be erected. Kant had driven the piles deep down into 
 the earth a secure foundation was made ; but Kant had de 
 clined building. 
 
 Jacobi, for one, saw in the principles of " criticism" a path on 
 which he could travel. He maintained, that just as Sense was, 
 according to Kant, a faculty whereby we perceived material 
 things, so also was Reason a sense, a faculty, whereby we per 
 ceive the supersensual. 
 
 It was indeed soon evident that men would not content them 
 selves with the mere negation to which Kant had reduced our 
 knowledge of things per se. It was the positive part of his sys 
 tem they accepted and endeavored to extend. This attempt 
 forms the matter of all the subsequent history of German Philos 
 ophy till Hegel. We will briefly state the nature of the dis 
 cussions which the result of Kant s system had rendered im 
 perative. 
 
 Kant had postulated the existence of an object as the neces 
 sary correlate to a subject. Knowledge was both objective and 
 subjective ; but inasmuch as it was thus inseparably twofold it 
 could never penetrate the essence of things it could never know 
 the object it could only know phenomena. Hence the pro 
 blem was : 
 
 What is the relation of object and subject ? 
 
 To solve this, it was necessary to penetrate the essence of 
 things, to apprehend noumena. All the efforts of men were 
 therefore to be directed towards this absolute science. The 
 ground of all certitude being in the a priori ideas, an attempt 
 was made to construct a priori the whole system of human 
 knowledge. 
 
 The Ego was the necessary basis of the new edifice. Conscious 
 ness, as alone certain, ivas proclaimed the ground upon which ab 
 solute science must rest. - 
 
 Fichte s position is here clearly marked out. His sole object 
 
688 FICHTE. 
 
 was to construct a science out of consciousness, and thereon to 
 found a system of morals. 
 
 Let us at the outset request the reader to give no heed to any 
 of the witticisms which he may hear, or which may suggest 
 themselves to him on a hasty consideration of Fi elite s opinions. 
 That the opinions are not those of ordinary thinkers, we admit ; 
 that they are repugnant to all " common sense," we must also 
 admit ; that they are false, we believe : but we also believe 
 them to have been laborious products of an earnest mind, the 
 consequences of admitted premises, drawn with singular audacity 
 and subtlety, and no mere caprices of ingenious speculation no 
 paradoxes of an acute but trifling mind. 
 
 It was within him that he found a lamp to light him on his 
 path. Deep in the recesses of his soul, beneath all understand 
 ing, superior to all logical knowledge, there lay a faculty by 
 which truth, absolute truth, might be known. 
 
 "I have found the organ," he says in his Bestimmung des 
 Menschen, " by which to apprehend all reality. It is not the 
 understanding; for all knowledge supposes some higher knowl 
 edge on which it rests, and of this ascent there is no end. It is 
 Faith, voluntarily reposing on views naturally presenting them 
 selves to us, because through these views alone we can fulfil our 
 destiny, which sees our knowledge, and pronounces that it is 
 good, and raises it to certainty and conviction. It is no knowl 
 edge, but a resolution of the will to admit this knowledge. 
 This is no mere verbal distinction, but a true and deep one, 
 pregnant with the most important consequences. Let me for 
 ever hold fast by it. All my conviction is but faith, and it pro 
 ceeds from the will and not from the understanding ; from the 
 will also, and not from the understanding, must all the true cul 
 ture proceed. Let the first only be firmly directed towards the 
 Good, the latter will of itself apprehend the True. Should the 
 latter be exercised and developed while the former remains 
 neglected, nothing can come of it but a facility in vain and end 
 less sophistical subtleties refining away into the absolutely void 
 
689 
 
 inane. I know that every seeming truth, born of thought alone, 
 and not ultimately resting on faith, is false and spurious; for 
 knowledge, purely and simply such, when carried to its utmost 
 consequences, leads to the conviction that we can know nothing ! 
 Such knowledge never finds any thing in the conclusions, which 
 it has not previously placed in the premises by faith ; and even 
 
 then its conclusions are not always correct Every human 
 
 creature born into the world has unconsciously seized on the 
 reality which exists for him alone through this intuitive faith. 
 If in mere knowledge in mere perception and reflection we 
 can discover no ground for regarding our mental presentations 
 as more than mere pictures, why do we all nevertheless regard 
 them as more, and imagine for them a basis, a substratum inde 
 pendent of all modifications ? If we all possess the capacity and 
 the instinct to go beyond this natural view of things, why do so 
 few of us follow this instinct, or exercise this capacity? nay, 
 why do we even resist with a sort of bitterness when we are 
 urged towards this path ? What holds us imprisoned in these 
 natural boundaries ? Not inferences of our reason ; for there 
 are none which could do this. It is our deep interest in reality 
 that does this in the good that we are to produce in the com 
 mon and the sensuous that we are to enjoy. From this interest 
 can no one who lives detach himself, and just as little from the 
 faith which forces itself upon him simultaneously with his exist 
 ence. We are all born in faith, and he who is blind follows 
 blindly the irresistible attraction. He who sees follows by sight, 
 and believes because he will believe."* 
 
 Here the limit set by Kant is overleaped : a knowledge of 
 realities is affirmed. But it is not enough to affirm such a 
 knowledge ; we must prove it. To prove this is the mission of 
 Philosophy. 
 
 Fichte, who thought himself a true Kantist, although Kant 
 very distinctly and publicly repudiated him, declared that the 
 
 * We adopt the translation of Mrs. Percy Sinnett : Destination, of Man, 
 London, 1846. 
 
690 
 
 FICHTE. 
 
 materials for a science had been discovered by Kant ; nothing 
 more was needed than a systematic co-ordination of these mate 
 rials: and this task he undertook in his famous Doctrine of 
 Science (Wissenschaftslehre). In this he endeavored to con 
 struct a priori all knowledge. 
 
 III. BASIS OF FICHTE S SYSTEM. 
 
 We are supposed to perceive external objects through the 
 ideas which these objects excite in us. But this assumption is 
 not warranted by the facts of consciousness. What is the fun 
 damental fact ? It is that I have in my mind a certain idea. 
 This, and this only, is primitively given. When we leave this 
 fact in quest of an explanation, we are forced to admit either 
 that this idea is spontaneously evolved by me ; or else some not- 
 me something different from myself has excited it in me. 
 Idealism or Dualism ? choose between them. 
 
 Kant, unwilling to embrace idealism, and unable to conceive 
 how the Ego spontaneously evolved within itself, ideas of that 
 which it regarded as different from itself, postulated the exist 
 ence of a Non-Ego, but declared that we knew nothing of it. 
 In this he followed Locke, and the majority of philosophers. 
 
 Truly, said Fichte, we know nothing of it ; we can only know 
 that which passes within ourselves. Only so much as we are 
 conscious of can we know ; but in consciousness there is no ob 
 ject given, there is only an idea given. Are we forced by the 
 very laws of our reason to suppose that there is Non-Ego exist 
 ing ? are we forced to assume that these ideas are images of 
 something out of us and independent of us ? To what does this 
 dilemma bring us ? Simply to this : that the very assumption, 
 here called a necessary consequence of our mental constitution 
 this Non-Ego, which must be postulated, is, after all, nothing but 
 a postulate of our reason ; is therefore a product of the Ego. It 
 is the Ego which thus creates the necessity for a Non-Ego ; it is 
 the Ego which thus, answering to the necessity, creates the Non- 
 Ego wanted. Ideas, and nothing but ideas, are given in the 
 
BASIS OF FICHTE S SYSTEM. 691 
 
 primitive fact of consciousness. These are the products of the 
 activity of the Ego ; and not, as is so commonly asserted, the 
 products of the passivity of the Ego. The soul is no passive 
 mirror reflecting images. It is an active principle creating them. 
 The soul is no lifeless receptivity. Were it not brimming over 
 with life and activity, perception would be impossible. One 
 stone does not perceive another. A mould does not perceive the 
 liquid that is poured into it. 
 
 Consciousness is in its very essence an activity. Well, then, 
 if in its activity it produces images, and if by the laws of its 
 nature it is forced to assume that these images have some sub 
 stratum, what is this assumption but another form of the soul s 
 activity ? If the Ego is conscious of its changes, and yet is 
 forced to attribute these changes to some external cause, what is 
 this very act of assuming an external cause but the pure act of 
 the Ego ? another change in the consciousness ? 
 
 You admit that we cannot know Substance ; all our knowl 
 edge is limited to accidents to phenomena. But, you say, you 
 are forced to assume a Substance as the basis of these accidents 
 a noumenon as that whereby phenomena are possible; and 
 yet you cannot know this noumenon. Fichte answers : If you 
 cannot know it, your assumption, as the mere product of your 
 reason, is nothing more nor less than another form of the activity 
 of the Ego. It is you who assume ; and you assume ivhat you 
 call Substance. Substance is nothing but the synthesis of acci 
 dents. And it is a mental synthesis. 
 
 Thus Fichte founded Idealism upon the basis of consciousness, 
 which was the admitted basis of all certitude ; and he not only 
 founded idealism, but reduced the Ego to an activity, and all 
 knowledge to an act. 
 
 The activity of the Ego is of course an assumption, but it is 
 the only assumption necessary for the construction of a science. 
 That once admitted, the existence of the Non-Ego, as a product 
 of the Ego, follows as a necessary consequence. 
 
 Every one will admit that A = A ; or that A is A. This is 
 
692 FICHTE. 
 
 an axiom which is known intuitively, and has no need of proof. 
 It is the proposition of absolute identity (Satz der Identltat). It 
 is absolutely true. In admitting this to be absolutely true, we 
 ascribe to the mind a faculty of knowing absolute truth. 
 
 But in saying A equals A, we do not affirm the existence of A ; 
 we only affirm that if A exist, then it must equal A. And the 
 axiom teaches us not that A exists ; but there is a necessary re 
 lation between a certain if and then ; and this necessary relation 
 we will call X. But this relation, this X, is only in the Ego, 
 comes only/ro?ft the Ego. It is the Ego that judges in the pre 
 ceding axiom that A = A ; and it judges by means of X. 
 
 To reduce this to language a little less scholastic, we may say 
 that, in every judgment which the mind makes, the act of judg 
 ing is an act of the Ego. 
 
 But as the X is wholly in the Ego, so therefore is A in the 
 Ego, and is posited by the Ego. And by this we see that there 
 is something in the Ego which is forever one and the same, and 
 that is the X. Hence the formula, " I ami: Ego = Ego." 
 
 We come here to the Cogito, ergo sum, of Descartes, as the 
 basis of all certitude. The Ego posits itself, and is by means of 
 this very self-positing. When I say " I am," I affirm, in con 
 sciousness, my existence ; and this affirmation of my conscious 
 ness is the condition of my existence. The Ego is therefore at 
 one and the same time both the activity and the product of ac 
 tivity ; precisely as thought is both the thinking activity, and 
 the product thought. 
 
 We will, for the present, spare the reader any further inflic 
 tion of such logical abstractions. lie will catch in the foregoing 
 a glimpse of Fi elite s method, and be in some way able to esti 
 mate the strength of the basis on which idealism reposes. 
 
 The great point Fichte has endeavored to establish is the 
 identity of being and thought of existence and consciousness 
 of object and subject. And he establishes this by means of the 
 Ego considered as essentially an activity. 
 
 Hence the conclusion drawn in the practical part of his phi- 
 
BASIS OF FICHTE S SYSTEM. 693 
 
 losophy, that the true destination of man is not thought, but 
 action, which is thought realized. " I am free," he says. That 
 is the revelation of consciousness. " I am free ; and it is not 
 merely my action, but the free determination of my will to obey 
 the voice of conscience, that decides all my worth. More bright 
 ly does the everlasting world now rise before me ; and the fun 
 damental laws of its order are more clearly revealed to my men 
 tal si^ht. My will alone, lying hid in the obscure depths of my 
 soul, is the first link in a chain of consequences stretching 
 through the invisible realms of spirit, as in this terrestrial world 
 the action itself, a certain movement communicated to matter, is 
 the first link in a material chain of cause and effect, encircling 
 the whole system. The will is the efficient cause, the living- 
 principle of the world of spirit, as motion is of the world of 
 sense. I stand between two worlds, the one visible, in which the 
 act alone avails, and the intention matters not at all ; the other 
 invisible and incomprehensible, acted on only by the will. In 
 both these worlds I am an effective force. The Divine life, as 
 alone the finite mind can conceive it, is self-forming, self-repre 
 senting will, clothed, to the mortal eye, with multitudinous sen 
 suous forms, flowing through me and through the whole im 
 measurable universe, here streaming through my veins and 
 muscles, there, pouring its abundance into the tree, the flower, 
 the grass. The dead, heavy mass of inert matter, which did but 
 fill up nature, has disappeared, and, in its stead, there rushes by 
 the bright, everlasting flood of life and power, from its Infinite 
 Source. 
 
 " The Eternal Will is the Creator of the world, as he is the 
 Creator of the finite reason. Those who will insist that the 
 world must have been created out of a mass of inert matter, 
 which must always remain inert and lifeless, like a vessel made 
 by human hands, know neither the world nor Him. The In 
 finite Reason alone exists in himself the finite in him ; in our 
 minds alone has he created a world, or at least that by and 
 through which it becomes unfolded to us. In his light we be- 
 
694 FICHTE. 
 
 hold the light, and all that it reveals. Great, living Will! 
 whom no words can name, and no conception embrace ! well 
 may I lift my thoughts to thee, for I can think only in thee. In 
 thee, the Incomprehensible, does my own existence, and that of 
 the world, become comprehensible to me ; all the problems of 
 being are solved, and the most perfect harmony reigns. I veil 
 my face before thee and lay my linger on my lips." 
 
 IV. FICHTE S IDEALISM. 
 
 The ground-principle of Fichte s idealism having been given, 
 we have now to see how he avoids the natural objections which 
 rise against such a doctrine. But first let us notice how this 
 deification of personality was at once the most natural product 
 of such a mind as Fichte s, and the best adapted to the spirit of 
 the age which produced it. His doctrine was an inspiration of 
 that ardent and exalted spirit which stirred the heart of Ger 
 many, and made the campaign of 1813 an epoch in history. 
 Germany then, as now, was most deficient in energetic will. It 
 had armies, and these armies were headed by experienced gener 
 als. But among them there was scarcely another beyond the 
 impetuous Blucher, who had steadfast will. They were beaten 
 and beaten. At length they were roused. A series of insults 
 had roused them. They rose to fight for fatherland ; and in 
 their ranks was Fichte, who by deed as well as doctrine sought 
 to convince them that in Will lay man s divinity. 
 
 The question being, What is the relation of Object and Sub 
 ject ? and Fichte s solution being Object and Subject are identi 
 cal, it followed from his position that inasmuch as an Object and 
 a Subject a Non-Ego and an Ego were given in knowledge, 
 and the distinction between them by all men supposed to be 
 real, the origin of this distinction must arise in one of two ways : 
 either the Ego must posit the Non-Ego, wilfully and consciously 
 (in which case mankind would never suppose the distinction to 
 be a real distinction) ; or else the Ego must cause the Non-Ego 
 to be, and must do so necessarily and unconsciously. 
 
695 
 
 How does Fichte solve the problem ? He assumes that the 
 existence of the very Ego itself is determined* by the Non-Ego ; 
 and in this way : To be, and to be conscious, are the same. The 
 existence of the Ego depends upon its consciousness. But to be 
 conscious of Self is at the same time to be conscious of Not-Self; 
 the correlates Self and Not-Self are given in the same act of con 
 sciousness. But how is it that we attribute reality to Not-Self? 
 Just as we attribute reality to Self, namely, by an act of Con 
 sciousness. Not-Self is given in Consciousness as a reality, and 
 therefore we cannot suppose it to be a phantom. 
 
 We may pause here to remark how all the witticisms against 
 Idealism fall to the ground. The wits assume that when it is 
 said the World is produced by the Ego, this World must be held 
 as a phantom. Now nobody ever believed that external objects 
 had no reality ; the only possible doubt is as to whether they 
 have any reality independent of mind. 
 
 In consciousness we have a twofold fact, namely, the fact of 
 Self, and the fact of Not-Self, indissolubly given in one. We 
 conclude therefore that Consciousness that the Ego is partly 
 self-determined, and partly determined by not-self. Let us sup 
 pose the entire reality of the Ego (that is, in its identity of Sub 
 ject and Object) represented by the number ten. The Ego, 
 conscious of five of its parts or, to speak with Fichte positing 
 five, does by that very act posit five parts negatively in itself. 
 But how is it that the Ego can posit a negation in itself? It 
 does so by the very act of Consciousness ; in the act of sepa 
 rating five from ten, the five remaining are left passive. The 
 negation is therefore the passivity of the Ego. This seems to 
 lead to the contradiction that the Ego, which was defined as an 
 Activity, is at the same time active and passive. The solution 
 
 * The German word bestimmen, which we are forced to translate "to de 
 termine," is of immense use to the metaphysicians ; we would gladly have 
 substituted some other equivalent, could we have found one to represent 
 the meaning better. To determine, in philosophy, does not mean (as in or 
 dinary language), to resolve, but to render definite. Chaos, when deter 
 mined, is the created world. 
 
696 FICHTE. 
 
 of this difficulty is that it is Activity which determines Passivity, 
 and reciprocally. Let us suppose the absolute reality as a 
 Sphere ; this is entirely in the Ego, and has a certain quantity. 
 Every quantity less than this totality, will, of necessity, be nega 
 tion, passivity. In order that a less quantity should be com 
 pared with the totality and so opposed to it, it is necessary there 
 should be some relation between them ; and this is in the idea 
 of divisibility. In the absolute totality, as such, there are no 
 parts ; but this totality may be compared with parts and distin 
 guished from it. Passivity is therefore a determinate quantity 
 of Activity, a quantity compared with the totality. In regard to 
 the Ego as absolute, the Ego as limited is passive ; in the rela 
 tion of Ego as limited to the Non-Ego, the Ego is active and the 
 Non-Ego passive. And thus are activity and passivity recipro 
 cally determined. 
 
 The result of this and much more reasoning, is the hypothesis 
 that when mankind attribute to objects a real existence they are 
 correct ; but they are incorrect in supposing that the Object is 
 independent of the Subject : it is identical with the Subject. The 
 common-sense belief is therefore correct enough. It is when we 
 would rise above this belief, and endeavor to philosophize, that 
 we fall into error. All the philosophers have erred, not in as 
 suming the reality of objects, but in assuming the reality of two 
 distinct, disparate existences, Matter and Mind ; whereas we have 
 seen that there is only one existence, having the twofold aspect 
 of Object and Subject. 
 
 Nor is the distinction unimportant. If Dualism be accepted, 
 we have no refuge from Skepticism. If we are to believe that 
 Dinge an sick exist that Matter exists independently of Mind, 
 exists per se then are we doomed to admit only a knowledge of 
 phenomena as possible. The things in themselves we can never 
 know ; we can only know their effects upon us. Our knowledge 
 is relative, and never can embrace the absolute truth. 
 
 But if Idealism be accepted, the ordinary belief of men is not 
 only respected but confirmed ; for this belief is that we do know 
 
697 
 
 things in themselves, and that the things we know do exist. The 
 Dualist forces you to admit that you cannot know things in 
 themselves ; and that your belief in their existence is merely the 
 postulate of your Reason, and is not immediately given in the 
 facts of Consciousness. The Idealist, on the contrary, gives you 
 an immediate knowledge of things in themselves, consequently 
 opens to you the domain of absolute Truth. He only differs 
 from you in saying that these things, which you immediately 
 know, are part and parcel of yourself; and it is because you and. 
 they are indissolubly united, that immediate knowledge is pos 
 sible. 
 
 " But," says Realism, " I know that objects are altogether in 
 dependent of me. I did not create them. I found them there, 
 out of me. The proof of this is that if, after looking at a tree, I 
 turn away, or shut my eyes, the image of the tree is annihilated, 
 but the tree itself remains." 
 
 " No," answers Idealism, " the tree itself does not remain : for 
 the tree is but a phenomenon, or collection of phenomena ; the 
 tree is a Perception, and all perceptions are subjective. You 
 suppose that every one must admit that our perceptions are dif 
 ferent from their objects. But are they different ? that is pre 
 cisely the question at issue ; and you assume it. Let us be 
 cautious. What is an object a tree for instance ? Tell me, 
 what does your Consciousness inform you of? Let me hear 
 the fact, the whole fact, and no inference from the fact. Is not 
 the object (tree) one and the same as your perception (tree) ? Is 
 not the tree a mere name for your perception ? Does not your 
 Consciousness distinctly tell you that the Form, Color, Solidity, 
 arid Smell of the Tree are in you are affections of your Sub 
 ject ?" 
 
 " I admit that," replies Realism ; " but although these are in 
 me, they are caused by something out of me. Consciousness tells 
 me that very plainly." 
 
 "Does it so? I tell you that Consciousness has no such 
 power. It can tell you of its own changes; it cannot trans- 
 
 30 
 
698 FICHTE. 
 
 cend itself to tell you any thing about that which causes its 
 changes." 
 
 " But I am irresistibly compelled to believe," says Realism, 
 " that there are things which exist out of me ; and this belief, be 
 cause irresistible, is true." 
 
 " Stop ! you run on too fast," replies Idealism ; " your belief is 
 not what you describe it. You are not irresistibly compelled to 
 believe that things exist, which said things lie underneath all 
 their appearances, and must ever remain unknown. This is no 
 instinctive belief; it is a philosophic inference. Your belief 
 simply is, that certain things, colored, odorous, extended, sapid, 
 and solid, exist ; and so they do. But you infer that they exist 
 out of you? Rash inference. Have you not admitted that 
 color, odor, taste, extension, etc., are but modifications of your 
 sentient being ; and if they exist in you, how can they exist out 
 of you ? They do not : they seem to do so by a law of the 
 mind which gives objectivity to our sensations."* 
 
 "Try your utmost to conceive an object as any thing more 
 than a synthesis of perceptions. You cannot. You may infer, 
 indeed, that a substratum for all phenomena exists, although un 
 known, unknowable. But on what is your inference grounded ? 
 On the impossibility of conceiving the existence of qualities 
 extension, color, etc. apart from some substance of which they 
 are qualities. This impossibility is a figment. The qualities 
 have no need of an objective substratum, because they have a 
 subjective substratum : they are the modifications of a sensitive 
 subject ; and the synthesis of these modifications is the only sub 
 stratum of which they stand in need. This may be proved in 
 another way. The qualities of objects, it is universally admitted, 
 are but modifications of the subject: these qualities are attrib 
 uted to external objects ; they are dependent upon the subject 
 
 * The difference between Berkeley and Fichte is apparent here. The 
 former said that the objects did exist independent of the Ego, but did not 
 exist independent of the universal Mind. Fichte s Idealism was Egoism; 
 Berkeley s was a theological Idealism. 
 
699 
 
 for their existence ; and yet, to account for their existence, it is 
 asserted that some unknown external something must exist as a 
 substance in which they must inhere. Now, it is apparent that, 
 inasmuch as these qualities are subjective and dependent upon 
 the subject for their existence, there can be no necessity for an 
 object iii which they must inhere." Thus may Idealism defend 
 itself against Realism. 
 
 We have made ourselves the advocates of Fichte s principles, 
 but the reader will not mistake us for disciples of Fichte. In 
 the exposition of his system we have, for obvious reasons, gen 
 erally avoided his own manner, which is too abstract to be 
 followed without difficulty, and we have endeavored to state his 
 ideas in our own way. To exhibit Fichte s Idealism is, strictly 
 speaking, all that our plan imposes on us ; but although his phil 
 osophical doctrines are all founded upon it, and although it was 
 the doctrine which made an epoch in German Philosophy, con 
 sequently the doctrine which entitles him to a place in this His 
 tory, nevertheless we should be doing him injustice and mislead 
 ing our readers, if we did not give some glimpse of his moral 
 system. The Idealism, as Idealism, seems little better than an 
 ingenious paradox : only when we see it applied can we regard 
 it as serious.* 
 
 Y. APPLICATION OF FICHTE S IDEALISM. 
 
 The Ego is essentially an Activity ; consequently free. But 
 this free activity would lose itself in infinity, and would remain 
 without consciousness in fact, without existence did it not 
 
 * Those who are curious to see what he himself makes of his system, are 
 referred to his Wissenschaftslehre (of which a French translation by M. Paul 
 Grimblot exists, under the title of Doctrine de la Science}, or, as a more pop 
 ular exposition, to his Bestimmung des Mensclien, a French translation of which 
 has been published by M. Barchou de Penhoen, under the title Destination 
 de VHomme, which, from the character and learning of the translator, is, we 
 have no doubt, an excellent version. An English translation has also been 
 made by Mrs. Percy Sinnett, which can be recommended. Fichte s work, 
 The Nature of the Scholar, has also recently appeared, by Mr. W. Smith, 
 who has also translated the Characteristics of tht Present Aye. 
 
700 FICHTE. 
 
 encounter some resistance. In the effort to vanquish this resist 
 ance, it exerts its will, becomes conscious of something not itself, 
 and thereby becomes conscious of itself. But resistance limits 
 freedom, and as an Activity the Ego is essentially free it is 
 irresistibly impelled to enjoy perfect freedom. This expansive 
 force, which impels the Ego to realize itself by complete develop 
 ment, and thereby assimilating the Non-Ego this force, in as 
 far as it is not realized, is the aim of man s existence it is his duty. 
 
 Here a difference from the ordinary schools of morality begins 
 to show itself. Duty is not a moral obligation which we are free to 
 acknowledge or reject ; it is a pulse beating in the very heart of 
 man a power inseparable from his constitution ; and according 
 to its fulfilment is the man complete. 
 
 The world does not exist because we imagine it, but because 
 we believe it. Let all reality be swept away by skepticism we 
 are not affected. Man is impelled by his very nature to realize 
 his existence by his acts. Our destination is not thought, but 
 action. Man is not born to brood over his thoughts, but to man 
 ifest them to give them existence. There is a moral world 
 within ; our mission is to transport it ivithout. By this we cre 
 ate the world. For what is the condition of existence ? what 
 determines Thought to be? Simply that it should realize itself 
 as an object. The Ego as simple Subject does not exist ; it has 
 only a potentiality of existence. To exist, it must realize itself 
 and become Subject- Object. 
 
 Mark the consequence : Knowing that we carry within us the 
 moral world, and that upon ourselves alone depends the attain 
 ment of so sublime an object as the manifestation of this world, 
 it is to ourselves alone that we must direct our attention. This 
 realization of the world, what is it but the complete development 
 of ourselves? If we would be, therefore if we would enjoy the 
 realities of existence, we must develop ourselves in the attempt 
 to incessantly realize the beautiful, the useful, and the good. 
 Man is commanded to be moral by the imperious necessity of 
 his own nature. To be virtuous is not to obey some external 
 
701 
 
 law, but to fulfil an internal law : this obedience is not slavery, 
 but freedom ; it is not sacrificing one particle of freedom to any 
 other power, but wholly and truly realizing the power within us 
 of being free. 
 
 Life is a combat. The free spirit of man, inasmuch as it is 
 finite, is limited, imperfect; but it incessantly struggles to subju 
 gate that which opposes it it tends incessantly towards infin 
 ity. Defeated in his hopes, he is sometimes discouraged, but 
 this lasts not long. There is a well-spring of energy forever 
 vital in the heart of man ; an ideal is forever shining before 
 him, and that he must attain. 
 
 Man knows himself to be free ; knows also that his fellow- 
 men are free ; and therefore the duty of each is to treat the 
 others as beings who have the same aim as himself. Individual 
 liberty is therefore the principle of all government: from it 
 Fichte deduces his political system. 
 
 And what says Fichte respecting God ? He was, as we know, 
 accused of atheism. Let us hear his real opinions. In his an 
 swer to that charge we have an abstruse, but at the same time 
 positive, exposition of his views.* God created the world out of 
 an inert mass of matter ; and from the evidence of design in this 
 created world we infer an intelligent designer. This is the com 
 mon view ; but Fichte could not accept it. In the first place, 
 what we call the World is but the incarnation of our Duty 
 (unsere Welt ist das versinnlichte Material unserer Pflicht). It 
 is the objective existence of the Ego : we are, so to speak, the 
 creators of it. Such a statement looks very like atheism, espe 
 cially when Fichte s system is not clearly apprehended : it is, 
 however, at the worst, only Acosmism. 
 
 Nor could Fichte accept the evidence of Design, because De 
 sign is a mere conclusion of the understanding, applicable only 
 to finite, transient things, wholly inapplicable to the infinite : 
 Design itself is but a subjective notion.f 
 
 * Geriehtliche Verantwortungssvlinften gegen die Anklage de Atheismus. 
 t Ibid., p. 4S. 
 
702 FICHTE. 
 
 " God," says Fichte, " must be believed in, not inferred. Faith 
 is the ground of all conviction, scientific or moral. Why do 
 you believe in the existence of the world ? it is nothing more 
 than the incarnation of that which you carry within you, yet 
 you believe in it. In the same way God exists in your Con 
 sciousness, and you believe in him. He is the Moral Order 
 (moralische Ordnung] of the world : as such we can know him, 
 and only as such. For if we attempt to attribute to him Intel 
 ligence or Personality, we at once necessarily fall into anthropo 
 morphism. God is infinite : therefore beyond the reach of our 
 science, which can only embrace the finite, but not beyond our 
 faith."* 
 
 By our efforts to fulfil our Duty, and thus to realize the Good 
 and Beautiful, we are tending towards God, we live in some meas 
 ure the life of God. True religion is therefore the realization 
 of universal reason. If we were all perfectly free, we should be 
 one ; for there is but one Liberty. If we had all the same con 
 victions, the law of each would be the law of all, since all would 
 have but one Will. To this we aspire ; to this Humanity is 
 tending. 
 
 The germ of mysticism which lies in this doctrine was fully 
 developed by some of Fichte s successors, although he himself 
 had particularly guarded against such an interpretation, and dis 
 tinguishes himself from the mystics. 
 
 Let us now pass to Fichte s Philosophy of History. 
 
 The historian only accomplishes half of the required task. 
 He narrates the events of an epoch, in their order of occurrence, 
 and in the form of their occurrence ; but he cannot be assured 
 that he has not omitted some of these events, or that he has 
 given them their due position and significance. The philosopher 
 must complete this incomplete method. He must form some 
 idea of the epoch an Idea a priori, independent of experience. 
 He must then exhibit this Idea always dominant throughout the 
 
 * Sittenlehre, pp. 189, 194. 
 
APPLICATION OF PICHTE s IDEALISM. 703 
 
 epoch and manifesting itself in all the multiplicity of facts, 
 which are but its incarnation. What is the world but an incar 
 nation of the Ego ? What is an epoch but an incarnation of an 
 Idea? 
 
 Every epoch has therefore its pre-existent Idea. And this 
 Idea will be determined by the Ideas of the epochs which have 
 preceded it ; and will determine those which succeed it. Hence 
 we conclude that the evolutions of Ideas or the History of the 
 World is accomplished on a certain plan. The philosopher 
 must conceive this plan in its totality, that he may from it 
 deduce the Ideas of the principal epochs in the history of Hu 
 manity, not only as past, but as future. 
 
 The question first to be settled is this : What is the ground- 
 plan of the world? or, in other words, according to Fichte, 
 What is the fundamental Idea which Humanity has to realize ? 
 
 The answer is : The Idea of Duty. This, in its concrete ex 
 pression, is : To fix the relations of man to man in such order 
 that the perfect liberty of each be compatible with the liberty of 
 the whole. 
 
 History may thus be divided into two principal epochs. The 
 one, in which man has not established the social relations on the 
 basis of reason. The other, in which he has established them, 
 and knows that he has done so. 
 
 That Humanity exists but for the successive and constant 
 realization of the dictates of reason is easily proved. But some 
 times Humanity has knowledge of what it performs, and why it 
 performs it ; sometimes it obeys but a blind impulse. In this 
 second case, that is to say, in the first epochs of the terrestrial 
 existence of Humanity, Reason, although not manifesting itself 
 distinctly, consciously, nevertheless exists. It manifests itself as 
 an instinct, and appears under the form of a natural law ; it 
 manifests itself in the intelligence only as a vague and obscure 
 sentiment. Reason, on the contrary, no sooner manifests itself 
 as Reason, than it is gifted with consciousness of itself and its 
 acts. This constitutes the second epoch. 
 
704: FICHTE. 
 
 But Humanity does not pass at once from the first to the 
 second epoch. At first Reason only manifests itself in a few 
 men, the Great Men of their age, who thereby acquire authority. 
 They are the instructors of their age; their mission is to elevate 
 the mass up to themselves. Thus Instinct diminishes, and Rea 
 son supervenes. Science appears. Morality becomes a science. 
 The relations of man to man become more and more fixed in 
 accordance with the dictates of reason. 
 
 The entire life of Humanity has five periods. I. The domina 
 tion of Instinct over Reason : this is the primitive age. II. The 
 general Instinct gives place to an external dominant Authority : 
 this is the age of doctrines unable to convince, and employing 
 force to produce a blind belief, claiming unlimited obedience : 
 this is the period in which Evil arises. III. The Authority, 
 dominant in the preceding epoch, but constantly attacked by 
 Reason, becomes weak and wavering : this is the epoch of skep 
 ticism and licentiousness. IV. Reason becomes conscious of it 
 self; truth makes itself known ; the science of Reason develops 
 itself: this is the beginning of that perfection which Humanity 
 is destined to attain. V. The science of Reason is applied ; 
 Humanity fashions itself after the ideal standard of Reason : 
 this is the epoch of Art, the last term in the history of our 
 species. 
 
 This brief outline of Fichte s system will be sufficient to assign 
 him his place in the long line of European thinkers who have 
 worked, with such perseverance, the glittering mine of Meta 
 physics; and sufficient also, we trust, not only to stimulate the 
 curiosity of such readers whose studies lie in that direction, but 
 also to furnish them with a general view capable of rendering 
 the details intelligible. 
 
LIFE OF SCHELLING. 705 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 SCHELLING. 
 
 I. LIFE OF SCHELLING. 
 
 FREDERICK WILLIAM JOSEPH SCHELLING was born in Leon- 
 berg, in Wurtemberg, 27th of January, 1775. At the Uni 
 versity in Tubingen he first knew Hegel, and their friendship 
 was enduring and productive. At Leipzig he studied Medicine 
 and Philosophy ; in the latter he became the pupil of Fichte. 
 He afterwards filled Fichte s vacant chair at Jena, where he 
 lectured with immense success. In 1807 he was made a mem 
 ber of the Munich Academy of Sciences. And in Bavaria, 
 honored, rewarded, and ennobled, he remained till 1842, when 
 the King of Prussia seduced him to Berlin ; and there, in the 
 chair once held by Hegel, he opened a series of lectures, in 
 which he was to give the fruit of a life s meditation. 
 
 His appearance at Berlin was the signal for violent polemics. 
 The Hegelians were all up in arms. Pamphlets, full of person 
 alities and dialectics, were launched against Schelling, apparent 
 ly without much effect. His foes at length grew weary of 
 screaming; and he continued quietly to lecture. In 1845, the 
 writer of this work had the gratification not only of hearing 
 him lecture on Mythology to large audiences, but also of hearing 
 him in the expansiveness of private conversation pour forth his 
 stores of varied knowledge. His intellectual vigor was such, 
 that although seventy summers had whitened his hair, he seemed 
 to have still a long lease of life ; and indeed he continued nine 
 years longer to inspire the respect of all who knew him. He 
 died on the 20th August, 1854. 
 
706 SC HELLING. 
 
 II. SCHELLING S DOCTRINES. 
 
 Schelling is often styled the German Plato. In such parallels 
 there is always some truth amidst much error. Schelling s works 
 unquestionably exhibit great power of vivid imagination con 
 joined with subtle dialectics ; if on this ground he is to be styled 
 a Plato, then are there hundreds to share that title with him. 
 His doctrines have little resemblance to those of his supposed 
 prototype. Curiously enough, his head was marvellously like 
 that of Socrates ; not so ugly, but still very like it in general 
 character. 
 
 Schelling may be regarded as having been the systematizer of 
 a tendency, always manifesting itself, but then in full vigor in 
 Germany the tendency towards Pantheism. This tendency is 
 not merely the offspring of Mysticism. It may be recognized in 
 the clear Goethe, no less than in the mystical Novalis. In some 
 way or other, Pantheism seems the natural issue of almost every 
 Philosophy of Religion, when rigorously carried out; but Ger 
 many, above all European countries, has, both in poetry and 
 speculation, the most constantly reproduced it. Her poets, her 
 artists, her musicians, and her thinkers, have been more or less 
 Pantheists. Schelling s attempt, therefore, to give Pantheism a 
 scientific basis, could not but meet with hearty approbation. 
 
 We may here once more notice the similarity, in historical 
 position, of the modern German speculations to those of the 
 Alexandrian Schools. In both, the incapacity of Reason to 
 solve the problems of Philosophy is openly proclaimed ; in both, 
 some higher faculty is called in to solve them. Plotinus called 
 this faculty Ecstasy. Schelling called it the Intellectual In 
 tuition. The Ecstasy was not supposed to be a faculty possessed 
 by all men, and at all times ; it was only possessed by the few, 
 and by them but sometimes. The Intellectual Intuition was not 
 supposed to be a faculty common to all men ; on the contrary, it 
 was held as the endowment only of a few of the privileged : it 
 was the faculty for philosophizing. Schelling expresses his dis- 
 
TOT 
 
 dain for those who talk about not comprehending the highest 
 truths of Philosophy. "Really," he exclaims, "one sees not 
 wherefore Philosophy should pay any attention whatever to In 
 capacity. It is better rather that we should isolate Philosophy 
 from all the ordinary routes, and keep it so separated from ordi 
 nary knowledge, that none of these routes should lead to it. 
 Philosophy commences where ordinary knowledge terminates."* 
 The highest truths of science cannot be proved, they must be 
 apprehended ; for those who cannot apprehend them, there is 
 nothing but pity ; argument is useless. 
 
 After this, were we to call Schelling the German Plotinus, we 
 should perhaps be nearer the truth than in calling him the Ger 
 man Plato. But it was for the sake of no such idle parallel 
 that we compared the fundamental positions of each. Our ob 
 ject was to " point a moral," and to show how the same forms 
 of error reappear in history, and how the labors of so many 
 centuries have not advanced the human mind in this direction 
 one single step. 
 
 The first point to be established is the nature of Schelling s 
 improvement upon Fichte : the relation in which the two doc 
 trines stand to each other. 
 
 Fichte s Idealism was purely subjective Idealism. The Object 
 had indeed reality, but was solely dependent upon the Subject. 
 Endeavor as we might, we could never separate the Object from 
 the Subject, we could never conceive a possible mode of exist 
 ence without being forced to identify with it a Subject. Indeed 
 the very conception itself is but an act of the Subject. Admit 
 ting that we are forced by the laws of our mental constitution to 
 postulate an unknown something, a Noumenon, as the substance 
 in which all phenomena inhere, what, after all, is this postulate ? 
 It is an act of the Mind ; it is wholly subjective ; the necessity 
 for the postulate is a mental necessity. The Non-Ego therefore 
 is the product of the Ego. 
 
 * Neue Zeitsckrift.fur Speculative Physik, ii. 34. 
 
708 SCHELLING. 
 
 There is subtle reasoning in the above ; nay more, it contains 
 a principle which is irrefutable : the principle of the identity of 
 Object and Subject in knowledge.* This Schelling adopted. 
 Nevertheless, in spite of such an admission, the nullity of the ex 
 ternal world was too violent and repulsive a conclusion to be 
 long maintained ; and it was necessary to see if the principle of 
 identity might not be preserved, without forcing such a con 
 clusion. 
 
 The existence of the objective world is as firmly believed in as 
 the existence of the subjective : they are, indeed, both given in 
 the same act. We cannot be conscious of our own existence 
 without at the same time inseparably connecting it with some 
 other existence from which we distinguished ourselves. So in 
 like manner we cannot be aware of the existence of any thing 
 out of ourselves without at the same time inseparably connecting 
 with it a consciousness of ourselves. Hence we conclude that 
 both exist ; not indeed separately, not independently of each 
 other, but identified in some higher power. Fichte said that the 
 Non-Ego was created by the Ego. Schelling said that the two 
 were equally real, and .that both were identified in the Absolute. 
 
 Knowledge must be knowledge of something. Hence Knowl 
 edge implies the correlate of Being. Knowledge without an 
 Object known, is but an empty form. But Knowledge and Be 
 ing are correlates ; they are not separable ; they are identified. 
 It is as impossible to conceive an Object known without a Sub 
 ject knowing, as it is to conceive a Subject knowing without an 
 Object known. 
 
 Nature is Spirit visible ; Spirit is invisible Nature :f the abso 
 lute Ideal is at the same time the absolute Real. 
 
 * This is the stronghold of Idealism, and we consider it impregnable, so 
 long as men reason on the implied assumption, that whatever is true in 
 human knowledge is equally true (i. e. actually so co-ordinated) in fact; 
 that as things appear to us so they are per se. And yet without this assump 
 tion Philosophy is impossible. 
 
 t Our readers will recognize here a favorite saying of Coleridge, many 
 
SCHELLING S DOCTRINES. 709 
 
 Hence Philosophy has two primary problems to solve. In 
 the Transcendental Philosophy the problem is to construct Na 
 ture from Intelligence the Object from the Subject. In the 
 Philosophy of Nature the problem is to construct Intelligence 
 from Nature the Subject from the Object.* And how are we 
 to construct one from the other ? Fichte has taught us to do so 
 by the principle of the identity of Subject and Object, whereby 
 the productivity and the product are in constant opposition, yet 
 always one. The productivity (Thatigkeif) is the activity in act; 
 it is the force which develops itself into all things. The pro 
 duct is the activity arrested and solidified into a fact ; but it is 
 always ready to pass again into activity. And thus the world 
 is but a balancing of contending powers within the sphere of the 
 Absolute. 
 
 In what, then, does Schelling differ from Fichte, since both 
 assert that the product (Object) is but the arrested activity of 
 the Ego ? In this : the Ego in Fichte s system is a finite Ego 
 it is the human soul. The Ego in Schelling s system is the Ab 
 solute the Infinite the All, which Spinoza called Substance ; 
 and this Absolute manifests itself in two forms : in the form of 
 the Ego and in the form of the Non-Ego as Nature and as 
 Mind. 
 
 The Ego produces the Non-Ego, but not by its own force, not 
 out of its own nature ; it is the universal Nature which works 
 within us and which produces from out of us ; it is universal 
 Nature which here in us is conscious of itself. The souls of men 
 are but the innumerable individual eyes with which the Infinite 
 World-Spirit beholds himself. 
 
 "What is the Ego ? It is one and the same with the act which 
 renders it an Object to itself. When I say " myself" when I 
 form a conception of my Ego, what is that but the Ego making 
 
 of whose remarks, now become famous, are almost verbatim from Schelling 
 and the two Schlegels. 
 
 * System des Transcendentalen Idealismus, p. 7. 
 
710 
 
 SCHELLING. 
 
 itself an Object ? Consciousness therefore may be defined the 
 objectivity of the Ego. Very well ; now apply this to the Abso 
 lute. He, too, must be conscious of himself, and for that he 
 must realize himself objectively. We can now understand 
 Schelling when he says, " The blind and unconscious products 
 of Nature are nothing but unsuccessful attempts of Nature to 
 make itself an Object (sick selbst zu reflectireri) ; the so-called 
 dead Nature is but an unripe Intelligence. The acme of its 
 efforts that is, for Nature completely to objectize itself is at 
 tained through the highest and ultimate degree of reflection in 
 Man or what we call Reason. Here Nature returns into itself, 
 and reveals its identity with that which in us is known as the 
 Object and Subject."* 
 
 The function of Reason is elsewhere more distinctly described 
 as the total indifference-point of the subjective and objective. 
 The Absolute he represents by the symbol of the magnet. Thus, 
 as it is the same principle which divides itself in the magnet into 
 the north and south poles, the centre of which is the indifference- 
 point, so in like manner does the Absolute divide itself into the 
 Real and Ideal, and holds itself in this separation as absolute in 
 difference.! And as in the magnet every point is itself a magnet, 
 having a North pole, a South pole, and a point of indifference, 
 so also in the Universe, the individual varieties are but varieties 
 of the eternal One. Man is a microcosm. 
 
 Reason is the indifference-point. Whoso rises to it, rises to 
 the reality of things (zum wahren Ansich), which reality is pre 
 cisely in the indifference of Object and Subject. The basis of 
 Philosophy is therefore the basis of Reason ; its knowledge is a 
 knowledge of things as they are, i. e. as they are in Reason.^ 
 
 The spirit of Plotinus revives in these expressions. We have 
 in them the whole key-stone of the Alexandrian School. The 
 
 * System des Transcendentalen Idealismus, p. 5. 
 
 t Hence Schelling s philosophy is often styled the Indifference Phi 
 losophy. 
 
 % Zeitschrift fur Speculative PhysiTc, vol. ii. heft 2. 
 
m 
 
 Intellectual Intuition by which we are to embrace the Absolute, 
 is, as before remarked, but another form of the Alexandrian 
 Ecstasy. Schelling was well aware that the Absolute, the In 
 finite as such, could not be known under the conditions of finity, 
 cannot be known in personal consciousness. How, then, can it 
 be known ? By some higher faculty which discerns the identity 
 of Object and Subject which perceives the Absolute as Abso 
 lute, where all difference is lost in indifference. 
 
 There are three divisions in Schelling s system : the philosophy 
 of Nature, the transcendental philosophy, and the philosophy of 
 the Absolute. 
 
 His speculations with respect to Nature have met with consid 
 erable applause in Germany. Ingenious they certainly are, but 
 vitiated in Method ; incapable of verification. Those who are 
 curious to see what he makes of Nature are referred to his Zeit- 
 schriftfur speculative PhysiJc, and his Ideenzu einer Philosophie 
 der Natur. The following examples will serve to indicate the 
 character of his speculations.* 
 
 Subject and Object being identical, the absolute Identity is the 
 absolute totality named Universe. There can be no difference 
 except a quantitative difference ; and this is only conceivable 
 with respect to individual existences. For the absolute Identity 
 is quantitative indifference both of Object and Subject, and is 
 only under this form. If we could behold all that is, and behold 
 it in its totality, we should see a perfect quantitative equality. It 
 is only in the scission of the Individual from the Infinite that 
 quantitative difference takes place. This difference of Object and 
 Subject is the ground of all finity ; and, on the other hand, quan 
 titative indifference of the two is Infinity. 
 
 That which determines any difference is a Power (Potenz}, 
 and the Absolute is the Identity of all Powers (aller Potenzen). 
 
 * The reader must not complain if he do not understand what follows : 
 intelligibility is not the characteristic of German speculation ; and we are 
 here only translating Schelling s words, without undertaking to enlighten 
 their darkness. 
 
712 SCHELLING. 
 
 All matter is originally liquid ; weight is the power through 
 which the Attractive and Expansive force, as the immanent 
 ground of the reality of Matter, operates. Weight is the first 
 Potenz. The second Potenz is Light an inward intuition of 
 Nature, as weight is the outward intuition. Identity with Light 
 is Transparency. Heat does not pertain to the nature of Light, 
 but is simply a modus existendi of Light. Newton s speculations 
 upon Light are treated with disdain, as a system built upon il 
 logical conclusions, a system self-contradictory, and leading to 
 infinite absurdities. Nevertheless this absurd system has led 
 men to many discoveries : it is the basis of a gradually advan 
 cing science,* while the views of Schelling lead to nothing ex 
 cept disputation. So with his explanation of Electricity : let us 
 suppose it exact, and we must still acknowledge it to be useless. 
 It admits of no verification ; admits of no application. It is ut 
 terly sterile. 
 
 There are, indeed, general ideas in his Natur-philosophie, 
 which not only approach the conceptions of positive science, but 
 have given a powerful stimulus to many scientific intellects. The 
 general law of polarity, for example, which he makes* the law of 
 universal nature, is seen illustrated in physics and chemistry ; al 
 though the presumed relation between heat and oxygen, which 
 he makes the basis of all atomic changes, no chemist will nowa 
 days accept. When, in the second part of this treatise, he the 
 orizes on organic life, the result is similar namely, some general 
 ideas which seem luminous are enforced by particular ideas cer 
 tainly false. He maintains that vegetation and life are the prod 
 ucts of chemical action : the first consisting in a continual deox- 
 idation, the second in a continual oxidation ; as soon as this 
 chemical action ceases, death supervenes, for living beings exist 
 only in the moment of becoming.\ He only expresses the uni 
 versally accepted idea of life when he makes it depend on the 
 incessant disturbance and re-establishment of an equilibrium,]; or, 
 
 * Von der Weltseele, p. 25, sq. f Ibid., p. 181. I Ibid., p. 284. 
 
713 
 
 as De Blainville defines it, " a continual movement of decompo 
 sition and recomposition." 
 
 All the functions of Life are but the iudividualizations of one 
 common principle ; and all the series of living beings are but 
 the individualizations of one common Life : this is the Weltseele, 
 or anima mundi. The same idea had been expressed by Goethe, 
 and has since been presented, under various forms, by Oken and 
 many German naturalists. The idea of a dynamic progression 
 in Nature, is also the fundamental idea in Hegel s philosophy. 
 
 Schelling, in his Jahrbucher der Medicin, says that Science is 
 only valuable in as far as it is speculative ; and by speculation 
 he means the contemplation of God as He exists. Reason, inas 
 much as it affirms God, cannot affirm any thing else, and anni 
 hilates itself at the same time as an individual existence, as any 
 thing out of God. Thought (das Denken) is not my Thought ; 
 and Being is not my Being ; for every thing belongs to God or 
 the All. There is no such thing as a Reason which we have ; 
 but only a Reason that has us. If nothing exists out of God, 
 then must the knowledge of God be only the infinite knowledge 
 which God has of himself in the eternal Self-affirmation. God 
 is not the highest, but the only One. He is not to be viewed as 
 the summit or the end, but as the centre, as the All in All. 
 Consequently there is no such thing as a being lifted up to the 
 knowledge of God ; but the knowledge is immediate recognition. 
 
 If we divest Schilling s speculations of their dialectical forms, 
 we shall arrive at the following results : 
 
 Idealism is one-sided. Beside the Subject there must exist an 
 Object : the two are identical in a third, which is the Absolute. 
 This Absolute is neither Ideal nor Real neither Mind nor Na 
 ture but both. This Absolute is God. He is the All in All ; 
 the eternal source of all existence. He realizes himself under 
 one form, as an objectivity ; and under a second form as a sub 
 jectivity. He becomes conscious of himself in man : and this 
 man, under the highest form of his existence, manifests Reason, 
 and by this Reason God knows himself. Such are the conclu- 
 
SCHELLING. 
 
 sions to which Schelling s philosophy leads us. And now, we 
 ask, in what does this philosophy differ from Spinozism ? 
 
 The Absolute, which Schelling assumes as the indifference- 
 point of Subject and Object, is but the tfpwrov ctyado v and primal 
 Nothing, which forms the first Hypostasis of the Alexandrian 
 Trinity. The Absolute, as the Identity of Subject and Object, 
 being neither and yet both, is but the Substance of Spinoza, 
 whose attributes are Extension and Thought. 
 
 With Spinoza also he agreed in giving only a phenomenal re 
 ality to the Object and Subject. With Spinoza he agreed in 
 admitting but one existence the Absolute. 
 
 But, although agreeing with Spinoza in his fundamental posi 
 tions, he differed with him in Method, and in the applications of 
 those positions. In both differences the superiority, as it seems 
 to me, is incontestably due to Spinoza. 
 
 Spinoza deduced his system very logically from one funda 
 mental assumption, viz. that whatever was true of ideas was 
 true of objects. This assumption itself was not altogether ar 
 bitrary. It was grounded upon the principle of certitude, which 
 Descartes had brought forward as the only principle which was 
 irrefragable. Whatever was found to be distinct and a priori in 
 Consciousness, was irresistibly true. Philosophy was therefore 
 deductive ; and Spinoza deduced his system from the principles 
 laid down by Descartes. 
 
 Schelling s Method was very different. Aware that human 
 knowledge was necessarily finite, he could not accept Spinoza s 
 Method, because that would have given him only a knowledge 
 of the finite, the conditioned ; and such knowledge, it was ad 
 mitted, led to skepticism. He was forced to assume another 
 faculty of knowing the truth, and this was the Intellectual Intu 
 ition. Reason which could know the Absolute, was only possible 
 by transcending Consciousness and sinking into the Absolute. 
 As Knowledge and Being were Identical, to know the Infinite, 
 we must be the Infinite, *. e. must lose our individuality in the 
 universal. 
 
LIFE OF HEGEL. 715 
 
 Consciousness, then, which had for so long formed the basis 
 of all Philosophy, was thrown over by Schelling, as incompetent 
 to solve any of its problems. Consciousness was no ground of 
 certitude. Reason was the organ of Philosophy, and Reason was 
 impersonal. The Identity of Being and Knowing took the 
 place of Consciousness, and became the basis of all speculation. 
 We shall see to what it led in Hegel. 
 
 Our notice of Schelling has necessarily been brief, not because 
 he merited no greater space, but because to have entered into 
 details with any satisfaction, would have carried us far beyond 
 our limits. His works are not only numerous, but differ consid 
 erably in their views. All we have endeavored to represent is 
 the ideas which he produced as developments of Fichte, and 
 which served Hegel as a basis.* 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 HEGEL. 
 I. LIFE OF HEGEL. 
 
 GEORGE FREDERICK WILLIAM HEGEL was born at Stuttgard, 
 the 27th of August, 1770. He received that classical education 
 which distinguished the Wirtembergian students beyond all 
 others ; and in his eighteenth ydatf he went to Tubingen, to pur 
 sue his theological and philosophical studies. He was there a 
 fellow-student with Schelling, for whom he contracted great es 
 teem. The two young thinkers communicated to each other 
 their thoughts, and discussed their favorite systems. In after- 
 
 * A French translation of Schilling s most important work, under the 
 title of Systimt de Vldealisme transcendental, by P. Grimblot, the translator 
 of Fichte, has appeared ; also a version of Bruno ; ou, Les Principes den 
 Choses. 
 
716 HEGEL. 
 
 life, when opposition had sundered these ties, Hegel never spoke 
 of this part of their connection without emotion. In his twen 
 tieth year he had to give up all his plans for a professorship, and 
 was content (hunger impelling) to accept the place of a private 
 tutor, first in Switzerland, and subsequently in Frankfort. 
 
 Early in 1801 his father died; and the small property he in 
 herited enabled him to relinquish his tutorship, and to move to 
 Jena, where he published his dissertation De Orbitis Planetarium. 
 This work was directed against the Newtonian system of Astron 
 omy. It was an application of Schelling s Philosophy of Na 
 ture ; and in it Newton was treated with that scorn which Hegel 
 never failed to heap upon Empirics, i. e. those who trusted more 
 to experience than to logic. In the same year he published his 
 Difference between Fichte and Schelling, in which he sided with 
 the doctrines of his friend, whom he joined in editing the Crit 
 ical Journal of Philosophy. It is in the second volume of this 
 Journal that we meet with his celebrated essay Glauben und 
 Wissen (Faith and Knowledge), in which Kant, Jacobi, and 
 Fichte are criticised. 
 
 At Jena he enjoyed the society of Goethe and Schiller. The 
 former, with his usual sagacity, detected the philosophical genius 
 which as yet lay undeveloped in Hegel ; of which more may be 
 read in Goethe and Schiller s Correspondence. Hegel, on the 
 other hand, was to the last one of Goethe s stanchest admirers ; 
 and many a gleam of lustre is shed over the pages of the phi 
 losopher by the frequent quotations of the poet. 
 
 At the University of Jena, Hegel then held the post of Privat- 
 docent / but his lectures had only four listeners. These four, how 
 ever, were all remarkable men : Gabler, Troxler, Lachmann, and 
 Zellmann. On Schelling s quitting Jena, Hegel filled his chair ; 
 but filled it only for one year. Here he published his Phanome- 
 nologie des Geistes. He finished writing this work on the night 
 of the ever-memorable battle of Jena. While the artillery was 
 roaring under the walls, the philosopher was deep in his work, 
 unconscious of all that was going on. He continued writing, as 
 
TIT 
 
 Archimedes at the siege of Syracuse continued his scientific re 
 searches. The next morning, manuscript in hand, he steps into 
 the streets, proceeding to his publisher s, firmly convinced that 
 the interests of mankind are bound up with that mass of writing 
 which he hugs so tenderly. The course of his reverie is some 
 what violently interrupted ; bearded and gesticulating French 
 soldiers arrest the philosopher, and significantly enough inform 
 him that, for the present, the interests of men lie elsewhere than 
 in manuscripts. In spite of French soldiers, however, the work 
 in due time saw the light, and was welcomed by the philosophical 
 world as a new system or rather as a new modification ofSchel- 
 ling s system. The editorship of the Bamberg newspaper was 
 then offered him, and he quitted Jena. He did not long remain 
 at Bamberg ; for in the autumn of 1808 we find him Rector of 
 the Gymnasium College at Niirnberg. He shortly after married 
 Friiulein von Tucher, with whom he passed a happy life, and 
 who bore him two sons. In 1816 he was called, to the chair 
 of Heidelberg, and published in 1817 his Encyclopadie der P kilos. 
 Wissenschaften, which contains an outline of his system. This 
 work so exalted his reputation that in 1818 he was called to the 
 chair of Berlin, then the most important in Germany. He 
 there lectured for thirteen years, and formed a school, of which it 
 is sufficient to name its members Gans, Rosenkranz, Michelet, 
 "Werder, Marheiuecke, and Hotho. 
 
 Hegel was seized with cholera in 1831, and after a short ill 
 ness expired, in the sixty-second year of his age, on the 24th of 
 November, the anniversary of the death of Leibnitz. 
 
 II. HEGEL S METHOD. 
 
 Schelling s doctrines were never systematically co-ordinated. 
 He was subtle, ardent, and audacious ; but he disregarded pre 
 cision ; and stood in striking contradiction to his predecessors, 
 Kant and Fichte, in the absence of logical forms. 
 
 The effect of his teaching was felt more in the department of 
 the philosophy of nature than elsewhere. Crowds of disciples, 
 
718 HEGEL. 
 
 some of them, as Oken and Steffens, illustrious disciples, attempt 
 ed the application of his principles ; and after a vast quantity of 
 ingenious but sterile generalization, it was found that these prin 
 ciples led to no satisfactory conclusion. 
 
 Schelling s ideas were, however, very generally accepted in the 
 philosophical world at the time Hegel appeared. These ideas 
 were thought to be genuine intuitions of the truth ; the only draw 
 back was their want of systematic co-ordination. They were 
 inspirations of the truth ; and demonstrations were needed. The 
 position Hegel was to occupy became therefore very clear. 
 Either he must destroy those ideas and bring forward others ; or 
 he must accept them, and, in accepting, systematize them. This 
 latter was no easy task, and this was the task he chose. In the 
 course of his labors he deviated somewhat from Schelling, because 
 the rigorous conclusions of his logic made such deviations neces 
 sary ; but these are, after all, nothing but modifications of Schel 
 ling s ideas ; very often nothing but different expressions for the 
 same ideas. 
 
 What then constitutes Hegel s glory ? What is the nature of 
 his contribution to philosophy, and what has placed him on so high 
 a pedestal of renown ? It is nothing less than the invention of 
 a new Method.* 
 
 The invention of a method has always been considered the 
 greatest effort of philosophical genius, and the most deserving of 
 the historian s attention. A method is a path of transit. Who 
 so discovers a path whereon mankind may travel in quest of truth, 
 has done more towards the discovery of truth than thousands of 
 men merely speculating. What had the observation and specu 
 lation of centuries done for astronomy before the right path was 
 found ? And if a method could be found for philosophy if a 
 path of transit from the phenomenal to the noumenal world could 
 be found should we not then be quickly in possession of the truth ? 
 
 * This is the claim put up by his disciple, Michelet, Gesch, der Systeme der 
 Philos. ii. 604-5 ; who declares Hegel s method to be all that can properly be 
 called his own. Comp. Hegel s Vermlschte Schriften, ii. 479. 
 
719 
 
 A Method is all-important. The one invented by Descartes 
 seemed promising ; but it led to Malebranche and Spinoza. The 
 one invented by Locke had obvious excellences ; but it was a 
 path of transit to Berkeley and Hume. That of Kant led to 
 Fichte and Skepticism. 
 
 Curious to consider ! In the modern as in the ancient world, 
 the inevitable results of a philosophical Method are Idealism and 
 Skepticism. One class of minds is led to Idealism or Mysticism ; 
 another class is led to Skepticism. But as both these conclusions 
 are repugnant to the ordinary conclusions of mankind, they are 
 rejected, and the Method which led to them is also rejected. A 
 new one is found ; hopes beat high ; truth is about to be discov 
 ered ; the search is active, and the result always the same re 
 pugnant Idealism or Skepticism. Thus struggling and baffled, 
 hoping and dispirited, has Humanity forever renewed the con 
 flict, without once gaining a victory. Sisyphus rolls up the 
 heavy stone, which no sooner reaches a certain point than down 
 it rolls to the bottom, and all the labor is to begin again. 
 
 We have already traced the efforts of many noble minds ; we 
 have seen the stone laboriously rolled upwards, and seen it swift 
 ly roll down again. We have seen Methods discovered ; we have 
 followed adventurous spirits as they rushed forward to conquest ; 
 and seen the discouragement, the despair which possessed them, 
 as they found their paths leading only to a yawning gulf of 
 Skepticism, or a baseless cloud-land of Idealism. We have now 
 to witness this spectacle once more. We have to see whither 
 Hegel s Method can conduct us. 
 
 And what is this Method which Hegel discovered ? Accepting 
 as indisputable the identity of Object and Subject, he was forced 
 also to accept the position, that whatever was true of the thought 
 was true of the thing. In other words, Mind and Matter being 
 identical, Ideas and Objects were correlates, and equally true. 
 This was the position upon which Descartes stood ; the position 
 upon which Spinoza stood. Schelling and Hegel arrived at this 
 position by a different route, but they also took their stand upon it. 
 
720 
 
 HEGEL. 
 
 Now, it is evident that such a position is exposed to attacks on 
 all sides ; to none more so than the contradictions which rise up 
 from within it. If whatever is true of Ideas is true also of Objects, 
 a thousand absurdities bristle up. Thus, as Kant said, there is 
 considerable difference between thinking we possess a hundred 
 dollars, and possessing them. Hegel s answer is delicious : he 
 declares that " Philosophy does not concern itself with such 
 things as a hundred dollars !" (damn ist philosophisch nichts zu 
 erkennen.) Philosophy directs its thoughts only towards that 
 which is necessary and eternal. 
 
 Very well : let such miserable illustrations as that of dollars 
 be banished from discourse ; let us concern ourselves only with 
 what is necessary and eternal ; let us confine ourselves to abstrac 
 tions. Are there no contradictions here between Thoughts and 
 E-ealities ? For example, we have the Thought of Non-existence : 
 does therefore this Non-existence which is our Thought also 
 possess an objective being ? Is there a Non-existence ? 
 
 We have chosen this idle question, because Hegel himself has 
 forced us to it. He boldly says, that the Non-existence the 
 Nothing exists, because it is a Thought (das Nichts ist ; denn 
 es ist ein Gedanke). It is not, however, merely a Thought, but 
 it is the same Thought as that of a pure Being (Seyn), viz. an 
 entirely unconditioned Thought. 
 
 In this, coupled with his famous axiom, that " Being and Non- 
 Being are the same" (Seyn und Nichts ist dasselbe), we- have 
 two of the curious results to which his Method led him. It was 
 the Method of Descartes, founded upon Descartes principle of 
 the truth of ideas being equivalent to the truth of things ; but 
 inasmuch as this met with strong opposition from various sides, 
 Hegel resolved to give it a deeper, firmer basis, a basis that went 
 underneath these contradictions. The basis was his principle of 
 the identity of contraries. 
 
 Two contraries are commonly supposed to exclude each other 
 reciprocally : Existence excludes Non-Existence. This notion 
 Hegel pronounces to be false. Every thing is contradictory in 
 
721 
 
 itself: contradiction forms its essence: its identity consists in 
 being the union of two contraries. Thus Being (Seyri) consid 
 ered absolutely considered as unconditioned that is to say, as 
 Being in the abstract, apart from any individual thing, is the 
 same as Nothing. Existence is therefore identical with its nega 
 tion. But to conclude that there is not Existence, would be 
 false ; for the abstract Nothing (Nichts) is at the same time the 
 abstract Being. AVe must therefore unite these two contraries, 
 and in so doing we arrive at a middle term the realization* of 
 the two in one, and this is conditioned Existence it is the world. 
 
 Here is another example. In pure light that is, light without 
 color or shadow we should be totally unable to see any thing. 
 Absolute clearness is therefore identical with absolute obscurity 
 with its negation, in fact; but neither clearness nor obscurity 
 arc complete alone : by uniting them we have clearness mingled 
 with obscurity ; that is to say, we have Light properly so called. 
 
 Hegel thus seized the bull by the horns. Instead of allowing 
 himself to be worsted by the arguments derived from the con 
 tradictions to which the identity of Existence and Knowledge 
 was exposed, he at once met the difficulty by declaring that the 
 identity of contraries was the very condition of all existence; 
 without a conU ugy-Hotliing could cpjne_jjii4Hbringr---This was 
 logical audacity which astounded his countrymen, and they have 
 proclaimed this feat worthy of immortal glory. A new light 
 seemed to be thrown upon the world : a new aspect was given 
 to all existences, l^eing was at the same time Non-Being; Sub 
 ject was at the same time Object ; and Object was Subject : 
 Force was at the same time Impotence; Light was also Dark 
 ness, and Darkness was also Light. 
 
 " Nothing in this world is single ; 
 All things, by a law divine, 
 In one another s being mingle." 
 
 The merit of this discovery, whatever may be its value, is 
 
 * The original word is wer<len--t\\c becoming. It is much used in German 
 speculation to express the transition from Non-being to Being. 
 
 31 
 
722 HEGEL. 
 
 considerably diminished when we remember how distinctly it 
 was enunciated in ancient Greece. Heraclitus had told us how 
 "All is, and is not; for though it comes into being, yet it forth 
 with ceases to be." Empedocles had told us how there was 
 " Nothing but a mingling and then a separation of the mingled." 
 Indeed the constant flux and reflux of life, the many changes, 
 and the compound nature of all things, must early have led 
 men to such a view. Hegel himself admits that all the posi 
 tions maintained by Heraclitus have been by him developed 
 in his Logic. What then was wanting to Heraclitus what 
 is the great merit of Hegel? A perception of the logical 
 law of the identity of contraries. To this Hegel has the sole 
 claim. 
 
 Here, then, is the foundation-stone of Hegel s system. He 
 adopts the principle of the identity of Subject and Object. This 
 principle being pronounced false, because it leads to manifest 
 contradictions, Hegel replies that the principle is true ; and that 
 it must lead to contradictions, because the identity of contraries 
 is the condition of all existence. 
 
 Such is the Method which admiring disciples extol as the 
 greatest effort of Philosophy, as the crown of all previous spec 
 ulations ; and even in France it has been in some quarters ac 
 cepted as a revelation. 
 
 The law being given, we may now give the process. Let us 
 take any one Idea (and with Hegel an Idea is a reality, an Ob 
 ject, not simply a modification of the Subject) ; this Idea, by its 
 inherent activity, tends to develop that which is within it. This 
 development operates a division of the Idea into two parts a 
 positive and a negative. Instead of one Idea we have therefore 
 two, which reciprocally exclude each other. The Idea, therefore, 
 by the very act of development, only conduces to its own nega 
 tion. But the process does not stop there. The negation itself 
 must be negatived. By this negation of its negation, the Idea 
 returns to its primitive force. But it is no longer the same. It 
 has developed all that it contained. It has absorbed its contrary. 
 
ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. 723 
 
 Thus the negation of the negation, by suppressing the negation, 
 at the same time preserves it.* 
 
 We may, by way of anticipation, observe that Hegel s notion of 
 God becoming conscious of Himself in Philosophy, and thereby at 
 taining His highest development, is founded on the above process. 
 God as pure Being can only pass into reality through a nega 
 tion ; in Philosophy He negatives this negation, and thus becomes 
 a positive affirmation. 
 
 III. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. 
 
 We have seen Hegel s Method. Whether that be a path of 
 transit to the domain of truth, or only to the cloud-land of mys 
 ticism and the bogs of absurdity, our readers will very soon 
 decide. Meanwhile we must further detail Hegel s opinions ; we 
 must see whither his Method did lead him. 
 
 As every thing contains within itself a contradiction, and as 
 the identity of the two constitutes its essence, so we may say 
 that Schelling s conception of the identity of Subject and Ob 
 ject was not altogether exact. He assumed the reality of both 
 of these poles of the magnet; and the identity he called the 
 point of indifference between them. These two extremities were 
 always separate, though identified. Hegel declared that the 
 essence of all relation that which is true and positive in every 
 relation is not the two terms related, but the relation itself. 
 This is the basis of Absolute Idealism. 
 
 It may be thus illustrated. I see a tree. Psychologists tell 
 me that there are three things implied in this one fact of vision, 
 viz. a tree, an image of that tree, and a mind which apprehends 
 that image. Fichte tells me that it is I alone who exist : the 
 tree and the image of the tree are but one thing, and that is a 
 modification of my mind. This is Subjective Idealism. Schel- 
 ling tells me that both the tree and my Ego are existences 
 
 * This play upon words is assisted by the German aufheben, which means 
 "to suppress" as well as "to preserve." See Ott, Hegel et la Philos. AlU- 
 mande, p. 80. 
 
724: HEGEL. 
 
 equally real or ideal, but they are nothing less than manifesta 
 tions of the Absolute. This is Objective Idealism. But, accord 
 ing to Hegel, all these explanations are false. The only thing 
 really existing (in this one fact of vision) is the Idea the rela 
 tion. The Ego and the Tree are but two terms of the relation, 
 and owe their reality to it. This is Absolute Idealism. 
 
 Of the three forms of Idealism, this is surely the most pre 
 posterous ; and that any sane man not to speak of a man so 
 eminent as Hegel should for an instant believe in the correct 
 ness of the logic which " brought him to this pass" that he 
 should not at once reject the premises from which such conclu 
 sions followed must ever remain a wonder to all sober thinkers 
 must ever remain a striking illustration of the unbounded con 
 fidence in bad logic which distinguishes metaphysicians 
 
 " Gens rations ferox, et men tern pasta cliimaeris." 
 
 Truly, a race mad with logic, and feeding the mind with chi 
 meras. 
 
 What does this Absolute Idealism bring us to? It brings us 
 to a world of mere " relations." The Spinozistic notion of Sub 
 stance" was too gross. To speak of Substance, was to speak only 
 of one term of a relation. The Universe is but the Universe of 
 Ideas, which are at once both Objective and Subjective, their es 
 sence consisting in the relation they bear to each other, in the 
 identity of their contradiction. 
 
 Remark, also, that this Absolute Idealism is nothing but 
 Hume s Skepticism, in a dogmatical form. Hume denied the 
 existence of Mind and Matter, and said there was nothing but 
 Ideas. Hegel denies the existence of both Object and Subject, 
 and says there is nothing but the " relations" of the two. He 
 blames Kant for having spoken of Things as if they were only 
 appearances to us (Erscheinungen fitr uns) while their real na 
 ture (Ansich) was inaccessible. The real relation, he says, is 
 this: that the Things we know are not onlv appearances to us, 
 but are in themselves mere appearances (sondern an sick blosse 
 JZrscheinungen). The real Objectivity is this ; that our Thoughts 
 
ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. Y25 
 
 are not only Thoughts, but at the same time are the reality of 
 Things.* 
 
 This is the Philosophy not a Philosophy, remember not a 
 system which may take its place amongst other systems. No, 
 it is the Philosophy par excellence. We have Hegel s word for 
 it ;f we have the confirmation of that word by many ardent dis 
 ciples. True it is, that some of the young Hegelians, when re 
 proached with the constant changes they introduce, reply that it 
 belongs to the nature of Philosophy to change. But these are 
 inconsiderate, rash young men. Mature and sober thinkers (of 
 Hegel s school) declare that, although some improvements are 
 possible in detail, yet on the whole Hegel has given the Philos 
 ophy to the world. 
 
 And this philosophy is not a system of doctrines whereby man 
 is to guide himself. It is something far greater. It is the con 
 templation of the self-development of the Absolute. Hegel con 
 gratulates mankind upon the fact of a new epoch having dawned. 
 " It appears," says he, " that the World-Spirit ( Weltgeist) has at 
 last succeeded in freeing himself from all encumbrances, and is 
 able to conceive himself as Absolute Intelligence (sick als abso- 
 
 luten Geist zu erfassen] For he is this only in as 
 
 far as he knows himself to be the Absolute Intelligence : and 
 this he knows only in Science ; and this knowledge alone consti 
 tutes his true existence"]. 
 
 Such pretensions would be laughable, were they not so painful 
 to contemplate. To think not only of one man, and that one 
 remarkable for the subtlety of his intellect, a subtlety which was 
 its bane, together with many other men some hundred or so, 
 all rising above the ordinary level of ability one and all cul 
 tivating, as the occupation of their lives, a science with such 
 pretensions, and with such a Method as that of the identity of 
 
 * " Dass die Gedanken nicht bloss unsere Gedankeu, sondern zugleich das 
 Ansich der Dinge und des Gegenstandlichen (iberhanpt sind." Encyclopddie, 
 p. 89 ; see also p. 97. The whole of this Introduction to the Eiicydopddie is 
 worth consulting. 
 
 t Gtsch. der Pldlos. iii. 690. \ Ibid. iii. 689. 
 
726 HEGEL. 
 
 contraries ! The delusions daily to be seen are those of igno 
 rance, and only depend upon ignorance. But the delusions of 
 Metaphysics are the delusions of an ambitious intelligence which 
 " o erleaps itself." Men such as Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, 
 for example, belong incontestably to a high order of intelligences ; 
 yet we have seen to what their reasonings brought them; we 
 have seen what absurdities they could accept, believing they had 
 found the truth. Hegel especially impresses you with a sense of 
 his wonderful power. His works we have always found very 
 suggestive; his ideas, if repugnant to what we regard as the 
 truth, are yet so coherent, so systematically developed, so obvi 
 ously coming from matured meditation, that we have always 
 risen from the perusal with a sense of the author s greatness. 
 We allude especially to his Lectures on ^Esthetics, his History 
 of Philosophy, his Philosophy of History, and his Philosophy 
 of Rdigwn. 
 
 As for the system itself, we may leave to all readers to decide 
 whether it be worthy of any attention, except as an illustration of 
 the devious errors of speculation. A system which begins with 
 assuming that Being and Non-Being are the same, because Being 
 in the abstract must be conceived as the Unconditioned, and so 
 must Non-Being, therefore both, as unconditioned, are the same ; 
 a system which proceeds upon the identity of contraries as the 
 method of Philosophy ; a system in which Thought is the same as 
 the Thing, and the Thing is the same as the Thought; a system 
 in which the only real positive existence is that of simple Relation, 
 the two terms of which are Mind and Matter ; this system, were it 
 wholly true, leaves all the questions for which science is useful as 
 a light, just as much in the dark as ever, and is therefore unwor 
 thy the attention of earnest men working for the benefit of 
 mankind. 
 
 Not only is it useless ; it is worse, it is pernicious. The facility 
 with which men can throw all questions into the systematic ob 
 scurity of metaphysics, has long been the bane of German Liter 
 ature and Thought. In England and France we have been 
 
727 
 
 saved from perpetuating the frivolous discussions of the School 
 men, mainly because we have retained their nomenclature and 
 terminology, and are warned by these from off scholastic ground ; 
 but the Germans, having invented a new philosophical language, 
 do not perceive that the new terms disguise old errors ; they fail 
 to recognize in Irrlicht the familiar face of Ignis fatuus. 
 
 IY. HEGEL S LOGIC. 
 
 Philosophy being the contemplation of the self-development of 
 the Absolute, or, as Hegel sometimes calls it, the representation 
 of the Idea (Darstellung der Idee), it first must be settled in what 
 directions this development takes place. 
 
 The process is this.. Every thing must be first considered 
 per se (an sick) ; next in its negation, or some other thing (An- 
 derseyn). These are the two terms the contraries; but they 
 must be identified in some third, or they cannot exist : this third 
 is the Relation of the two (the Anundfursichseyn). This is the 
 affirmation which is founded on the negation of a negation : it is 
 therefore positive, real. 
 
 The Absolute, which is both Thought and Being, must be con 
 sidered in this triple order, and philosophy falls into three parts: 
 
 I. LOGIC, the science of the Idee* an und fur sick. 
 
 II. NATURE-PHILOSOPHY, as the science of the Idee in its An- 
 derseyn. 
 
 III. PHILOSOPHY OF INTELLIGENCE, as the Idee which has re 
 turned from its Anderseyn to itself. 
 
 Logic, in this system, has a very different meaning from that 
 usually given to the word. It is, indeed, equally, with the com 
 mon logic, an examination of the forms of Thought ; but it is 
 more : it is an examination of Things, no less than of Thoughts. 
 As Object and Subject are declared identical, and whatever is 
 true of the Thought is equally true of the Thing, since the 
 
 * The Idee is but another term for the Absolute. We shall use it, rather than 
 Idea, because the English word cannot be employed without creating un 
 necessary confusion. 
 
728 HEGEL. 
 
 Thought is the thing, Logic, of course, takes the place of the 
 ancient Logic, and, at the same time, of Metaphysics. It is the 
 generation of all abstract ideas. Consequently it contains the 
 whole system of Science ; and the other parts are but the appli 
 cation of this Logic. 
 
 Hegel s Logic is contained in three stout volumes of dry hard 
 scholasticism. It is a representation of the Idee, in its process 
 of pure thought, free from all contact with objects. It is wholly 
 abstract. It begins with pure Being. This pure Being, in vir 
 tue of its purity, is unconditioned ; but that which has no condi 
 tions has no existence : it is a pure abstraction. Now a pure ab 
 straction is also the Nothing (das Nichts) : it also has no condi 
 tions ; its unconditionalness makes its nothingness. The first 
 proposition in Logic is, therefore, " Being and Non-Being are the 
 same." 
 
 Hegel admits the proposition to be somewhat paradoxical, and 
 is fully aware of its openness to ridicule ; but he is not a man 
 to be scared by a paradox, to be shaken by a sarcasm. He is 
 aware that stupid common-sense will ask, " whether it is the 
 same if my house, my property, the air I breathe, this town, sun ? 
 the law, mind, or God, exist or not." Certainly, a very pertinent 
 question: how does he answer it? " In such examples," he 
 says, " particular ends utili^forjnstan^e are understood, and 
 then it is asked if it is indifferent to me whether these useful 
 things exist "oFnoT] BTit7m~~lruth , Philosophy ~is~~preeise ly the" ~ 
 toJrcc man from ijmmim^rable finite aims and 
 
 ends, and to make him so indifferent, to them that it is really all 
 
 tliejjajne whether such things exist or not." Here we trace the 
 Alexandrian influence ; except that Plotinus would never have had 
 the audacity to say that Philosophy was to make us indifferent 
 whether God existed or not; and it must have been a slip of the 
 pen which made Hegel include God in the examples : a slip of 
 the pen, or else the " rigor of his pitiless logic," of which his dis 
 ciples talk. " Pitiless" indeed ! more intrepid absurdity it 
 would be difficult to find. 
 
729 
 
 Remark, also, the evasive nature of his reply. Common-seme 
 suggests to him a plain direct question, not without interest. This 
 question, plain as it is, goes to the bottom of his system. He 
 evades it by answering, that Philosophy has nothing to do with 
 the interests of men. Very true ; his system has nothing to do 
 with them. But the question put was not, " Has Philosophy to 
 concern itself with the interests of mankind ?" The question put 
 was, " If, as you say, Being and Non-Being are the same, is it the 
 same thing to have a house and not to have it ?" Hegel might 
 have given a better answer even upon his own principles. 
 
 To return, however. The first proposition has given us the two 
 contraries ; there must be an identity a relation to give them 
 positive reality. As pure Being, and as pure Non-Being, they have 
 no reality ; they are mere potentialities. Unite them, and you 
 have the Becoming ( Werden), and that is reality. Analyze this 
 idea of Becoming, and you will find that it contains precisely 
 these two elements, a Non-Being from which it is evolving) 
 and a Being which is evolved. 
 
 Now these two elements, which reciprocally contradict each 
 other, which incessantly tend to absorb each other, are only 
 maintained in their reality by means of the relation in which they 
 are to each other ; that is, the point of the magnet which keeps 
 the poles asunder, and by keeping them asunder prevents their 
 annihilating each other. The Becoming is the first concrete 
 Thought we can have, the first conception ; Being and Non-Be 
 ing are pure abstractions. 
 
 A question naturally suggests itself as to how Being and Non- 
 Being pass from Abstractions into Realities. The only answer 
 Hegel gives us is, that they become Realities : but this is answering 
 us with the very question itself. We want to know how they be 
 come. In themselves, as pure Abstractions, they have no reality ; 
 and although two negatives make an affirmative in language, it 
 is not so evident how they can accomplish this in fact. The 
 question is of course insoluble ; and those Hegelians whom we 
 
 questioned on the point, unanimously declared it to be one of 
 
 310 
 
730 HEGEL. 
 
 those truths (very numerous in their system) which can be com 
 prehended, but not proved. 
 
 Let us grant the Becoming. It is the identity of Being and 
 Non-Being ; and as such it is Being as determined, conditioned. 
 All determination (Bestimmung) is Negation.* Therefore, in 
 order that Being should become, it must suffer first a negation ; 
 the Ansichseyn must also be Anderseyn, and the relation of the 
 two is total reality, the Anundfursichseyn. 
 
 Quality is the first negation : it is the reality of a thing. 
 That which constitutes Quality is the negation which is the con 
 dition of its Being. Blue, for example, is blue only because it is 
 the negation of red, green, purple, etc. ; a meadow is a meadow 
 only because it is not a vineyard, a park, a ploughed field, etc. 
 
 Being, having suffered a Negation, is determined as Quality, 
 it is Something, and no longer an Abstraction. But this some 
 thing is limited by its very condition ; and this limit, this nega 
 tion, is external to it: hence Something implies Some-other-thing. 
 There is a This and a That. Now the Something and the 
 Some-other-thing, the This and the That, are the same thing. 
 This is a tree ; That is a house. If I go to the house, it will 
 then be the This, and the tree will be That. Let the tree 
 be the Something, and the house the Some-other-thing, and the 
 same change of terms may take place. This proves that the two 
 are identical. The something carries its opposite (other-thing) 
 within itself; it is constantly becoming the other-thing. Clearly 
 showing that the only positive reality is the Relation which 
 always subsists throughout the changes of the terms. 
 
 This, it must be owned, looks like the insanity of Logic. It is 
 not, however, unexampled in Hegel s works. In his Phanome- 
 nologie des Geistes, he tells us that perception gives us the ideas 
 of Now, Here, This, etc. And what is the Now ? At noon I say, 
 " Now it is day." Twelve hours afterwards I say, " Now it is 
 night." My first affirmation is therefore false as to the second, 
 
 * This, as many other ideas, is borrowed from Spinoza, in whose system it 
 has real significance. In Hegel s it is a mere play upon words. 
 
731 
 
 my second false as to the first : which proves that the Now is a 
 general idea; and as such a real existence, independent of all 
 particular Nows. 
 
 Our readers are by this time probably quite weary of this friv 
 olous Logic ; we shall spare them any further details. If they 
 wish further to learn about Quantities, Identities, Diversities, etc., 
 they must consult the original. 
 
 Those who are utter strangers to German speculation will 
 wonder, perhaps, how it is possible for such verbal quibbles to 
 be accepted as Philosophy. But, in the first place, Philosophy 
 itself, in all its highest speculations, is but a more or less inge 
 nious playing upon words. From Thales to Hegel, verbal distinc 
 tions have always formed the ground of Philosophy, and must 
 ever do so as long as we are unable to penetrate the essence of 
 things. In the second place, Hegel s Logic is a work requiring 
 prodigious effort of thought to understand : so difficult and am 
 biguous is the language, and so obscure the meaning. Now, 
 when a man has once made this ejFort, and succeeded, he is very 
 apt to overvalue the result of all that labor, and to believe what 
 he has found, to be a genuine truth. Thirdly, Hegel is very 
 consistent ; consistent in audacity, in absurdity. If the student 
 yields assent to the premises, he is sure to be dragged irresistibly 
 to the conclusions. Fourthly, the reader must not suppose that 
 the absurdities of Hegel s system are so apparent in his works as 
 in our exposition. We have exerted ourselves to the utmost to 
 preserve the real significance of his speculations ; but we have 
 also endeavored to bring them into the clear light of day. Any 
 thing except a verbal translation would reveal some aspects of 
 the absurdity, by the very fact of bringing it out of the obscurity 
 with which the German terminology veils it. The mountain 
 looming through a fog turns out to be a miserable hut as soon 
 as the fog is scattered ; and so the boasted system of Absolute 
 Idealism turns out to be only a play upon words, as soon as it 
 is dragged from out the misty terminology in which it is en 
 shrouded. 
 
732 HEGEL. 
 
 V. APPLICATION OF THE METHOD TO NATURE AND HISTORY, 
 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Having exhibited the various evolutions of the Idee as pure 
 Thought, Hegel undertakes to exhibit its objective evolutions in 
 the domain of Nature. 
 
 In the former attempt he had only to deal with abstractions ; 
 and it was no such difficult matter to exhibit the " genesis of 
 ideas 1 the dependence of one formula upon another. Verbal 
 distinctions were sufficient there. But verbal distinctions, auda 
 cious logic, and obscure terminology avail nothing in attacking 
 the problems presented to us by. Nature; and in endeavoring to 
 give scientific solutions, Nature is not to be coerced. Aware of 
 the difficulties seeing instinctively that the varieties of Nature 
 could not be reduced to the same simplicity as the varieties of 
 the Idee as Thought had been reduced in his Logic Hegel as 
 serted that the determinations of the Idee in its exteriority could 
 not follow the same march as the determinations of the Idee as 
 Thought. Instead of generating each other reciprocally, as in 
 the Logic, these determinations in Nature have no other connec 
 tion than that of coexistence ; sometimes indeed they appear 
 isolated. 
 
 When we look abroad upon Nature, we observe an endless 
 variety of transformations. At first these seem without order ; 
 on looking deeper, we find that there is a regular series of devel 
 opment from the lowest to the highest. These transformations 
 are the struggles of the Idee to manifest itself objectively. Nature 
 is a dumb Intelligence striving to articulate. At first she mumbles ; 
 with succeeding efforts she articulates ; at last she speaks. 
 
 Every modification which the Idee undergoes in the sphere of 
 pure Thought it endeavors to express in the sphere of Nature. 
 And thus an object is elevated in the scale of creation in so far 
 as it resumes within itself a greater number of qualities : inor 
 ganic matter is succeeded by organic, and amongst organized 
 
APPLICATION OF HEGEL 5 S METHOD. 
 
 733 
 
 beings there is a graduated scale from the plant up to man. In 
 man the Idee assumes its highest grade. In Reason it becomes 
 conscious of itself, and thereby attains real and positive existence 
 the highest point of development. Nature is divine in prin 
 ciple (an sick), but it is a mistake to suppose it divine as it exists. 
 By the Pantheists Nature is made one with God, and God one 
 with Nature. In truth, Nature is but the exteriority (Aeusser- 
 lichkeit) of God : it is the passage of the Idee through imperfec 
 tion (Abfall der Idee). Observe moreover that Nature is not 
 only external in relation to the Idee, and to the subjective exist 
 ence of the Idee, namely Intelligence ; but exteriority constitutes 
 the condition in virtue of which Nature is Nature (sondern die 
 AeusserlichJceit macht die Bestimmung aus, in welcher sie als 
 Natur ist). 
 
 The Philosophy of Nature is divided into three sections 
 Mechanics, Physics, and Physiology. Into the details, we are 
 happy to say, our plan forbids us to enter ; or we should have 
 many striking illustrations of the futility of that Method which 
 pretends to construct the scheme of the world a priori. Experi 
 mental philosophers Newton especially are treated with con 
 sistent contempt*^ Hegelis not a timid speculate 
 from no conse^uejice^ lie bows dowrTto no name ; he is im-^ 
 pressed Byno fact, however great. Tji^^JSeTrtrniVi*]^^ 
 
 no better 
 
 seq-uaJ^ fundamental 
 
 theories. That all Europe had been steadily persevering in ap 
 plying Newton s principles, and extending his discoveries, that 
 Science was making gigantic strides, hourly improving man s 
 mastery over Nature, hourly improving the condition of man 
 kind, this fact, however great it might appear to others, when 
 coupled with the other fact, that upon the ontological Method 
 no discoveries had yet been made, and none seemed likely to be 
 made appeared to Hegel as unworthy of a philosopher s notice. 
 The interests of mankind were vulgar considerations, for which 
 
734: HEGEL. 
 
 there would always be abundant vulgar minds. The philosopher 
 had other objects. 
 
 The thirdjinjLlast part of HegelXSfojm is the Philosophy of 
 ^Intelligence. Therein the Idee returns from Nature to Itself, and 
 returns througlTa consciousness. of itself. 
 
 ^JSubjectiyely the Idee. first maatfests-.itself as a Soul ; it then 
 r^trinTsj]jjojTjt,self ? andJ^ mg^r^mse^^ nna ily ren 
 
 ders itself an Object to itself, and theniFis Reason. 
 
 Objectively the Idee manifests itself as Will, and realizes itself 
 in History and in Law. 
 
 The Subjective and Objective manifestations being thus 
 marked out, we have now to see in what manner the identity of 
 the two will manifest itself. The identity of the Objective and 
 Subjective is the Idee as Intelligence, having consciousness of 
 itself in individuals, and realizing itself as Art, as Religion, and 
 as Philosophy. 
 
 The " Lectures on the Philosophy of History,"* edited by the 
 late accomplished Professor Guns, is one of the pleasantest books 
 on the subject we ever read. The following ideas will be suffi 
 cient to give an indication of its method. 
 
 History is the development of the Idee objectively the pro 
 cess by which it attains to a consciousness of itself by explaining 
 itself.f The condition of Intelligence is to know itself ; but it 
 can know itself only after having passed through the three 
 phases of the method, namely, affirmation, negation, and nega 
 tion of negation, as the return to consciousness endowed with 
 reality. It is owing to these phases that the human race is per 
 fectible. 
 
 States, Nations, and Individuals represent the determinate 
 moments of this development. Each of these moments manifests 
 
 * Werke, vol. ix. 
 
 t History is a sort of Theodicca ; the merit of originality, however, which 
 Hegel claims (Einldtung, p. 20), is due to Vico, from whom he has largely 
 borrowed ; Vico expressly calls his New Science a Civil Theology of Divine 
 Providence. See La Science Nouvelle, livre i. ch. iv. 
 
735 
 
 itself in the constitution, in the manners, in the creeds, in the 
 whole social state of any one nation. For this nation it is what 
 we call the spirit of the age : it is the only possible truth, and 
 by its light all things are seen. But with reference to the abso 
 lute Idee all these particular manifestations are nothing but 
 moments of transition instruments by which the transition to 
 another higher moment is prepared. Great men are the incar 
 nations of the spirit of the age. 
 
 It is not every nation that constitutes itself into a state : to do 
 that, it must pass from a family to a horde, from a horde to a 
 tribe, and from a tribe to a state. This is the formal realization 
 of the Idee. 
 
 But the Idee must have a theatre on which to develop itself. 
 The Earth is that theatre ; and as it is the product of the Idee 
 (according to the Naturphilosophie), we have the curious pheno 
 menon of an actor playing upon a stage that stage being him 
 self ! But the Earth, as the geographical basis of History, has 
 three great divisions : 1. The mountainous regions. 2. The 
 plains and valleys. 3. The coasts and mouths of rivers. The 
 first represents the primitive condition of mankind ; the second 
 the more advanced condition, when society begins to be formed ; 
 the third, when, by means of river-communication, the activity 
 of the human race is allowed free development in all directions, 
 particularly of commerce. This is another of the ideas of Vico,* 
 and is in contradiction to all history. 
 
 The great moments of History are four. 1. In the East we 
 have the predominance of substantiality; the Idee does not 
 know its freedom. The rights of men are unknown because the 
 East knows only that one is free. This is the childhood of the 
 World. 2. In Greece we have the predominance of Individu 
 ality. The Idee knows that it is free, but only under certain 
 forms, that is to say, only some are free. Mind is still mixed 
 with Matter, and finds its expression therein ; this expression is 
 
 * L& Science Nouvelk, livre i. ch. ii. 97. 
 
736 HEGEL. 
 
 Beauty. This is the youthhood of the World. 3. In Rome we 
 have opposition between the Objective and Subjective : the po 
 litical universality and individual freedom both developed, yet 
 not united. This is the Manhood of the World. 4. In the Teu 
 tonic Nations we have the unity of the contradiction the Idee 
 knowing itself; and instead of supposing, like Greece and Rome, 
 that some only are free, it knows that all men are free. This is 
 the old-age of the World ; but although the old-age of body is 
 weakness, the old-age of Mind is ripeness. The first form of 
 government which we see in History is .Despotism ; the second is 
 Democracy and Aristocracy ; the third is Monarchy.* 
 
 On reading over this meagre analysis, the ingenious specula 
 tions of the original will scarcely be recognized. Such -is the 
 art with which Hegel clothes his ideas in the garb of Philosophy, 
 that though aware that he is writing fiction, not history, and 
 giving us perversions of notorious facts as the laws of historical 
 development telling us that the Spirit of the World manifests 
 himself under such and such phases, when it is apparent to all 
 that, granting the theory of this World-Spirit s development, the 
 phases were not such as Hegel declares them to have been ; al 
 though we are aware of all this, yet is the book so ingenious 
 and amusing, that it seems almost unfair to reduce it to such a 
 caput mortuum as our analysis. Nevertheless the principles of 
 his philosophy of History are those we have given above. The 
 application of those principles to the explication of the various 
 events of History, is still more ingenious. 
 
 Hegel s Philoso%)liy of Religion has in the last few years been 
 the subject of bitter disputes. The schisms of the young Hege 
 lians the doctrines of Strauss, Feuerbach, Bruno, Bauer, and 
 others being all deduced, or pretended to be deduced, from 
 Hegel s system, much angry discussion has taken place as to the 
 real significance of that system. When doctors thus disagree, 
 we shall not presume to decide. We will leave the matter to 
 
 * Philosophic dev Geschichte, p. 12S. 
 
theologians ; and for the present only notice Hegel s fundamental 
 ideas. 
 
 It is often a matter of wonder to see how Hegel s Method is 
 applied to all subjects, and how his theory of life can be brought 
 to explain every product of life. This is doubtless a great logical 
 merit ; and it inspires disciples with boundless confidence. Few, 
 however, we suspect, have approached the subject of Religion 
 without some misgivings as to the applicability of the Method 
 to explain it. Probably the triumph is great when the applica 
 bility is shown to be as perfect here as elsewhere. Of this our 
 readers shall judge. 
 
 Hegel, of course, accepts the Trinity ; his whole system is 
 Trinitarian. God the Father is the eternal Idee an und fur sich : 
 that is to say, the Idee as an unconditioned Abstraction. God the 
 Son, engendered by the Father, is the Idee as Andersseyn : that 
 is to say, as a conditioned Reality. The separation has taken 
 place which, by means of a negation, gives the Abstraction real 
 existence. God the Holy Ghost is the Identity of the two ; the 
 negation of the negation and perfect totality of existence. He is 
 the Consciousness of himself as Spirit : this is the condition of 
 his existence. 
 
 God the Father was before the World, and created it. That 
 is to say, he existed an sich, as the pure Idee, before he assumed 
 any reality. He created the World, because it is the essence of 
 his being to create (es yehort zu seinem Seyn, Wesen, Schopfer 
 zu seyri). Did he not create, then would his own existence be 
 incomplete. 
 
 The vulgar notion of theologians is that God created the world 
 by an act ; but Hegel says that the creation is not an act, but an 
 eternal moment not a thing done, but a thing perpetually doing ; 
 God did not create the world, he is eternally creating it. Attached 
 also to this vulgar notion, is another less precisely but more 
 commonly entertained ; namely, that God, having created the 
 world by an act of his will, lets it develop itself with no inter 
 ference of his ; as Goethe somewhere ridicules it, he " sits aloft 
 
738 HEGEL. 
 
 seeing the world go." This was not the doctrine of St. Paul, 
 whose pregnant words are, " In Him we live, and move, and have 
 our being." We live in God, not out of him, not simply by him. 
 And this is what Hegel means when he denies that the creation 
 was a single act. Creation was, and is, and ever will be. Crea 
 tion is the reality of God : it is God passing into activity, but 
 neither suspended nor exhausted in the act. 
 
 This is all we can here give of his Philosophy of Religion ; 
 were we to venture further, we should only get ourselves entan 
 gled in the thorny labyrinth of theological problems. Let us 
 pass, therefore, to his History of Philosophy, which, according 
 to him, is the history of the development of the Idee as intelli 
 gence. This development of thought is nothing more than the 
 various transitions which constitute the moments of the absolute 
 Method. All these moments are represented in history ; so that 
 the History of Philosophy is the reproduction of the Logic under 
 the forms of intelligence. The succession of these moments 
 gives to each period a particular philosophy ; but these various 
 philosophies are, in truth, only parts of the one philosophy. 
 This looks like the Eclecticism of Victor Cousin ; and indeed 
 Cousin s system is but an awkward imitation of Hegel : but the 
 Frenchman has either misunderstood, or has modified, the views 
 of his master. 
 
 Historically speaking, there have been, according to Hegel, 
 but two philosophies that of Greece and that of Germany. The 
 Greeks conceived Thought under the form of the Idee ; the mod 
 erns have conceived it under the form of Spirit. The Greeks 
 of Alexandria arrived at unity ; but their unity was only ideal, 
 it existed objectively in thought. The subjective aspect was 
 wanting : the totality knew itself not as subjective and objective. 
 This is the triumph of modern philosophy. 
 
 The moments have been briefly these:!. With Thales and 
 the Eleatics, the Idee was conceived as pure Being the One. 
 
 2. With Plato it was conceived as Universal, Essence, Thought. 
 
 3. With Aristotle as Conception (Begri/}. 4. With the Stoics, 
 
APPLICATION OF HEGEL 5 S METHOD. 739 
 
 Epicureans, and Skeptics, as subjective Conception. 5. With 
 the Alexandrians as the totality of Thought. 6. With Descartes 
 as the Self-Consciousness. 7. With Fichte as the Absolute, or 
 Ego. 8. With Schelling as the Identity of Subject and Object. 
 
 We close here our exposition of Hegel s tenets ; an exposition 
 which we have been forced to give more in his own words than 
 we could have wished ; but the plan we adopted with respect to 
 Kant and Fichte would not have been so easy (we doubt if it be 
 possible) with respect to Hegel, whose language must be learned, 
 for the majority of his distinctions are only verbal. In Kant 
 and Fichte the thoughts were to be grappled with ; in Hegel the 
 form is every thing. 
 
 We have only touched upon essential points. Those desirous 
 of more intimate acquaintance with the system, are referred to 
 the admirable edition of his complete works, published by his dis 
 ciples, in twelve volumes, octavo. If this voluminousness be some 
 what too alarming, we can recommend the abridgment by Franz 
 and Hillert (HegeVs Philosophic in wortlichen Auszugen, Berlin, 
 1843), where the whole system is given in Hegel s own words, and 
 only his illustrations and minute details are omitted. Michelet s 
 work is useful mainly for its bibliography. He indicates the vari 
 ous directions taken by Hegel s disciples. Chalybaus is popular, 
 but touches only on a few points. Barchou de Penhoen evidently 
 knows Hegel only at second-hand, and is not to be trusted. Dr. 
 Ott s work is ill written, but is very useful as an introduction to 
 the study of the works themselves, and has been very useful to 
 us in our exposition. No work of Hegel s has been translated 
 into English;* and only his ^Esthetik into French, and that is 
 more an analysis, we believe, than a translation. The Philos 
 ophy of History has been translated into Italian. 
 
 * Since this was written, a part of the Logic has appeared under this 
 title : The Subjective Logic of Hegel, translated l>y II. Sloman and J. Wallon, 
 1855. To the list of works mentioned above should be added Wilm s ad 
 mirable Hist, de la Pldlos. Allemande, by far the best work on the subject 
 known to me. 
 
TENTH EPOCH. 
 
 PSYCHOLOGY SEEKING ITS BASIS IN PHYSIOLOGY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 CABANIS. 
 
 WHILE Ontology was reasserting its claim in Germany, with 
 such, results as we have seen, Philosophy in England and France 
 relinquished its lofty claims, and contented itself with the en 
 deavor to construct a Psychology. The writings of Reid, Stew 
 art, Brown, James Mill, and their disciples, valuable in many 
 respects, are all deficient in Method, all without a firm basis. The 
 attempt of Hartley and Darwin to connect Psychology with 
 Physiology, we have seen was premature. It nevertheless point 
 ed out the true direction. If Psychology is to be studied as a 
 Science, it must be studied according to rigorously scientific prin 
 ciples ; if, on the contrary, it is to be studied as a branch of 
 Metaphysics, then indeed the Scotch school, and every other 
 unscientific school, may justly complain of the encroachment of 
 Physiology on their domain. 
 
 The history of the rise of psychological Method remains to be 
 written. . It began with Hobbes and Locke. They opposed the 
 reigning doctrine of innate ideas. They analyzed Thought as 
 the product of Experience. Hobbes, as was natural in the first 
 vehemence of the swing of reaction against spiritualism, recog 
 nizes nothing in the mind but sensations in all their varieties ; 
 
CABANIS. 741 
 
 the mind, he said, is moved by external motion, that is all. 
 Locke, on deeper meditation, saw that there was something more 
 than this ; he saw, dimly it is true, yet never overlooking it alto 
 gether, that the mind co-operated. Not only Sense, but Reflection 
 on the materials given through Sense, furnished, he said, the 
 complex thoughts of man. Thus he proclaimed Experience the 
 source of knowledge. The mind of the child was like a sheet of 
 blank paper, on which Experience wrote its various records. In 
 Locke, we see the initial steps of the Physiological Method ; and 
 as he was himself an anatomist, there is nothing surprising in 
 his having been led by his study of man s structure to some con 
 clusions respecting man s mind. He directed that attention to 
 Sense which metaphysicians had been in the habit of directing 
 to ideas and verbal subtleties ; and by so doing, took an impor 
 tant step towards the confrontation of speculation with fact ; and 
 initiated the still more important idea of a constant relation be 
 tween organ and function. He also was led to study the growth 
 of mind ; and hence his frequent reference to savages and chil 
 dren, which distresses Victor Cousin, who is often as terrified at 
 a fact as at a ghost. 
 
 Great as Locke s services were, there was a radical vice in his 
 system which prevented its acceptance. He began the Physio 
 logical Method, but he only began it. The Experience-hypoth 
 esis would not suffice to explain all phenomena (at least not as 
 that hypothesis was then understood) ; there were forms of 
 thought neither reducible to Sense and Reflection, nor to indi 
 vidual Experience. He drew illustrations from children and 
 savages ; but he neither did this systematically, nor did he ex 
 tend the Comparative Method to animals. The prejudices of that 
 age forbade it. The ignorance of that age made it impossible. 
 Comparative Physiology is no older than Goethe, and Compara 
 tive Psychology is only now glimmering in the minds of men as 
 a possibility. If men formerly thought they could understand 
 man s body by dissecting it, and did not need the light thrown 
 thereon by the dissection of animals ; they were still less likely 
 
742 
 
 CABANIS. 
 
 to seek psychical illustrations in animals, denying, as they did, 
 that animals had minds. 
 
 The school of Locke, therefore, although regarding Mind as a 
 property of Matter, consequently directing attention to the hu 
 man organism, trying to understand the mechanism of sensation, 
 and thus dealing with tangible realities instead of with impalpa 
 ble and ever-shifting entities, was really incompetent to solve the 
 problems it had set itself, because its Method was imperfect, and 
 its knowledge incomplete. The good effect of its labors was pos 
 itive ; the evil, negative. Following out this positive tendency, 
 we see Hartley and Darwin advancing still nearer to a true 
 Method ; by a bold hypothesis, making the phenomena depen 
 dent on vibrations in the nerves ; thus leading to a still more 
 precise and definite consideration of the organism. 
 
 These were, however, tentatives guided by no distinct concep 
 tion of the necessary relation between organ and function ; and 
 the Physiological Method, truly so called, must be first sought in 
 Cabanis. 
 
 Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis was born 5th of June, 175*7, at 
 Conac, near Brives. He became a physician, and established 
 himself at Auteuil, where, in the house of Madame Helvetius, he 
 cultivated the acquaintance of Turgot, D Holbach, Franklin, 
 Condillac, Diderot, and D Alembert. To these let us add Con- 
 dorcet and Mirabeau, both of whom he attended in their last 
 hours. He died on the 6th of May, 1808. He wrote several 
 works, but one only has survived in the memories of philosophic 
 readers : Rapports du Physique et du Moral de VHomme* 
 
 A disciple of Condillac, he nevertheless saw, more distinctly 
 than any man before him, one radical vice of Condillac s system, 
 namely, the limitation of mental phenomena to sensations, and 
 
 * This work originally appeared as a series of Memoires read before the 
 Institute (1798-99). It was published as a separate book in 1802, under the 
 title Traitedu Physique et du Moral de VHomme ; which title is also borne by 
 the second edition of 1805. Not until 1815, and after the death of Cabanis, 
 was the word Jtapports substituted for Traite. 
 
CABANIS. 743 
 
 the non-recognition of connate instincts. If sensation were the 
 admitted source of all mental phenomena (and Cabanis rightly 
 extended these phenomena beyond " ideas"), it became the duty 
 of philosophers to examine the nature of sensation itself. " No 
 one," he says, " had clearly explained in what the act of sensibil 
 ity consists. Does it always presuppose consciousness and dis 
 tinct perception ? and must we refer to some other property of 
 the living body all those unperceived impressions and movements 
 in which volition has no part ?" To put this question was to in 
 augurate a new study. It became necessary to examine whether 
 all mental phenomena were not reducible to the fundamental 
 laws of sensibility. " All the while that the Intellect is judging 
 and the Will is desiring or rejecting, many other functions are 
 going on, all more or less necessary to the preservation of life. 
 Have these diverse operations any influence, the one on the 
 other? And is it possible from the consideration of different 
 physical and moral states, which are observed simultaneously, to 
 seize the relations which connect the most striking phenomena, 
 with such precision as to be certain that in the other less obvi 
 ous cases, if the connection is less easily detected, it is so simply 
 because the indications are too fugitive ?" 
 
 This conception of a possible Psychology is in itself enough to 
 mark forever the place of Cabanis in the History of Philosophy. 
 It establishes Psychology as one branch of the great science of 
 Life. It connects the operations of intelligence and volition with 
 the origin of all vital movements. It makes Life and Mind cor 
 relatives. This was a revival of the great truth clearly recog 
 nized by Aristotle, from whom it descended to the Schoolmen. 
 " Impossibile est," says Aquinas, very emphatically, " in uno 
 homine esse plures animas.per essentiam differentes, sed una tan- 
 turn est anima intellectiva, quas vegetativse et sensitive et intel- 
 lectivse officiis fungitur." The division of Life and Mind as 
 two distinct entities was introduced by the Italians of the Renais 
 sance, adopted by Bacon, and once more rejected by Stahl, who 
 returned to the Aristotelian conception. With the fall of Stahl s 
 
744 CABANIS. 
 
 doctrine, the separation of Mind from Life again became the 
 dictum of the schools, until Cabanis ; no one since Cabanis 
 seems to have been thoroughly impressed with the unity of the 
 two till Mr. Herbert Spencer presented it as the basis of psycho 
 logical induction.* The consequences were immediate : if Mind 
 was to be studied as one aspect of Life, it could only be efficient 
 ly studied on that inductive and experimental Method which had 
 reached the certain truths of positive science : " Les principes 
 foudamentaux seraient egalement solides; elles se formeraient 
 egalement par 1 etude severe et par la composition des faits ; 
 elles s etendraient par les memes methodes de raisonuement." 
 Cabanis warns his readers that they will find nothing of what is 
 called Metaphysics in his book; they will only find physiological 
 researches, metis dirigees vers V etude particuUere d?un ordre de 
 fonctions. 
 
 In the purely physiological direction, indeed, Cabanis had 
 many predecessors, from Willis in the middle of the seventeenth 
 century, to Prochaska, who preceded Cabanis by one year only.f 
 The nervous system had of course been studied by physiologists, 
 and this study led them to psychological theories ; but although 
 we may find elsewhere, especially in Unzer and Prochaska, 
 sounder views of the physiology of the nervous system, we find 
 nowhere so clear and large a conception of the physiological 
 psychology. 
 
 " Subject to the action of external bodies," says Cabanis, " man 
 finds in the impressions these bodies make on his organs at once 
 his knowledge and the causes of his continued existence ; for to 
 live is to feel ; and in that admirable chain of phenomena which 
 constitute his existence, every want depends on the development 
 
 i 
 
 * Spencer, Principles of Psychology, 1855. 
 
 t Lefin>dtze aus der Physlologie des Menschen, 1797. Curiously enough the 
 second and third editions of this work were exactly contemporaneous with 
 the second and third editions of Cabanis, 1802 and 1S05 (counting the publi 
 cation in the Memoires de Vlnstitut as one edition). It is not to be supposed 
 that Cabanis knew of Prochaska s existence ; nor is there more than a gen 
 eral resemblance in their physiological conclusions. 
 
CABANIS. 745 
 
 of some faculty ; every faculty by its very development satisfies 
 some want, and the faculties grow by exercise as the wants ex 
 tend with the facility of satisfying them. By the continual action 
 of external bodies on the senses of man, results the most remark 
 able part of his existence. But is it true that the nervous cen 
 tres only receive and combine the impressions which reach them 
 from these bodies ? Is it true that no ima^e or idea is formed 
 
 O 
 
 in the brain, and that no determination of the sensitive organ 
 takes place, other than by virtue of these same impressions on 
 the senses strictly so called 2"* 
 
 This question cuts away the very root of Condillac s system. 
 Cabanis had no difficulty in showing that Condillac s limitation of 
 our mental phenomena to the action of the special senses, was a 
 contradiction of familiar experience, e. g. the manifold influence 
 exercised by the age, sex, temperament, and the visceral sensa 
 tions generally. A survey of the human organism, compared with 
 that of animals, conducted him to the following conclusions : 
 
 " The faculty of feeling and of spontaneous movement, forms 
 the character of animal nature. 
 
 " The faculty of feeling consists in the property possessed by 
 the nervous system of being warned by the impressions produced 
 on its different parts, and notably on its extremities. These im 
 pressions are internal or external. 
 
 "External impressions, when perception is distinct, are called 
 sensations. 
 
 " Internal impressions are very often vague and confused, and 
 the animal is then only warned by their effects, and does not 
 clearly distinguish their connection with the causes. 
 
 " The former result from the application of external objects to 
 the organs of sense ; and on them ideas depend. 
 
 " The latter result from the development of the regular func 
 tions, or from the maladies to which each organ is subject ; and 
 from these issue those determinations which bear the name of 
 instincts. 
 
 * Deuxieme Memoire, ii. 
 
746 CABANIS. 
 
 "Feeling and movement are linked together. Every move 
 ment is determined by an impression, and the nerves, as the or 
 gans of feeling, animate and direct the motor organs. 
 
 " In feeling, the nervous organ reacts on itself. In movement 
 it reacts on other parts, to which it communicates the contractile 
 faculty, the simple and fecund principle of all animal movement. 
 
 "Finally, the vital functions can exercise themselves by the 
 influence of some nervous ramifications, isolated from the sys 
 tem : the instinctive faculties can develop themselves, even when 
 the brain is almost wholly destroyed, and when it seems wholly 
 inactive. 
 
 "But for the formation of thoughts it is necessary that the 
 brain should exist, and be in a healthy condition : it is the spe 
 cial organ of thought."* 
 
 He justly repudiates any attempt to explain sensibility, which 
 must be accepted as a general property of organized beings, in 
 the same way that attraction is accepted as a general property of 
 masses. No general fact admits of explanation. It can only be 
 subordinated to some other fact, and be explained by it, on the 
 supposition that it is not general. Accepting sensibility, there 
 fore, as an ultimate fact in the organic world, he detects its phe 
 nomena running through all those called vital and all those called 
 mental. 
 
 " It is something," he says, " to have established that all ideas 
 and all moral phenomena are the results of impressions received 
 by the different organs ; and I think a still wider step is taken 
 when we have shown that these impressions have appreciable 
 differences, and that we can distinguish them by their seat and 
 the character of their products, although they all act and react 
 on each other, on account of the rapid and continual communi 
 cations with the sensitive organ."| The object of his treatise is 
 to examine the relations existing between the moral and physical 
 conditions, how the sensations are modified by modifications in 
 
 * Deuxilrw Memoire, viii. t Ibid., v. 
 
CABANIS. 
 
 the organs, how ideas, instincts, passions are developed and mod 
 ified by the influences of age, sex, temperament, maladies, etc. 
 It is not, therefore, a treatise on Psychology, but contributions 
 towards a science of Psychology, and as such may still be read 
 with advantage, although the science of the present day rejects 
 many of its physiological details. He foresaw that this would be 
 so. " Le lecteur s apercevra bientot que nous entrons ici dans 
 une carriere toute nouvelle. Je n ai pas la prevention de 1 avoir 
 parcouru jusqu au bout; mais des hommes plus habiles et plus 
 heureux acheveront ce que trop souvent je n ai pu que tenter." 
 
 As a specimen of inductive Psychology, we must not pass over 
 in silence his experimental proof of instinct being developed by 
 certain organic conditions. He takes one of the most marvellous 
 of instincts, that of maternal love, and having analyzed its phys 
 iological conditions, he says "In my province, and some of the 
 neighboring provinces, when there is a deficiency of sitting Hens, 
 a singular practice is customary. We take a capon, pluck off 
 the feathers from the abdomen, rub it with nettles and vinegar, 
 and in this state of local irritation place the capon on the eggs. 
 At first he remains there to soothe the pain ; soon there is estab 
 lished within him a series of unaccustomed but agreeable im 
 pressions, which attach him to these eggs during the whole 
 period of incubation ; and the effect is to produce in him a sort 
 of factitious maternal love, which endures, like that of the hen, 
 as long as the chickens have need of aid and protection. The 
 cock is not thus to be modified ; he has an instinct which 
 carries him elsewhere." 
 
 The novelty of the conception which Cabanis put forth, and 
 the interest attached to many of his illustrations, made his work 
 very popular; but its influence was only indirect. The igno 
 rance which almost all psychologists continued to display, not 
 only of Physiology, but of the necessity of a physiological 
 Method, together with the alarm excited by the accusation of 
 " materialism," aided as it was by the reaction, mainly political, 
 but soon extending itself to philosophical questions, which con- 
 
748 CABANIS. 
 
 demned the labors of the eighteenth century, left Cabanis with 
 few adherents and no continuers. In elaborate works the brain 
 was still designated as the "organ of the mind," but the mind 
 was passionately declared not to be the function of the brain ; 
 the profounder views of Cabanis, which regarded Mind as one 
 aspect of Life, were replaced by the old metaphysical concep 
 tions of le Moi the Ego the immaterial Entity playing upon 
 the brain as a musician plays upon an instrument* Instinct 
 was no longer regarded as determined by the organism, chang 
 ing with its changes, rendered abortive by mutilations, and ren 
 dered active by stimulation ; but as a " mysterious principle im 
 planted" in the organism : a " something" which, although es 
 sentially mysterious and unknowable, appeared to be perfectly 
 well known to the metaphysicians. 
 
 While the reaction was strong against Cabanis and against 
 the whole eighteenth-century Philosophy, there arose another 
 doctrine, which, taking Physiology as its avowed basis, succeeded, 
 in spite of vehement opposition, in establishing itself perma 
 nently among the intellectual tendencies of the age ; and that 
 doctrine may now be said to be the only psychological one which 
 counts any considerable mass of adherents. I allude to Phre 
 nology. 
 
 * One living 1 writer, of authority, has gravely declared that mental fa 
 tigue is the consciousness which the mind has of the brain s weariness ! 
 In our confessed inability to understand what matter is, why will men 
 persist in dogmatizing on what it is not? We know neither matter nor 
 spirit, we only know phenomena. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 P H KEN O LOGY. 
 
 I. LIFE OF GALL. 
 
 FRANCIS JOSEPH GALL was born at Tiefenbrunn, in Suabia, on 
 the 9th of March, 1757. In the preface to his great work, 
 Anatomie et Physiologic du Systeme Nerveux, 1810, he narrates 
 how as a boy he was struck with the differences of character and 
 talents displayed by members of the same family, and how he 
 observed certain external peculiarities of the head to correspond 
 with these differences. Finding no clue given in the works of 
 metaphysicians, he resumed his observations of nature. The 
 physician of a lunatic asylum at Vienna allowed him frequent 
 occasions of noticing the coincidence of peculiar monomaniacs 
 with peculiar configurations of the skull. The prisons and 
 courts of justice furnished him with abundant material. When 
 ever he heard of a man remarkable either for good or evil, 
 he made his head a study. He extended his observation to ani 
 mals ; and finally sought confirmation in anatomy. The exterior 
 of the skull he found, as a general rule, to correspond with the 
 form of the brain. 
 
 After twenty years of observation, dissection, theorizing, and 
 arguing, he delivered his first course of lectures in Vienna. This 
 was in 1796. The novelty of his views excited a great sensation ; 
 one party fanatically opposing them, another almost as fanatically 
 espousing them. Ridicule was not sparing. The new system 
 lent itself to ridicule, and angry opponents were anxious, as oppo 
 nents usually are, to show that what made them angry was utterly 
 farcical. In 1800 Gall gained his best disciple, Spurzheim. 
 
750 PHRENOLOGY. 
 
 Hitherto Gall had been aided by a young anatomist named 
 Niklas, to whom he taught the new method of dissecting the 
 brain ;* now Spurzheim s mastery of anatomical manipulation, 
 combined with his power of generalization and of popular expo 
 sition, came as welcome aids in the gigantic task of establishing 
 the new doctrine on a scientific basis. 
 
 In 1802, M. Charles Villers, the translator of Kant, published 
 his Lettre a Georges Cuvier sur une Nouvelle Theorie du Cerveau 
 par le Docte-ur Gall. I have riot been able to procure this Let 
 ter, but it is in many points interesting to the historian of Phre 
 nology, because it not only expounds the doctrine as it was then 
 conceived, but describes the localization of the organs then 
 fixed on by Gall. A plate represents the skull, marked by 
 Gall himself, with the four-and-twenty organs, which at that 
 period comprised the "original faculties" of the mind. Among 
 these twenty-four, there are four subsequently discarded alto 
 gether : Vital Force Susceptibility Penetration (independent 
 of that which characterizes the metaphysical faculty) and Gen 
 erosity (independent of benevolence.) Not only are these four as 
 tonishing organs marked by Gall as representing original facul 
 ties, but the twenty organs which were afterwards retained by 
 him are differently localized ; so that, according to M. Lelut, 
 from whom I borrow these details, "of those twenty organs 
 there is scarcely one which occupies the place Gall finally as 
 signed to it."f 
 
 Phrenologists should give prominence to this fact. They are 
 bound not to pass it over. In every way it is important in the 
 history of the doctrine. It may perhaps be satisfactorily 
 explained ; but until it be so explained, it must tell against them ; 
 and for the very reason which they incessantly advance as their 
 claim to consideration, namely, that the several organs were 
 
 * Gall pays his tribute to Niklas in the first edition of the Anat. et Phys. 
 du Systeme Nerueux, i. preface xv. In the second edition this tribute is omit 
 ted ; not very creditably. 
 
 t Lelut: Ittjet de V Organologle Phrcnoloyique, 1843, p. 29. 
 
LIFE OF GALL. 751 
 
 established by observation, not by any theory.* For, if the doctrine 
 had been established by a mingling of hypothesis and observa 
 tion, nothing would be more likely than that the first sketch of it 
 would be immature in conception, and uncertain in details; 
 whereas, if the doctrine grew up slowly from a gradual accumu 
 lation of rigorously verified facts, these facts would remain con 
 stant through all the tentative changes of doctrine. Gall had 
 been twenty years collecting facts of correspondence between ex 
 ternal configuration and peculiarities of character. He had con 
 trolled these observations by repeated verifications. Prisons, 
 lunatic asylums, busts, portraits, remarkable men, even animals, 
 had furnished him with facts. Unless these facts really deserve 
 all the credit which is demanded for them, Phrenology has the 
 ground cut from under it.; and if we are to give them our confi 
 dence, upon what ground can we relinquish it in favor of subse 
 quent facts, which deny all that has been said before ? If Gall 
 could be deceived after twenty years of observation of facts 
 which, according to his statement, are very easily observed, be 
 cause very obvious in their characters, why may he not have 
 been equally deceived in subsequent observations ? If one col 
 lection of facts forced him to assign the organ of poetry to a 
 particular spot (on the skull marked by him for M. Villers), how 
 came another collection of facts to displace poetry, and substitute 
 benevolence on that spot ? Are the manifestations of poetry and 
 benevolence so closely allied as to mislead the observer ? 
 
 Probably Spurzheim s assistance came at the right moment to 
 rectify many of the hazardous psychological statements, and to 
 marshal the facts in better order. Together they made a tour 
 through Germany and Switzerland, diffusing the knowledge of 
 their doctrine, and everywhere collecting fresh facts. On the 
 30th of October, 1806, they entered Paris. In 1808 they pre- 
 
 * " On voit par la marche de ces recherches que le premier pas fut fait par 
 la decouverte de quelques organes ; que ce n est quegraduellement que nous 
 avons fait parler les faits pour en deduireles principes gerieraux, et que c est 
 subsequemment et a la fin que nous avons appris & connaitre la structure du 
 cerveau." Anat. et Phys. i. preface xviii. 
 
752 PHRENOLOGY. 
 
 sented to the Institute their Memoire on the Anatomy and Physi 
 ology of the Nervous System in general, and of the Brain in 
 particular ; and in 1810 appeared the first volume of their great 
 work, under the same title, which work was remodelled in 1823, 
 and published in six volumes, octavo, under the title of Fonctions 
 du Cerveau. 
 
 In 1813 Gall and Spurzheim quarrelled and separated. Spurz- 
 heim came to England, Gall remained in Paris, where he died 
 on the 22d of August, 1828. At the post-mortem examination, 
 his skull was found to be of at least twice the usual thickness, a 
 fact which has been the source of abundant witticisms, for the 
 most part feeble. A small tumor was also found in his cerebel 
 lum : " a fact of some interest, from that being the portion of the 
 brain in which he had placed the organ of amativeness, a pro 
 pensity which had always been very strongly marked in him."* 
 I know not in what sense the writer just quoted thinks the fact 
 so remarkable. Tumors in other organs are not usually the indi 
 cations of increased activity; nor are we accustomed to find 
 great poets with tumors in the organ of "imagination ;" great 
 artists with tumors in the perceptive region ; great philanthro 
 pists with tumors on the frontal arch ; great rebels with tumors 
 behind their ears.f 
 
 II. GALL S HISTORICAL POSITION. 
 
 The day for ridiculing Gall has gone by. Every impartial com 
 petent thinker, whether accepting or rejecting Phrenology, is 
 aware of the immense services Gall has rendered to Physiology 
 and Psychology, both by his valuable discoveries, and by his bold, 
 if questionable, hypotheses. He revolutionized Physiology by 
 his method of dissecting the brain, and by his bold assignment 
 
 * The English Cyclopaedia^ vol. iii., Art. Gall. 
 
 t To anticipate the reply that the existence of disease in the organ would 
 provoke unusual activity of the organ, it is only necessary to state that Gall s 
 "propensity" is not said to have been called into unusual activity shortly 
 before his death, but to have always been very active. Had there been a 
 casual connection between the disease and the activity, increase of the activ 
 ity would have followed the rapid progress of the disease. 
 
753 
 
 of definite functions to definite organs. To verify or refute his 
 hypotheses, vast researches were undertaken ; the nervous system 
 of animals was explored with new and passionate zeal ; and now 
 there is no physiologist who openly denies that mental phenom 
 ena are directly connected with nervous structure ; while even 
 Metaphysicians arc beginning to understand the Mechanism of 
 the Senses, and the general laws of nervous action. The time 
 has arrived in which it seems almost as absurd to theorize on 
 mental phenomena in defiance of physiological laws, as it would 
 be to adopt Stahl s advice, and consider anatomical and chemical 
 researches futile in the study of Medicine. We owe this mainly 
 to the influence of Gall. He first brought into requisite promi 
 nence the principle of the necessary relation between organ and 
 function. Others had proclaimed the principle incidentally ; he 
 made it paramount by constant illustration, by showing it in de 
 tail, by teaching that every variation in the organ must necessa 
 rily bring about a corresponding variation hi the function. He 
 did not say mind was the product of organization : " Nous ne 
 confondous pas les conditions avec les causes efficientes ;" all he 
 asserted was the correspondence between the state of the organ 
 and its manifestations.* This was at once to call the attention 
 of Europe to the marvellous apparatus of organs, which had pre 
 viously been so little studied, except from a purely anatomical 
 view, that no one, until Sommerring (who was Gall s contempo 
 rary), had observed the relation between size of the brain and in 
 tellectual power, as a tolerably constant fact in the animal king 
 dom. This one detail is sufficient to make every reader suspect the 
 chaotic condition of Physiological Psychology when Gall appeared. 
 Nor has Gall s influence been less remarkable in the purely 
 psychological direction. People are little aware how that influ- 
 
 * So also Spurzheim says : " Both Dr. Gall and I have always declared that 
 we merely observe the effective and intellectual manifestations, and the or 
 ganic conditions under which they take place ; and that in vising the word 
 organs we only mean the organic parts by means of which the faculties of the 
 mind become apparent, but not that thesfi constitute tlie mind." Phrenolo 
 gy, p. 16. 
 
 32* 
 
754: PHRENOLOGY. 
 
 ence is diffused, even through the writings of the opponents of 
 Phrenology, and has percolated down to the most ordinary intel 
 ligences. " Ni les vains efforts d un despotisme energique," says 
 Auguste Comte, " secondes par la houteuse condescendance de 
 quelques savans fort accredited, ni les sarcasrnes ephemeres de 
 1 esprit litteraire et metaphysique, ni meme la frivole irrationa- 
 lite de la plupart des essais tentes par les imitateurs de Gall, 
 n ont pa empecher pendant les trente dernieres annees Taccroisse- 
 ment rapide et continu, dans toutes les parties du monde savant, 
 du nouveau systeme d etudes de 1 homme intellectual et moral. 
 A quels autres signes voudrait-on reconnaitre le succes progres- 
 sif d une heureuse revolution philosophique ?"* 
 
 Gall may be said to have definitively settled the dispute be 
 tween the partisans of innate ideas and the partisans of Sensa 
 tionalism, by establishing the connate tendencies, both affective 
 and intellectual, which belong to the organic structure of man. 
 Two psychological facts, familiar from all time to the ordinary 
 understanding, but shrouded from all time in the perplexities of 
 philosophy, were by Gall made the basis of a doctrine. The 
 first of these facts is, that all the fundamental tendencies are con 
 nate, and can no more be created by precept and education than 
 they can be abolished by denunciation and punishment. The 
 second fact is, that man s various faculties are essentially distinct 
 and independent, although intimately connected with each other. 
 What followed ? That the Mind consists of a plurality of func 
 tions, consequently must have a plurality of organs, became the 
 necessary corollary of this second proposition, as soon as the re 
 lation between organ and function was steadily conceived. 
 
 These two propositions have entered into the body of all Euro 
 pean doctrines, although the corollary from the second is still 
 vehemently disputed by many. No man of any intellectual 
 eminence would now repeat Johnson s celebrated assertion of the 
 poetic faculty being simply intellectual activity in a special di- 
 
 * Cours de Philos. Positive, in. 766. 
 
CRANIOSCOPY. 755 
 
 rection, whereby Newton might have written Othello, and Shak- 
 speare the Prineipia, had either of these great men set them 
 selves the task. " Sir, a man can walk as far east as he can walk 
 west," was thought a conclusive illustration ; which indeed it 
 was, when the " unity" of the faculties found no contradiction ; 
 but which no one would now accept as more than a fallacious 
 analogy. 
 
 Another conception systematized by Gall has also passed into 
 general acceptance, namely, the pre-eminence of the affective 
 faculties over the intellectual ; and the subdivision of the affec 
 tive faculties into propensities and sentiments, and of the intel 
 lectual faculties into perceptives and reflectives ; thus marking 
 the progress in development from the individual to the social, 
 from the sensuous to the intellectual, which constitutes the great 
 progress of civilization in the triumph of sociality over animality. 
 
 III. CRANIOSCOPY. 
 
 Phrenology has two distinct aspects. It is a doctrine of Psy 
 chology, and it is an Art of reading character. The scientific 
 doctrine is based on the physiology of the nervous system, to 
 which is added psychological analysis and classification. The 
 Art is based on empirical observation of coincidences between 
 certain configurations of the skull and certain mental phenomena. 
 This latter is truly Cranioscopy, and is no more entitled to the 
 name of a science, than are Physiognomy or Cheironomy ; a 
 point which Gall s successors have, with scarcely an exception," 
 entirely overlooked. When therefore the phrenologists with 
 much emphasis declare their system to be a system of " facts" 
 and " observations," which claim our confidence because they 
 are facts and not " mere theories," it is absolutely necessary that 
 we should accurately discriminate in what sense these said facts 
 are to be understood ; because according to that sense will be 
 the kind of confidence they will claim. If, for instance, they are 
 presented purely as empirical facts the observed coincidences 
 between certain cranial appearances and corresponding mental 
 
756 PHRENOLOGY. 
 
 manifestations we may thankfully accept them as valuable 
 materials. Abundance of such material does exist; no one 
 acquainted, even superficially, with phrenological writings will 
 deny it. But without desiring to lessen the value of these facts 
 by rigorous criticism of the evidence on which they rest, we may, 
 nay more, we must, if our inquiry be regulated by scientific pre 
 cision, treat them as we treat all other empirical facts, namely, 
 hold them as mere sign-posts, until they be proved universal, 
 and until they be bound together by some ascertained law. Now 
 it will scarcely be denied that the observed correspondences be 
 tween special cranial configuration and mental peculiarities, do, 
 in many instances, fail. Large heads are sometimes observed in 
 connection with very mediocre abilities; small heads, on the 
 contrary, with very splendid abilities ; particular " organs" do 
 not always justify their prominence by the presence of the par 
 ticular "faculties" which they are said to indicate. I wish 
 rather to understate than overstate the difficulty, and I will not 
 seek to gain any advantage by multiplying exceptions : it is 
 enough for the present argument if any exceptions have been 
 observed ; because any exception to an empirical generalization 
 is fatal to it as an empirical generalization, and can only be set 
 aside when the generalization has ceased to be empirical, and 
 has become scientific. Thus, I am aware that phrenologists ex 
 plain each exception to their perfect satisfaction. But, in 
 explaining it, they quit the sphere of empirical observation to 
 enter that of science ; and thus their explanation itself has only 
 the validity which can be given it by theory. To make my 
 meaning more definite, let us suppose that the empirical general 
 ization of large chests being the cause of great muscular power, 
 is under discussion. As an observed fact an empirical fact 
 the correspondence of broad chests and muscular strength, is a 
 valuable addition to our empirical knowledge. Taken as an in 
 dication, RO one disputes the fact ; but taken as a cause, and 
 connected with a physiological theory, it bears quite a different 
 value. The physiologist may say that the fact proves breadth 
 
CRANIOSCOPV. 757 
 
 of chest to admit of more perfect oxygenation of the blood, and 
 thus causes greater muscular power. Against such a theory we 
 bring the fact that no absolute and constant relation between 
 broad chests and muscular power exists ; if we find large chests 
 accompanying strength, we also find small chests in certain lithe, 
 wiry frames accompanying even greater strength ; the empirical 
 generalization is thus destroyed, the explanation is shown to be 
 imperfect, and the ratio of muscular power is shown to depend 
 on some other condition besides the oxygenation of the blood. 
 
 When phrenologists explain away the exceptions to their em 
 pirical facts, they are on the field of pure science, and their ex 
 planations can only have value in proportion to the validity of 
 the scientific principles invoked ; and thus the Art of Cranios- 
 copy is perpetually forced to recur to that very Physiology which 
 the successors of Gall have so unwisely neglected, and of which 
 (because it refuses its aid ?) they often speak so contemptuously. 
 The fact of a large head with a small mental capacity, or of a 
 small head with a great mental capacity, is explained by them 
 as resulting from the difference in the " temperaments" of the 
 two. But have they discriminated the conditions thus vaguely 
 indicated by the word temperament ? Have they estimated the 
 proportions in Avhich the temperaments are mingled ? Have they 
 discovered a means of valuation by which the exact influence of 
 each temperament can be estimated ? They have not even made 
 the attempt. 
 
 And yet that such a valuation is indispensable to the scientific 
 precision of their results, must be evident to every one. What, 
 strictly speaking, is this " temperament," which acts as a disturb 
 ing force in the calculation ? I believe that science will one day 
 show that it is the result of that law of indeterminate composi 
 tion which distinguishes living tissue from all other substances. 
 Inorganic bodies combine according to the law of determinate 
 composition : the proportions of the constituent elements are 
 fixed, definite, invariable. In water we invariably find 88 9 of 
 oxygen, and 11-1 of hydrogen, in every 100 parts; never more, 
 
758 PHRENOLOGY. 
 
 never less ; let the water be dew, rain, snow, or artificially pro 
 duced in the laboratory, its composition is always determinate, 
 even to the fraction. In any piece of flint every 100 parts will 
 be composed of 48 2 of silicon and 51 8 of oxygen ; never more, 
 never less. But this is not the case with organic substances 
 (those at least which we ventured to distinguish as teleorganic 
 substances),* which are indeterminate in composition. Elemen 
 tary analyses do not yield constant results, as do the analvses of 
 inorganic substances. Nerve-tissue, for example, contains both 
 phosphorus and water, as constituent elements ; but the quantity 
 of these elements varies within certain limits ; some nerve-tissues 
 have more phosphorus ; some more water ; and according to 
 these variations in the composition will be the variations in the 
 nervous force evolved. This is the reason why brains differ so 
 enormously even when their volumes are equal. The brain dif 
 fers at different ages, and in different individuals. Sometimes 
 water constitutes three-fourths of the whole weight, sometimes 
 four-fifths, and sometimes even seven-eighths. The phosphorus 
 varies from O SO to 1-65, and 1 80; the cerebral fat varies from 
 3-45 to 5 30, and even 6-10. These facts will help to explain 
 many of the striking exceptions to phrenological observations 
 (such, for example, as the manifest superiority of some small 
 brains over some large brains), and are, indeed, included within 
 the comprehensive formula constantly advanced by phrenologists 
 that "size is a measure of power, other things being equal." In 
 this formula there is a truth, and an equivoque. The truth may 
 be passed over by us, as claiming instantaneous assent. The 
 equivoque must arrest us. Phrenologists forget that here " the 
 other things" never are equal ; and consequently their dictum, 
 
 * Matter is divided into Inorganic and Organic ; in 1853 1 proposed a mod 
 ification of this division into 1. Anorganic ; 2. Merorganic; and 3. Tele- 
 organic: the first including those usually styled inorganic; the second in 
 cluding those substances in an intermediate state, either wanting some 
 addition to become living, or having lost some elements, and passed from 
 the vital state into that of product ; the third including only the truly vital 
 substances. 
 
CKANIOSCOPY. 759 
 
 " size is a measure of power," is without application. There 
 never is equality in the things compared, because two brains ex 
 actly similar in size, and external configuration, will nevertheless 
 differ in elementary composition. The difference may be slight, 
 but however slight, it materially affects the result. The differ 
 ence of elementary composition brings with it a difference in 
 development ; and by development, I do not mean growth, but 
 differentiation* Parallel with these differences, not appreciable 
 by any means in the phrenologist s power, there are psychologi 
 cal differences, resulting from the effect of education. So that 
 to say "size is the measure of power," is as vague as to say " age 
 is the measure of wisdom ;" because, although it is true that size 
 is an index of power, and, other things being equal, the greater 
 the brain the greater the mental power, it is equally true, that 
 age and experience in minds of equal capacity will produce pro 
 portionate wisdom : unfortunately we cannot get minds of equal 
 capacity placed under the same conditions ; and thus it happens 
 that we find some men with large brains inferior to others with 
 much smaller brains, and men of patriarchal length of years more 
 unwise than their nephews. 
 
 And, in a less degree, this is true of size, taken as the measure 
 of power, between one organ and another in the same brain. 
 Failing utterly when two different brains are compared, the indi 
 cation of size will be no more than approximative when two 
 parts of the same brain are compared ; although in this case the 
 other things are necessarily more nearly equal : it is the same 
 nerve-tissue, the same temperament we are dealing with. In a 
 given brain, therefore, we may reasonably expect to find that any 
 one organ which is larger in size than another, will be more 
 powerful in function. But although this, as an empirical gener 
 alization, is a valuable indication, it is by no means certain, be 
 cause there may be, and indeed usually is, a difficulty thrown in 
 
 * I have explained, at some length, the relation of growth and develop 
 ment in an article on Dwarfs and Giants, in Frazer s Magazine for August 
 and September, 1856. 
 
760 PHRENOLOGY. 
 
 the way by the inappreciable yet potent differences of development 
 which have taken place. Differentiations occur in two direc 
 tions, in elementary composition and in morphological develop 
 ment. One brain may have more phosphorus than another; 
 and in the same brain one organ may be vesicular or more fibrous 
 than another. Thus it by no means follows that a man with re 
 flective organs large in size, shall have so exercised these organs 
 as to have brought their development into proportional advance ; 
 while on the other -hand his smaller imaginative organs may 
 have been so developed by culture and exercise, as to have placed 
 them on a par in efficiency with the reflectives. Daily expe 
 rience assures us that such is the case ; and the philosophic 
 phrenologist might point to it as one explanation of the many 
 exceptions which Cranioscopy must necessarily encounter in its 
 attempt to read character according to external indications. 
 
 This is not the place for an examination of Phrenology as an 
 Art, or as a Science. I content myself, therefore, with the fore 
 going indication of what I believe to be the true position of 
 Cranioscopy, and some of the difficulties which beset it. That 
 the collection of observed correspondences between certain con 
 figurations of the skull and certain mental characteristics, is a 
 worthy task, and one which must materially aid the science of 
 Psychology, I do not think would be denied by any philosopher, 
 if it were undertaken with that subsidiary aim ; but when phrenol 
 ogists obtrude their " system" on the notice of philosophers, 
 declaring it to be a completed science of Psychology, and a 
 true method of reading character, they must not be surprised if 
 contradiction meet them on all sides, and if this contradiction 
 often speak the language of contempt : since daily experience 
 cannot sanction the present pretensions of the Art, because the 
 Art is found to be constantly at fault ; nor can psychologists 
 recognize the pretensions of the Science. 
 
PHRENOLOGY AS A SCIENCE. 761 
 
 IV. PHRENOLOGY AS A SCIENCE. 
 
 To defend their Art, phrenologists are compelled to recur to 
 their Doctrine, founded on the physiology of the nervous sys 
 tem, and on a psychological classification of the faculties. Indeed, 
 while on the one hand we find every phrenologist since Gall, 
 Spurzheim, and Vimont, occupied entirely with Cranioscopy, and 
 many even speaking with disdain of anatomists and physiolo 
 gists ; on the other hand we find them anxious to bring forward 
 physiological and pathological evidence, whenever that evidence 
 favors their views ; and we hear them confidently assert that 
 Phrenology is the only true Physiology of the nervous system. 
 This latter assertion I am quite willing to echo, if the terms be 
 somewhat modified, and the phrase run thus : "Phrenology aspires 
 to be the true Physiology of the nervous system ; when that 
 Physiology is complete, Phrenology will be complete." But for 
 the present we find Physiology confessing its incompleteness 
 confessing itself in its infancy ; whereas Phrenology claims to be 
 complete, equipped, full-statured ! Rightly considered, that very 
 claim is a condemnation of Phrenology, as at present understood. 
 The pretension of being a perfect or nearly perfect system, surely 
 implies a profound ignorance of the subject, an entire misconcep 
 tion of the complexity of the problem it pretends to have solved. 
 At a time when Science is unable to solve the problem of three 
 gravitating bodies, phrenologists pretend to find no difficulty in 
 calculating the result of forces so complex as those which con 
 stitute character : at a time when the nervous system is confessed, 
 by all who have studied it, to be extremely ill-understood, the 
 functions of that system are supposed to be established ; at a 
 time when Physiology is so rapidly advancing that every decade 
 renders most books antiquated, a Psychology professedly founded 
 on that advancing science remains immovable ! 
 
 Gall was on the right path when he entitled his first great 
 work Anatomy and Physiology of the Nervous System* His 
 
 * "Quiconque," he says, "est convaincu que la structure des parties du 
 
762 PHRENOLOGY. 
 
 successors have quitted that path. In spite of his emphatic dec 
 larations, when he was engaged in his exposition of the anatomy 
 and physiology of the nervous system,* declarations of the neces 
 sity there was always to make the study of organ and function 
 go hand in hand, so that he would only have his labors regarded 
 " as the basis of an essay towards a more perfect work ;" in spite, 
 we say, of every philosophical consideration, his successors have 
 neglected Physiology for Cranioscopy ; not one of them has 
 made or attempted to make any discovery or extension of dis 
 covery in the direction Gall so successfully opened ; and the 
 result of this neglect has been twofold first, that since Gall and 
 Spurzheim, Phrenology has not taken a single step ; second, that 
 all the eminent physiologists of Europe who have devoted them 
 selves to the study of the nervous system, unanimously reject a 
 theory which does not keep pace with the advance of science. 
 It is very easy for phrenologists to disregard the unanimous 
 opposition of physiologists, and to place this opposition to the 
 account of prejudice, or the "not having sufficiently studied 
 Phrenology ;" but an impartial on-looker sees clearly enough 
 that, making every allowance for prejudice, the opposition rests 
 mainly on the discrepancy between the facts stated by phrenol 
 ogists and the facts which Science has hitherto registered. Had 
 phrenologists kept themselves acquainted with what was grad 
 ually being discovered by physiologists, they would have seen 
 that something more than prejudice must be at work when all 
 the eminent neurologists, such as Serres, Flourens, Majendie, 
 Leuret, Longet, Lelut, Lafargue, Bouillaud, Baillarger, Miiller, 
 Valentin, and comparative anatomists such as Owen, declare 
 against Phrenology ; although every one of these is ready to 
 admit the importance of Gall s method of dissection, ready to 
 incorporate whatever results Gall arrived at, which can be in any 
 
 cerveau a un rapport necessaire et immediat avec leurs functions, trouvera 
 qu il est naturel de reunir ces deux objects 1 un a 1 autre, en los considerant 
 et en les traitant comme un seul et m6rae corps de doctrine." An. et Phys., 
 pref. xxv. 
 * Compare his Anal, et Pliys. dn Syst. Nerveux, i. 95 and 271. 
 
PHRENOLOGY AS A SCIENCE. 763 
 
 way confirmed. I do not blame phrenologists for having ren 
 dered no assistance to Physiology by their own labors ; but I 
 am forced to point out the historical consequences of their hav 
 ing neglected to follow the path commenced by Gall, and devi 
 ated into that of simple Cranioscopy. The neglect of which 
 they complain, is entirely owing to their presenting a rude sketch 
 as a perfect science, and to their keeping behind the science of 
 their day, instead of on a level with it. Impatient of contradic 
 tion, they shut their eyes to difficulties ; unable to accommodate 
 their principles to the principles of Physiology, they contempt 
 uously dismiss objections as " merely theoretical," and fall back 
 upon their " well-established facts." 
 
 Gall undertook a gigantic task. He produced a revolution, 
 and his name will always live in the history of Science. It is 
 idle to attempt to undervalue his work by citing his predecessors. 
 Others before him had thought of localizing the different facul 
 ties in different parts of the brain. He and Spurzheim have 
 mentioned such predecessors.* These, however, are very vague, 
 unfertile conceptions ; they in no way lessen Gall s originality. 
 A nearer approach is to be read in Prochaska, whom Gall often 
 mentions, although he does not, I think, mention this particular 
 anticipation. It is the third section of chapter five, and is enti 
 tled. " Do each of the divisions of the intellect occupy a sepa 
 rate portion of the brain ?" and it concludes thus : " It is by no 
 means improbable that each division of the intellect has its allot 
 ted organ in the brain, so that there is one for the perceptions, 
 another for the understanding, probably others also for the will 
 and imagination and memory, which act wonderfully in concert 
 and mutually excite each other to action. The organ of imagi 
 nation, however, amongst the rest will be far apart from the 
 organ of perceptions. ! How far this general supposition of a 
 
 * Fonctions du Cerveau, ii. 350 sq. Compare also Lelut: Rejet de V Orga- 
 nologia, p. 21 sq., and Prochaska, p. 374 sq. 
 
 t Prochaska, p. 447. There is a remarkable passage, too long for quotation 
 here, in Willis s Cerebri Anatome, c. x. p. 125, on the convolutions as indi- 
 
764 PHRENOLOGY. 
 
 " probability" is from Gall s specific attempt to localize the or 
 gans, need not be pointed out. The attempt was far from being 
 fully successful ; but, as a tentative, it was truly philosophical, 
 and produced a revolution. 
 
 Having once conceived the brain to be an apparatus of organs, 
 not a single organ, the problem was to analyze this apparatus 
 into its constituent organs, and to assign to each its special func 
 tion. In this difficult problem Gall, by the necessities of his po 
 sition as a system-founder, was forced to proceed on a false 
 method, namely, that of determining the separate organs accord 
 ing to a purely physiological and superficial analysis, instead of 
 subordinating this analysis to anatomical verification. It is this 
 arbitrary and unscientific proceeding which has made all anato 
 mists reject the system. What would he have said to a physi 
 ologist who, knowing that the liver formed bile and sugar, should 
 have assigned the function of bile-formation to one lobe, and 
 the function of sugar-formation to another lobe, no structural dif 
 ferences having been observed ? or who should assign to the 
 different lobules of the kidney functions as different as are as 
 signed to the different convolutions of the brain ? It is perfectly 
 true that from inspection of an organ no idea of its function can 
 be obtained ; and this truth has blinded phrenologists who are 
 not physiologists to the necessity of nevertheless always making 
 anatomy the basis of every physiological analysis. No inspection of 
 the alimentary canal could disclose to us that its function was that 
 of digestion. Nevertheless the function of digestion, except in 
 the crude conception of ordinary men, is only intelligible after a 
 rigorous analysis of the several processes, buccal, stomachal, and 
 intestinal; for the intelligence of each of which, we must assign 
 to each gland its specific secretion, and to each secretion its spe 
 cific action : a physiologist who should attempt the explanation 
 of digestion on any other mode would justly be slighted by every 
 
 eating intellectual superiority. I give only the opening ; " Plicae sunt con- 
 volutiones cerebri longe plures ac majores inhominesunt quim inquovisalio 
 animali, nempd propter varies et multiplies faoultatum supcriorum aclus." 
 
PHRENOLOGY AS A SCIENCE. 765 
 
 good biologist in Europe. If Phrenology is the Physiology of 
 the nervous system, it must giv r e up Gall s approximative method 
 for a method more rigorously scientific ; and as Auguste Comte 
 justly remarks, phrenologists, before they can take rank among 
 men of science, must " reprendre, par uue serie derecte de travaux 
 anatorniques, Fanalyse fondamentale de 1 appareil cerebral, en 
 faisant provisoirement abstraction de toute idee de fonctions."* 
 
 One of the fundamental questions which must be answered by 
 this anatomical analysis, is that which no phrenologist condescends 
 to ask, namely, Are the convolutions the seat of intelligence ? in 
 other words, Is the gray vesicular matter which forms the surface 
 of the brain, the sole and specific seat of those changes on which 
 all mental phenomena depend ? This is a question which Crani- 
 oscopy may ignore, since the facts on which Cranioscopy is 
 founded are little if at all affected by it. To Phrenology the ques 
 tion is initial, all-important; because if the "Physiology of the 
 nervous system" should turn out defective in its basis, the whole 
 scaffolding will have to be erected anew. I put the question in 
 two forms, because although it is commonly said that the convo 
 lutions of the brain form the organs, yet as many animals are alto 
 gether without convolutions, the vesicular surface, whether convo 
 luted or not, must be understood as the seat of mental changes ; 
 the convolutions being only a mode of increasing the surface. 
 
 As the space at my disposal is inadequate to any exhaustive 
 discussion of this important question, the reader will be satisfied 
 with a brief indication of the doubt which Physiology forces me 
 to express respecting the convolutions as the specific seat of men 
 tal manifestations. I cannot reconcile the current opinion on 
 that subject with anatomical and zoological facts. I believe that 
 the vesicular matter which constitutes the convolutions, is only 
 one factor in the sum ; it would, however, lead me too far to 
 enter on the discussion, which might be objected to as at present 
 only hypothetical. 
 
 *Coursde Philosophie Positive, iii. 821. Comte 13 much more favorable to Gall 
 than I am, yet see his remarks on the multiplication of the faculties, p. 823 sq. 
 
766 PHRENOLOGY. 
 
 Quitting all hypothetical considerations for the less questiona 
 ble evidence of facts, I find M. Baillarger* who invented a 
 new method of measuring the surfaces of brains, by dissecting 
 out all the white substance from their interior, and then unfold 
 ing the exterior, and taking a cast of it declaring from his meas 
 urements that it is far from true that in general the intelligence 
 of different animals is in direct proportion to their respective 
 extents of cerebral surface. If their absolute extents of surface 
 be taken, the rule is manifestly untrue in many instances ; and it 
 is not more true if the extent of surface in proportion to the vol 
 ume of the brain be regarded ; for the human brain has less 
 superficial extent in proportion to its volume than that of many 
 inferior mammalia: its volume is two and a half times as 
 great in proportion to its surface, as it is in the rabbit, for 
 example. 
 
 Nor is this all. The researches of M. Camille Darestef estab 
 lish beyond dispute that the number and depth of the convolu 
 tions bear no direct relation to the development of intelligence ; 
 whereas they do bear a direct relation to the size of the animal ; 
 so that, given the size of the animal in any genus, he can predict 
 the degree of convoluted development; or given the convolutions, 
 he can predict the size : " toutes les especes a cerveau lisse ont 
 une petite taille ; toutes les especes a circonvolutions nombreuses 
 et compliquees sont, au contraire, de gran detaille." Further, I 
 am informed by Professor Owen that the grampus has convolu 
 tions deeper and more complicated than those of man. From all 
 which facts it becomes evident that the phrenological basis is so 
 far from being in accordance with the present state of our know 
 ledge of the nervous system as to require complete revision. 
 
 Phrenology has another important point to determine, namely, 
 the relation of the size of the brain to mental power. Is the size 
 of the brain to be taken absolutely, and its functional activity in 
 
 * Gazette Medicate, 19 April, 1845. Pagct : Report on the Progress of Anat 
 omy, in British and Foreign Med. Rev. July, 1846. 
 
 t Aimalesdes Sciences Naturelles, 3* serie, xvii. 80, and 4c serie, i. 73. 
 
PHRENOLOGY AS A SCIENCE. 767 
 
 the purely mental direction to be measured by its absolute bulk ? 
 A galvanic battery of fifty plates is five times as powerful as a bat 
 tery of ten plates ; a cord of twenty threads is five times as strong 
 as a cord of four threads, other things equal ; and, .in like manner, 
 we should expect that a brain of fifty ounces would be twice as 
 powerful as one of twenty-five ounces (the limits are really greater 
 than these). Nevertheless, we find no such absolute and constant 
 relation between size and mental power as would justify the 
 phrenological position ; the weight of the human brain being 
 about three pounds 5 the weight of the whale s brain being five 
 pounds; the weight of the elephant s between eight and ten 
 pounds. If therefore the function of the brain be solely or mainly 
 that of mental manifestation, and if size be the measure of 
 power, the whale and the elephant ought to surpass man, as a 
 Newton surpasses an idiot. If on the contrary the brain, as a 
 nervous centre, has other functions besides that of mental mani 
 festation, these discrepancies can be explained, although Phrenol 
 ogy must take these other functions into account.* 
 
 It is true that phrenologists have been aware of these discrep 
 ancies; and, unable to admit the whale and elephant as superior 
 to man, they have met the objection by saying the size must be 
 estimated relatively, not absolutely. Compared with the weight 
 of his body, the brain of man is certainly heavier than the brains 
 of most animals, including the whale and the elephant ; and this 
 fact seems to restore Phrenology to its cheerfulness on the sub 
 ject ; but the fact does not hold good of monkeys, the smaller 
 apes, many species of birds, and some rodents. This is the dilem 
 ma : either the ratio of mental power depends on the absolute 
 size of the brain, and in this case the elephant will be thrice 
 as intelligent as man ; or it depends on the relative size of the 
 brain compared with the body, and in this case man will be less 
 intelligent than a monkey or a rat, although more intelligent than 
 
 * I have sketched the relations of the brain to the body in the paper 
 before referred to, on Dwarfs and Giants. See Fraze^s Mag., Sept. 1856, 
 p. 289. 
 
768 PHRENOLOGY. 
 
 the elephant. Moreover, if relative size is the basis taken, phre 
 nologists would be bound to compare in each case the weight of 
 the brain with the weight of the body, before they could establish 
 a conclusion ; and this is obviously impracticable. I have stated 
 the dilemma ; but having stated it, I will add that although phre 
 nologists attach importance to questions of weight of the brain, 
 there seems to me a great fallacy involved in such estimates. Intel 
 ligence is not to be measured by the balance. Weight is no index 
 of cerebral activity, nor of the special directions of the activity. 
 
 Enough has been said to show that Phrenology, so far from at 
 present being the only true physiological explanation of the ner 
 vous system, is in so chaotic and unstable a position with respect 
 to its basis, as to need thorough revision ; and until some 
 phrenologist shall arise who, following up the impulsion given by 
 Gall, can once more place the doctrine on a le^el with the science 
 of the age, all men of science must be expected to slight the pre 
 tensions of Phrenology as a psychological system, whatever it may 
 hereafter become. That a new Gall will some day arise I have 
 little doubt, for I am convinced that Psychology must be establish 
 ed on a physiological basis. Meanwhile, for the purposes of this 
 History, it suffices to have indicated the nature of Gall s innova 
 tion, and the course of inquiry he opened. As a psychological clas 
 sification, the one now adopted in Phrenology can only be regarded 
 in the light of a tentative sketch ; superior indeed to those which 
 preceded it, but one which daily experience shows to be insufficient. 
 
 To conclude this chapter, we may point to Gall as having 
 formed an epoch in the History of Philosophy by inaugurating 
 a new Method. From the time when Philosophy itself became 
 reduced to a question of Psychology, in order that a basis might, 
 if possible, be laid, the efforts of men were variously directed, 
 and all ended in skepticism and dissatisfaction, because a true 
 psychological Method did not guide them. The history of the 
 tentatives towards a true Method has been sketched in various 
 chapters of this volume, and with Gall that Method may be said 
 to have finally settled its fundamental principles. 
 
ELEVENTH EPOCH. 
 
 PHILOSOPHY FINALLY RELINQUISHING ITS PLACE IN FAYOR 
 OF POSITIVE SCIENCE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ECLECTICISM. 
 
 " Nous ne croyons pas les choses parce qu elles sont vraies," 
 says Pascal, "mais nous les croyons vraies parce que nous les 
 aimons." This is one ever-present obstacle to the progress of 
 mankind. We do not love truth because it is true, but because 
 it seems to countenance other opinions which we believe necessary 
 to our well-being. Only a few philosophic minds have strength 
 enough to detach their eyes from consequences, and concentrate 
 all their attention on Truth ; and these few can only do so in 
 virtue of their steadfast conviction that Truth can never be really 
 injurious, whatever phantoms apprehensive ignorance may con 
 jure up around it. 
 
 The reaction against the Philosophy of the eighteenth century 
 was not a reaction against a doctrine proved to be incompetent, 
 but against a doctrine believed to be the source of frightful im 
 morality. The reaction was vigorous because it was animated 
 by the horror which agitated Europe at the hideous excesses of 
 the French Revolution. Associated in men s minds with the 
 saturnalia of the Terror, the philosophical opinions of Condillac, 
 Diderot, and Cabanis were held responsible for the crimes of the 
 Convention ; and what might be true in those opinions was 
 flung aside with what was false, without discrimination, without 
 
 33 
 
770 ECLECTICISM. 
 
 analysis, in fierce impetuous disgust. Every opinion which had 
 what was called "a taint of materialism," or seemed to point in 
 that direction, was denounced as an opinion necessarily leading 
 to the destruction of all Religion, Morality, and Government. 
 Every opinion which seemed to point in the direction of spirit 
 ualism was eagerly welcomed, promulgated, and lauded ; not 
 because it was demonstrably true, but because it was supposed 
 capable of preserving social order. And indeed when, looking 
 back upon those times, we contemplate the misery and anarchy 
 which disgraced what was an inevitable movement, and dimmed 
 what was really noble in the movement, we can understand how 
 generous hearts and minds, fluctuating in perplexity, did instinct 
 ively revolt not only against the Revolution, but against all the 
 principles which were ever invoked by the revolutionists. Look 
 ing at the matter from this distance, we can see clearly enough 
 that " materialism" had really no more to do with the Revolu 
 tion than Christianity had to do with the hideous scenes in 
 which the Anabaptists were actors ; but we can understand how 
 indelible was the association of Revolution and materialism in 
 the minds of that generation. 
 
 So profoundly influential has this association been, that a cel 
 ebrated surgeon of our own day perilled his position by advo 
 cating an opinion, now universally accepted, but then generally 
 shuddered at; namely, that the brain is the "organ" of the 
 mind. He had to retract that opinion, which the pious Hartley 
 and many others had advanced without offence. He had to 
 retract it, not because it was scientifically untenable, but because 
 it was declared to be morally dangerous. It was materialism," 
 and materialism " led" to the destruction of all morality. Al 
 though every man now believes the brain to be veritably the 
 organ of the mind, the word materialism is still used as a bug 
 bear. Instead of being refuted as false, it is by many denounced 
 as dangerous. I believe the philosophy of the eighteenth cen 
 tury to be dangerous because false ; the writers to whom I allude 
 declare it false because they believe it dangerous. I believe it 
 
ECLECTICISM. 771 
 
 also to be in many respects healthful, because in many respects 
 true ; and it would be uncandid in me not to declare that if I 
 oppose the eighteenth century doctrine, I believe the spiritualism 
 which denounces it is even more incomplete as a philosophy, and 
 consequently even more dangerous in its influence. 
 
 The history of the reaction in France is very instructive, but 
 it would require more space than can here be given adequately 
 to narrate the story.* Four streams of influence converged into 
 one, all starting from the same source, namely, horror at the 
 revolutionary excesses. The Catholics, with the great Joseph 
 de Maistre and M. de Bonald at their head, appealed to the relig 
 ious sentiments; the Royalists, with Chateaubriand and Madame 
 de Stael, appealed to the monarchical and literary sentiments ; 
 the metaphysicians, with Laromiguiere and Maine de Brian, and 
 the moralists with Royer-Collard, one and all attacked the weak 
 points of Sensationalism, and prepared the way for the enthusi 
 astic reception of the Scotch and German philosophies. A 
 glance at almost any of these writers will suffice to convince the 
 student that their main purpose is to defend morality and order, 
 which they believe to be necessarily imperilled by the philosophy 
 they attack. The appeals to the prejudices and sentiments are 
 abiding. Eloquence is made to supply the deficiencies of argu 
 ment; emotion takes the place of demonstration. The hearer 
 is charmed, roused, dazzled. He learns to associate all the nobler 
 sentiments with spiritualistic doctrines, and all grovelling ideas 
 with materialistic doctrines ; till the one school becomes insep 
 arably linked in his mind with emotions of reverence for what 
 ever is lofty, profound, and noble, and the other with emotions 
 of contempt for whatever is shallow and unworthy. The leaders 
 of the reaction were men of splendid talent?, and their work was 
 eminently successful. But now that the heats of controversy 
 have cooled, and all these debates have become historical, we 
 
 * The reader may consult on this topic Damiron, Essai sur V Histoire de la 
 PldlosopJde en France an XlXitme Slede ; and Taine, Les Plulosophes Fran- 
 ais du XlXleme Siccle. 
 
7 < Z ECLECTICISM. 
 
 who look at them from a distance can find in them no philosoph 
 ical progress, no new elements added which could assist the evo 
 lution of Philosophy and form a broader basis for future monu 
 ments. In political and literary History these attempts would 
 claim a conspicuous position ; in the History of Philosophy they 
 deserve mention only as having made mankind aware of the 
 limited nature of the eighteenth century philosophy, and its ex 
 traordinary lacuna. Their office was critical, and has been 
 fulfilled. 
 
 One doctrine, and one alone, emerged from these attempts, 
 and held for some time the position of a school. It made a 
 noise in its day, but even the echoes have now become almost 
 inaudible, for a feebler doctrine scarcely ever obtained acquies 
 cence. TVe must, nevertheless, bestow a few sentences on it to 
 make our history complete. Eclecticism is dead, but it produced 
 some fjood results, if only by the impetus it gave to historical 
 research, and by the confirmation it gave, in its very weakness, 
 to the conclusion that an a priori solution of transcendental 
 problems is impossible. For Eclecticism was the last product of 
 philosophical speculation, the gathering together of all that phi 
 losophers had achieved, and the evolution from these separate 
 achievements of one final doctrine, which final doctrine is itself 
 rejected. 
 
 Victor Cousin and Thomas Jouffroy are the chiefs of this 
 school, one a brilliant rhetorician utterlv destitute of originality, 
 the other a sincere thinker, whose merits have been thrown into 
 the shade by his brilliant colleague. As a man of letters, M. 
 Cousin deserves the respect which attends his name, if we except 
 the more than questionable use which he has made of the labors 
 of pupils and assistants without acknowledgment. However, 
 our business is not with Cousin, but with Eclecticism. Royer- 
 Collard introduced the principles of the Scotch school, to combat 
 with them the principles of sensationalism. Reid and Stewart 
 were translated by Jouffroy. explained and developed by Royer- 
 Collard. Jouffroy, and Cousin. The talents of these professors, 
 
ECLECTICISM. 4 ( 3 
 
 aided by the tendency towards any reaction, made the Scotch 
 philosophy dominant in France. But Victor Cousin s restless 
 activity led him to the study of Kant : and the doctrines of the 
 "Konigsberg sage were preached by him with the same ardor 
 as that which he had formerly devoted to the Scotch. A.s soon 
 as the Parisians began to know something of Kant, M. Cousin 
 started off to Alexandria for a doctrine : he found one in Proclus. 
 He edited Proclus ; lectured on him ; borrowed some of his 
 ideas, and would have set him on the throne of Philosophy, had 
 the public been willing. A trip to Germany in 1824 made him 
 acquainted with the modern Proclus Hegel. On his return to 
 Paris he presented the public with as much of Hegel s doc 
 trines as he could understand. His celebrated Eclecticism is 
 nothing but a misconception of Hegel s HUtory r>f Philosophy, 
 fenced round with several plausible arguments. 
 
 All error, M. Cousin repeatedly enforces, is nothing but " an 
 incomplete view of the truth." Upon this definition is based the 
 proposition that " All systems are incomplete views of the reality, 
 set up for complete images of the reality ." The conclusion is 
 obvious : " All systems containing a mixture of truth and error 
 have only to be brought together, and then the error would be 
 eliminated by the mere juxtaposition of system with system. 
 The truth or portion of the truth which is in one system would 
 be assimilated with the portions of the truth which are in other 
 systems ; and thus the work would be easy enough." 
 
 Eclecticism, therefore, means the bringing together of all dis 
 covered truths eliminated from their accompanying errors ; and 
 out of this body of truths a doctrine is to be elaborated. A great 
 task ; but is it practicable I The system is based on the defini 
 tion of error ; by that it must stand or fail. 
 
 The definition appears to us altogether untenable. Error is 
 sometimes an incomplete view of the truth ; but it is not alurays: 
 it is sometimes no view of the truth at all, but a mere divergence 
 from it. When Xewton constructed his theory of the laws of 
 attraction, and interposed an ether as the medium through which 
 
ECLECTICISM. 
 
 they operated, he had an incomplete view of the truth. But 
 when Descartes developed his theory of vortices, he was quite 
 wide of the truth he was altogether wrong. The phrase " in 
 complete view" is indeed so vague, that men who sport with 
 verbal subtleties may justify the theory of Descartes as an incom 
 plete view of the truth ; a very incomplete view. At any rate 
 no one will be disposed to assert that by the mere juxtaposition 
 of Newton s doctrine with that of Descartes he could in any way 
 eliminate the error that is in both. 
 
 If therefore all systems are not incomplete views of the reality 
 if all systems do not contain certain portions of the truth how 
 is the eclectic to decide which systems are available for his pur 
 pose, which philosophies are to be juxtaposed? This leads to the 
 necessity of a criterium. M. Jouffroy tells us that it is an easy 
 matter. We have only to collect all the systems which have 
 ever been produced, have them translated and arranged in their 
 legitimate order, and the truths discovered by each will become 
 organized in one doctrine. 
 
 Without stopping to ask what is the legitimate order, and how 
 we are to know it, the student is naturally anxious to learn by 
 what criterium Eclecticism proposes to judge and separate truth 
 from error in any system. The inquiry is pertinent. It is easy 
 to bid us be careful in separating the wheat from the chaff, that 
 we may garner it up in the storehouses of the world. Suppose 
 the farmer does not know the wheat when he sees it, what crite 
 rium do you give him whereby he may judge wheat to be wheat, 
 not chaff? None. The philosopher can only distinguish the 
 truth in two ways : either he knows it already, and then he has 
 what he is seeking ; or else he knows it by its relation to and 
 accordance with those truths which he is already in possession 
 of. That is to say, he has a criterium in his System : those 
 views which range under it, he accepts as extensions of his 
 knowledge ; those which range beyond its limits, he denies to be 
 true. 
 
 Suppose the eclectic places in juxtaposition the two great 
 
ECLECTICISM. 775 
 
 schools which have always divided the world, viz. that which 
 declares experience to be the source of all knowledge ; and that 
 which declares we have a great deal of our knowledge antece 
 dent to and independent of experience. Both of these systems 
 he pronounces to be composed of truth and error. lie assumes 
 this ; for a little consideration might tell him that it is utterly 
 impossible both should be correct : experience either is or is not 
 the sole fountain of knowledge. The difference is as decided as 
 that respecting the motion of the earth, or the motion of the 
 sun. Ptolemy and Copernicus : choose between them ; any 
 compromise is impossible, unless you wish to side with the Sizar 
 who, when the question was put, " Does the earth move round 
 the sun, or the sun round the earth ?" replied, " Sometimes one 
 and sometimes the other." He was an eclectic apparently. Let 
 us however for a moment grant that the two schools of Psychol 
 ogy are both partly right and partly wrong ; we then ask, What 
 criterium has the eclectic whereby to distinguish error from 
 truth ? He has none ; the doctors are silent on the point. 
 
 That men derive assistance from others, and that those who 
 went before us discovered many truths, all admit. And there 
 can be no doubt that a juxtaposition and comparison of various 
 doctrines would be of service. Eclecticism, therefore, as a sub 
 sidiary process is valuable ; and has always been practised. M. 
 Cousin however converts this subsidiary process into a primary 
 one, and dignifies it with the attributes of a Method. In the one 
 sense it is simply that the inquirer consults the works of his pre 
 decessors, and selects from them all that he considers true : viz. 
 such portions as confirm, extend, and illustrate his previous opin 
 ions ; these opinions constituting his criterium. Let the reader 
 reflect on the pertinacity with which men refuse to admit views 
 which to others are self-evident, because those views are or seem 
 to be opposed to religion, or the reigning doctrine, and he will 
 clearly enough see the nature of this criterium. The history of 
 opinion is crowded with instances of it. M. Cousin however does 
 not so understand Eclecticism. He savs we should admit all 
 
776 AUGUSTE COMTE. 
 
 systems as containing some truths; and these truths separate 
 themselves from errors by the mere process of juxtaposition, 
 somewhat in the manner, we presume, of chemical affinities. 
 A theory that needs, one would think, no further refutation than 
 a simple statement of its principles. 
 
 Having dismissed Eclecticism as a Method, we need not waste 
 time in examining M. Cousin s various and constantly shifting 
 opinions. It is enough that he himself -has relinquished them. 
 It is enough that France and Europe reject them. 
 
 This final doctrine then fares no better than the doctrines 
 which preceded it. Philosophy is still in search of its Method 
 and its basis ; and wearied out by so many fruitless efforts, it 
 finally gives up the quest, and allows itself to be absorbed by 
 Science. The dogmatic assertion of this position is to be found 
 in Auguste Comte. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 AUGUSTS COMTE. 
 
 As I have devoted a whole volume to the exposition of Comte s 
 philosophy,* it will be unnecessary to enter into a detailed exposi 
 tion here ; and the small space at disposal may be occupied with 
 a general indication of his historical position and the nature of 
 his Method. 
 
 In the course of this History one fact has been gradually as 
 suming more and more distinctness, as the various failures to 
 establish any solid basis for Philosophy have been brought before 
 us : namely, that mankind has, from the origin of speculative in 
 quiry, been pursuing a false Method. Gradually, as men became 
 aware of this fact, they withdrew themselves more and more from 
 Philosophy, and devoted their speculative energy to Science. 
 
 * Comics Philosophy of the Sciences, 1853 (Bohn s Scientific Library, vol. 20). 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE. 777 
 
 Even those who, reluctant to relinquish the high aims of Philoso 
 phy, tried by changes of direction to discover new and more pros 
 perous issues, and hoped in reinvestigatina; the nature of human 
 knowledge to disclose some yet unsuspected path which might 
 lead them to the goal, found Psychology itself forced to range 
 beside the positive sciences, and to adopt the one Method which 
 hitherto had alone been fruitful in results. And while from all 
 directions a convergence towards Science was silently taking- 
 place, there arose a powerful thinker who proclaimed the in 
 herent necessity of this convergence, and the necessity under 
 which Philosophy now was of definitively relinquishing its 
 ancient claims in favor of the positive Method, which could lead 
 men to a general doctrine such as might once more establish har 
 mony in their endeavors, and give to Europe an invigorating faith. 
 In the Cours de Philosophic Positive, 6 vols., 1830-42, Au- 
 guste Comte did for the nineteenth century what Bacon did for 
 the seventeenth : he resumed in one vast work the various re 
 forming tendencies of preceding ages. Whoever casts his 
 glance at the present intellectual state of Europe, will perceive a 
 great want of unity, caused by the absence of any one doctrine, 
 general enough to embrace every variety of ideas, and positive 
 enough to carry with it irresistible conviction. Look at the state 
 of Religion : Catholicism and Protestantism make one great 
 division ; but within the sphere of each we see numerous subdi 
 visions ; the variety of sects is daily increasing. Each Religion 
 has remarkable men amongst its members ; but each refuses to 
 admit the doctrines of the others. There is, in fact, no one gen 
 eral doctrine capable of embracing Catholics, Protestants, Mo 
 hammedans, and their subdivisions. Look also at the state of 
 Philosophy. There is no one system universally accepted ; there 
 are as many philosophies as there are speculative nations, almost 
 as many as there are professors. The dogmas of Germany are 
 held in England and Scotland as the dreams of alchemists ; the 
 Psychology of Scotland is laughed at in Germany, and neglected 
 in England and France. Besides this general dissidence, we see, 
 
TT8 AUGUSTS COMTE 
 
 in France and Germany at least, great opposition between Re 
 ligion and Philosophy openly pronounced. This opposition is 
 inevitable : it lies in the very nature of Philosophy ; and although, 
 now as heretofore, many professors eagerly argue that the two 
 are perfectly compatible and accordant, the discordance is, and 
 always must be, apparent. 
 
 With respect to general doctrines, then, we find the state of 
 Europe to be this : religions opposed to religions ; philosophies 
 opposed to philosophies ; and Religion and Philosophy at war 
 with each other. Such is the anarchy in the higher regions. 
 
 In the positive sciences there is less dissidence, but there is the 
 same absence of any general doctrine ; each science is on a firm 
 basis, and rapidly improves ; but a Philosophy of Science is no 
 where to be found except in the work of M. Auguste Comte? 
 which comes forward with the express purpose of supplying the 
 deficiency. The speciality of most scientific men, and their in 
 capacity of either producing or accepting general ideas, has 
 long been a matter of complaint ; and this has been one great 
 cause of the continuance of Philosophy : for men of speculative 
 ability saw clearly enough that however exact each science 
 might be in itself, it could only form a part of Philosophy. 
 Moreover, the evil of speciality is not confined to neglecting the 
 whole for the sake of the parts ; it affects the very highest con 
 dition of Science, namely, its capability of instructing and direct 
 ing society. 
 
 In the early ages of speculation, general views were eagerly 
 sought and easily obtained. As Science became rich and com 
 plex in materials, various divisions took place ; and one man 
 cultivated one science, another man another. Even then general 
 views were not absent. But as the tide rolled on, discovery suc 
 ceeding discovery, and new tracts of inquiry leading to vast 
 wildernesses of undiscovered truth, it became necessary for one 
 man to devote himself only to a small fraction of a science, which 
 he pursued, leaving to others the task of bringing his researches 
 under their general head. Such a minute division of labor was 
 
AUGUSTS COMTE. 779 
 
 necessary for the successful prosecution of minute and laborious 
 researches ; but it ended in making men of science regard only 
 the individual parts of science; the construction of general doc 
 trines was left to philosophers. A fatal error ; for such doctrines 
 could only be truly constructed out of the materials of Science 
 and upon the Method of Science ; whereas the philosophers were 
 ignorant of Science or only superficially acquainted with it 
 and despised the Method. The Natur-Pliilosophie of Schelling 
 and Hegel is a sufficiently striking example of the results of such 
 a procedure. 
 
 We come then to this conclusion : in the present state of 
 things the speculative domain is composed of two very different 
 portions, general ideas and positive sciences. The general ideas 
 are powerless because they are not positive ; the positive sciences 
 are powerless because they are not general. The new Philosophy 
 which, under the title of Positive, M. Comte proposes to create 
 and the basis of which he has himself laid is destined to put 
 an end to this anarchy, by presenting a doctrine which is posi 
 tive, because elaborated from the sciences, and yet possessing all 
 the desired generality of metaphysical doctrines, without possess 
 ing their vagueness, instability, and inapplicability. 
 
 Besides this general aim of the new " Great Instauration," we 
 have to notice three initial conceptions which Comte advances, 
 two of which relate to Method, and one to History. 
 
 The first is the conception of Philosophy, which, in its widest 
 sense, is identical with Science ; consequently one Method must 
 be followed in all investigations, whether the investigations relate 
 to Physics, to Psychology, to Ethics, or to Politics. Every spe 
 cial science, no matter what its subject-matter, is but a branch of 
 the one Positive Philosophy. 
 
 The second conception is that of Classification, whereby all 
 the special sciences will assume their proper place in the hie 
 rarchy of Science, the simpler being studied first, and thus becom 
 ing instruments for the better prosecution of those which suc 
 ceed. Thus Mathematics becomes the instrument of Astronomy 
 
780 ATJGCSTE COMTE. 
 
 and Physics ; Chemistry becomes the instrument of Biology ; 
 and Biology becomes the instrument of Sociology. 
 
 The third conception is that of the fundamental law of evolu 
 tion. This conception sets forth that Humanity has three stages, 
 the Theological, the Metaphysical, and the Positive. Whether 
 we examine the history of nations, of individuals, or of special 
 sciences, we find that speculation always commences with super 
 natural explanations, advances to metaphysical explanations, and 
 finally reposes in positive explanations. The first is the neces 
 sary point of departure taken by human intelligence ; the second 
 is merely a stage of transition from the supernatural to the posi 
 tive ; and the third is the fixed and definite condition in which 
 knowledge is alone capable of progressive development. 
 
 In the Theological stage, the mind regards all effects as the 
 productions of supernatural agents, whose intervention is the 
 cause of all the apparent anomalies and irregularities. Nature is 
 animated by supernatural beings. Every unusual phenomenon 
 is a sign of the pleasure or displeasure of some being adored and 
 propitiated as a God. The lowest condition of this stage is that 
 of the savages, viz. Fetishism. The highest condition is when 
 one being is substituted for many, as the cause of all phenomena. 
 
 In the Metaphysical stage, which is only a modification of the 
 former, but which is important as a transitional stage, the super 
 natural agents give place to abstract forces (personified abstrac 
 tions) supposed to inhere in the various substances, and capable 
 themselves of engendering phenomena. The highest condition 
 of this stage is when all these forces are brought under one gen 
 eral force named Nature. 
 
 In the Positive stage, the mind, convinced of the futility of all 
 inquiry into causes and essences, applies itself to the observation 
 and classification of laius which regulate effects : that is to say, 
 the invariable relations of succession and similitude which all 
 things bear to each other. The highest condition of this stage 
 would be, to be able to represent all phenomena as the various 
 particulars of one general view. 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE. 781 
 
 Thus, in Astronomy \ve may trace the gradual evolution from 
 Apollo and his chariot, through the Pythagorean ideas of Num 
 bers, Harmonies, and so many other metaphysical abstractions, 
 to the firm basis on which it is now settled : the law of gravita 
 tion. So that it is by geometry and dynamics we hope to wrest 
 their secret from the spheres ; not by the propitiation of a Sun- 
 god. Thus also in Physics, where thunder was the intervention 
 of Jove, and where Metaphysics had introduced Nature s " hor 
 ror of a void," Science seeks the laws of gravitation, electricity, 
 light, etc. 
 
 In the work already mentioned I have illustrated this law in 
 many ways. The reader is advised however to seek in Comte s 
 own volumes for a complete verification of the law, and its im 
 portance in all historical inquiry.* A few sentences will suffice 
 to indicate the nature of the three stages : All are agreed, in 
 these days, that real knowledge must be founded on the observa 
 tion of facts. But no science could have its origin in simple ob 
 servation ; for if, on the one hand, all positive theories must be 
 founded on observation, so, on the other, it is equally necessary 
 to have some sort of theory before we address ourselves to the 
 task of steady observation. If, in contemplating phenomena, we 
 do not connect them with some principle, it would not only be 
 impossible for us to combine our isolated observations, and con 
 sequently to draw any benefit from them ; but we should also 
 be unable even to retain them, and most frequently the impor 
 tant facts would remain unperceived. We are consequently 
 forced to theorize. A theory is necessary to observation, and a 
 correct theory to correct observation. 
 
 This double necessity imposed upon the mind of observation 
 for the formation of a theory, and of a theory for the practice of 
 observation would have caused it to move in a circle, if nature 
 had not fortunately provided an outlet in the spontaneous activ- 
 
 * This advice can tlie more easily be followed now that a translated con 
 densation of the Positive Philosophy by Harriet Martirjcau, has placed the 
 work within reach of English readers. 
 
782 AUGUSTE COMTE. 
 
 ity of the mind. This activity causes it to begin by assuming a 
 cause, which it seeks out of nature, i. e. a supernatural cause. 
 As man is conscious that he acts according as he wills, so he nat 
 urally concludes that every thing acts in accordance with some 
 superior will. Hence Fetishism, which is nothing but the endow 
 ment of inanimate things with life and volition. This is the 
 logical necessity for the supernatural stage : the mind com 
 mences with the unknowable ; it has first to learn its impotence, 
 to learn the limits of its range, before it can content itself with 
 the know able. 
 
 The metaphysical stage is equally important as the transitive 
 stage. The supernatural and positive stages are so widely op 
 posed that they require intermediate notions to bridge over the 
 chasm. In substituting an entity inseparable from phenomena, 
 for a supernatural agent, through whose will these phenomena 
 were produced, the mind became habituated to consider only the 
 phenomena themselves. This was a most important condition. 
 The result was, that the ideas of these metaphysical entities 
 gradually faded, and were lost in the mere abstract names of the 
 phenomena. 
 
 The positive stage was now possible. The mind having ceased 
 to interpose cither supernatural agents or metaphysical entities 
 between the phenomena and their production, attended solely 
 to the phenomena themselves. These it reduced to laws ; in 
 other words, it arranged them according to their invariable re 
 lations of similitude and succession. The search after essences 
 and causes was renounced. The pretension to absolute knowl 
 edge was set aside. The discovery of laws became the great ob 
 ject of mankind. 
 
 Kemember that although every branch of knowledge must 
 pass through these three stages, in obedience to the law of evo 
 lution, nevertheless the progress is not strictly chronological. 
 Some sciences are more rapid in their evolution than others ; 
 some individuals pass through these evolutions more quickly than 
 others ; so also of nations. The present intellectual anarchy re- 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE. 783 
 
 suits from that difference ; some sciences being in the positive, 
 some in the supernatural, and some in the metaphysical stage : 
 and this is further to be subdivided into individual differences ; 
 for in a science which, on the whole, may fairly be admitted as 
 being positive, there will be found some cultivators still in the 
 metaphysical stage. Astronomy is now in so positive a condi 
 tion, that we need nothing but the laws of dynamics and gravi 
 tation to explain all celestial phenomena ; and this explanation 
 we know to be correct, as far as any thing can be known, because 
 we can predict the return of a comet with the nicest accuracy, 
 or can enable the mariner to discover his latitude and find his 
 way amidst the " waste of waters." This is a positive science. 
 But so far is meteorology from such a condition, that prayers for 
 dry or rainy weather are still offered up in churches; whereas if 
 once the laws of these phenomena were traced, there would no 
 more be prayers for rain than for the sun to rise at midnight. 
 Remark also, that while in the present day no natural philoso 
 pher is unwise enough to busy himself with the attempt to dis 
 cover the cause of attraction, thousands are busy in the attempt 
 to discover the cause of life and the essence of mind. This differ 
 ence characterizes positive and metaphysical sciences. The one 
 is content with a general fact, that " attraction is directly as the 
 mass and inversely as the square of the distance ;" this being 
 sufficient for all scientific purposes, because enabling us to pre 
 dict with unerring certainty the results of that operation. The 
 metaphysician or metaphysical physiologist, on the contrary, is 
 more occupied with guessing at the causes of life, than in observ 
 ing and classifying vital phenomena with a view to detect their 
 laws of operation. First he guesses it to be what he calls a 
 " vital principle" a mysterious ejafcity residing in the frame, and 
 capable of engendering phenomena. He then proceeds to guess 
 at the nature or essence of this principle, and pronounces it 
 " electricity," or " nervous fluid," or " chemical affinity." Thus 
 he heaps hypothesis upon hypothesis, and clouds the subject from 
 his view. 
 
784 AUGUSTS COMTE. 
 
 The more closely we examine the present condition of the sci 
 ences, the more we shall be struck with the anarchy above indi 
 cated. We shall find one science (Physics) in a perfectly posi 
 tive stage, another (Biology) in the metaphysical stage, a third 
 (Sociology) in the supernatural stage. Nor is this all. The 
 same varieties will be found to co-exist in the same individual 
 mind. The same man who in Physics may be said to have ar 
 rived at the positive stage, and recognizes no other object of in 
 quiry than the laws of phenomena, will be found still a slave to 
 the metaphysical stage in Biology, and endeavoring to detect the 
 cause of life ; and so little emancipated from the supernatural 
 stage in Sociology, that if you talk to him of the 2^ s sibility of a 
 science of history, or a social science, he will laugh at you as 
 a " theorizer." The present condition of Science, therefore, ex 
 hibits three Methods instead of one : hence the anarchy. To 
 remedy the evil all differences must cease : one Method must 
 preside. Auguste Comte was the first to point out the fact, and 
 to suggest the cure ; and it will render his name immortal. So 
 long as the supernatural explanation of phenomena was univer 
 sally accepted, so long was there unity of thought, because one 
 general principle was applied to all facts. The same may be 
 said of the metaphysical stage, though in a less degree, because 
 it was never universally accepted ; it was in advance of the 
 supernatural, but before it could attain universal recognition, the 
 positive stage had already begun. When the positive Method is 
 universally accepted and the day we hope is not far distant, at 
 least among the elite of humanity then shall we again have 
 unity of thought, then shall we again have one general doctrine, 
 powerful because general. That the positive Method is the only 
 Method adapted to human capacity, the only one on which truth 
 can be found, is easily proved : on it alone can prevision of phe 
 nomena depend. Prevision is the characteristic and the test of 
 knowledge. If w r e can predict certain results and if they occur 
 as we predicted, then are we assured that our knowledge is cor 
 rect. If the wind blows according to the will of Boreas, we may, 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE. 785 
 
 indeed, propitiate his favor, but we cannot calculate upon it. We 
 can have no certain knowledge whether the wind will blow or 
 not. If, on the other hand, it is subject to laws, like every thing- 
 else, once discover these laws, and men will predict concerning 
 it as they predict concerning other matters. "Even the wind 
 and rain," to use the language of one of our clearest writers, 
 " which in common speech are the types of uncertainty and 
 change, obey laws as fixed as those of the sun and moon ; and 
 already, as regards many parts of the earth, man can foretell 
 them without fear of being deceived. He plans his voyages to 
 suit the coming monsoons, and prepares against the floods of the 
 rainy season."* If one other argument be needed, we would 
 simply refer to the gradual and progressive improvement which 
 has always taken place in every department of inquiry conduct 
 ed upon the positive Method and with a success in exact pro 
 portion to its rigorous employment, of that Method contrasted 
 with the circular movement of Philosophy, which is just as far 
 from a solution of any one of its problems as it was five thousand 
 years ago ; the only truths that it can be said to have acquired 
 are a few psychological truths, and these it owes to the positive 
 Method. So little has the Philosophy of Science been studied, 
 that Comte s admirable classification of the fundamental sciences 
 has not only been regarded as a merely ingenious speculation, 
 but many writers have said that it was not different from other 
 classifications which had been proposed, among which Hegel s 
 has been mentioned. But the resemblance is only superficial. 
 A few sentences must suffice here to indicate the principle on 
 which it is based : The problem to be solved is the dependence 
 of the sciences upon each other. This dependence can only re 
 sult from that of the corresponding phenomena. In considering 
 these, it is easy to class them in a small number of natural cate 
 gories, so disposed that the rational study of each successive 
 category should be founded on the knowledge of the principal 
 
 * Dr. Arnott s Elements of Physics, fifth edition, vol. i. p. 13. 
 
786 AUGUSTE COMTE. 
 
 laws of the preceding category. The order of their dependence 
 is determined by the degree of simplicity or generality of the 
 phenomena. It is evident that the most simple phenomena 
 those which are least mixed up with others are the most gen 
 eral ; for that which is observed in the greatest number of circum 
 stances is the most independent of the various particulars of 
 those circumstances. The principle therefore to be adopted is 
 this : we must commence with the study of the most simple or 
 general phenomena, and proceed successively to the most com 
 plex and particular. 
 
 A distinction is to be made between the two classes of pheno 
 mena which are manifested by inorganizcd bodies and by organ 
 ized bodies. The phenomena of the latter are obviously more 
 complex than those of the former : they greatly depend upon in- 
 organized bodies, while these in no way depend upon organized 
 bodies. Organized bodies manifest all the phenomena of the in- 
 organized, whether chemical or mechanical ; but they also mani 
 fest the phenomena named vital, which are never manifested by 
 inorganized bodies. 
 
 In the study of inorganic Physics we commence by separating 
 the general phenomena of the universe from the less general ter 
 restrial phenomena. Thus we have, first, celestial Physics, or 
 Astronomy, whether geometrical or mechanical ; secondly, ter 
 restrial Physics. The phenomena of Astronomy being the most 
 general, the most simple, and the most abstract of all, we must 
 begin our study with them. Their laws influence all other ter 
 restrial phenomena, of which they are essentially independent. 
 In all terrcsti ial Physics universal gravitation is a condition ; 
 and so the simple movement of the body, if we would consider 
 all the determining conditions, is a subject of greater complexity 
 than any astronomical question. 
 
 Terrestrial Physics is also divided into two classes : Physics 
 and Chemistry- Chemistry, rightly conceived, presupposes a 
 knowledge of Physics : for all chemical phenomena are more 
 complex than those of Physics, and depend on them in great part : 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE. 787 
 
 whereas they have no influence on physical phenomena. All 
 chemical action is subject to the influence of weight, heat, etc., 
 and must therefore be treated after them. 
 
 Organic Physics requires a similar division into Biology and 
 Sociology. The phenomena relating to mankind are obviously 
 more complex than those relating to the individual man, and 
 depend upon them. In all social questions we see in operation 
 the physiological laws of man ; and we see also something pe 
 culiar, not physiological, which modifies the effects of these laws, 
 and which results from the action of individuals on each other, 
 curiously complicated by the action of each generation on its suc 
 cessor. It would be manifestly as impossible to treat the study 
 of the collective species as a pure deduction from the study of 
 the individual, as it would be to treat Physiology as a pure de 
 duction from Chemistry. 
 
 The Positive Philosophy therefore resolves itself into five fun 
 damental sciences, of which the succession is determined by a 
 necessary and invariable subordination founded on a comparison 
 of corresponding phenomena. The first (Astronomy) considers 
 the most general, simple, and abstract phenomena those far 
 thest removed from humanity : they influence all others, but are 
 not influenced by them. The last (Sociology) considers the 
 most particular, complex, and concrete phenomena those most 
 directly interesting to man : they depend more or less upon all 
 the preceding classes, without exercising on the latter the slight 
 est influence. Between these two extremes the degrees of spe 
 ciality and of complication of phenomena gradually augment 
 according to their successive independence. 
 
 The foundation of a comprehensive Method is the great 
 achievement of Comte, as it was of Bacon, and the influence he 
 has exercised, and must continue to exercise, will be almost ex 
 clusively in that direction. Over his subsequent efforts to found 
 a social doctrine, and to become the founder of a new religion, 
 let us draw the veil. They are unfortunate attempts which re 
 mind us of Bacon s scientific investigations ; and, in the minds of 
 
788 CONCLUSION. 
 
 many, these unfortunate attempts will create a prejudice against 
 what is truly grand in his philosophic career. In the Cours de 
 Philosophic Positive we have the grandest, because on the whole 
 the truest, system which Philosophy has yet produced ; nor 
 should any differences, which must inevitably arise on points of 
 detail, make us forget the greatness of the achievement and the 
 debt we owe to the lonely thinker who wrought out this system. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 MODERN Philosophy opens with a Method ; and ends with a 
 Method ; and in each case this method leads to positive Science, 
 and sets Metaphysics aside. Within these limits we have wit 
 nessed various efforts to solve the problems of Philosophy ; and 
 all those efforts have ended in skepticism. 
 
 There are two characteristics of Modern Philosophy which 
 may here be briefly touched on. The first is the progressive 
 development of Science, which in ancient speculations occupied 
 the subordinate rank, and which now occupies the highest. The 
 second is the reproduction in Philosophy of all the questions 
 which agitated the Greeks, which also pass through a similar 
 course of development : not only are the questions similar, but 
 their evolutions are so. 
 
 After the Eleatics had vexed the problems of Existence to no 
 purpose, there came Democritus, Anaxagoras, Plato, and Aris 
 totle, who endeavored to settle the problems of the nature and 
 origin of human knowledge. So, in modern times, after Des 
 cartes and Spinoza, came Hobbes, Locke, Leibnitz, Reid, and 
 Kant. The ancient researches into the origin of knowledge 
 
 O O 
 
 ended in the Skeptics, the Stoics, and the New Academy : that 
 is to say, in Skepticism, Common Sense, and Skepticism again. 
 The modern researches ended in Berkeley, Hume, Reid, and 
 Kant : that is, in Idealism, Skepticism, Common Sense, and 
 
CONCLUSION. 789 
 
 Skepticism again. These inquiries terminating thus fruitlessly, 
 a new and desperate spring was made in Alexandria : reason 
 was given up for ecstasy ; Philosophy merged itself in Religion. 
 In Germany a similar spectacle presents itself : Schelling identi 
 fied Philosophy with Religion. Thus has Philosophy completed 
 its circle, and we are left in this nineteenth century precisely at 
 the same point at which we were in the fifth. 
 
 Observe, however and the fact is full of significance how, 
 in the course of speculation, those questions which were suscepti 
 ble of positive treatment, gradually acquired strength and devel 
 opment. If we are as far removed from a solution of any onto- 
 logical problem as we were in the days of Proclus, we are not 
 nearly so ignorant of the laws of mental operation. Psychology 
 is not a mature science yet ; but it boasts of some indisputable 
 truths. Although much remains to do, much also has been 
 done ; and whatever be the ultimate results of the new Method, 
 it is satisfactory to feel that we have at least escaped from the 
 vicious circle of verbal quibbling and logomachy, and are advan 
 cing on a straight road, every step bringing us nearer to positive 
 knowledge, every addition being that of inalienable truth. 
 
 Modern philosophy staked its pretensions on the one ques 
 tion : Have we any ideas independent of experience ? This was 
 asking, in other words, Have we any organon of Philosophy ? 
 
 The answer always ends in a negative. If any one, therefore, 
 remain unshaken by the accumulated proofs this History affords 
 of the impossibility of Philosophy, let him distinctly bear in 
 mind that the first problem he must solve is, Have we ideas in 
 dependent of experience ? Let him solve that ere he begins to 
 speculate. 
 
 THE END. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Abelard, his character, birth, de 
 scent, studies, 346 ; love of dia 
 lectics, taste for notoriety, personal 
 appearance, triumph over his mas 
 ter, origin of his misfortunes, 348 ; 
 establishes a school of philosophy, 
 his debate with Champeaux, 349 : 
 his brilliant career, intrigue with 
 Heloise, 350-355 ; becomes a monk, 
 founds the convent of the Para 
 clete, his philosophy and contribu 
 tions to the development of specu 
 lation, 355 ; peculiarity of his doc 
 trine, 357-359 ; object of his work 
 Introductio ad Tkeologiam, his trea 
 tise Sic et Won, 359. 
 
 Academy, the New, difference be 
 tween the skepticism of the New 
 Academicians and that of the Pyr- 
 rhonists, 293 ; its derivation from 
 Plato explained, 296. 
 
 Academicians, the New, problem re 
 specting perception presented by 
 them, 298-304. 
 
 Alcibiades, his description of Socra 
 tes, 123. 
 
 Algazzali : birth, parentage, studies, 
 profession, 363 ; resemblance be 
 tween him and Descartes, 363 ; his 
 skepticism, 364 ; his examination 
 of doctrines held by the faithful, 
 366 ; his career and endeavors to 
 attain the ecstatic state, 367 ; his 
 attempts to prove the existence of 
 prophetism, 369. 
 
 Alexandrian schools, the, 307; schools 
 of philosophy formed at Alexandria, 
 308 ; illustrious men assembled 
 there, 309 ; direction given to the 
 mind by the Alexandrian school, 
 313 ; in what its originality con 
 sists, its dialectics, 315 ; its theories 
 of inspiration, 319 ; the Alexandrian 
 Trinity, 320-324 ; similarity of the 
 Alexandrian Trinity to that of Spi 
 noza, 326 ; aim of the Alexandrian 
 school, 333 ; its termination in Pro- 
 clus, 336. 
 
 Ameinias, his statement respecting 
 Parmenides, 49. 
 
 Anaximander, his birth, inventions 
 ascribed to him, 10 ; astronomical 
 and mathematical knowledge, lead 
 er of a colony to Apollonia, resi 
 dence at the court of Poly crates, 
 doctrines and speculations, "ll ; his 
 distinction between finite things 
 and the Infinite All, 13 ; his specu 
 lations wholly deductive, 14; his 
 physical speculations, 15 ; harmony 
 between him and Pythagoras, 33. 
 
 Anaximenes, doctrines of, a develop 
 ment of those of Thales, his birth 
 place, his theory respecting air, 6 ; 
 his doctrine an advance on Thaies, 7. 
 
 Anaxagoras : birth, patrimony, char 
 acter, passion for philosophy, and 
 residence at Athens, 71 ; his pov 
 erty, career as a teacher, pupils, 
 accusation, banishment, death, 72 ; 
 his philosophy, 72 : leading doc 
 trines, 74 ; cosmology, 75 ; his re 
 jection of Fate and Chance, 76 ; 
 Plato s objection to him, 78 ; his 
 notion respecting Intelligence, 80 ; 
 mistakes made by him, inapplica 
 bility of the title Eclectic to him, 82 ; 
 admission of both Sense and Kea- 
 son into his system, 83. 
 
 Antisthenes, his life, teachers, sys 
 tem, 177 ; his manners and gloomy 
 temper, school founded by him, 178. 
 
 Arabians, two great epochs in the in 
 tellectual development of the, 369 ; 
 Arabian philosophy, 361 ; Arabian 
 philosophers, their familiarity with 
 Greek writers, 362 ; obligations of 
 Europe to, 370. 
 
 Arcesilaus: birth, studies, promotion 
 to the academic chair, character, 
 death, 294 ; his doctrine of a acata 
 lepsy, 297. 
 
 Archytas and Timasus, works attrib 
 uted to them, spurious, 24. 
 
 Aristippus, founder of the Cyrenaio 
 school ; his acquaintance with Soc- 
 
792 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 rates, 173 ; residence at Corinth ; 
 disposition and character, return 
 to Cyrene, 174 ; his philosophy, a 
 
 Erecur.sor of Epicureanism, its re- 
 ition to Socrates, 175 ; his doc 
 trine of pleasure, 177. 
 
 Aristotle : birth, origin, 241 ; educa 
 tion, visit to Athens, 242 ; writes 
 his History of Animals, 243; founds 
 the school of the Peripatetics, in 
 fluence of his writings, 244 ; nature 
 of his method, 246 ; difference be 
 tween him and Plato, 247 ; his doc 
 trine of induction, 249 ; commence 
 ment of positive science in Aris 
 totle s method, 250 ; difference be 
 tween the Aristotelian method and 
 the method of positive science, 250 ; 
 difference between Aristotle s and 
 Plato s use of the term dialectics, 
 252 ; his categories, 255 ; object of 
 his logic, 256 ; his propositions, 
 257 ; his definition of the syllo 
 gism, 259 ; his metaphysics, 261 ; 
 errors in his theory, 262 ; his va 
 rious doctrines, 263 ; compared 
 with Plato, his versatile intellect, 
 264 ; results of his labors, 266 ; 
 his long authority explained, 872 ; 
 his influence on the sixteenth cen 
 tury, 378. 
 
 Authority and Liberty, principles 
 of, 371. 
 
 Bacon, Francis : birth, ancestry, edu 
 cation, 398 ; visits France, studies 
 common law, distinguished as an 
 orator, 399 ; sworn a member of the 
 Privy Council, appointed keeper of 
 the Great Seal ; created Baron Ver- 
 iilam, accused of corruption, 400; 
 impeached, retires from public life, 
 401 ; his death, his method, 402 ; 
 his four classes of idols, 402 ; his 
 description of induction, 404 ; his 
 doctrine illustrated, 405; his Pre 
 rogative Instances, 406 ; distinguish 
 ing characteristic of his philosophy, 
 408 ; his chief merit, 409 ; division 
 of his method into two parts, his 
 Aphorisms, 410 ; positive tendency 
 of his speculations, 411 ; his sepa 
 ration of science from theology il 
 lustrated, 412 ; his declaration re 
 specting physics, 413 ; his testimo 
 nies to the .genius and errors of the 
 ancients, 415; the groundwork of 
 his Organum, 416 ; his constant 
 aim, 417 ; inquiry into the ori 
 ginality and usefulness of his 
 method, objections brought against 
 
 it by Le Maistre and Macaulay re 
 futed, 420-434. 
 
 Baillarger, M., his method for meas 
 uring the surfaces of the brain, 766. 
 
 Belief and perception, difference be 
 tween, 585. 
 
 Berkeley, George : birth, education, 
 publication of his writings, visit to 
 London, reception there, character, 
 548 ; career, travels, preferment, 
 visit to America, return to Eng 
 land, made Bishop of Cloyne, re 
 moval to Oxford, death, his ideal 
 ism, 549 ; misunderstanding of 
 him by his critics, his rejection of 
 the noumenon, explained, 550 ; ac 
 cusation brought against him re 
 futed, doctrine of the reality of 
 things maintained by him, 552 ; 
 his definition of substance, 553; his 
 starting-point, 556 ; his theory of 
 the origin of knowledge, 557 ; ker 
 nel pfliis system, 558; his identi 
 fication of the object with sensa 
 tion, 559 ; fundamental principle 
 of his theory, 560; his refutation 
 of realism, 561 ; his triumph over 
 dualism, 563 ; his theory irrefuta 
 ble, 564 ; his main position incon 
 trovertible, 566 ; causes of his fail 
 ure, results of his labors, 569. 
 
 Brain, function of the, 597 ; discrep 
 ancies in the size of the, 767. 
 
 Bruno, Giordano, his martyrdom, 
 373; rarity of his works, 374; his 
 birth and disposition, character, 
 adopts the Dominican frock, 375 ; 
 his doubts on transubstantiation 
 and respecting Aristotle, his ad 
 venturous course, 376 ; his perse 
 cutions, 377 ; his teachers, 379 ; 
 his position among teachers, his 
 travels and adventures, 379-384 ; 
 flight to Venice, thrown into pris 
 on, 385; sent to Rome, excommuni 
 cated arid perishes at the stake, 
 886 ; historical value of his system, 
 character of his writings, 388 ; his 
 anticipation of Spinoza and Des 
 cartes, impulse given by him to the 
 study of Nature, 390 ; his creed, 
 391 ; grandeur of his system, 392 ; 
 his comedy, 393 ; his various writ 
 ings, 394-397. 
 
 Cabanis, Pierre Jean Georges, 740 ; 
 physiological method to be sought 
 in him, 742 ; birth, profession, res 
 idence at Auteuil, death, his work 
 entitled Rapports en, Pkysique, his 
 position in the history of philoso- 
 
INDEX. 
 
 793 
 
 phy, 742 ; his recognition of the 
 unity of life and mind, 743 ; his 
 predecessors, his physiological psy 
 chology, 744; results of his survey 
 of the human organism, 746 ; object 
 of his treatise, 746 ; popularity and 
 influence of his work, 747. 
 
 Carneades, birth, teachers, promo 
 tion to the academic chair, sent as 
 ambassador to Rome, 295 ; influ 
 ence, return to Athens, death, 296. 
 
 Cartesian doctrine, 454. 
 
 Causation, defined, 586 ; weakness of 
 the theory of, exposed, 662 ; in 
 stinctive belief in causation proved 
 to be false, 666 ; belief in causa 
 tion, on what founded, 668; uni 
 versal causation, source of the be 
 lief in, 664; reflection required for 
 the belief in, not an instinct, 666. 
 
 Century, the sixteenth, its place in 
 history, 877. 
 
 Certainty, how attainable, xxxiv. 
 
 Christology, Hegelian, Spinoza s an 
 ticipation of, 466. 
 
 Collard, Eoyer, 772. 
 
 Common sense philosophy, failure of 
 and benefits conferred by, 629. 
 
 Comte, Auguste : historical position, 
 nature of his method, 776 ; his 
 Cours de Philosopkie Positive, 777 ; 
 his inauguration of a philosophy of 
 science, 778 ; his three initial con 
 ceptions, 779 ; his fundamental law 
 of evolution, 780; nature of, 781 ; 
 its three stages not strictly chrono 
 logical, 782 ; his classification of the 
 fundamental sciences, 785 ; his in 
 fluence, 787. 
 
 Condillac, Etienne de, birth, career, 
 publication of his essay, appointed 
 tutor to the Prince of Parma, made 
 a member of the French Academy, 
 publication of his Logic, death, 589 ; 
 the representative of Locke in 
 France, object of his Traite des Sen 
 sations, peculiarity of his system, 
 590 ; his misconception of Locke, 
 his doctrine refuted, 591 ; his error 
 respecting the mental faculties, 
 592 ; his theory of sensations, 593 ; 
 his definition of ideas, 594 ; the 
 systematic error of his system, 597 ; 
 examined into, 598, 599 ; destruc 
 tion of the basis of his system, his 
 discovery that our faculties are not 
 innate or even connate, 600 ; merits 
 of his works and style, his want of 
 a true psychological method, 602. 
 
 Consciousness, limitation of, 451. 
 
 Continuity, law of, 405. 
 34 
 
 Cousin, Victor, 772. 
 
 Cranioscopy, 755-759 ; difficulties be 
 setting, 760. 
 
 Cyrenaic school, the, 173. 
 
 Cynic school, the, 177 ; effect created 
 by the school in Athens, great 
 qualities of its disciples, 181 ; causes 
 of the want of respect felt for them, 
 182. 
 
 Dareste, Camille, his researches into 
 the convolutions of the brain, 766. 
 
 Darwin, Erasmus : birth, studies, 
 profession, his poem of the Hotimie 
 Garden, his Zoonomia, his theory 
 the same as Hartley s, his defini 
 tion of the word idea, 609 ; his 
 conception of psychology, 610 ; his 
 theory of vibrations, explanation of 
 perception, 615 ; theory of beauty, 
 616. 
 
 Definitions, employment of, by Soc 
 rates, 153 ; importance of, in the 
 Socratic method, 156 ; in what they 
 consist, 253. 
 
 Dcmocritus, the laughing philoso 
 pher: birth, 94; character, station, 
 career, anecdotes respecting, ob 
 scurity of his philosophy, difficulty 
 of assigning him a position, 94; 
 differences between him and other 
 schools, nature of his doctrine and 
 teaching, his identification of sensa 
 tion and thought, 95 ; his doctrine 
 of reflection, 96 ; his hypothesis to 
 explain perception, 98 ; his doctrine 
 of atomism, 99; superiority of his 
 system, 100. 
 
 Descartes, Rene : birth, parentage, 
 precocity, studies, 435 ; travels, 
 pursuits, 436 ; conceives the design 
 of a reformation in philosophy, 
 publication of his Discourse on 
 Method, sensation produced by it, 
 visit to Stockholm, death, 437; 
 character, 438 ; causes which led 
 him to the invention of his method, 
 439 ; logical imperfection of his 
 Cogito, ergo Sum, 440 ; vital portion 
 of his system, 441 ; psychological 
 portion, 442 ; mathematical or de 
 ductive portion, 443 ; differences 
 and resemblances between him and 
 Bacon, nature and tendency of his 
 method, 445 ; applications of his 
 method, 446 ; weakness of his at 
 tempts to demonstrate the exist 
 ence of God, 447 ; physical specu 
 lations, 448 ; position, 450 ; his 
 criterion examined, fallacy of his 
 system, 451 ; fallacy of his notion. 
 
794 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 that the mind is a passive recipient, 
 453 ; his doctrine respecting innate 
 ideas, 454. 
 
 Dialectics, Zeno of Elea, the inventor 
 of, 57 ; creation of, to what owing, 
 62. 
 
 Diogenes of Apollonia : birth, tenets, 
 7; theory of life, 8; the last ancient 
 philosopher attached to the physi 
 cal method, 9. 
 
 Diogenes of Sinope : birth, parent 
 age, flight to Athens, poverty, life, 
 179; his ostentation, 182; charac 
 teristics, death, 184. 
 
 Eclecticism, 769 ; origin and growth 
 of, 771 ; definition of, 773 ; crite- 
 rium, necessity of a, 774 ; want of 
 a criterium in the system, 775 ; 
 valuable as a subsidiary process, 
 776. 
 
 Ecstasy, faculty of, place it holds in 
 Neo-Platonism, 318. 
 
 Ego, the activity and passivity of the, 
 696. 
 
 Eleatics, the, 37. 
 
 Empedocles, contrary opinions as to 
 the place occupied by him, 83 ; in 
 terpretation of the disputed pas 
 sage in Aristotle respecting, 84 ; 
 Dirth, station, espousal of the dem 
 ocratic party, travels, character, 
 and anecdotes respecting him, 86 ; 
 uncertainty as to his teachers and 
 his writings, 88 ; diversity of opin 
 ion with respect to his position sig 
 nificant, his relation to the Eleatic 
 school, his resemblance to Zenoph- 
 anes, 88 ; his attempts to prove the 
 existence of Reason and of the Di 
 vine Nature, 90 ; his attacks on an 
 thropomorphism, 90 ; his relation 
 to the Pythagorean school, 91 ; ad 
 vance made by him on Anaxago- 
 ras s doctrine, 92 ; his conception 
 of God, 93. 
 
 Epicureans, the, 274. 
 
 Epicurus : birth, origin, and educa 
 tion, 274; his travels, opening of 
 his school in the garden, his char 
 acter, accusations brought against 
 him refuted, misrepresentations of 
 his doctrine, 275; dislike felt for 
 him by the Stoics, 276 ; his doc 
 trine and system, 277, 278; his 
 ethical doctrine, psychology and 
 physics, 279 ; his doctrine review 
 ed, 280. 
 
 Epochs in Philosophy : first epoch 
 speculations on the nature of the 
 universe, 1 ; second epoch specu 
 
 lations on the creation of the uni 
 verse and the origin of knowledge, 
 63 ; third epoch intellectual crisis, 
 101 ; fourth epoch a new era 
 opened, 122 ; fifth epoch partial 
 adoption of the Socratic method, 
 169 ; sixth epoch complete adop 
 tion of the Socratic method, 186 ; 
 seventh epoch philosophy again 
 reduced to a system, 241 ; eighth 
 epoch second crisis of Greek phi 
 losophy, 268 ; ninth epoch phi 
 losophy allies itself with faith, 307 ; 
 conclusion of ancient philosophy, 
 336. Transition period, 343. First 
 epoch, foundation of the inductive 
 method, 398 ; second epoch foun 
 dation of the deductive method, 
 435 ; third epoch philosophy re 
 duced to a question of psychology, 
 495; fourth epoch the subjective 
 nature of knowledge leads to ideal 
 ism, 548 ; fifth epoch the argu 
 ments of idealism carried out into 
 skepticism, 570 ; sixth epoch the 
 origin of knowledge referred to 
 sensation, 589 ; seventh epoch 
 second crisis, 618 ; eighth epoch 
 recurrence to the fundamental 
 question respecting the origin of 
 knowledge, 630 ; ninth epoch on 
 tology reasserts its claim, 675 ; 
 tenth epoch psychology seeking 
 its basis in physiology, 740 ; elev 
 enth epoch philosophy finally re 
 linquishing its place in favor of 
 positive science, 769. 
 
 Euclid of Megara ; birth, delight in 
 listening to Socrates, 170 ; his re 
 semblance to the Eleatics, his dia 
 lectics, 172. 
 
 Existence, belief in, 583. 
 
 Experience, dispute concerning, 546 ; 
 the foundation of our belief in 
 causality, 6G3. 
 
 Experimentum crucis, value of the, 
 408. 
 
 Fathers, the Christian, 343. 
 
 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb : birth, pre- 
 cociousness, 675 ; anecdotes of, 676, 
 677 ; education, 678 ; life at Schulp- 
 forte, 679 ; becomes a candidates 
 theoloffiw, residence in Switzerland, 
 acquaintance with Kant s writ 
 ings, 681 ; writes an abridgment of 
 Kant s Kritik, 6S3 ; extracts from 
 his journal, made professor of phi 
 losophy at Jena, 684; residence at 
 Berlin," 685; death, character, his 
 torical position, 686 ; his opinion;?, 
 
INDEX. 
 
 795 
 
 his definition of fuitli, and place 
 occupied by it in his system, 688 ; 
 basis of his system, 690 ; his doc 
 trine of the Ego and Non-Esro, 
 691 ; his doctrine of the identity 
 of Subject and Object, 692; his 
 doctrine of the Will, 693 ; his 
 idealism, his distinction between 
 the Ego and Non-Ego, 694; differ 
 ence between him and Berkeley, 
 698 ; application of his idealism, 
 his doctrine of the aim of man s 
 existence, 699 ; his definition of 
 Duty, his doctrine of the condition 
 of existence and the freedom of the 
 Ego, 700; his opinions respecting 
 God, 701 ; his philosophy of his 
 tory, 702. 
 
 Gall, Francis Joseph : birth, atten 
 tion early called to phrenology, 
 lectures at Vienna, 749 ; Gall and 
 Spurzheim visit Paris, quarrel be 
 tween them, his historical position, 
 services rendered by him to phys 
 iology and psychology, 752 ; his 
 influence, 753 ; his systematization 
 of the affective faculties, 755 ; his 
 anatomy of the nervous system, 
 761 ; consequence of the abandon 
 ment of Gall s method, 763 ; his 
 predecessors, necessary rejection 
 of his system, 764. 
 
 German Pantheists, 706. 
 
 Greek ethics, their range, 337. 
 
 Greek inquiry, its results, 337. 
 
 Greek philosophy, nature of the sec 
 ond crisis of, 306. 
 
 Greek speculation, conclusions ar 
 rived at after reviewing the history 
 of, 327. 
 
 Hartley, David : birth, parentage, 
 studies, profession, 603 ; publica 
 tion of his Treatise, misapprehen 
 sion of him by Dr. Parr, death, 
 604 ; character, his system, his 
 definition of man, 605; his opinions 
 respecting mind and matter, 606 ; 
 his theory of vibrations, applica 
 tion of the doctrine of association, 
 607 ; position occupied by him, 608. 
 
 Hegel, George Frederick William, 
 birth, education, residence at Tu 
 bingen, intimacy with Schelling, 
 715; residence at Jena, publica 
 tion of his dissertation De Orbiiis 
 and his essay Glauben und Wissen, 
 intimacy with Goethe and Schiller, 
 lectures at Jena, publishes his 
 Phtinomenologie, 716; leaves Jena 
 
 for Bamberg and Niirnberg, mar 
 riage, residence at Heidelberg, pub 
 lishes his Encyclop ddie, made pro 
 fessor at Berlin, death, his method, 
 teaching, 717 ; his position, inven 
 tion of a new method, 718; nature 
 of his method, 719; results of his 
 method, 720 ; his doctrine respect 
 ing contraries, 721 ; process of his 
 law respecting contraries, 722 ; his 
 notion of God, his method, whith 
 er it led him, 723 ; similarity to 
 Hume, 724 ; estimate of his phi 
 losophy by his disciples, 725 ; his 
 greatness, uselessness and perni- 
 ciousness of his system, 726 ; his 
 logic, in what it consists, first prop 
 osition in his logic, how treated by 
 him, 727, 730 ; his system, why- 
 overrated, 731 ; application of his 
 method, 732; his Philosophy of 
 Nature, 733; his Philosophy of In 
 telligence, his Lectures on History, 
 734 ; Philosophy of Religion, 736 ; 
 applicability of hi s method to all 
 subjects, 737 ; analysis of his History 
 of Philosophy, 738 ; editions and 
 abridgments of his works, 739. 
 
 Heloise, her history, 350-355. 
 
 Heraelitus, the crying philosopher, 
 his origin, birth, and character, 
 64; his philosophy, tendency of 
 his doctrines, contradiction be 
 tween him and Xenophanes, 65 ; 
 a materialist, 66 ; his doctrine a 
 modification of the Ionian system, 
 69; his explanation of phenomena, 
 70; his office negative, 70. 
 
 History, two principal epochs in, 703. 
 
 Hobbes, Thomas, depreciation of, 
 his errors, writings, 495: his style 
 and matter, 496; his position "in 
 the history of philosophy ; 497 ; 
 the precursor of the eighteenth 
 century-school of psychology, his 
 discovery respecting our" sensa 
 tions, 498 ; his definition of imagi 
 nation, 500; definition of memory, 
 501 ; association of ideas demon 
 strated by him, 502 ; his psychol 
 ogy, 504; definition of understand 
 ing, 505. 
 
 Humanity, five periods in the life of, 
 704. 
 
 Hume, David, birth, parentage, visit 
 to France, 570; publication of his 
 treatise on Human Nature, and his 
 Essays, travels, publication of his 
 Political Discourses and his In 
 quiry, appointed librarian to the 
 Faculty of Advocates, publication 
 
796 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 of his History of England, his 
 death and character, 571 ; his skep 
 ticism, his influence on specula 
 tion, his theory respecting matter 
 and mind, 572; unreasonableness 
 of the objections to him, 573 ; his 
 theory of the source of our reason 
 ing, 574 ; charges brought against 
 him refuted, 575; nature of his 
 mission, 576; his skepticism, na 
 ture of, 577; his theory of causa 
 tion, 578; source of the opposition 
 to it, 5JT9, 580 ; incompetency of 
 his explanation of our belief in 
 causation, 581. 
 
 Idealism, unsatisfactory nature of, 
 569 ; idealistic arguments answer 
 ed, 566 ; errors and truths in the 
 system, 568. 
 
 Idea, use of the word. 558. 
 
 Ideas, innate, doctrine of, antici 
 pated by Parmenides, 50 ; ideas, 
 innate, 453 ; inquiry into the ori 
 gin of, by Locke, 518; theory of 
 fundamental ideas, 583. 
 
 Induction and Syllogism, distinction 
 between, 258; nature of induction, 
 404; how to be conducted, 405; 
 co-ordination of its elements into 
 a compact body of doctrine, 409 ; 
 difference between simple-incau 
 tious, and cautious-methodical, 
 423; a graduated and successive, 
 insisted upon, 426 ; ordinary con 
 fused with scientific, 427 ; induc 
 tive method as distinguished from 
 induction, inductive rules, im 
 portance of, overrated by Bacon, 
 428. 
 
 Intellectual operations explained, 
 xxix. 
 
 Intuitional reason, assumption re 
 specting, xxv. 
 
 Ionian school, distinctive character 
 istics of, 2. 
 
 Jouffruy, Thomas, 772. 
 
 Kant, birth, parentage, education, 
 pursuits, character, life at Konigs- 
 berg, 630; publication of his Cri 
 tique of Pure Reason, 631 ; death, 
 relation to Swcdenborg, 632 ; his 
 torical position, clearness of his 
 system, 633; object lie had in 
 view, 634 ; his inquiry into the na 
 ture of experience, his criticism of 
 the operation of the mind, problem 
 he set himself to solve, his concep 
 tion of a purely critical philosophy, 
 
 635 ; his theory of knowledge, 636 ; 
 his theory of the purpose of criti 
 cism, 637 ; his answer to the 
 skeptic and dogmatist, 639 ; dif 
 ference between him and Hume, 
 his theory of the veracity of con 
 sciousness, 640; leading points of 
 his analysis of the mind, his divi 
 sion of judgments into analytic 
 and synthetic, 641 ; his theory that 
 mind does add something to sense- 
 experience, 642 ; his psychology, 
 object of his Critique, 644; his in 
 quiry into the objective reality of 
 space and time, 646 ; his analysis 
 of the forms of the understanding, 
 647 ; his Categories, his inquiry 
 into the pure forms of reason, 648; 
 his theory of the office of reason, 
 his theory of the three pure forms 
 of reason, 649 ; consequences of 
 his psychology, 650 ; his theory of 
 an external world, 651 ; his theory 
 of the constitution of knowledge, 
 his assumption of the impossibility 
 of ontology as a science, 652 ; re 
 sults of his analysis, 653 ; his 
 theory of moral certitude, of the 
 freedom of the will, 654; funda 
 mental principles, examination of, 
 655 ; vital point in his system, 
 656 ; his theory of causation and 
 doctrine of necessary truths, 657- 
 059 ; his distinction between a 
 pure and an empirical cognition, 
 660 ; his views on causation re 
 stated by Whewell, 661-664; error 
 in his theory of causation, 665-667; 
 latest development of his doctrine, 
 668; his doctrine of fundamental 
 ideas, 669 ; his notion of progres 
 sive intuition, 670-673 ; result of 
 his system, 674. 
 
 Leibnitz : his arguments against 
 Locke, reputation as a philosopher 
 and mathematician, 541 ; influence 
 of the ancients over him, 542 ; his 
 arguments respecting universality 
 and necessity, his doctrine of ne 
 cessary truths, 543 ; real force of 
 his theory, 545. 
 
 Locke, John : birth, parentage, edu 
 cation, life at Oxford, contempt for 
 university studies, 506; his pro 
 ficiency in medicine, turns his at 
 tention to politics, travels, plans 
 his Easay, 507 ; returns to Oxford, 
 is deprived of his studentship, 
 goes to the Hague, publication of 
 his letter on Toleration, returns to 
 
INDEX. 
 
 England, publication of his Essay, 
 its success, opposition excited, ac 
 quaintance with Newton, 503 ; 
 death, spirit of his writings, charges 
 brought against him, 509 ; proof 
 that he did not borrow from 
 Hobbes, 510, 511 ; his good quali 
 ties and originality, 512; his esti 
 mate of the value of hypothesis, 
 his readiness to change his opin 
 ions, 513 ; characteristics of his 
 Essay, 514; his method, 515; the 
 founder of modern psychology, 
 516; object he had in view, 517; 
 plan laid down by him in the con 
 duct of his inquiry, 518 ; his posi 
 tivism, 519 ; his theory of the origin 
 of our ideas, 521 ; and of the origin 
 of our knowledge, 523; his defini 
 tion of reflection and sensation, 
 525 ; elements of idealism and 
 skepticism in his system, 527 ; his 
 theory of the primary and second 
 ary qualities of bodies, 528 ; his 
 anticipation, of the doctrine of cau 
 sation, 529 ; his definition of knowl 
 edge, his doctrine respecting sim 
 ple and complex ideas, 530 ; his 
 denunciation of skepticism, 532 : 
 object of his essay, 533 ; his critics, 
 533-539 ; careful study of him rec 
 ommended, 540. 
 
 Logic, definition of, 252 ; object of 
 Aristotle s logic, 256 ; bad logic de 
 fined, 585 . 
 
 Macaulay, his argument against the 
 originality and usefulness of Ba 
 con s method refuted, 420-434. 
 
 Materialism, principle of, stated, 493. 
 
 Mathematicians, the, 10; collision be 
 tween the mathematical and physi 
 cal systems, 62. 
 
 Megaric school, the, 169. 
 
 Metaphysics, science of, denied by 
 the Sophists, 121 ; three questions 
 propounded by metaphysics, an 
 swered by the Alexandrian school, 
 328 ; metaphysical and scientific 
 methods, germinal difference be 
 tween, xxii ; irrationality of spec 
 ulation or metaphysics, xxxi. 
 
 Method, estimate of, by Socrates, 
 158; peculiarities of a philosophi 
 cal method, Socratic method, its 
 vagueness, 169; Aristotle s method, 
 246 ; spirit of Bacon s method, 408 ; 
 method of verification, 410 ; useful 
 ness of Bacon s method, 427 ; radi 
 cal defect of Bacon s method, 429 ; 
 Bacon s method only indirectly use 
 
 ful, 432; Bacon s method latent in 
 the spirit of the age, no evidence 
 against his originality, 433 ; full es 
 tablishment of the deductive meth 
 od, 444 ; Descartes method, good 
 ness of, examined, 449 ; Spinoza s 
 method, novelty of, 472; Locke s 
 method, 515 ; Hegel s method, 717 ; 
 the history of the rise of the psy 
 chological method, 740 ; the posi 
 tive method, 776; value of the 
 positive method, 784; illustrations 
 of the superiority of the positive 
 method, 785; the birth of the new 
 method, xiii. 
 
 Mill, John, his strictures on the dog 
 ma cessante causa cessat et effectus, 
 587. 
 
 Mysticism, infusion of, into philoso 
 phy, 331. 
 
 Neo-Platonism, antagonism between 
 it and Christianity, causes of its 
 failure, 314; Neo-Platonic theory 
 of God, 322 ; Neo-Platonic doctrine 
 of emanation, Neo-Platonic theory 
 of the origin of the world, 328 ; 
 their doctrine respecting God, 329. 
 
 Nominalism, dispute concerning, 346. 
 
 Object, the, and sensation, want of 
 correspondence between, 303. 
 
 Ontological speculations, basis of all 
 modern, 455. 
 
 Parmenides, his birth, 48 ; wealth and 
 devotion to study, his politics, char 
 acteristics of his philosophy, 49 ; 
 his doctrine respecting the duality 
 of thought, 50 ; his antithesis to 
 d6a always THCTU, 53; central point 
 in his system, his notion on the 
 science of Being, 53 ; his doctrine 
 of the identity of thought and ex 
 istence, 54; his physical specula 
 tions, ideal element introduced in 
 to his speculations, skeptical tend 
 ency of his doctrines, 55. 
 
 Perception and reasoning, difference 
 between, xxv ; perception and sen 
 sation, difference between, xxvi; 
 nature of perception defined, 301 ; 
 process of, 611. 
 
 Philo: birth, genius, education, his 
 teachers, Greek and Oriental ele 
 ments of his mind, 310 ; agreement 
 and difference between him and 
 Plato, 311 ; his theology, 312. 
 
 Philosophy, distinction between it 
 and science, present decadence of, 
 circular movement of, xi ; spectacle 
 
798 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 presented by the history of, xii ; 
 definition of, ancient philosophy es 
 sentially metaphysical, xiii ; supe 
 riority of science to, xiv ; charac 
 teristics of, xv ; difference between 
 and science illustrated, xvi ; re 
 garded as a system of credit, xxii ; 
 contrast between philosophy and 
 science, xxii ; proved to be impos 
 sible, xxx ; the initiator of science, 
 xxxi ; purpose of the author in 
 writing the history of, xxxi ; mor 
 al philosophy created by Socrates, 
 266; conclusion of ancient philoso 
 phy, 336 ; influence of, 337 ; Chris 
 tian philosophy a misnomer, phi 
 losophy, in what it consists, 338 ; 
 modern philosophy, commence 
 ment of, mediaeval philosophy, 343 ; 
 influence of Aristotle over mediae 
 val philosophy, 345; emancipation 
 of philosophy, 370; fundamental 
 question of modern, 455 ; first cri 
 sis in modern philosophy, 493; re 
 action against the eighteenth cen 
 tury philosophy, 769-771 ; office of 
 positive philosophy, 779 ; reduc 
 tion of positive philosophy into five 
 fundamental sciences, 787 ; two 
 characteristics of modern philoso 
 phy, present condition of, impos 
 sibility of a, 788. 
 
 Phenomena, order of their depend 
 ence, 786. 
 
 Phrenology, rise of, 748 ; changes 
 made in the localization of the or 
 gans, 750 ; two distinct aspects of, 
 755 ; difficulties of, 759 ; proper ob 
 ject of, 760; assumptions of, 761; 
 initial question affecting, 765; im 
 portant point it has to determine, 
 766 ; chaotic aspect of, 768. 
 
 Physics, organic and inorganic, treat 
 ed by the positive method, 786. 
 
 Physicists, the, 1. 
 
 Plato : interest felt in him, his char 
 acter, nature of his metaphysics, 
 morals, and politics, 186 ; parent 
 age, birth, and education, 188; his 
 skepticism, und correction of, by 
 Socrates, his travels, 189 ; his lec 
 tures, 191 ; their purely argument 
 ative character, visit to" Sicily, 192; 
 sold as a slave, visit to Syracuse, 
 death, disposition, 193; character 
 of his writings, 195; his Dialogues 
 and Epistles, various of them spu 
 rious, 165, 166; his opinions illus 
 trated in his Dialogues, 197 ; design 
 of his Dialogues, his dialectics, 199 ; 
 attempts to classify his Dialogues, 
 
 chronology of, 201 ; necessity for a 
 positive arrangement of his works, 
 variations in his opinions, 2 >0, 204; 
 new classification of his works pro 
 posed, purpose of his Dialogues, 
 206 ; his method, nature of his phi 
 losophy, 207 ; nature of his method, 
 209 ; his conception of philosophy 
 as dialectics, his great dogma, 210; 
 his theory of general terms, 212; 
 his doctrine of ideas, 214-216 ; his 
 psychology illustrated, 216-220 ; his 
 doctrine of innate ideas, 22] ; his 
 doctrine of recollection, 222; divi 
 sion of his philosophy into two 
 branches, 223 ; passage from the 
 Republic illustrative of his method, 
 224 ; his doctrine of rational and 
 sensitive souls, his system a resume 
 of the conflicting tendencies of his 
 age, 226 ; summary of his dialectics, 
 227 ; his theology and cosmology, 
 228 ; his analogical reasoning, 229 ; 
 his doctrine of evil, 231 ; doctrine 
 of metempsychosis as applied by 
 him, 232; his view of the beautiful 
 and the good, 233 ; his ethics, 236 ; 
 contradictions in his ethical opin 
 ions, his JKepublic, 236-240. 
 
 Platonic philosophy, central error of, 
 154. 
 
 Platonism, its union with Oriental 
 mysticism, 312. 
 
 Plotinus, 314; his agreement with 
 Plato, 316 ; his resemblance to Ger 
 man metaphysicians, 324 ; spirit of, 
 revived by Schelling, 710. 
 
 Position of the Socratic method in 
 the history of speculation, 266. 
 
 Process, the exclusive, necessity of, 
 insisted on, 406. 
 
 Proclus: birth, visit to Alexandria 
 and Athens, his theological tend 
 ency, 332 ; his estimate of faith, his 
 method, 333 ; his assumption re 
 specting mathematics, 334 ; his as- 
 sertion^respecting the mind, 335; 
 the last of the ancient philosophers, 
 336. 
 
 Prophetism, 368. 
 
 Protagoras, the first avowed Sophist, 
 his studies, resemblance between 
 him and Ileraclitus, his doctrine of 
 sensation, 11G; a teacher of moral 
 ity, 119. 
 
 Psychology, lesson taught by, xxix ; 
 its assumption of the place of on 
 tology, 4U3 ; reason of the im 
 portance it has assumed, 494; 
 psychological method, history of 
 the, 740 ; necessity of its estab- 
 
INDEX. 
 
 lishment on a physiological basis, 
 763. 
 
 Pyrrho, founder of the skeptical phi 
 losophy, contrast between him and 
 Socrates, 268; his doctrine, irre- 
 coverability of, 269. 
 
 Pythagoras : birth. 15; one of the 
 great founders of mathematics, fa 
 bles current about him, 1C ; proba 
 bility of his having visited Egypt, 
 unlikelihood of his having 1 been in 
 structed, by Egyptian priests, 17 ; 
 invention of the word philosopher 
 by him, 13 ; its interpretation, his 
 secret society, 19: political career 
 
 20 ; residence at Croton, difference 
 between him and his predecessors, 
 
 21 ; risings against him, death, 22; 
 musical scale invented by him, his 
 philosophy, 23 ; his doctrines a con 
 tinuation of Anaximander s, uncer 
 tainty as to the genuineness of the 
 opinions ascribed to him, no peculiar 
 doctrines attributed to him by Plato 
 and Aristotle, his oral teaching, 24 ; 
 his theory of numbers, 26; his doc 
 trines contained in a few mystical 
 sentences, 30 ; his opinions on sub 
 sidiary points, his doctrine of the 
 transmigration of souls, 31 ; his doc 
 trines in relation to the preceding 
 philosophy, 32; the representative 
 of the second branch of Ionian phi 
 losophy, 33. 
 
 Pythagoreans, celebrated, Pythago 
 rean school, its method and ten 
 dency, why called the mathemati 
 cal, 25 ; Pythagorean system, a 
 verbal quibble at the foundation of, 
 27 ; Pythagorean formula, mistake 
 as to its meaning by Ritter and 
 others, 28; Pythagorean doctrine, 
 33 ; translations from Aristotle s 
 Metaphysics respecting, 34-36. 
 
 Realism and Nominalism, origin of the 
 dispute between, 211. 
 
 Reasoning, how conducted in Bacon s 
 time, 425. 
 
 Reformers, sixteenth century, spirit 
 common to the, 377. 
 
 Reid, Thomas : birth, education, made 
 Professor of Moral Philosophy at 
 Aberdeen, publication of his In 
 quiry into the Human Mind and of 
 his Essays on the Intellectual Powers, 
 death, his philosophy, 61S ; his mis- 
 statement of Locke, 619 ; his refu 
 tation of the Ideal theory, 620; his 
 attack on skepticism, 621 ; his the 
 ory of perception and instinct, 623 ; 
 difference between the Ideal hy 
 
 pothesis and Reid s theory, the 
 great point in his theory, 625; his 
 theory of ideas of sensation, 627 ; 
 difference between Reid and Berke 
 ley, his mistake respecting the ori 
 gin of knowledge, 628. 
 
 Reminiscence, doctrine of, implied in 
 a passage from the Pkcedo, 220. 
 
 Republic, the, of Plato, difficulty of 
 determining its date, 201. 
 
 Revolution, the French, and material 
 ism, fancied association between, 
 770. 
 
 Rome and the Eastern schools of phi- 
 losophv, xxxii ; Roman philosophy, 
 308. 
 
 Sensation, growth of, 525 : impossi 
 bility of displacing by an idea, 596 ; 
 distinction between sensation and 
 ideation, 597 ; sensation independ 
 ent of thought, 599 ; dependent on 
 the sensational centre, 613 ; visual 
 sensation, how produced, 614. 
 
 Sensation school, the, 589 ; sensation 
 al centres, 598. 
 
 Skeptics, mistakes made by the an 
 cient, nature of their influence, 
 271 ; main position of skepticism, 
 621 ; skepticism not refuted by 
 Reid s theory, 622. 
 
 Schelling : birth, studies at Tubingen, 
 friendship with Hegal, residence at 
 Jena and Berlin, death, 705 ; his 
 doctrines, his pantheistic tendency, 
 706 ; his improvement on Fichte s 
 doctrine, 707 ; difference between 
 him and Fichte, the E<ro in Schel- 
 ling s system, 709 ; function of rea 
 son in his system, 710 ; three divi 
 sions in his system, his speculations 
 on Nature, 711 ; luminousness of 
 some of his ideas, 712 ; his opinion 
 of science, results of his specula 
 tions, 713 ; similarity and difference 
 between him and Spinoza, differ 
 ence between their methods, 714. 
 
 Science, linear progress of, xi ; sci 
 ences, progressive development of, 
 777 ; present condition of, 784. 
 
 Scientific method, its superiority, 
 xxii. 
 
 Scholasticism, 843 ; manifestations of 
 the philosophical element in, 344. 
 
 Schoolmen, the error committed by, 
 346. 
 
 Scotch philosophy, failure of, 629. 
 
 Socrates : his opinions respecting 
 Anaxagoras, 78 ; his life, antagon 
 ism between him and the Sophists, 
 his mission, 122 ; treatment by the 
 
800 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Sophists, effect produced by him, 
 his personal appearance, 123 ; his 
 qualities, 125 ; his birth, parents, 
 education, and early studies, 127 ; 
 his wife, his military services, 128 ; 
 anecdotes respecting him, 129; his 
 public career, 130 ; conduct as Epis- 
 tates, 132; mistaken for a Sophist, 
 133; his mode of disputation, 134; 
 his tastes and habits, 135 ; his daily 
 occupation, 136 ; his enemies, 137 ; 
 his condemnation, apology for the 
 Athenians, 138 ; his alleged impiety, 
 139 ; his religious opinions, 140; his 
 trial, 141 ; speech made by him, 
 142 ; his behavior in the prospect of 
 death, 143 ; impression produced 
 by it on Phaedo, 144; the closing 
 scene, 145 ; his character, 147 ; his 
 philosophy, new method invented 
 by him, 148; his use of the terms 
 genus and species, 149 ; assertion re 
 specting his anticipation of Bacon s 
 method, differences and resem 
 blances between him and Bacon, 
 151 ; drift of his questioning, 153 ; 
 the founder of a new epoch, 155; 
 his opinion of physical speculation, 
 156 ; philosophic basis given by him 
 to the doctrine of the immortality of 
 the soul, 160; his arguments in fa 
 vor of a beneficent Providence, 161- 
 165 ; conjectures respecting his de 
 mon, 166 ; his statement respecting 
 the Divine Voice, 167 ; Socrates phi 
 losophical career justified, 199 ; sum 
 mary of the Socratic movement, 
 266 ; benefit conferred by the So 
 cratic epoch, 267. 
 
 Sophos, meaning of the word, 19. 
 
 Sophists, the, much calumniated, 102; 
 cause of the dislike felt for them by 
 Plato, 103 ; meaning of the word, 
 104 ; vagueness of the term, 105 ; 
 various assertions respecting them 
 proved to be false, 106 ; their teach 
 ing, 107; art taught by them, not 
 reprehensible, 108 ; art of disputa 
 tion taught by them, 109 ; their art 
 compared with forensic oratory, 
 111; their popularity, 112; estima 
 tion of their art by the Greeks, 113 ; 
 doctrines taught by them ethical, 
 examination of their doctrines, 114 ; 
 difference between them and the 
 Skeptics, 118 ; their opinion of ora 
 tory, the natural production of the 
 opinions of the epoch, 120. 
 
 Soufism, 369. 
 
 Speculation, tendency of early philo 
 sophical, 3. 
 
 Spinoza: his childhood, 456; his pa 
 rents, his early passion for study, 
 his doubts, 457; summoned before 
 the Eabbins, withdraws from the 
 synagogue, 458 ; his attempted as 
 sassination, his excommunication, 
 459 ; his subsequent career, his love 
 for his master s daughter, 460 ; his 
 disappointment, his Latin studies, 
 461 ; leaves Amsterdam for Ley- 
 den, writes his abridgment of the 
 Meditations of Descartes, sensation 
 produced by it, his residence at the 
 Hague, 462 ; declines the chair of 
 philosophy at Heidelberg, beauty 
 of his course of life, 463 ; his pov 
 erty, 464 ; publication of his Tracta- 
 tus Theologico-Politicus, 465 ; state 
 of things in Holland on its appear 
 ance, 466 ; his character, amuse 
 ments, death, 468 ; his doctrine, a 
 logical development of the system 
 of Descartes, 469 ; his doctrine of 
 Substance, 470 ; his agreement with 
 Descartes, 471 ; novelty of his meth 
 od, his Definitions, 472 ; his Axioms, 
 474 ; his notions on cause and 
 effect, 475 : his Propositions and 
 Corollaries, 476-478 ; his proof of 
 the existence of Substance, his the 
 ology, 4SO ; his exposition of his 
 doctrine completed, causes why it is 
 branded as atheistical, 481 ; his doc 
 trine of Final Causes, 482; his de 
 monstration of the anthropomor 
 phic tendency of judging infinite by 
 rinitc wisdom, 484 ; impression left 
 on the mind by his theological sys 
 tem, 485 ; initial error of his sys 
 tem, 486 ; whence it arises, 487 ; 
 logical perfection of his system, his 
 criticism of Bacon, 490 ; justifica 
 tion of his employment of the geo 
 metrical method, 491. 
 
 Stoics, the, 281 ; Stoical doctrine, 
 analogy between the Stoics and the 
 Scotch" philosophers, their ethical 
 doctrine, 289 ; tendency of their 
 ethical formula, 291 ; mistakes made 
 by them, merits and demerits of 
 Stoicism, 202. 
 
 Systems, errors at the root of philo 
 sophical, 14. 
 
 Table-turning, xvi. 
 
 Thales, father of Greek speculation, 
 birth, origin of his activity in poli 
 tics, 1 ; a proficient in mathemati 
 cal knowledge, 2 ; his attempt to 
 discover the beginning of things, 
 8; his philosophy in harmony with 
 
INDEX. 
 
 801 
 
 ancient opinions, wrongly accused 
 of atheism, 4; his speculations, in 
 ductive in their nature, 14. 
 
 Timseus and Archytas, works attrib 
 uted to them, spurious, 24. 
 
 TimcKus, Aristotle s comment on the, 
 200. 
 
 Truths, necessary and contingent, 
 671 ; nature of contingent truths, 
 673. 
 
 Universals, importance of the dispute 
 concerning, 356. 
 
 Van Heusde s arrangement of Plato s 
 works, 205. 
 
 Verification of particulars, the distin 
 guishing characteristic of the sci 
 entific method, xxx. 
 
 Verification, graduated, systematiza- 
 tion of, 408. 
 
 Villers, Charles, his letter to Cuvier, 
 750. 
 
 Xenophanes : birth, a cultivator of 
 elegiac and gnomic poetry, banish 
 ment, and wanderings as a rhapso- 
 dist, poverty and fanaticism, 87 ; 
 a monotheist, 38 ; his doctrine re 
 specting Truth, disagreement be 
 tween his doctrines and those of 
 Pythagoras, few of his rhapsodies 
 extant, 39 ; conclusions arrived at 
 by him, 41 ; the head of the Mono- 
 
 theists and Skeptics, his philoso 
 phy, attempted solution of the pro- 
 ble"m of existence, 42 ; explanation 
 of his notion respecting God, con 
 tradiction between his opinions, 43 ; 
 his pantheism, his monotheism dif 
 ferent from anthropomorphism, a 
 monotheist only in contradiction to 
 his polytheistical contemporaries, 
 44 ; nature of his skepticism, 46 ; 
 his conceptions of the Deity, 47; 
 his influence on the progress of 
 speculation, 48. 
 
 Zeno, alias Palamedes of Elea, 55 ; 
 character, political activity, cap 
 tured by Nearchus, 56 : death, his 
 philosophy, the inventor of dialec 
 tics, 57 ; the first prose writer, 58 ; 
 difference between him and Parme- 
 nides, his doctrine of one existence 
 and many appearances, his argu 
 ments respecting motion, 59; his 
 Achilles puzzle, 60 ; its refutation, 
 61 ; Zeno, the terminator of the 
 second great line of independent 
 inquiry, 62. 
 
 Zeno, the Stoic: birth, origin, pur 
 suits, studies, career, 281 ; founds 
 a school, his character, personal ap 
 pearance, death, 282; his philoso 
 phy, psychology, 284; his theory 
 of sensation, 286. 
 


 THIS "ROfi 
 
 - 
 
 rn-ri 
 
 E 
 
 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHI 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below, or 
 on the date to which renewed, 
 books are subject to immediate recall. 
 
 & 
 
 f 
 
 "FOii CIR DPT 8 77 
 
 
 " MAR: 16 1983 
 
 rec d circ. APR 5 & 
 
 r~ i"i 
 
 
 S 
 
 
 i 
 
 a 
 
 i 
 
 Jl 
 
 1 
 
 \|l 
 p 
 
 L 
 
 I 
 
 
 
 ! 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 LD21 32m 1, 75 
 (S3845L)4970 
 
 / 
 
 General Library 
 
 University of California 
 
 Berkeley 
 
u.u. DcrwtLtY LlDKAHItb 
 
 C03fl30303t 
 -<- >^ C 
 
 ,^