repulsive to his positive and lucid mind. 'More than once,' he tells us, à propos of Albertus Magnus, 'I have opened his ponderous folios, with the determination to master at least some portion of their contents; but I shut them again with an alacrity of impatience, which will be best comprehended by any one who makes a similar attempt.'1 What an immense task must be a history composed at first hand; obscure texts and strange theories in antiquity; empty dissertations in the middle ages; complicated doctrines and a superabundance of documents in modern times; here is work for any historian. The life of a man would not suffice for it; especially if to this list we were to add the materials supplied by the East. Mr. Lewes lacks the vocation of the scholar, which indeed is generally wanting in original minds. His history resembles rather that of Hegel, than that of Ritter. His review of the labours of philosophers is rather occupied with that which they have thought, than with their comparative importance. He judges rather than expounds: his history is fastidious and critical. It is the work of a clear, precise, and elegant mind, always that of a writer, often witty, measured, possessing no taste for declamation, avoiding exclusive solutions; and making its interest profitable to the reader whom he forces to think. There are many ideas in this book. Besides an important introduction consisting of 120 pages, the author frequently expresses his own opinions, in appreciating those of others: an almost entire system of philosophy may be extracted from them. This gives him a right to figure in our work; we should have had nothing to ask for in an ordinary history; in this instance so much has been given us that we are obliged to make a choice. What is the thesis of Mr. Lewes ? It is the radical weakness of all metaphysics, demonstrated by history. In his first edition (1845), he proposed to himself as his object to turn men's minds away from this study by demonstrating the successive failures of successive schools: at present he declares that his adhesion to positivism is firm and complete, This avowal is more loyal 1 History of Philosophy, vol. ii. p. 74 than reassuring: no doubt it appears strange and interesting to see the history of philosophy reconstructed by a positivist; but has he nothing to dread from inquiry? I acknowledge that I expected it. Nothing of the sort has taken place. Pythagoras and Parmenides, Plato and Plotinus, Spinoza and Berkeley are treated as masters of human thought, and with sincere admiration. No indifferent person has written these lines upon Pythagoras: 'He who could transcend all earthly struggles, and the great ambition of the greatest of 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 existence; listening to music and the hymns of Homer, Hesiod, and Thales, or listening to the harmony of 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!' And afterwards, comparing Homer and Xenophanes, both of them rhapsodists: what a fate is that of the philosopher! his mutilated work is visited only by some rare scholar, or by some dilettanti spiders; the other, the poet's, lives in the memory of all mankind. Joy and universal life are echoed by Homer; in Xenophanes, distress, convulsive agitation, infinite doubt, infinite sadness.2 1 More than once we shall find this melancholy strain of the historian, upon the vain effort of human thought which seeks without finding, and aspires without attaining. 6 II. An ample, but entirely dogmatic, Preface first calls for our attention. Theology, philosophy, and science,' says Mr. Lewes, 'constitute our spiritual triumvirate.' 'Its [theology's] main province is the province of Feeling; its office is the systematization of 1 Lewes, History of Philosophy, vol. i. p. 23. 2 Ibid. p. 43. -What is philoso 3 These prolegomena comprise the following questions :phy? Objective and subjective method. Criterion of truth. ties of thought. Necessary truths. Some infirmi our religious conceptions. The office of Science is distinct. It may be defined as the systematization of the order of phenomena considered as phenomena. The office of Philosophy is again distinct from these. It is the systematization of the conceptions furnished by Theology and Science. It is ἐπιστήμη ἐπιστημῶν. 1 Psychology is to the other sciences what geography is to topography. Its history is the story of its emancipation with regard to theology, its transformation into science. Understood in the sense of metaphysics, philosophy is completely vain; because it seeks for noumena which will always be out of its reach. And the objection is founded less upon the objects of its research, God, liberty, causality, etc., than upon its method, which, being separated from verification, is therefore outside of science. 'The History of Philosophy presents the spectacle 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.'* 'There are many who deplore the encroachment of Science, fondly imagining that Metaphysical Philosophy would respond better to the higher wants of man. This regret is partly unreasoning sentiment, partly ignorance of the limitations of human faculty. Even among those who admit that Ontology is an impossible attempt, there are many who think it should be persevered in, because 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 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 hopes to pass. He dies without reaching America, but to the last gasp he maintains that he has discovered the route on which others may reach it.' 3 1 Lewes, Prolegomena, p. xvii. 2 Ibid. xxvii. 3 Ibid. p. xxviii. Science seeks truth; but what is truth? 'Truth is the cor respondence between the order of ideas and the order of phenomena, so that the one is the reflection of the other-the movement of Thought following the movement of Things.' 1 Let us remark these terms, 'the order of ideas,' 'the movement of thought,' substituted for the ordinary formula-conformity of the idea with the object. If we accept the latter, truth is a chimera, and idealism is irresistible. The utmost end of knowledge is adaptation, and we call truth precise adaptation. What the body and the fall of bodies are in themselves matters not to us. If the movement of our thought is controlled by the movements of things, there is truth: if our ideas are arranged in an order which does not correspond with the order of phenomena, there is error. 6 To attain this correspondence between an internal and external order is what we seek, and for this we employ two methods :a. The Objective Method, which moulds its conceptions on realities by closely following the movements of the objects as they severally present themselves to Sense, so that the movements of Thought may synchronize with the movements of Things. 'B. The Subjective Method, which moulds realities on its conceptions, endeavouring to discern the order of Things, not by step by step adjustments of the order of ideas to it, but by the anticipatory rush of Thought, the direction of which is determined by Thoughts and not controlled by Objects.' Every research contains an observation, a conjecture, and a verification. The subjective method stops at the second term: its function is hypothesis. The objective method embraces three terms its function is verification. It absorbs whatever there is of good in the subjective method, adding to it control. The subjective method seeks for truth in the relations of ideas, the objective method seeks for truth in the relations of objects. An exact reasoning is the ideal union of objects in their true relations of co-existence and succession: it is to see with the eye of the mind. A chain of reasoning is an ideal representation of details, actually non-apparent to the senses. This may make us 1 Prolegomena, p. xxxi. 2 Ibid. p. xxxiii. understand what exact sense we ought to give to the word fact. Generally, it is considered as a final verity. This we say is a fact, not a theory; that is to say, an indisputable fact, not a disputable view of truth. But a fact is in reality a bundle of inferences; a fact so simple as that of seeing an apple upon a table, supposes, in addition to the simple sensation of colour, the recall of the ideas of roundness, savour, odour, etc. If facts are inextricably mingled with inferences, and if reasoning is a mental vision which establishes details that are not present, thenceforth how can we sustain the opposition of fact and of theory? They are both fallible, and radical opposition exists between verified inferences and non-verified inferences. The weakness of the subjective method consists in the impossibility of verification. The objective method simply co-ordains materials furnished by experience, without introducing any which are new. The subjective method commits the fault of drawing matter from the subject, instead of simply drawing form. The fundamental distinction between metaphysics and science is then in their method, and not in the nature of their object. Add a verifiable method to a metaphysical theory, and you make of it a scientific theory; subtract from a scientific theory the verifiable element, and you make of it a metaphysical theory. Remove from the law of gravitation the verifiable formula 'the direct relation of masses in their inverse relation to the square of the distances,' and there only remains an occult attraction: this is metaphysics. Two travellers come from a country where clocks are not known, even by hearsay. The one has metaphysical, the other has scientific tendencies. They both stand before this new object. The metaphysician will say: This explains itself by a vital principle: the beating of the pendulum resembles that of the heart, the hands travel like antennæ, the striking of the hour resembles a cry of anger or of pain; and he will exhaust himself in ingenious explanations of this kind. Here you have the subjective method, which deduces instead of verifying. The other man will say to him: I have grave doubts of your conjectures. I have belonging to me a powerful instrument called analysis. I am going to make use of it. I take away the face of this |