can think without experiencing any special sensation, except those of organic life; as for instance, when we are reflecting in our bed in the midst of the silence of night.

Thus the independence of ideation and of sensation is proved psychologically and anatomically, and uproots the doctrine of Condillac.

Let us now see that of Kant.1 Mr. Lewes ardently admires this philosopher, whom he calls the greatest of modern metaphysicians.' He is above all thankful to him for having laid bare the nothingness of ontology, of having shown with more clearness and precision than any one prior to himself, that human knowledge is relative; but upon the point which occupies us on the nature of the laws or forms of thought, Mr. Lewes dissents from him. 'The forms of thought like the forms of life are evolutions, not preformations.' Kant did not see that. His method was incomplete. He has employed only the metaphysical method of subjective analysis, when he should also have employed the biological method of objective analysis. Transporting into psychology the old Aristotelian error of matter and of form considered as really separable (while they are only separated by abstraction), he regarded the forms of thought as ready-made factors, anterior to and independent of experience. Now these formula ought to be sought, either physiologically, that is to say, in organic conditions; or psychologically, that is to say, in the evolution of thought. Such is the nature of our mind, that we think as successive that which is in its nature simultaneous; the condition of thought is change. To think is to exercise judgment, that is, to unite a predicate to a subject. But these forms or conditions of thought are a result of a development, not of pre-existing elements. Kant has done the same thing as if he had said that the form of the oak pre-exists in the acorn, because the form of the oak comes out of the acorn. But scientific botany would not accept this solution, and scientific psychology refuses even to accept as a priori conditions of experience that which is the result of volition and of experience. Besides this the forms enumerated by Kant are not sufficiently

numerous to express the subjective conditions.

He puts forward for example pleasure and pain, which are inseparable elements of all sensation and which determine every action. He says nothing of the various senses and of their conditions; nevertheless it is the organization of the retina and of the skin which makes vibration upon the one produce the sensation of light, and upon the other the sensation of heat. Sight, heat, and sound are forms of sensibility which serve to clothe the thing in itself (Ding an sich), just like time and space, which it gives singly.

The distinction between the subjective element and the objective element of thought is rightly regarded as the principal achievement of critical philosophy. Nevertheless it hides a fundamental error because it endeavours to isolate the elements of an indissoluble act.

Psy

'It was one thing to assume that there are necessarily two co-efficients in the function; another thing to assume that these could be isolated and studied apart. It was one thing to say, Here is an organism with its inherited structure, and aptitudes dependent on that structure, which must be considered as necessarily determining the forms in which it will be affected by external agencies, so that all experience will be a compound of subjective and objective conditions; another thing to say, Here is the pure a priori element in every experience, the form which the mind impresses on the matter given externally. The first was almost an inevitable conclusion, the second was a fiction. chology, if it can show us anything, can show the absolute impossibility of our discriminating the objective from the subjective elements. In the first place the attempt would only be possible on the ground that we could, at any time and in any way, disengage thought from its content; separate in Feeling the object, as it is, out of all relation to Sensibility, or the subject as pure subject. If we could do this in one instance we should have a basis for the investigation. The chemist who has learned to detect the existence of an acid, by its reactions in one case, can by its reactions determine it in other cases. Having experience of an acid and an alkali, each apart from the other, he can separate them when finding them combined in a salt, or he can combine them when he finds them separate. His analysis and synthesis

are possible, because he has elsewhere learned the nature of each element separately. But such analysis or synthesis is impossible with the objective and subjective elements of thought. Neither element is ever given alone. Pure thought and pure matter are unknown quantities, to be reached by no equation.'1

Thought is necessarily and universally a subject-object; matter is necessarily and universally an object-subject. The subject and the object are combined in knowledge as the acid and the basis are combined in salt.2

III.

Let us now pass on to the history properly so called. As it is, above all, dogmatic and critical, and as it has frequently given the author an opportunity for airing his own ideas, we might easily collect these fragments of a scattered doctrine and construct a whole out of them. We have, however, preferred to respect the order followed by the author. We are now going to pass rapidly through the history, rejecting the learning in favour of the ideas, especially those which belong to the domain of psychology.

In his history of ancient philosophy Mr. Lewes appears to attach himself principally to two points; the examination of theories upon knowledge and the bringing out of the negative side of doctrines. Perhaps some philosophers of the adverse schools will consider that he reads a little too favourably for his own view those old texts whose elasticity renders them easily manageable. Thus, he finds in Xenophanes at least the germs of scepticism;3 his disciple Parmenides 'had not a mere vague and general notion of the uncertainty of human knowledge. He maintained that thought was delusive, because dependent upon organization," which at least touches upon materialism. Heraclitus sees in everything only a becoming; Empedocles laments upon the uncertainty of knowledge and the frailty of human life.

Anaxagoras, 'on the great subject of the origin and certainty of our knowledge, differed from Xenophanes and Heraclitus.

1 Lewes, History of Philosophy, vol. ii. p. 483. 3 Ibid. vol. i. p. 49.

2 Ibid. vol. ii. p. 484. 4 Ibid. p. 53.

He thought, with the former, that all sense-knowledge is delusive; and with the latter, that all knowledge comes through the senses. Here is a double scepticism 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 distinguishing all the real objective elements of which things are composed. 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 observe noumena, an anticipation of the greatest discovery of psychology, though seen dimly and confusedly by Anaxagoras.'1 Mr. Lewes holds that he has made the same discovery in Democritus (p. 97, vol. i.) Whatever we may think of these interpretations, they at least prove that the author takes more seriously than we should have been inclined to think he would these first essays of philosophical thought. His heart is with the men of these ancient days, he admires them, and he cannot think without emotion of this flight of daring human indefatigable curiosity set free for the first time.

The question of the Sophists has been much discussed in our days. After Hegel, who rehabilitates Protagoras, Mr. Grote takes them in hand.2 Justice is due to every one, even to the sophists; they will not obtain it without difficulty. It is, nevertheless, clear that they were condemned upon the deposition of bitter enemies; that to judge Protagoras or Callicles according to Plato is to judge Socrates according to the Nubes. Mr. Lewes, agreeing with his compatriot, shows how far this question has been obscured and misunderstood. He does not wish to glorify the Sophists or to absolve them from all reproach, he merely asks that those who judge them should place themselves in imagination in their time :

'The Sophists were wealthy; the Sophists were powerful; the

1 Lewes, History of Philosophy, vol. i. p. 75.

2 In his work on Plato and the Socratics, and in his History of Greece, vol. viii.

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 attention of the world. The man of conviction has at all times a superb contempt for the man of mere oratorical or dialectical display. 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 persuasive language. He sees through the fallacy, but cannot make others as clear-sighted. His warning is unheeded; his wisdom is spurned; his ambition is frustrated; the popular idol is carried onward in triumph. The neglected thinker would not be human if he bore this with equanimity. He does not. He is loud and angry in lamenting the fate of a world that can be so led; loud and angry in his contempt of one who could so lead it. Should he become the critic or the historian of his age, what exactness ought we to expect in his account of the popular idol ? '

The immorality imputed to them, says Mr. Lewes, is not sustained by examination. Athens was not peopled only by architects, sculptors, poets, and philosophers; there were true citizens, human beings having human passions. How can we suppose that they have suffered it to be proclaimed and repeated that all morality is a farce and all law à quibble? That they would have permitted open blasphemy against all justice, against the basis of every social contract? Such charlatans would have inspired only ridicule or horror. And nevertheless the sophists were rich, admired, intrusted with delicate missions, sent on embassies, surrounded by rich and noble young men ; they were the intellectual leaders of their age, and if they had been what their adversaries describe them, Greece could only have been an earthly Pandemonium, where Belial was King,' 2

1 Lewes, History of Philosophy, p. 106.

2 Vol. i. p. 110.