occupies the volume before us, and which may be said to aim at the development of a modern Novum Organon in the form of "a systematic introduction to the philosophy of science." But, Mr. Lewes observes, "what was intended merely as a preparation for psychology discloses itself as the foundation of a creed." The history Mr. Lewes gives of the results of his cerebral evolution and concurrent mental development will be recognised as not unlike their own by those who have freely thought out the great problems of Life and Mind. In the evolution of ideas, as in that of the organism proper, there is an order, and it would be both useful and interesting to work it out. We shall consider, however, the chief result at which Mr. Lewes aims, viz. the combination of metaphysic with positive science, since this is a fundamental characteristic of his method.

If the method of metaphysics be that of the speculative and scholastic schools, and which entirely exclude biology and physiology, then its repudiation by scientific inquirers is inevitable. But there are degrees in this respect. Besides, since the differentiation of states of consciousness is necessary for the correlative differentiation of states of brain, in so far as the metaphysical method has effected this differentiation its results may be accepted. There are, however, physicians who think that to differentiate the simplest manifestations of consciousness, such as, e. g., the corporeal sensations of heat and cold and the like, is to be "half metaphysical," and therefore speculative and unsound. In short, the slightest approach in medicine to metaphysics is denounced. Mr. Lewes endeavours, therefore, to meet current prejudices, and to place metaphysics in a new and better light. He says:

"The word Metaphysics is a very old one, and in the course of its history has indicated many very different things. To the vulgar it now stands for whatever is speculative, subtle, abstract, remote from ordinary apprehension, and the pursuit of its inquiries is secretly regarded as an eccentricity, or even a mild form of insanity. To the cultivated it sometimes means scholastic ontology, sometimes psychology pursued independently of biology, and sometimes, though more rarely, the highest generalizations of physic. It may be preserved if we separate it from its method as that which comes after physics [according to Aristotle] and embraces the ultimate generalizations of research. It thus becomes a term for the science of the most general conceptions." (p. 15).

*

From this point of view modern science is full of metaphysics, and those who most stoutly repudiate it most energetically adopt it. No better illustration of this could be given than Professor Tyndall's discourse "On the Scientific Uses of Imagination." Hence Mr. Lewes truly remarks:

109-LV.

3

"Few researches can be conducted in any one line of inquiry without sooner or later abutting on some metaphysical problem, were it only that of force, matter, or cause; and since science will not, and metaphysics cannot, solve it, the result is a patchwork of demonstration and speculation very pitiable to contemplate. Look where we will, unless we choose to overlook all that we do not understand we are mostly confronted with a meshwork of fact and fiction, observation curiously precise, besides traditions painfully absurd-a compound of sunlight and mist. Thus, in various writings we come upon Laws which compel phenomena to obey their prescription-Plans and Archetypal Ideas which shape the course of events, and give forms and functions to organisms -Forces playing about like sprites, and Atoms that are at once extraordinarily indivisible and infinitely divisible-Bodies acting where they are not, and Non-Being (pure space) endowed with physical properties, among others that of resistance (since forces, in spite of their alleged independence of matter, are supposed to be diminished by the spaces they traverse)—these and many analogous phantoms, more or less credited, too frequently hover amid phenomena and convert speculation into what Hegel, in another connection, sarcastically calls 'a true witches' circle.' Why is this? Mainly because men of science are generally trained either to ignore all metaphysical questions, or to regard them as 'mysteries which must be accepted.'" (p. 9).

Maintaining both that experience is essential to knowledge and that there is a region of inquiry which transcends the limits of experience, Mr. Lewes would name the former empirical, the latter the metempirical, region. Physics and metaphysics would then include all in the empirical region, and "deal with things and their relations as these are known to us, and as they are believed to exist in the universe. Metempirics sweeps out of this region in search of the otherness of things; seeking to behold things, not as they are in our universe-not as they are to us-it substitutes for the ideal constructions of science the ideal constructions of the imagination." Such a metempiric is Serjeant Cox.

In these views the man of culture can readily recognise old notions under new terms. In acquiring knowledge man aims at two objects-the knowledge of external nature, and the knowledge of his own nature. With Bacon, Coleridge, and others, the understanding is that faculty by which a knowledge of the former is obtained, the reason by which we acquire a knowledge of the latter. As a fact of positive science, both kinds of faculties combine in all seekings after knowledge, and reason is but a higher evolution of the understanding. Considered out of relation to brain-work, Mr. Lewes's doctrines belong to the old philosophy. From the newer point of view,

whatever method be pursued, the results are all referable to brain-functions differently exercised in different men, for there can be no knowledge and no thought whatever independently of brain-work. There must, in fact, be a certain evolution of brain, not only to attain to the power of comprehending the subtle and comprehensive inductions of science, but even to take hold of the first step in any metaphysics and in all philosophy-the knowledge of the me distinct from the not This is shown, not only in the history of the development of each individual mind, from infancy onwards, but of that of the human mind as manifest in races. The distance in this respect between the understanding of the aborigines of the hills of India and the reasoning power of the Brahmins and Bhuddists of the plains, who have sounded the thinkable depths of all philosophy, is much greater than that between the animal homo in his most degraded form and the civilised

me.

ape.

But what are the facts of experience considered as subjects of scientific inquiry, according to the method of Mr. Lewes? What is empirical, what metempirical? He will not deny that our knowledge of atoms and of energies, of evolution and reversion, of the great laws of morphology, is not direct, or that the facts are far beyond immediate observation. Nevertheless chemistry, with its atomic theories, kinetics, kinematics, and physics in general, and, although last not least, biology, have all attained a most remarkable development in modern times. Yet the hypothesis of the atomic constitution of matter is of prehistoric antiquity; nay, Mr. Lewes's own division of knowledge into the empirical and metempirical is only an ancient notion redeveloped. The old apeiron, commonly translated "the Infinite," denoted that which transcended experience, just as empeiria denoted knowledge founded on or within the range of experience. In truth, all systems of philosophy, being the result of evolutions of the human brain on the common basis of certain primary facts of consciousness, must necessarily have principles and facts in common, although having specific differences accordingly as one primary fact predominates more than another evolutionally. This being so, the inductions of biology and the conclusions of biological philosophy as to evolution of brain must be made available to the elucidation of scientific methods.

To give one or two illustrations. How do we arrive at the notion of an atom in the contradictory senses which Mr. Lewes has correctly indicated? Thus; by experience we can divide and subdivide a piece of matter until it is no longer divisible; in thought or metempirically (metaphysically) we

can further divide and subdivide ad infinitum. By applying mathematics and experiment to a solution of the question of the infinite divisibility thus raised, Sir Wm. Thompson has deduced that atoms are finite, and of a size somewhere between the 250,000,000th and the 500,000,000th (five hundred millionth) of an inch thick. Further, calling in the help of the imagination metempirically, we obtain more definite notions of the size of atoms by imagining how big the molecules of water are. According to Sir W. Thompson, if a drop of water were enlarged to the size of the earth, and proportionably therewith each of its constituent molecules, it would appear to be like a heap of things of a size between that of small shot and a cricket ball. All this is, of course, a product of pure thought. From time immemorial to the present men have theorised in this way. In the philosophy of Herbert Spencer and other atomic physicists we have only a reproduction of Lucretius and Democritus with a difference.

It may be said that mathematics is an exact science, and wholly unlike metaphysics; but it is only exact because the signs of the notions which mathematical signs represent are exactly and definitely representative, which abstract terms are not. Having its solid foundation in number, we have to inquire how the fundamental fact of number originated as an experience. Could this be otherwise that in the fundamental fact of experience that we both see and feel we are one-an individuum-an atomic thinking organism? It is thus, presumably, that I and 1 bear the same sign visually. From this point of view the Ego of the metaphysician correlates a law of life. Nor is it otherwise with the sciences of motion: what primary experience have we of motion beyond that of the power we possess to move bodies? An historical inquiry into the development of words by which the cause of motion is denoted would trace back all knowledge to this primary fact of experience. All cosmogonies, whether ancient or modern, and all philosophical systems, depend on this primary fact of experience that a man can put forth force so as to move bodies. A professor (Tait), eminent alike as a mathematician and a physicist, teaches us that the whole of the sciences of force and motion are included in this definition of Force-that when the velocity or direction of a body changes, or both change, "we naturally," he says, "attribute this to some extraneous cause. This cause of whatever nature it be, is known by the general name of force." The uses of the words "naturally" and "nature nature" are noteworthy here; by naturally is meant

'Dynamics of a Particle,' chap. i.

intuitively, by intuitions are meant fundamental conditions or elements of knowledge that come to us congenitally and independently of experience, and which have been recognised otherwise causally as " innate ideas "-instincts, &c. Biologically, they are due to properties of brain which come to us evolutionally. It is upon a like fundamental element of knowledge and fact of experience that the whole of reflective or introspective philosophy rests: we are conscious-Cogito, ergo sum. In Mr. Taylor's Primitive Culture' we may read how this fundamental fact has evolved into numerous hypotheses, theories, and systems, of philosophy, religion, and morals, varying with the varying extent of knowledge, but all of which can be classified under the general term Animism, because founded on the deduction that consciousness is due to a thing distinct from the body-"separable and separate Hamilton's words, and named soul, psyche, pneuma, anima, spirit, ghost, &c.

But another fact of experience is implied in the deduction that there is body, and still another that consciousness is intimately associated with living bodies. This may be said to come by experiment rather than by observation, for all the thinking conceivable would not suffice to assure a man that his thinking depended on his body, much less on his brains. But from the moment men found they could render others or be rendered themselves unconscious by a blow on the head experimental and somatic philosophy began. In thinking-out, therefore, by the natural method, what is the order of nature in any particular direction, every thinker must fundamentally come to the same conclusion. And so the true principles of all philosophies must be the same.

What, then, it will be asked, leads to such widely different views in philosophy? Setting errors of method aside, they arise chiefly from the different meanings attached to the words used to denote the generalisations arrived at, and more especially to the names by which generalisations as to Cause and Order are denoted. Mr. Lewes affords an instructive illustration of this point. Quoting Newton's well-known denunciation of hypotheses, he remarks that in the very passage which follows "he (Newton) has no hesitation in propounding a view which in these days must startle the most speculative by its wildness' (p. 52). The wildness is only in the use of the word "spirit" to denote a cause; substitute the word "energy and Newton's hypothesis is a remarkable anticipation of modern scientific research. We quote it thus amended:

دو

"And now we might add something concerning a most subtle