one's feelings so keenly as poetry, especially of a devotional kind, or I am not sure that chapter of Herder's did not unconsciously operate as a disillusionizing medium by leading me to expect too much from the experiment. At any rate, I came home with a feeling of disappointment.

MRS. HARRINGTON. And with a very bad cold, you might have added, Florence.

TREVOR. No doubt Herder's is a pleasing conception very artistically wrought out, and sunrises and dew-drops are under proper conditions delightful objects of contemplation. But the freshness which accompanies the dawn, whether of science or of sunshine, and the pleasure it is thus capable of imparting, is due to the fact that it is a season of hope and expectation, and suggests the further progress and realization of which it is only the harbinger.

HARRINGTON. Besides, men with work to do in the world must have full sunshine, all the light in fact they can possibly get, though accompanied by the penalties of weariness and exhaustion. We must advance, as Cicero said, 'in solem et pulverem,' into sun and dust. That, indeed, is our position in dealing with the Eleatics. As Florence remarked, in reality if not in time, we are beyond the first dawn of Greek thought. The dew-drops and the haze of early morn are past, and the sun of Greek science is high in the heavens. Some of those fragments of Xenophanes, e.g. are quite marvellous for their audacity of speculation. They might almost stand for the utterances of a disciple of Voltaire. There can be no doubt, I should say, of his complete Skepticism.

TREVOR. True; and what is remarkable in this early specimen of free-thought-a kind of intellectual fossil embedded in primeval strata but manifesting the well-known characteristics of contemporary living species-it is evidently the outcome of considerable ratiocination. It is not the mere impulse to vent paradoxes or startling utterances in order to frighten timid people, of which Skeptics are sometimes and perhaps with justice accused. His dicta, fragmentary as they are, are evidently conclusions based upon long and laborious processes. He is not only a Skeptic, but, what is

still higher praise, he is a rational Skeptic, if you, Arundel, will allow that such an abnormal being ever existed.

ARUNDEL. Why, as to that, the union of Rationalism of a certain kind with Skepticism, both in ancient and modern times, is too distinctly marked to be successfully impugned. Indeed, the older I grow and the more I study the intellectual formations of great thinkers, the more I am persuaded that centaurs and monstrosities are rather the rule than the exception. I expect our researches will reveal quite a menagerie of abnormal combinations of this sort. No doubt Xenophanes is a genuine Skeptic to whom every established conviction suggests grounds of dissent just as naturally perhaps as the idea of another man's property suggests to a thief the desirability of its acquisition. In him the Skeptical element outweighs the rational. As to Parmenides, I confess I hesitate in pronouncing him a Skeptic. He seems to me rather a Rationalist, one who would fain make Reason the sole arbiter of truth, and who merely questions sense-impressions or popular opinions so far as they conflict with her dictates. At all events the rationalist element in his intellect is decidedly predominant.

HARRINGTON.

The predominance must depend, I take it, on the comparative weight you attach respectively to a thinker's method and his conclusions. That his method was Skeptical seems amply proved not only by his own expressions but also by his subsequent fame in Greek history. He was known to Plato and Aristotle as a Skeptical Idealist, and his very argument to prove the non-existence of motion is adopted by Sextos Empeirikos himself. Besides, he is classed among Skeptics by Plutarch and Cicero. Indeed I think it not improbable that his philosophical influence might have been more Skeptical than Idealistic, inasmuch as incredulity with respect to sensations or opinion is more easily comprehended than such an abstraction, e.g. as the Ens. I should be inclined to say the same of all systems of thought in which a Transcendental Idealism is made to depend upon processes antagonistic to or entirely dispensing with the ordinary commonsense of mankind. I have no doubt this is as true of Kant and Hegel in our own day as it was of Parmenides 500 years

B.C.

Men understand the initiatory Skepticism, and act upon it. They do not understand the ideal and mystic dogmatism of which it is ostensibly the basis. Hence it seems to me that the majority of the disciples of such teachers remain in the purgatory of Unbelief, and are not anxious to look for an Elysium the existence of which their very method has taught them to doubt.

TREVOR. Luckily for you, Harrington, there is no disciple of Hegel here to defend his master, and to repudiate with Hegelian indignation your accusation of the Skeptical tendency of his teaching which is in my judgment duly merited. It will perhaps serve to confirm your notion that Idealism is often allied with Skepticism if you observe how Greek speculation from Parmenides to Plotinos is marked by a twofold tendency to pure abstraction and unlimited negation. Of all thinking communities, Greece has originated the greatest number of Ideal systems, and has furnished the world with most Skeptics.

ARUNDEL. Add the experience of modern German speculation, in which, since Schelling and Hegel, Skepticism and Nihilism have become wildly rampant. But I don't agree with what Harrington advanced a minute ago as to men being less influenced by plain contradictions to their senses than by what transcends their reason. At least it is not true of people unsophisticated by philosophical speculation. Take Zenon, for instance, and the astounding paralogisms which he enunciated. Place before a jury of intelligent men the problem of Achilles and the tortoise, we cannot conceive their being puzzled, as certain philosophers are said to have been, by the clear absurdity of the metaphysical conclusion. They would immediately decide the question by the simple plan of solvitur ambulando, as Diogenes the cynic decided it. No other solution could be rendered comprehensible to them. The sophistries of Transcendental logic, like the absurdities of Transcendental mathematics, such men would sweep away like so many cobwebs.

MISS LEYCESTER. No doubt they would, Mr. Arundel; and give them scope and margin enough for wielding their Philistine brushes and dusters, those ordinary non-thinkers

would make short work of a few more idealities you yourself would be loth to part withal.

TREVOR. Well warned, Miss Leycester. Your proposed reductio ad absurdum, Arundel, takes the issue out of the category in which Zenon placed it. The actual consequence of pitting Achilles against the tortoise he was quite as well aware of as we are. What he postulated was the ideal standpoint of the Eleatics. Maintain as he did the fact that time. is infinitely divisible, and as a metaphysical result Achilles cannot overtake the tortoise.

MRS. HARRINGTON. To come to matters more within the limits of ordinary comprehension, I wish to ask in what way fragments of such antiquity as those of Xenophanes and Parmenides were preserved so many years before the invention of printing, and I suppose of writing as well.

TREVOR. By oral tradition. The earliest teachers of Greece, i.e. of the mythology which then stood for her history, her religion, and her popular philosophy, were wandering minstrels, not unlike perhaps the itinerant students, Goliardic poets, and Troubadours of the Middle Ages, or the ancient bards of Wales and Scotland. Hence the sayings of the earliest Greek thinkers, like those we have just considered, were first preserved in the memories of faithful disciples. With the invention and diffusion of the art of writing these utterances found a better depository in papyrus rolls, which were reverentially kept in the principal temples. Elea is said to have been one of the earliest places which could thus boast of something like a philosophical library. The first literary library of Greece of which we have authentic record was that of Peisistratos.

HARRINGTON. What an interesting place that Elea must. have been in the days of Parmenides and Zenon! It was a municipality based on principles of civic freedom, of which philosophers are the ruling spirits not only in speculation but in legislation. Parmenides, e.g. was not only the chief of its philosophic school but was also the recognised head of its civil and legal administration, a combination we can realize only inadequately by imagining the mayor of a university town, the vice-chancellor of the university, and a leading

professor-supposing the last to be what he generally is not, the greatest speculative thinker of the age-rolled into one. Plutarch tells us that Parmenides adorned his city with the best laws,' and that the magistrates were required to take an oath that they would abide by the laws of Parmenides. The same high position was also held by Zenon, who if the testimony of later writers is to be credited fell a sacrifice to his patriotism and his determination to preserve the state from tyranny. In the history of municipal government I do not know anything more interesting than this early example of civic freedom and autonomy under the shelter of high culture and philosophy. This ideally perfect arrangement has its parallels in ancient Greece,' but the nearest approach to it in modern European history is perhaps Lorenzo de' Medici in Florence, and the influence of Calvin at Geneva, neither a very satisfactory example on the score of freedom.

TREVOR. Yes, in those early days Elea might have been called the intellectual capital of Magna Græcia, the name given to the South of Italy. By a curious coincidence, too, the same neighbourhood has produced some of the foremost Italian contributors to Idealism in modern philosophy, as we shall see when we come to discuss Giordano Bruno.

HARRINGTON. Your unattached thinkers, who succeed the Eleatics, I think we must allow to stand over for the present, considering the lateness of the hour. If we except Herakleitos, who represents an Idealism which we shall meet in Oriental

The interest which the speculative thinkers of Ancient Greece took in matters of state and civic polity, and, as a consequence, their paramount influence in their respective cities, is very remarkable. Besides the instances of Parmenides and Zenon at Elea, there are the equally noteworthy examples of Empedokles at Agrigentum, Melissos at Samos, and Pyrrhon at Elis. Moreover, Thales is said to have endeavoured to combine the twelve Ionian cities of Asia Minor into a Pan-Ionic league, possibly similar to the Lombard league of the Middle Ages, or to that of the Hanse Towns of more modern times. In our own country the chief examples of the union of philosophical speculation with practical politics are Bacon, Locke and his indirect aid to the government of William III., Shaftesbury, Bentham, and John Stuart Mill. On the Continent, the enormous influence of Fichte in the war of the French Revolution, as well as of Gioberti in the Italian national movement of 1848, are unparalleled in ancient history. Cf. Curtius, Greek History, Eng. trans. ii. p. 428.