Revival Reformation Classics: Can Change the World Again.

A Critical History of Philosophy.

BY

REV. ASA MAHAN, D.D., LL.D.,

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. I. & II.

FOREWORD BY THE EDITOR AND PUBLISHER.

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BOOK V.

THE MODERN EVOLUTION IN PHILOSOPHY.

INTRODUCTION.

What is denominated the Modern Evolution in Philosophy begins with Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1636), who is regarded as the author of the inductive method in science. To comprehend the Evolution under consideration, we must attain to a clear and distinct understanding of the true idea of science, on the one hand, and of the method in science really developed by Bacon on the other. 'The sciences,' says Bacon, 'have hitherto been in a most sad condition. Philosophy, wasted in empty and fruitless logomachies, has failed during so many centuries to bring out a single work or experiment of actual benefit to human life. Logic hitherto has served more to the establishment of error than to the investigation of truth. Whence all this? Why this penury of the sciences? Simply because they have broken away from their root in nature and experience. The blame of this is chargeable to many sources; first, the old and rooted prejudice that the human mind loses somewhat of its dignity when it busies itself much and continuously with experiments and material things; next, superstition and blind religious zeal, which has been the most irreconcilable opposer to Natural Philosophy; again, the exclusive attention paid to morals and politics by the Romans, and since the Christian Era to theology by every acute mind; still farther, the great authority which certain philosophers have professed, and the great reverence given to antiquity; and, in fine, a want of courage and a despair of overcoming the many and great difficulties which lie in the way of the investigation of nature. All these causes have contributed to keep down the sciences. Hence they must now be renewed and regenerated and reformed in their most fundamental principles; there must be found a new basis of knowledge and new principles of science. This radical reformation of the sciences depends on two conditions; objectively upon the referring of science to experience and the Philosophy of nature, and subjectively upon the purifying the sense and the intellect from all abstract theories and traditional prejudices. Both conditions furnish the correct method of natural science, which is nothing other than the method of induction. Upon a true induction depends all the soundness of the sciences.'

The validity of the above statements will not be questioned by any individual who is well read in the history of the sciences up to the time of Bacon. In none of the Schools of Philosophy up to this period, as we have said on a former occasion, had a single principle been developed which was of any practical value to mankind, nor a single deduction reached which the race had accepted as true, and about which philosophers themselves were not engaged in endless disputations. All, as Bacon states, was owing to a fundamentally false method which had obtained in all these schools. The question which here arises is this: has the procedure of the Modern Evolution been in fixed accordance with the right method? If we should refer to the Pure Sciences, we should say that the fixed method, in conformity to which they have been developed throughout, has been faultless and perfect. The same remark holds equally true in regard to certain of the Mixed Sciences, such, for example, as Astronomy, Chemistry, Physiology, and Natural Philosophy. Should we recur, however, to Metaphysics, Morals, Cosmology, Ontology, and Ultimate Causation, we should find that the methods which very largely obtain here are as old as those of Vayasa, Kapila, Kanada, and Gautama Buddha, that thought is moving now in the same identical circles as then, and is reaching no new deductions. When we shall have critically examined the principles and method of induction and deduction developed by Bacon, we shall also find them essentially imperfect, and adapted, if strictly followed, to mislead the scientific inquirer instead of giving the right direction to his inductions and deductions. When we shall have accomplished all that Bacon proposes, we shall find ourselves merely at the threshold of the temple of real science, instead of standing amidst the great revelations of the inner sanctuary. All these statements we shall have fully verified when we shall have developed the true idea and method of real science, and shall afterwards in their light have examined those of Bacon.

The True Idea of Science.

Science has been defined 'as knowledge systematized.' As Philosophy, the aim of science, is not to reveal mere facts as they are, but to answer the question why are the facts of the universe as they are and not otherwise. True science has its principles, facts, and deductions, and all as objects of valid knowledge. Every true system of science or Philosophy will be constituted exclusively of principles known to be absolutely valid, of facts known to be real, and of deductions necessarily resulting from said principles and facts and known as thus resulting. To render all this perfectly plain, permit us to invite very special attention to the following definitions and discriminations.

Necessary Ideas and General Notions or Conceptions distinguished.

Among thinkers of the Transcendental School especially, much is said about the distinction between ideas (necessary ideas), that of time or space, for example, and general conceptions, such as are represented by the term man, animal, or creature. While this discrimination is made, the essential characteristics which separate these phenomena of thought from each other are not generally understood. Let us see if we cannot apprehend the reason and ground of this discrimination.

1. The reality represented by a necessary idea is apprehended as really existing, with the impossibility of even conceiving of its non-existence. The object represented by a general conception, on the other hand, we may conceive to exist, but always with the conscious possibility of conceiving of its non-existence. Thus we apprehend the object of the idea represented by the term space or duration as a reality in itself, and that with the conscious impossibility of conceiving of its non-existence. In other words, we absolutely know that space and duration do and must exist. On the other hand, the object of the conception represented by the term man we apprehend as a reality, with the conscious possibility of conceiving of its non-existence. This distinction obtains universally between necessary ideas and general notions or conceptions.

2. All the elements which enter into and constitute a general conception are given by perception, external or internal. The object and characteristics of a necessary idea, on the other hand, are not perceived at all, but are always given as implied by what we perceive. Thus, the qualities represented by the term body are all consciously given by perception. Space, however, is not an object of perception at all, but is consciously given as a reality whose existence is implied by body, which is perceived to exist. The same holds true in all similar cases. We perceive, for example, succession, qualities, and events, and apprehend time, substance, and cause as realities whose existence is implied by facts which we perceive to be real.

3. All the elements which enter into and constitute a general conception, actually exist in every individual of the class which that conception represents. The elements of the conception represented by the term man, for example, actually exist in every individual of the race. So in all other cases. The reality represented by a necessary idea, on the other hand, exists by itself alone, and while it may be related to other realities, it can be compared, but by contrast, with no other. What other reality, for example, is like space or time? So of the terms substance and cause. Each represents a reality which can be compared with nothing else but itself. Necessary ideas can be compared with each other but relatively to our necessary mode of conceiving of their objects, never as realities in themselves.

4. An induction of a large number of individual objects is requisite to develop in the mind a general conception. The perception of a single fact is all that is requisite to develop a necessary idea. A vast number of individual men must have been perceived before the idea represented by the term man could have been originated in the mind. The moment the mind perceived a single body, fact of succession, phenomenon, or event, reason apprehended, not in its abstract, but concrete form, space, time, substance, and cause. The same holds true universally. The perceived cannot be apprehended at all, without the apprehension of the implied.

5. The faculty which gives us necessary ideas is entirely distinct and separate from those which furnish the elements that constitute general conceptions. The faculties which furnish the constituent elements of general conception are two—external and internal perception, or Sense and Consciousness. The faculty which gives us necessary ideas is reason, the faculty of implied knowledge. Through Sense and Consciousness we perceive phenomena, qualities, events; through reason we apprehend Space, Time, Substance, and Cause, realities implied by facts perceived. The distinction, then, between necessary ideas and general notions or conceptions, is wide, fundamental, and palpable, a distinction which true science will not fail to recognize.

Necessary Judgments Intuitively True, and General Judgments, or Propositions.

Equally manifest and fundamental is the distinction between universal and necessary judgments which have intuitive certainty, judgments such, for example, as Body implies space; Succession, time; Phenomena, substance; Events, a cause; and Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another, and general propositions, such as, All men are mortal, and All organized substances are subject to decay and dissolution. Among these distinctions, we notice the following:

1. Universal and necessary intuitive judgments we apprehend as true, with the absolute impossibility of conceiving of their not being true; that is, we not only intuitively know that such judgment is true, but also that it must be true, and by no possibility can be false. This, for example, is the fixed character of all the necessary judgments above adduced. We know absolutely, not only that the judgments, Body implies space; Succession, time; Phenomena, substance; and Events, a cause, are true, but equally that they must be true. In other words, the relation affirmed to exist between the subject and predicate in all such judgments is consciously perceived to be an absolutely necessary one.

General judgments, on the other hand, are apprehended as true, with the conscious possibility of conceiving of their non-truth. The judgment, for example, All men are mortal, we apprehend as true. Yet we can conceive that the facts of the case might be different from what they are. In all such judgments, in other words, the affirmed connection between the subject and predicate is apprehended as a real, but not as a necessary one.

2. In all general judgments, the elements represented by the predicate are contained in the subject as essential qualities and characteristics of the same. When we say, for example, that all men are animals, if all the qualities represented by the term animals did not exist in every man, the proposition before us would not be true. The same holds true of all such judgments.

In all necessary and intuitive judgments, on the other hand, the predicate represents a reality not contained at all in the subject, but sustaining a certain relation to the subject. In the judgment, for example, Body implies space, the predicate represents a reality not contained in, but which sustains a certain relation to, the subject. In other words, body and space are two realities distinct from each other, but which are intuitively apprehended as sustaining necessary relations to each other, and those identical relations affirmed in the judgment to exist between them. The same holds true in all such judgments.

3. Hence we remark, in the next place, that while in general judgments the elements represented by the predicate are contained in the reality represented by the subject, in all necessary intuitive judgments the subject represents a reality which necessarily implies the existence of the reality represented by the predicate in the same judgment. The ground of the validity of a general judgment, as we have seen, is the fact that the predicate represents essential elements contained in the subject. If all the qualities represented by the term animal did not exist in every man, the proposition, All men are animals, would not be true. The ground of the necessary intuitive validity of a necessary judgment, on the other hand, is the fact, not that the subject contains, but that it of necessity implies, the predicate. If body, for example, could exist, and space not be a reality, the judgment or proposition, Body implies space, would not be true.

4. When we reason from a general judgment as a principle in the argument, we gain no new truth whatever. Take as an example the following syllogism: All men are animals. John is a man. Therefore, he is an animal. It is self-evident here that if we did not know at the outset that John is an animal, we should not know that the proposition, All men are animals, is true. The argument, then, gives us no truth not previously known. The same does and must hold true in all cases in which we reason from such judgments or propositions as principles. In all cases, on the other hand, in which we reason from a necessary judgment as the principle in the argument, we gain a new truth. Two objects are before us, of the relations of which, as equal or unequal to one another, we are ignorant; and we are unable to compare them directly the one with the other. We can, however, compare each of them with one and the same object. Having made the comparison, we reason thus: Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another; these objects are each equal to the same thing; therefore, they are equal to one another. Again, Whenever of two objects one agrees, and the other disagrees with the same object, they disagree with each other. Of these two objects, one does and the other does not agree with the same object; therefore, they disagree with each other. Our principle in each of the above arguments is a necessary judgment, a judgment in which the subject implies the predicate, and in each case we reach a truth of which we were before ignorant. The same, from the nature of the case, must hold true in all instances in which we legitimately reason from a self-evident and necessary proposition, as the principle in the argument.

5. We now adduce a distinction of the most fundamental importance in science. We refer to the distinct and opposite law pertaining to the distribution of terms, which obtains in reference to these two classes of judgments. With general judgments, while all universal propositions distribute the subject, all negatives and no affirmatives distribute the predicate. With necessary principles all universals, both negative and affirmative alike, distribute both terms. Conversion of universal affirmative propositions of the former class is always by limitation; as, All men are mortal—some mortal beings are men. Conversion in the case of universal affirmative principles, on the other hand, is in all cases simple; as, Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another—things equal to one another are equal to the same thing. The same holds true of all universal affirmative deductions based upon such principles. The Logics hitherto studied in the schools, with almost no exceptions, rest upon an utterly false basis in the respects under consideration, and tend fundamentally to mislead the student in science.

6. Hence, we remark finally that while necessary judgments may, we do not now say always must, be employed as principles in science, mere general propositions can never be legitimately thus employed. Under the latter, as our principles, we can make no progress in knowledge whatever. Under the former we may be perpetually reaching, and legitimately too, deductions containing forms of new and vital truth. The above considerations sufficiently evince the fundamental distinctions between these two classes of judgments or propositions.

Distinguishing Characteristics of Necessary Principles.

We have, in a former part of this treatise, given the distinguishing characteristics of necessary intuitive judgments. As necessary to the end now in view, we repeat here what was there presented. On what conditions, then, do we intuitively perceive a necessary connection between the subject and predicate in a given judgment or proposition? On the following, and only on these, we answer.

1. When the subject is identical with the predicate, as in the judgment, A is A. Whatever A may be, A must be equal to, and identical with, itself. These are tautological, or identical, judgments, and are of course of little or no use in science.

2. When the predicate represents not an accidental, but an essential characteristic or element of the subject, as in the judgment, All bodies have extension. Body would not be body if it had not this quality. If it exist at all, it must have this quality. All such judgments, therefore, which may be denominated indicative, or rather explicative judgments, must possess intuitively necessary validity.

3. The same must hold equally true in all cases in which we intuitively perceive that the subject does and must imply the predicate. We all know, and must know, for example, that if space does not, body cannot, exist. We all know with equal absoluteness, consequently, that if body does exist, space must exist. We therefore intuitively recognize the absolute and necessary validity of the judgment, Body implies space, the subject in this judgment implying the predicate. In all cases of this kind, as in such judgments as Succession implies time; Phenomena, substance; Events, a cause; and Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another, an intuitively necessary connection exists between the subject and predicate, and the judgment must be valid. Such judgments may be denominated implicative judgments.

4. The only remaining class of intuitively necessary judgments are those in which there intuitively exists, between the subject and predicate, the relation of absolute incompatibility, or contradiction, and the judgment affirms this contradiction. The ideas of existence and of nonexistence are undeniably thus incompatible. Hence the judgment, It is impossible that the same object should, at the same moment, exist and not exist, does and must possess intuitively necessary validity. All such may be denominated incompatible judgments.

Careful reflection will absolutely evince the fact that all self-evident or intuitively necessary judgments do and must belong to one of the four classes above designated; no other relations of intuitively necessary connection between the subject and predicate, in a given judgment, being conceivable, and therefore possible. We have, then, criteria of absolute validity—criteria by which we can, with infallible certainty, determine the real character of every judgment or proposition which is set forth as having self-evident, that is, necessary validity. In every such judgment the subject will and must be identical with the predicate—or the predicate must represent an essential element of the subject—or the subject must imply, or be absolutely incompatible with, the predicate. Any proposition set forth as intuitively or self-evidently true, and not having some one of the above characteristics, is to be repudiated as a lawless assumption. We shall find the above criteria to be of fundamental importance in our future investigations.

Fundamental Error of Kant in respect to Necessary Intuitive Judgments.

'In all judgments,' says Kant, 'wherein the relation of a subject to a predicate is thought (if I only consider the affirmative, as the application to the negative is afterwards easy), this relationship is possible in two ways. Either the predicate B belongs to the subject A, as something which is contained in the conception A (in a covert manner), or B lies completely out of the conception, although it stands in connection with it. In the first case I name the judgment analytical, and in the other synthetical.' Of the former class, he adduces such judgments as 'All bodies are extended.' 'I need not,' he says truly, 'go out beyond the conception to find extension connected with it.' 'It is therefore an analytical judgment.' Among the latter he reckons such judgments as this, 'Everything which happens has its cause.' 'The conception of cause,' he says with equal truth, 'lies quite out of the first conception, and indicates something different from that which happens, and is not, therefore, at all contained in this latter representation.' All such propositions, he affirms, are consequently synthetical. The validity of analytical judgments, he further affirms, is discernible 'by means of the principle of contradiction;' that is, we should deny our own necessary conception of body if we should affirm that all bodies are not extended. This is not true, he adds, of synthetical judgments. No such judgment is discernible, he affirms, 'by means of the principle of contradiction.' 'Although a synthetical proposition may at all times be discerned by means of the principle of contradiction, yet only in this way, inasmuch as another synthetical proposition is presupposed from which it can be deduced, but never of itself.' According to this thinker, all analytical, and no synthetical, judgments have self-evident validity. The latter class of judgments, consequently, can have not an absolute, but only a relative validity, and as all the sciences rest ultimately upon such judgments, said sciences, in all their principles and deductions, are not absolutely, but only relatively true. Such is the universal doctrine of Transcendentalism. Here we meet with errors utterly subversive to all correct ideas of true science, and as utterly contradictory to facts as affirmed by the universal consciousness.

1. The validity of all synthetical judgments of the class now under consideration, in common with all of Kant's analytical judgments, is in fact, and equally so, discernible, and that of themselves 'by means of the principle of contradiction.' To be conscious of the fact that a denial of the proposition, All bodies have extension, is a contradiction, we must reflect upon the ideas represented by the term 'body,' on the one hand, and the term 'extension,' on the other. We then become distinctly conscious of the fact that the denial under consideration absolutely contradicts our essential conceptions both of body and extension, and of the immutable relations which must exist between them. Take now the judgment, Body implies space, one of our author's synthetical judgments. When we reflect upon the idea represented by the term 'body,' on the one hand, and on that represented by the term 'space,' on the other, we become equally and absolutely conscious that it no more denies our fundamental idea of body to affirm that it has not extension, than it does to affirm that it does not imply space. The affirmed relation between the subject and predicate is no more consciously absolute and necessary in the one case than it is in the other. The same holds true of all synthetical judgments of the class now under consideration. Our ideas of body, succession, phenomena, and events, on the one hand, and of space, time, substance, and cause, on the other, would not and could not be what they are if body did not imply space, succession, time, phenomena, substance, and events, a cause. The absolute validity of all primitive synthetical, as well as all analytical judgments, as both are defined by Kant, is in fact and form equally 'discernible' 'by means of the principle of contradiction.' The relation between the subject and predicate is just as consciously necessary in an implied, and also in an incompatible, as it is in an identical judgment. In denying this our author has started the scientific inquirer after truth upon the fatal track of fundamental error; a greater error in science being hardly possible than this now under consideration.

2. Kant has himself, in fact and form, admitted that the validity of every synthetical judgment of the class under consideration is 'of itself' 'discerned by means of the principle of contradiction,' just as that of analytical judgments is thus discerned. Our author, it should be borne in mind, denies absolutely that either time or space exist as realities in themselves, and that out of the mind they have [no] reality at all; but in the mind, as laws of thought, 'the subjective conditions of sensible intuition.' The same he affirms of space. 'We can therefore,' he says, 'only from the point of view as men speak of space, extended beings, etc. If we abandon the subjective condition under which we alone can receive external intuition, that is to say, the way we are affected by objects, the representation of space means nothing.' But does he also admit the necessary connection between the subject and predicate in all synthetical judgments of the class under consideration? Let us listen to his own words. 'Against this theory, which accords to Time empirical reality, but contends against absolute and transcendental, I have heard from perspicacious men so unanimous an objection that I have collected from it, that such naturally presents itself to every reader who is unaccustomed to those considerations. It runs thus: Changes are real (the alteration of our own representations shows this, although we should deny all external phenomena together with their changes). Now these changes are only possible in time, consequently Time is something real. The answer presents no difficulty. I concede the whole argument.' Here, then, he admits, in fact and form, the absolute validity of the synthetical judgment, Change, or Succession, implies time. In the same manner he admits the necessary connection between the subject and predicate in the synthetical judgment, Body implies space, and in all other similar judgments. He has, therefore, affirmed and denied, and that in the same sense, that the validity of such judgments is, 'by itself,' discerned on the principle of contradiction. In other words, the has, and in the same sense, affirmed and denied that synthetical judgments, in common with analytical, as he has himself defined both, have in themselves necessary certainty. Our philosopher, then, contrary to his prior asseverations, does admit the validity of the axioms, Body implies space, and Succession, time. How does be get rid of the deduction that space and time exist as realities in themselves? By denying reality of body, on the one hand, and of change or succession, on the other. 'Nothing generally which is perceived in space is a thing in itself.' Again, 'I have really the representation of Time, and of my determinations in it. It is therefore not to be looked at really as object, but as the mode of representation of myself as object. But if I myself could invisage myself, or if any other being (could invisage) me, without this condition of sensibility, the self-same determinations which we represent to ourselves as changes would then afford us a cognition, in which the representation of time, and consequently of change, would not at all occur.' To be Transcendental philosophers ourselves, and to admit the truth of the Transcendental doctrine, we must then not only deny the reality of space and time, which Kant elsewhere affirms we cannot deny, and also the existence of all realities in space and time, but in opposition to the absolute dictates of our own consciousness, must deny the reality of all changes anywhere, and all successive experiences in ourselves. Rather than take such a leap into 'the palpable obscure' of the absurd and ridiculous, we shall freely consent to disown the cognomen of philosopher, and to admit our utter want of 'the faculty of intellectual intuition,' 'the vernunst,' and 'Intellectuelle Auschauung,' by which we can affirm and deny the same things, deny all change in nature around us, and all successive experiences in ourselves, affirm the absolute impossibility of conceiving Space and Time not to be realities in themselves, and the identical realities which we apprehend them to be, and then affirm that they are not realities in themselves, and are in fact mere 'subjective laws of sensible intuition.' Such, however, is the system in all its forms, the system which we are hereafter to examine.

3. We have not yet presented the greatest error of Kant in his exposition of the character of synthetical judgments. In all such judgments the subject represents an object of perception and the predicate a reality whose existence is implied by the object perceived. We perceive body, changes, or succession, phenomena, qualities, and events, and apprehend space, time, substance, and cause as implied by what is perceived. Now, no proposition can be more self-evidently true than this, that the perceived must have been in the mind before the implied. If space, time, substance, and cause were apprehended before body, succession, quality, and events, then the former would be known by themselves, and not as they now are, as implied by the latter. According to Kant and the Transcendental Philosophy universally, the implied is always known and apprehended before the perceived, and determines the latter. 'The receptivity (capacity) of the subject to be affected by objects,' says Kant, 'necessarily precedes all intuitions of these objects,' and this receptivity, be says, 'is a pure intuition which bears the name of Space.' Precisely similar statements he makes in regard to ideas of change or succession and time. His fundamental doctrine, we repeat, is that in the order of origination in the mind, the ideas of time and space precede those of succession and body, and determine the same. Now here is a fundamental mistake. The apprehension of that which is known and conceived of, but as implied by something else, cannot have been thought of in the mind before the latter was. We know and can think of time, space, substance, and cause, but as realities whose existence is implied by succession, body, quality, and events which we perceive. The perception of the latter, therefore, must have preceded and determined the apprehension of the former. Kant and the Transcendental Philosophy undeniably reverse the order of universal experience, putting the antecedent in the place of the consequent, and the determined in the place of that which determines. Nothing can be more evident, we repeat, than is the fact that that which implies determines the implied, and not the latter the former, and that the former must have been in the mind before the latter.

4. Kant and the Transcendental Philosophy universally, we remark finally, have given a fundamentally false answer to the question, 'How are synthetical judgments à priori possible?' His opposition of their possibility, the only one conceivable as he affirms, is this. The idea of the predicate must have been in the mind before that of subject, and the former must have determined the latter. 'They (Time and Space),' he says, 'are, for instance, both taken together, pure forms of sensible intuition, and thereby make synthetical judgments à priori possible.' On no other condition, he repeatedly assures us, are such judgments possible. Here again is a fundamental error in science. If we have, as we consciously do have, the capacity to perceive body, for example, and then to apprehend space as implied by what we have perceived, then the apprehended relation between the perceived and implied would be an absolutely necessary one, and we should have, as we now do have, the à priori synthetical judgment, Body implies space The same must hold equally in respect to all such judgments. There are two conditions, therefore, on which 'synthetical judgments à priori are possible,' that given by Kant and the Transcendental Philosophy, and that given above, with this difference, that the latter does and the former does not accord with undeniable facts of conscious experience. In whatever light we contemplate the exposition given by Kant and by the Transcendental Philosophy of the doctrine of analytical and synthetical judgments, we are constrained to affirm that exposition to be fundamentally false, and utterly subversive of true science. As that exposition must be true, or Transcendentalism in all its forms must be utterly false, the system itself must 'vanish into naught.' No system can have a basis more utterly insubstantial and visionary. The above exposure will be found to be of fundamental importance in our future criticisms.

Relations of General and Synthetical Judgments to Science.

Kant has rightly affirmed that synthetical judgments à priori lie as principles at the basis of all the sciences. The reason is obvious. Through no other judgments as principles can we obtain deductions which would have logical validity or would not involve the error of petitio principli. What inference, for example, is deducible from a tautological judgment, such a A = A? Nothing can be yielded by such judgments beyond the judgments themselves. Explicative judgments, such as, All bodies are extended, can do no more than develop in the mind distinct apprehensions of the essential qualities of body, and thus prepare the way for scientific deduction. When, also, we reason from general judgments as principles, as, All men are mortal; John is a man, therefore he is mortal, no new truth pertaining to John is developed, nor is our conviction of the fact of his mortality in the remotest degree increased or diminished. When, on the other hand, we reason from a synthetical judgment as principle, we always, as we have before shown, advance our knowledge of truth. We say, for example, Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another. A and B are each equal to C; therefore they are equal to one another. In all such cases we obtain scientific deductions unknown before. Nor can we by any possibility obtain valid scientific deductions on any other conditions. Every deduction must be evincible by an ultimate reference to an à priori synthetical judgment—a judgment in which, by necessary intuition, the subject implies or is incompatible with the predicate. When we carefully examine the axioms and postulates which lie at the basis of any valid science; we find all its principles to be of this exclusive character. No deduction can have greater certainty than the principle on which it ultimately rests. One deduction may rest immediately upon another deduction. Both in common, however, must be evincible by an ultimate reference to synthetical judgments or principles of the character now under consideration. We have, then, our infallible tests or criteria of all valid axioms or principles in science. In all such principles the subject must necessarily imply, or be incompatible with, the predicate. All systems, by whatever names supported, or in whatever form developed—systems, not resting upon these identical judgments as principles—are logical fictions and nothing else.

Facts of Science.

Science in all its forms, as we have seen, consists of principles known to be possessed of universal and necessary validity—of facts known, with equal absoluteness, to be real, and of deductions necessarily arising from such principles and facts. Deductions of this exclusive class, and none others, take legitimate rank as truths of science. The criteria by which we may, with infallible certainty—criteria which we must rigidly employ, if we would attain to true, and not false science—the criteria, we say, by which we may with absolute certainty distinguish valid principles in science from all other judgments, we have already given—to wit, judgments in which the subject and predicate are consciously connected by necessary implication, the subject implying the predicate, or in which the subject and predicate are consciously separated by necessary incompatibility, the subject being incompatible with the predicate, and the judgment affirming this incompatibility, as in the judgment, 'It is impossible for the same object at the same moment to exist and not to exist.' Every system not having for its principles one or the other, or both of these classes of judgments, is, we repeat, a logical fiction. Facts which have legitimate place in science must be the conscious objects of valid knowledge. No one will doubt the absolute validity of this principle. If facts not thus known may be adduced, then science would not be knowledge systematized. To distinguish such facts from all others affirmed to be real, we insist have valid criteria by which we can with perfect certainty distinguish the former from the latter. If we have no such criteria, science is undeniably impossible. The existence of such criteria, together with their immutable characteristics, has already been demonstrated. We will here specify but three of these criteria—to wit, Knowledge consciously direct and immediate; Apprehensions common to all minds, and which in all minds ever remain one and the same, and subject to no change or modification, like our apprehensions of a circle or square; and Apprehensions of the validity of which all minds have an absolutely conscious certainty. Suppose that we have facts which are the objects of knowledge consciously direct and immediate—facts of which all minds are and must be possessed of the same identical apprehensions, apprehensions ever remaining immutably the same, without change or modification, and which are to all minds objects of consciously certain knowledge, 'a certainty which remains proof against all grounds and arguments' for its subversion. We must admit all such facts and none others into our system, and construct it in absolute conformity to said facts, or waste our powers in the construction of systems of 'science falsely so called.' Suppose that we are in the presence of diverse classes of facts, of all of which our knowledge possesses all the evidence of validity under consideration. If we take them all into account, and determine in their light our system of universal Being and its laws, one exclusive system—the Theistic, for example, will necessarily arise as the only true one. If we ignore or deny the reality of one class, and determine our theory in the light of the other, another and opposite system results. If we attempt 'by grounds and arguments' to disprove the reality of either class of facts, or the validity of our knowledge of the same, our efforts must fail utterly, as no forms of knowledge can have greater certainty than those possessed of the above characteristics. In despair of reaching the end desired through the Intelligence, which is strictly impossible in all such cases, we turn to the Will, and 'by an act of' (miscalled) 'scientific Scepticism to which we voluntarily determine ourselves,' we ignore and deny the validity of our knowledge of one of these classes of facts, and base our system upon the other. What have we now? A system, we answer, undeniably based, not upon intellectual, but Will data, and nothing else. Or finally, we in our voluntarily determined Scepticism deny the validity of our knowledge both in its subjective and objective forms, and base our systems, as the Sceptics do, upon 'airy nothing,' and locate it nowhere. In such a case we have a system which, by hypothesis, is no system at all. If we in our voluntarily determined Scepticism ignore or deny the validity of knowledge in its objective or subjective forms, our system must locate itself in the sphere of Materialism or Idealism in some specific form, as the case may be. If we voluntarily determine ourselves to 'a scientific Scepticism' in respect to knowledge in both forms, then we are Sceptics, and construct our system from unknown and unknowable materials, and locate it nowhere and in no time. In all the three cases the Will and not the Intelligence undeniably determines our principles, facts and deductions. It is full time that the world should distinctly understand that it is now admitted and affirmed, not merely by the race, but by philosophers of all schools, that within the sphere of the Intelligence no 'grounds or arguments' can be found to invalidate our knowledge of Matter, Spirit, Time, or Space, and that if we deny the validity of our knowledge of any of these realities, it must be by 'a scientific Scepticism to which we voluntarily determine ourselves,' that is, our denial must be, not an act of the Intelligence, but of the Will. Idealism, not by dicta of the Intelligence, but by a blind fiat of Will, denies the validity of knowledge in its objective, and affirms it in its subjective form. Materialism, in the same manner, denies the validity of knowledge in its subjective, and affirms it in its objective form. These affirmations and denials in both forms are made in respect to forms of knowledge undeniably possessed of the same identical characteristics; in other words, fundamental distinctions are made where no differences exist. Scepticism, in impeaching the validity of our knowledge both of Matter and Spirit, and confining it exclusively to phenomena, affirms absolutely the absurdity that consciously known phenomena imply nothing, that is, that Body does not imply space, nor Succession time, nor Phenomena substance, nor Events a cause; nor that the fact that Things are equal to the same thing implies their equality one to the other.

Immutable Condition on which the Validity of Original Intuition in any Form can be Invalidated.

That we have an intuitive perception of our own spirit as exercising the functions of thought, feeling, and willing, and of matter as an exterior substance possessed of the qualities of extension and form, even philosophers of all schools admit. On what condition can the invalidity of such intuitions be verified? On one condition exclusively, as we have formerly shown. There must be adduced a form of knowledge absolutely incompatible with the validity of such intuitions, a form, of knowledge of the validity of which we are and must be more absolutely certain than we are or can be of the truth of said intuitions. Is it conceivable that such a form of incompatible knowledge can be adduced? Can we be more rationally certain of the truth of any proposition than each individual is and must be of that of the judgments, I think, I feel, I will, and Matter is directly and immediately before me as an exterior substance possessed of the qualities of extension and form? Suppose that on an analysis of our apprehensions of the self and not-self certain inexplicable difficulties and apparent contradictions should be present in such apprehensions. Can we be more certain, or as certain of the validity of our analysis, as we are and must be of the reality of the self and not-self, and of the certainty of our conscious knowledge of the same? If this were the case, such analysis would for ever displace these apprehensions from human regard. We should no more think of the self and not-self as real existences, of the self as thinking, feeling, and willing, and of matter as possessed of extension and form, than we do of the earth as being a vast plain, and not a globe. The undeniable fact that our analysis, when most fully perfected, leaves our apprehensions and convictions in respect to the self and not-self exactly as they were before, demonstrates absolutely the utter invalidity of that analysis in the matter of disproof. The same does and must hold true of all forms of disproof that by any possibility can be adduced.

Criteria of Valid Deduction in Science.

No deduction, however fixed its connection with its premises, can have higher validity than its premises have. The character of all valid premises and facts has been determined. When do premises yield deductions which possess scientific validity? To this question we answer:

1. The principle being valid, there must be ranged under it all the facts bearing upon the case, none being supposed which are not, and none being omitted which are real. The induction of a single fact not real, or the omission of one which is real, would utterly vitiate the whole procedure.

2. The deduction must fully accord with and account for all the facts bearing upon the case. A single fact incompatible with and not fully explicable by this deduction demonstrates its invalidity.

3. All the facts under consideration must not only be compatible with and explicable by this deduction or hypothesis, but must be equally incompatible with and inexplicable by every opposite deduction or hypothesis. Any class of facts equally explicable by and compatible with two or more distinct and opposite hypotheses, not only fails utterly to prove one in opposition to either of the others, but makes no approach whatever towards proof in any direction.

Conditions of Refutation.

An argument is refuted when it is fully evinced that either premise is invalid, and invalid in any of the forms above explained, or that the deduction has no valid connection with said premises. If it should be shown, for example, that the argument is based upon a wrongly assumed principle—upon a false or partial induction of facts, that all the facts are equally compatible with and explicable by some other and opposite deduction or hypothesis, or that the deduction has no necessary connection with the premises; in either case the deduction has not been proven false, but the argument itself has been utterly invalidated. As laws of scientific induction and deduction, the above conditions of refutation are of the highest importance.

Conditions of Disproof.

Refutation is one thing, disproof is quite another. When an argument has been fully refuted, we have simply evinced the fact that a given deduction or hypothesis, which may be true or false, has been illogically inferred. A deduction or hypothesis has been disproved when it has been evinced, not that it has no valid basis in given premises, but that it is in itself false. This end is accomplished on the following conditions—to wit (we quote from the chapter on the Doctrine of Method in The Science of Logic):

' 1. In case it is a universal proposition, proving its contrary to be true. The proposition is then proved to be false in all its extent.

' 2. Proving its contradictory to be true. In this case, if the proposition is a particular one, it is proven false in all its extent; if it is a universal proposition, it is proven false in that particular form.

' 3. By showing it to be self-contradictory. No such proposition can by any possibility be true.

' 4. By proving that its truth is incompatible with some other proposition known to be true.

' Thus, in law, an alibi undeniably established absolutely disproves any crime charged upon an individual, the fact of his being in another place at the time being absolutely incompatible with the truth of the charge referred to.

' Some propositions may be proven false in one form and some in another, and success in such efforts often depends wholly upon a clear discernment of the form demanded in the particular case under discussion, and the direction of the entire argument upon that one point. How often, for example, is utterly useless and hopeless labour expended in an attempt to prove the opposite of a universal proposition, when nothing is required in the circumstances but proof of its contradictory, the latter being of very easy accomplishment and the former equally difficult, if not impossible.'

A proposition, it should be borne in mind, has been proven to be incompatible with known truth when it has been shown to be contradictory to some self-evidently necessary, intuitively perceived, or clearly demonstrated: truth. An individual professes, for example, to have found valid evidence in disproof of the validity of the necessary intuitive judgment, Phenomena imply substance, or Every event has a cause. What does he profess in such a case? He professes to have found some judgment incompatible with one or the other of these—a judgment more certain than one, not only known to be true, but known equally to be necessarily so. We know that they are and must be true. In other words, Kant professes to prove, and requires us to believe that be has found, a deduction resting upon principles and facts more certain than are judgments which, as he admits and all are conscious, must be true.

To us nothing can be more evident than is the fact that objects are really in motion around us, and that changes, at least in our inward experience, are real and successive. Yet, 'by a series of dependent propositions,' none of which can be so obviously true as is the fact of motion and change, Kant and modern scientists have reached and required us to assent to the validity of the deduction that 'in space, considered in itself, there is nothing movable,' and that in time, as it is in itself, there can be no such thing as change or successive events. In other words, Kant and his school profess to find propositions more certain to us than is the conscious fact that we are in a world of motion and change, and that events within and around us are really successive. Do we need to ponder and weigh arguments whose deductions so palpably contradict such palpably conscious facts?

Objections to a Given Proposition or Hypothesis, when Valid.

'Against almost every hypothesis on almost any subject' (we quote again from The Science of Logic) 'not falling within the sphere of absolute demonstration, very plausible objections may be urged.' Hence a very important inquiry arises—to wit, When shall an objection to any given hypothesis be considered as valid, that is, as conclusive against the truth of said hypothesis? All such objections will have the following characteristics:

1. The facts implied in the objection must be real, that is, must be declared as such by really valid evidence.

2. The validity of said facts must be incompatible, and undeniably so, with the truth of that hypothesis. It must not present a mere difficulty, one which we may or may not know how to explain consistently with said hypothesis, but one which undeniably cannot be thus explained. A difficulty, it should be borne in mind, is one thing; a real incompatibility is quite another. Facts difficult or insusceptible of explanation in our present state of knowledge, may be urged against hypotheses undeniably true. An objection to be valid must present a difficulty of this kind—that the fact which it asserts must be unreal, or the hypothesis against which it is urged must be false. Against the hypothesis of the identity of the nervous fluid and electricity, for example, this objection is urged—to wit, that the latter will and the former will not, in fact, pass along the nerve when it is tightly bound with a cord. Here is a fact affirmed which is not merely difficult of explanation in consistency with said hypothesis, but strictly and undeniably incompatible with it. Either the fact asserted is unreal, or the hypothesis must be false. This is the exclusive character of all valid objections against any hypothesis.

Note 1.—Everyone who urges any particular objection against any hypothesis should be required, before an answer is attempted, to prove that the fact he asserts is real, and then that, if it is true, the hypothesis against which it is urged must be false. This is the burden of proof resting upon the objector.

Note 2.—Individuals, in treating of objections, frequently err in two important particulars—in not distinguishing, in the first place, between a fact difficult of explanation, and one incompatible with the hypothesis against which it is urged; and in the next, instead of requiring the objector to prove his facts, and show that they possess the element of incompatibility, they assume the burden of explaining all difficulties, thus practically admitting that unless an hypothesis is totally free from difficulties it cannot be true.

Method of Refuting Objections, or the Forms in which they may be Refuted.

One topic more demands our special attention—to wit, the proper method or forms of refuting objections. An invalid objection may be shown to be such in one or the other of the following forms, or by more or less of them combined.

1. It may be shown that the objection is based upon a fundamental misconception of the subject against which it is urged.

2. It may be shown that the fact presented in the objection is unreal, or wants valid evidence of being real.

3. That the fact, if admitted, presents a mere difficulty, and wholly lacks the element of incompatibility.

4. That precisely the same objections lie against the opposite hypothesis, when one of the two must be true. That objection cannot be valid which would, as in such a case, exist in all its force if the hypothesis against which it is urged were true.

5. That the same, or precisely similar objections lie against hypotheses known and admitted to be true. Butler's 'Analogy' may be referred to as an example of this form of refuting objections.

Inconceivability as a Test of Truth.

In his chapter on Ultimate Scientific Ideas, Mr. Spencer is at great pains to prove that 'inconceivability is not a test of truth.' Yet in other parts of his works this very principle is most confidently and abundantly appealed to as an absolute criterion of truth and error. In one part of his works we are absolutely assured that the fact, that we cannot conceive a judgment to be true on the one hand, or false on the other, is no certain proof that it is true, or that it is false. In other parts of the same work we are assured, with the same absoluteness, that the inconceivable and impossible are identical. To understand this subject, we need to understand clearly the real meaning of this term as employed in science. Let its see if we cannot attain this end.

The Term 'Inconceivable,' as Employed in Science, Defined.

We have in our minds two classes of intuitive judgments which we characterize as empirical and rational, à posteriori and à priori, or contingent and necessary. As to the former class of judgments, such as, I think, I feel, I will, and Matter is before me as possessed of extension and form, we are absolutely conscious of their truth; yet are able to conceive that they are not true. The latter class we conceive to be true, with the absolute consciousness that they must be true, and can by no possibility be false. Of this class are all of Kant's analytical and à priori synthetical judgments, such as, A is A, All bodies are extended, and Body implies space; Succession, or change, implies time, Phenomena imply substance, Events imply a cause, Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another, and It is impossible for the same thing at the same instant to exist and not to exist. Between the subject and predicate in all such judgments, an absolutely necessary connection is intuitively perceived to exist, their opposites being necessarily apprehended as self contradictory and absurd. Hence, we apprehend all such judgments as true, with the absolute impossibility of conceiving them not to be true, that is, of presenting them to the mind as by any possibility being false. This is the real meaning of the term 'inconceivability' as applicable to such cases. To affirm that a judgment is known to be necessarily true, and cannot be false, and to affirm the absolute impossibility of conceiving that it is false, mean the same thing. To affirm, then, that inconceivability, in the only sense applicable to such cases, is not a test of truth, is to affirm that necessary and absolute knowledge is no knowledge at all. To attempt to prove that inconceivability in this sense is not a test of truth, is to affirm that a form of knowledge more certain than necessary and absolute knowledge does exist, and that the former is incompatible with the latter. This is the wonderful discovery which such thinkers as Messrs. Mill, Spencer, and scientists of their school really profess to have made. In other words, they really profess to have found judgments, the connection between the subject and predicate of which must be recognized as more fixed and certain than obtains in judgments the connection between the subject and predicate of which we cannot but know to be a necessary one. If they will designate such judgments, and establish for them a degree of certainty higher than that which is known to be necessary, they will certainly deserve our thanks. Until they have done this, nothing but 'science falsely so called' will intimate that inconceivability, as above defined, is not and must not be an infallible criterion of truth.

The Secondary Meaning of this Term.

There is an idea sometimes represented by the term under consideration, an idea according to which inconceivability is not a test of truth, and nobody regards it as such a test. We know space, for example, to exist, with the absolute knowledge that it must exist, that is, that it cannot but exist. When we, consequently, attempt to represent in thought the idea of space as a non-reality, we find that we have attempted to perform a conscious impossibility. As representing this conscious impossibility, we say that the non-reality of space is inconceivable, and in this sense, inconceivability, as we have shown, is a test of truth. When, on the other hand, we attempt, through the conceptive faculty, to expand our conceptions, so as fully to comprehend infinite space, we find that we have again attempted the impossible. In this secondary sense of the term infinite space is inconceivable. In this sense, also, as representing what is to the Understanding, or conceptive facility, an object of impossible comprehension, inconceivability is not a test of truth, and the inconceivable and impossible are not identical. An object, on the other hand, may be absolutely known to exist, and yet be, as space is in this secondary sense of the term, inconceivable. What is in this secondary sense of the term inconceivable, may be to the mind, not only an object of absolute knowledge, but may be to the Reason, the organ of implied knowledge, an object of consciously clear and distinct apprehension. To the Understanding, whose exclusive function is to conceive and comprehend the finite, infinity, in all its forms, is inconceivable and incomprehensible. To Reason, on the other, as the organ of implied and necessary knowledge, the infinite and perfect are conscious objects of as clear and distinct apprehension as any other. Hence it is, that we have as clear apprehension of the real meaning of the proposition, Space and Duration are infinite, as we do of the judgment, Body and Succession are finite. Hence it is, that an object may be to the conceptive faculty inconceivable, or incomprehensible, and may be to the Reason an object of most distinct apprehension, and of absolute knowledge. In one sense of the term, therefore, inconceivability is, and in another it is not, a test of truth.

Platonic Ideas.

Few topics in the history of Philosophy have occupied more attention than Plato's doctrine of Ideas. One inquiry, the most important of all, remains unmoved by speculators in such history. We refer, not to the question whether Plato regarded his ideas as real existences, or as archetypes in the mind of God, but to the question, what kind or class of realities do these ideas constitute or represent? Many thinkers, such as Coleridge, and individuals of his school, identify these ideas with what are now regarded as necessary instead of contingent phenomena of thought. These ideas are the objects, as Plato and these modern thinkers affirm, of Reason, the organ of 'universal, necessary, and eternal truth,' and therefore, it is now thought, must be of the character above indicated. This is an important mistake. Plato's ideas are not necessary, as opposed to contingent ideas, but general, or generic, as opposed to individual conceptions. All his examples and expositions show this. As examples illustrative of his own doctrine of ideas, he selects the generic, as opposed to the individual bed, or table. The generic bed and table, the generic man, and generic forms universally, as opposed to individual beds, tables, men, and forms, constituted Plato's ideas, and consequently his universal, necessary, and eternal truths. It was with exclusive reference to the doctrine of ideas in this specific and exclusive form that Aristotle joined issue with Plato. The only issue between the Nominalists and Realists in subsequent ages pertained not to necessary, as opposed to contingent ideas, but exclusively to generic, as opposed to individual conceptions. The question in dispute between these schools was not whether time, space, substances, and causes, really exist, but exclusively whether generic as well as individual terms and conceptions represent real existences.

The ancients knew little or nothing of the proper doctrine of necessary, as opposed to contingent ideas, or of the proper distinction between universal and necessary and general judgments. Hence, they knew very little of the nature of real principles, and consequently of the only proper methods in science. Similar remarks are almost equally applicable to modern scientific thought. In all the Logics since the days of Aristotle, with the exception of a very few of quite recent date, no distinction whatever is made between general and universal and necessary judgments, that is, between the formal and real principles in science; and all the rules pertaining to the distribution of terms, and the conversion of propositions evince the truth of these statements.

Take as illustration the following rules, which, with the exceptions referred to, are found in all Logics ancient and modern which contain any such rules at all, namely: 'All negative and no affirmative propositions distribute the predicate.' 'In converting a universal affirmative proposition, its quantity must be changed from the universal to the particular.' Now there is not a single principle or axiom in any science, a principle in respect to which both these rules do not utterly mislead the student. Among all such judgments, all universals, without exception, distribute both the subject and predicate, and conversion is always simple, and always so, not by accident; but from the necessary relations between the subject and predicate. In all deductions in the sciences also, with the single exception wherein the subject represents an inferior, and the predicate a superior conception, as in the judgment, All men are mortal, all universals distribute both terms, and all conversion of such judgments is simple. Thus, for more than two thousand years has Plato's doctrine of Ideas misled and vitiated scientific thought.

The Central Problem which now lies out, for Solution within the Sphere of Scientific Thought.

No deductions can have higher validity than the principle on which said deductions rest. If a shadow of doubt rests upon the principle, the same doubt must pass over and cloud the deduction. The central problem within the sphere of modern scientific thought may be thus stated, viz.: Have we any real scientific principles which can be verified as such, and what are the fundamental characteristics of such principles?—characteris- tics by which they are clearly distinguishable from all other judgments of every kind. Modern unbelief, in the sphere especially of German and Anglo-Saxon thought, has met the problem with an open denial of the existence of such principles, and of the possibility of their recognition, if they do exist. The necessary consequence of an admission of the validity of this denial is the appalling fact that real science, in any form, is an absolute impossibility; and this is the real dogma which modern unbelief is endeavouring to verify. Having arrived at a distinct recognition of the truth that Religion and Science do, in fact, rest upon the same ultimate principles, and must stand or fall together, they have deliberately determined upon sapping the foundations of both. Hence, they are endeavouring to bear away the temple of divine truth with the open cry, Let science die with religion. As we have absolute faith in both, we wait with calm assurance the result of this vain endeavour.

We claim to have absolutely vindicated for science the existence of such principles, and to have revealed and verified the validity of the criteria by which such principles may be with infallible certainty recognised. Such principles must, of course, when understood, present themselves to universal mind, as possessed of self-evident validity, a validity so absolute that the mind must know that they cannot be false. If such principles as these do, in fact, lie at the basis of universal science, scepticism itself must admit that science does repose upon an immovably valid basis. We shall not stop to repeat the criteria which have been so absolutely verified in preceding parts of this Treatise; but shall proceed at once to our criticisms of the specific forms of the Modern Evolution in Philosophy.

Fundamental Defects in the Anglo-Saxon and German Methods of Developing Systems of Science.

The preceding discussions have fully prepared the way for a distinct statement of the leading defects in the Methods of Modern Scientific Thought. We shall take as examples of what obtains elsewhere, the forms and methods of Anglo-Saxon and German thinking in the sphere of science.

Anglo-Saxon Thinking.

Among the Anglo-Saxons, with hardly any exceptions, no proper discrimination has been made between general propositions and principles, or axioms, in science. In all our Logics, very recent ones excepted, the major premise, in every syllogism presented, is a general proposition, as, All men are mortal. In real science this premise is never such a proposition, but always a self-evident principle, as, Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another. Here we have the occasion of the fundamental mistake of Mr. Mill in his Logic, that all inference from premises laid down involves the error of petitio principii. This would be the case, as we have shown in our criticism of the Logic of Aristotle, were the major premises in our scientific syllogisms, what Mr. Mill assumes them to be, general propositions, and not, what they really are, principles, or self-evident judgments. If we say, for example, All men are mortal; John is a man; therefore, he is mortal, the conclusion, as Mr. Mill says, is really begged in the major premise. If we assume as he does that all deductions are based upon such premises, then he is right in his criticism of the syllogism in all its forms. If, on the other hand, we say, Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another; A and B are each equal to C; and, therefore, they are equal to one another, we have a deduction not begged in either premise, but one logically deduced from both together. If we assume, as we must, that all syllogisms, or valid arguments, in all the real sciences, are of this last exclusive character, then Mr. Mills' exposition of the syllogism is at an infinite remove from the truth.

Careful observation and reflection will evince the fact that aside from the Pure Sciences and Natural Philosophy, the error under consideration runs through almost all departments of Anglo-Saxon thought. With the exceptions referred to, principles, as lying at the basis of all forms of science, have no well-defined place in science among our thinkers. Among 'first truths,' as elucidated by our most distinguished philosophers, no characteristics are given but such as are common to contingent and necessary forms of thought; nor were any distinctions presented between general judgments and principles, or between the principles and facts of science.

Hence it is that Anglo-Saxon thought has few of the characteristics of system, and our so-called systems are rather aggregations of topics connected with given subjects than properly systematized wholes, all of whose parts and the place of each part are determined by ultimate principles, and scientifically verified and classified facts. The leading characteristic of such thought is, however, self-contradiction. An Anglo-Saxon thinker will palpably contradict himself in numberless instances in the same treatise, and never suspect his want of self-consistency or the soundness of his logic. The great founder of our philosophy, for example, after affirming that the constituent elements of all ideas in the mind come from two exclusive sources—sensation or external perception, and reflection or consciousness; and after professedly demonstrating the dogma that we have no real knowledge of the facts of the external world, affirms that from these facts we have 'demonstrative evidence of the being of God.' Since that era our wisest theologians and Christian philosophers have repeated this act of self-contradiction. Standing on the outside of this visible, invisible universe, there is first of all a formal admission that we have no real, but only a relative knowledge of any of its facts, then there is an advance into 'the palpable obscure'—into the midst of these admitted unknown and unknowable facts, and from these is deduced a professed demonstration of the doctrine of God. Prior to 1850 an award of some £2,000 for the best, and one of £600 for the second best treatise in proof of the being of God, was offered in Aberdeen. In the treatise which received the first prize, the author lays down, as his major premise, this proposition, 'that our knowledge of the Supreme Being is as valid and not less inadequate than that of an external world.' He then, in fact and form, professedly demonstrates, as his minor premise, the proposition that we have, and can have, no real or valid knowledge of any such world, or of any facts connected with it. 'Matter and spirit,' he affirms, 'are wholly unknown to us as substances.' 'We cannot know,' he says again, 'that any division of conceptions will correspond with the reality of things.' Having thus utterly annihilated his minor premise, and taken from himself utterly the possibility of proving anything whatever upon the subject, he conceives that he has laid down an adamantine rock as the basis of the Theistic argument. The author who received the second prize, after expending all his strength and occupying the most of his treatise in a vindication of 'the design argument,' finally surrenders the argument as invalid, and hands us over for light and consolation to 'the grasp of intuition.' 'In thus abandoning all claim of demonstration,' he says, 'the evidence of the being of God, so far from being weakened, is indeed strengthened. For, in all our knowledge, there is and can be no higher warrant for reality than the grasp of intuition,' affirming, in another connection, that the doctrine of God 'needs and admits of no other proof.' Why attempt, then, to prove the doctrine by an argument occupying more than 300 pages—an argument admitted and affirmed to be invalid? One of the greatest thinkers of this age—an Anglo-Saxon philosopher—after demonstrating, by arguments to which no Sceptic attempts a reply, the absolute validity of 'presentative knowledge,' received through external and internal perception, assures us that human knowledge, in all its forms, has only 'a relative validity.' The same author, after vindicating for Theism a scientifically valid basis, and designating the sources of proof of the being of God, assures us that we have, and can have, no positive knowledge of Him at all, that all our ideas of Him are wholly constituted of 'a bundle of negations,' just as if there can be proof of the validity of 'a bundle of negations.' In our day an individual has been raised to one of the most dignified positions in a great National Church, and that mainly for his high merit in having, as is believed, shown, in a work entitled 'Limits of Religious Thought,' that in the entire sphere of affirmed religious truth there is not, and cannot be, 'a thought' which is not self-contradictory and absurd. 'The conception of the Absolute and Infinite,' says our author, 'from whatever side we view it, appears encompassed with contradictions. There is a contradiction in supposing such an object to exist, whether alone or in conjunction with others, and there is a contradiction in supposing it not to exist. There is a contradiction in conceiving it as one, and there is a contradiction in conceiving it as many. There is a contradiction in conceiving it as personal, and there is a contradiction in conceiving it as impersonal. It cannot without contradiction be represented as active, nor without equal contradiction be represented as inactive. It cannot be conceived as the sum of all existence, nor can it be conceived as a part only of that sum.' Yet he tells us that 'it is our duty to think of God as personal, and it is our duty to believe that He is infinite.' He then makes a formal attempt to verify, on rational grounds, some of the affirmed self-contradictory and absurd doctrines of this self-contradictory and absurd religion. These are a few of 'the deadly wounds' which our Divine religion, in the domain of Anglo-Saxon religious thought, has 'received in the house of her friends.' She may well exclaim, 'Deliver me from my friends, and I will take care of my enemies.'

Let us now, for a moment, turn in another direction. 'It must be admitted,' says Mr. Mill, 'that in every syllogism, considered as an argument to prove the conclusion, there is a petitio principii.' 'The syllogism is not a correct analysis of reasoning or inference.' Look again. 'It [the syllogism] is not the form in which we must reason, but it is the form in which we may reason, and into which it is indispensable to throw our reasoning when there is any doubt of its validity.' If, then, we would demonstrate the validity of an argument, we must put it in a form in which the conclusion presents a palpable example of the vicious sophism of petitio principii. The true process of reasoning, he affirms, is not the syllogistic, that is, reasoning from the general to the particular, but 'from particulars to particulars,' 'from known particular cases to unknown ones.' Yet he says that it is only in cases 'in which there is no suspicion of error that we are permitted to use the true process.' In all doubtful cases we must 'throw our reasoning' into the false, and not into the true form. What Daniels, in science, have formed our Logics! The individual whom his friends designate as the Newton and Bacon of this century, after a professed demonstration of the fact that inconceivability is, in no sphere of thought, a test of truth, bases upon this same inconceivability, as we have shown, an affirmed absolute disproof of the self-existence and eternity of God, on the one hand, and an affirmed demonstration of the self-existence and eternity of matter on the other. So everywhere. In one part of his multitudinous productions, inconceivability is professedly demonstrated to be no test of truth anywhere and in any sense. In the other portions of his works, this same inconceivability is employed as of absolute authority in proof or disproof of any dogma which he desires to set up or knock down. Having professedly demonstrated the fact, as the basis of all his deductions, that all our knowledge is exclusively phenomenal, mere appearance in which no reality appears, and 'that the reality existing behind all appearance is, and ever must be, unknown,' he then, in the general and in the particular, teaches just how and why this unknown and unknowable matter from a nebulous state—a state of which he affirms himself absolutely ignorant—whirls and tumbles and worms itself out of universal chaos into the goodly universe which now exists, and just how and why and by what specific processes this unknown and unknowable dead matter evolved itself into the living forms around us, and took on the processes of thought, feeling, and voluntary activity. Another of these great central lights, after affirming absolutely that 'it is certain that we can have no knowledge of the nature of either matter or spirit,' tells us just how and why one of these unknown and unknowable entities is to push the other out of existence or out of thought. 'As surely,' he says, 'as every future grows out of the past and present, so will the physiology of the future gradually extend the realm of matter and law until it is co-extensive with knowledge, with feeling, and with action.' After affirming 'that we know nothing about the composition of any body as it is,' he affirms absolutely that our thoughts 'are the expression of molecular changes in the matter of life which is the source of our other vital phenomena,' and our souls and bodies, with our capacities for thought, feeling, and action, are nothing but a congeries of living protoplasms which may be evolved from the dead protoplasms of a dead sheep—a process, he tells us, which shall 'transubstantiate sheep into a man.' Another of the central lights of the New Philosophy, Mr. Maudsley, in common with all his illustrious co-thinkers, affirms, first of all, an absolute ignorance of the nature of mind and matter both. 'We know not,' he says, 'and perhaps never shall know, what mind is.' Again, 'In the assertion that mind is altogether a function of matter, there is no more actual irreverence than in asserting that matter is the realization of mind; the one and the other proposition being equally meaningless so far as they postulate a knowledge of anything more than phenomena. Whether extension be visible thought, or thought invisible extension, is a question of a choice of words and not a choice of conceptions.' Where, then, if as here and elsewhere by this author affirmed, that our ignorance is absolute of both substances, is the ground for any deductions or conjectures even in respect to the functions of either? Yet we are gravely told, on the basis of a few experiments with a beheaded frog and brainless pigeon, and others of a kindred character—we are gravely told, we say, just how matter thinks and feels and wills. 'Eminent physiologists,' we are told, 'maintain that the spinal cord is really endowed with sensation and volition.' 'I hold,' says our author, 'emotion to mean the special sensibility of the vesicular neurine to ideas,' while 'the functions of the intelligence, of emotion, and of will,' 'are the highest functions of the nervous system—those to which the hemispherical ganglia minister.' The following is a more full exposition of his doctrine of volition and will. 'As the spinal cord reacts to its impressions in excito-motor action, and as the motory centres react to their impressions in sensori-motor action, so, after the complex interworking and combination of ideas in the hemispherical ganglia, there is, in like manner, a reaction or desire of determination of energy outward, in accordance with the fundamental property of organic structure, to seek what is beneficial and shun what is hurtful to it. It is this property of tissue that gives the impulse which, when guided by intelligence, we call volition, and it is the abstraction from the particular volitions which metaphysicians personify as the Will.' This dogma, that willing implies an agent who wills, is to our scientist a great absurdity. 'Physiologically,' he says, 'we cannot choose but reject the will; volition we know, and will we know, but the will, apart from particular acts of volition or will, we cannot know.' If the reader does not now fully understand how and why this unknown and unknowable entity called matter, thinks and feels and wills, and if he does not perceive with equal distinctness how and why it is that this other unknown and unknowable entity called mind, does not and cannot think, feel or will, at all, we can only say that he has not yet taken the first step in the sunlight of the New Philosophy.

Where, permit us to ask, but in the realm of Anglo-Saxon thought, can we find such palpable contradictions as the above? And these are but a few examples of what often appears in the wide domain of such thinking. The reason is before us, namely, the want of system in consequence of a want of apprehension of the true doctrine of principles in science, and the consequent habit of leaping from mere facts to deduction, instead of interpreting facts in the light of the principles which the former imply.

German Thinkers.

German thinkers, on the other hand, ever since the days of Kant, have recognized the existence of 'synthetical judgments à priori,' and of their relations as principles of science. Hence German thought has, since the period referred to, been peculiarized by its conformity to the idea of system, system in which every subject rises up before us as a logically consistent whole, with a place in it for every part, and with every part in its place. A German thinker, if he errs at all, does so in respect to his principles and facts, and very seldom in respect to the logical connection of his deductions with the former. His system, if wrong at all, is commonly wholly so, because it is based upon false principles. If you examine the parts of the system relative to one another, and to the great whole, here all is logically consistent throughout, with all the parts fastened together with iron bands. If you examine the principles on which such system rests, you will be most likely, perhaps, to find them to be, not real 'synthetical judgments á priori,' but mere lawless assumptions in the light of which the system itself will stand distinctly revealed as nothing but a logical fiction.

The reason for this characteristic of German thought is found in the fundamental error of the German mind, an error originated by Kant, in respect to the nature of 'synthetical judgments à priori.' Take, in illustration, the principle, Body implies space. According to the Transcendental exposition, the predicate space represents no reality whatever, such as we apprehend as necessarily existing, but a simple idea in the mind itself. The subject of this judgment, also—body—represents no reality external to the mind, but a mere mental state, a sensation, made to appear as such object by the idea represented by the term space, the idea existing in the mind prior to perception, and determining its form. As the predicate in this judgment, space, represents no reality in itself, neither does the subject, body. Thus, all meaning such as we attach to it, and all validity as a test of truth, and a principle in real science, drop out of the judgment, Body implies space. The same holds true of all other 'synthetical judgments à priori.' They give form to our thinking, but have no validity for truth, or application to realities as they are in themselves. Through this fundamental misapprehension in respect to the nature and proper sphere of such judgments, and the fixed relations between the subject and predicate in the same, the errors which we have already fully exposed arise. German thinkers make no distinction between valid principles and mere assumptions in science, and quite as habitually construct their systems upon the latter, as upon the former. The Anglo-Saxon makes no discrimination between universal and necessary principles, and general propositions, and hence, being without law, falls into endless contradictions, in the construction of systems of knowledge. The German, while he maintains the strictest logical consistency in the construction of his system, as frequently as otherwise, in consequence of the error designated, gives us logically constructed fictions instead of real systems of science. The Anglo-Saxon, having no fixed principles in the light of which facts are to be interpreted, often, in the presence of facts of a perfectly unindicative character, makes infinite leaps to deductions which he desires to reach. The German, in his fixed habit of giving system to thought, and of interpreting facts in the light of his principles, whatever they may be, arbitrarily cuts short, or stretches his facts, to make them conform to his assumptions. Take a single example of the habit of the German mind, not of determining hypotheses by facts, but of forcing facts into conformity with hypotheses arbitrarily assumed to be true. The question, for example, whether Thales had 'a conception of God as Intelligence,' is a simple question of historic verity, not to be determined at all by 'the chronology of speculation,' but by which such chronology is itself to be determined. Yet German thinkers, and certain Anglo-Saxons after them, determine facts of history by such chronology.' 'We agree with Hegel,' says Mr. Lewes, 'that Thales could have had no conception of God as intelligence, since that is the conception of a more advanced Philosophy.' World-renowned systems based upon nothing but lawless assumptions, systems in the construction of which facts are in forced conformity to said assumptions, are about as common among Germans, as are world-renowned thinkers. The Anglo-Saxon will continue to contradict himself, and repeat his absurd leaps in Logic, and the German will go on rearing up self-consistent systems of science falsely so called,' systems based upon airy nothing;' and in repeating his crucifixions of facts, until the true doctrine of principles and facts in science shall be clearly understood, and all systems shall be held to the severest scrutiny of such principles and facts. We are now prepared to enter into the interior of the Modern Evolution in Philosophy.

CHAPTER I.

BACON TO REID.

SECTION I.

BACON.

That which peculiarizes the modern from all prior evolutions in Philosophy is the wider prevalence in the latter of the Inductive Method. Every human being is by nature an inductive philosopher, and all men, in all the ordinary transactions of life, reason inductively. In all minds in common there exist, at least in their concrete form, the principles of all the sciences—principles under which facts are subsumed, and from said principles and facts thus contemplated, valid deductions are constantly being drawn. Why do children and men of all ages and classes, when in their presence two objects are compared with a common third, and both are found to agree, or one to agree and the other to disagree, with said object, draw the same conclusions from the facts before them? Because that in all such minds the same principles which lie at the basis of all inference in science are equally present in all in the concrete, in some in the abstract and universal form. An individual is on trial for a crime affirmed to have been committed by him, at a specified time and place, and very strong evidence has been adduced to convict him. On the part of the defence indubitable proof is presented that at that very time the accused was in a distant place, a hundred miles, for example, from the spot where the crime was committed. The child, the savage, and all men will unite in the judgment that this individual did not commit that crime, and that for the reason that all judge of the facts in the light of the same principles. In other words, all mankind are in fact and form, in their varied spheres of thought and action, inductive philosophers. Hence we have an explanation of the spectacle which the world is constantly witnessing—the common-sense of the race correcting and repudiating the deductions of false science. Whenever so-called systems of science fall upon those eternal principles which are common to all minds, and which, in fact, lie at the basis of all true science, such systems fall upon the rock of truth, and must be broken there. The advocates of such systems may, in their defence, assail these principles, and may sustain such assaults by very plausible arguments, just as plausible arguments may be adduced to prove that all proof, by argument, is impossible. But when philosophers attempt to prove, and require us to admit, as is now being done by the advocates of the New Philosophy, that such principles as, Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another, and, It is impossible for the same object at the same moment to exist and not to exist, are not valid for truth, we shall, if we reason inductively, conclude that in the brain of such thinkers science has run mad.

Nor has induction ever been wholly absent from the sphere of philosophic thought. All thinkers, in all ages, have reasoned from certain universally admitted facts, and have differed only in their explanation of these facts. There can be no science without á priori principles. In the pure sciences both principles and facts are given á priori. In the mixed sciences the principles are á priori, and the facts given wholly á posteriori. Among the ancients, the metes and bounds between these two classes of sciences, and the exclusive methods proper to each, were either, with very few exceptions, not understood at all, or totally misunderstood. In the Modern Evolution, these metes and bounds, and the true scientific method in each department of science, lie very much in the region, if not of 'the palpable,' yet of the real 'obscure.' Hence it is that from a high sphere of even Anglo-Saxon thought, we have had, within a few years past, our 'Rational Psychology' and 'Rational Cosmology,' systems in which the facts, nature, powers, and relations of matter and spirit, like all principles, facts, and deductions, in the pure sciences, are professedly determined wholly à priori. In the sphere of the New Philosophy, we meet with an open repudiation of implied knowledge in all its forms—knowledge in the forms represented by the terms, space, time, substance, and cause, a consequent repudiation of all proper principles in science, and an attempt to solve the problem of being and its laws by phenomena affirmed to imply nothing, not even principles by which their explanation is possible. This method of explaining phenomena by phenomena, and giving us systems of science based upon no principles whatever, is called, 'in these last days,' the Method of Induction. In the absence of principles, induction proper of facts, and even original classification of phenomena, is impossible. Of what use would it be to bring together an infinite number of facts, if we have no principles to which to refer them? Let the ideas of resemblance and difference, of equality and inequality, drop out of the mind, and not a single step could be taken in the classification of phenomena. Let the principles, Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another, and When one agrees and another disagrees with the same thing, such objects disagree with one another. Let the ideas of space, time, substance, cause, equality and difference, likeness and unlikeness, etc., disappear from the mind, and an infinity of phenomena might pass before us, and we should be none the wiser for what we behold. The objects of none of these ideas are objects of perception external or internal, that is, none of these realities take rank among mere phenomena, but as rational apprehensions whose validity is implied by phenomena which we do perceive. If our knowledge, as the advocates of the New Philosophy affirm, is confined to mere phenomena, we should remain for ever as ignorant as brutes.

Origin of Scientific Principles.

An explanation more distinct than we have yet given, perhaps, may now be presented of the origin of principles in science. Take any such principle we please, and we shall find that the subject represents an object of perception, and the predicate a reality implied by such object. We need only cite, as examples, such principles as the following: Body implies space; Succession implies time; Phenomena imply substance; Events imply a cause; and Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another. We perceive, for example, events; Reason, on occasion of such perception, apprehends a cause; the Judgment then intervenes and affirms the necessary relation between what is perceived and what is implied by the perceived. Thus we obtain the universal and necessary principle, Every event has a cause. The same holds undeniably true in the case of all the principles in all the sciences. Let such principles, both in the concrete and absolute and universal forms, drop out of human thought, and, we repeat, science in no form, not even as classification, would be possible.

Origin of False Systems of Philosophy.

We are now prepared to state definitely how it is that false systems of Philosophy take on their particular characteristics. One class begins with implied knowledge, and through this determine all facts and their characteristics, and from principles and facts thus determined construct their systems. Another class repudiate implied knowledge in all its forms, and construct their systems out of mere phenomena, phenomena considered as implying nothing, neither space, time, substance, nor cause, thus attempting to give to 'airy nothing a local habitation and a name.' A third class, without any recognition of the existence of the two forms of knowledge, or of the two classes of realities under consideration, or of their relations to each other, attempt an explanation of the facts of existence without any principles to guide their deductions. What but false and self-contradictory systems can arise under such circumstances?

Implied knowledge, in none of its forms, while it explains the possibility of realities which may be perceived to exist, determines anything whatever in respect to the question, what realities do, in fact, exist. Take the ideas of space, time, substance, and cause. These render conceivable the reality of body, succession, phenomena, qualities, and events, but determine nothing whatever in respect to the kinds of bodies, changes, phenomena, qualities, and events which shall appear. Suppose we attempt through the former, not to explain, but to determine what is. We may thus have system, system perfectly harmonious in all its parts; but our system will and must be a logical fiction and nothing else.

Suppose, now, that we repudiate implied knowledge in all its forms, and attempt to construct our system from mere phenomena, in accordance with the principles of Pure Idealism on the one hand, and of the New Philosophy on the other. Thought, as we apprehend it, implies, of necessity, a subject who thinks, and an object thought of. We drop out, as unreal, the thinker and the object, and assume as alone real the phenomena thought, and attempt to construct from this nothing something which has neither substance nor attributes, subject nor object, the universe as it is, and is seemingly known to us. We set our thought—which exists nowhere, in no time, from no cause, and for no end—we set this thought to work. The system which shall legitimately take form from such a material must, together with its author, be what a learned German said Hegel and his system were, namely, 'The system is nothing in itself, nor of itself; neither was its author in himself, but beside himself.' Take another case. Murder, as universally understood, implies an act, phenomenon, in which one real moral agent, with malice prepense, takes the life of another real moral agent. Every element in the above statement must be true, or there has been no murder. We drop out the killer and the killed, and bring the phenomenon by itself, as alone knowable and known, before a jury constituted of such thinkers as Messrs. Mill, Spencer, Huxley, Emerson, and their co-philosophers. They are required, the phenomenon having been legally verified, to find a verdict in strict accordance with their Philosophy. What would their verdict be? This: 'The jury find that there has been a real appearance, phenomenon, which goes by the name of murder. But since "the reality existing behind all appearance is, and ever must be, unknown," they find no evidence whatever that any real agent acted or suffered in the case. The jury therefore decide that the phenomenon which appeared several months since, should, if it can be caught, be put to death, but that no agent should be held as worthy of "death or of bonds." This, undeniably, is the only verdict which such thinkers could render, without affirming their entire Philosophy to be a lie. May not the world justly affirm that such 'a Philosophy is nothing in itself nor of itself; neither are its advocates in themselves but beside themselves'? But say these thinkers, 'We do know fact and we do know law.' Not so fast, gentlemen. Law is as invisible as space, time, substance, and cause, and if you confine, as you profess to do, all knowledge to mere phenomena, law, as well as all other forms of implied knowledge, must be dropped from your theory and from your vocabulary. You must take your subjectless and objectless phenomena, and with no principles by which you can rationally classify them, construct your baseless system as best you can.

If, finally, without recognizing the distinction between perceived and implied forms of knowledge, and consequently without scientific principles, we begin to theorize about facts and existences within and around us, we shall find ourselves in the proper sphere of Anglo-Saxon thought, where thinking, for the most part, will be without law; where the impossibility of proof, in any form, by argument will be demonstrated by argument; where the invalidity of the most certain will be proven by the less certain; where admitted contradictions will be demonstrated to be objects of rational faith, and the demonstrated object of our supreme veneration and trust shall be 'a bundle of negations.'

All such contradictions and absurdities will appear and disappear, and reappear, and have rule in the sphere of scientific thought, until the distinction between perceived and implied knowledge is distinctly recognized; until each shall have its proper and distinctly recognized place in science; until, from the relations of these, scientific principles are deduced, and under these principles all facts are classified. When the logical deductions yielded by these principles and facts shall be determined, then, and only then, shall we have truths and systems of real science. Here, and only here, do we or can we have a true idea of scientific induction and deduction, and of Inductive Science. The above remarks are so obviously applicable to the Pure Sciences, that nothing further, in that direction, need be added in this connection.

If Bacon did develop this idea of induction and deduction, then is he the proper father of Inductive Sciences. If he failed to do this, however, much as science is indebted to him in other respects, the high place referred to cannot be properly awarded to him.

What did Bacon really do for Science?

In estimating the real indebtedness of science to Bacon (1561-1626), we must bear in mind that he was contemporary with Kepler and Galileo, that Copernicus had lived and died before he was born, and that Roger Bacon (1214-1297) had assiduously cultivated the science of induction, and announced its essential principles. 'Experience alone,' said Roger Bacon, 'gives accurate knowledge.' 'Experiment proves and verifies the highest propositions which the other sciences can present.' Nor did Sir Francis Bacon, like his contemporaries and predecessors named, and others that might be named, make any practical advancement in any of the sciences. His real claims are based upon the fact that he gave impulse and direction to scientific thought and inquiry, by a formal announcement of the doctrine, which the spirit of that age was prepared to receive, namely, that in the à posteriori sciences, all valid deduction must have one exclusive basis—the induction of facts of observation and experiment. That principle being announced and accepted, a permanent foundation for the proper study of nature was laid. So far, the world owes a debt of enduring gratitude to this great thinker.

End and Aim of Induction according to Bacon.

But what direction did he give to induction? What end did he propose as the goal of observation and experiment? And by what method was this end to be reached? Bacon, we must also bear in mind, held in almost sovereign contempt the pure sciences, Mathematics, for example; and with him, Metaphysics were in not much higher repute. Theology, too, was almost wholly excluded from the sphere of science. What he regarded as the sciences stood in immediate connection with Natural Philosophy. 'Let none expect,' he says, 'any great promotion of the sciences, especially in their effective part, unless Natural Philosophy be drawn out to particular sciences; and again, unless these particular sciences be brought back again to Natural Philosophy' 'This ought to be esteemed 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 but little increase.' Here we have a very narrow view of the number, sphere, and criteria of the sciences, and here we note the first essential error of our great philosopher.

Fundamental False Principle announced by Bacon.

We now refer to the principle laid down by Bacon, and which gives character to all his views of science, 'that the activity of the intellect is exercised only upon data primitively furnished by sensation.' In accordance with this principle, he 'esteemed Natural Philosophy the great mother of the sciences,' and made little account of the pure sciences on the one hand, and of Metaphysics on the other. Thus this reputed father of Inductive Science started all induction upon the line of Materialism. No principle was ever more false, in fact, than that above announced. Thought and mental activity have been, in truth, quite as much exercised upon facts of mind as upon those of matter, and the great problems now before the world are, in fact and form, mental problems. Those who follow this principle will ignore and repudiate most of the most absolute facts and forms of knowledge. We have just as much reason to affirm that the activity of the intellect is exercised only upon interior, as upon exterior facts, and should be equally wrong in either case.

The Doctrine of Method as Understood by Bacon.

The Method of Induction as understood by Bacon, together with the end aimed at by this method, is thus set forth by himself: 'As things are at present conducted, a sudden transition is made from sensible objects and particular facts to general propositions which are accounted principles, and around which, as around many fixed poles, disputation and argument continually revolve. 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 which promises success is the reverse of this. It requires that we should generalize slowly, going from particular things to those that are but one step more general; from these to other of still greater extent, and so on to such as are most general.' These general judgments, or generalized facts, now become axioms, or scientific principles, 'axiomata media,' for the prosecution of future scientific inquiry, in which we reason, not from the particular to the general, but from the general to the particular. 'There are two ways,' he says in another connection, '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 particulars by a continued and gradual ascent, till at last it arrives at the most general axioms, which is the true way, but hitherto untried.'

The immutable condition of generalization, according to our philosopher, is a prior collection of all the facts to be explained and elucidated. 'The first object,' he says, '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.' In other words, before the process of generalization can be commenced with any rational hope of success, we must really become omniscient in respect to the matters of fact to be generalized. Such is the doctrine of Method as interpreted by Bacon, and such are the ends and aims of induction, as he expounded the subject. On this doctrine as thus understood, we remark:

General Remarks upon this Doctrine.

1. Principles, or axioms of science, as understood and interpreted by Bacon, are identical with general judgments. There are no axioms but such as are obtained by 'a continued and gradual ascent from sense and particulars, till at last we arrive at the most general axioms.' We claim to have demonstrated that principles or axioms in science, and these general propositions, are totally distinct and separate kinds of judgments; that the former lie at the basis of all the sciences, and the latter are ultimate truths reached by scientific processes conducted in the light of scientific principles or axioms. Without principles or axioms, not a step can be taken rationally even in the process of classification or generalization. According to Bacon, these long and painful processes which are necessary preliminaries to science proper are without law or order, and without any criteria by which we can distinguish the true process from the false.

2. This identification of general judgments with principles or axioms in science, or rather the substitution of the former for the latter, has induced the common mistake in respect to the relations of induction and deduction to each other. In induction, it is said, we reason from the particular to the general; while in deduction, we reason back from the general to the particular. By such a maxim, the pupil is totally misled in regard to both induction and deduction. In the former process, we never reason from the individual to the general, nor in the latter from the general to the individual. Reasoning from the individual to the general is false inference, making the conclusion broader than the premise; reasoning from the general to the individual, as Mr. Mill has shown, involves the vicious error of petitio principii. In every valid scientific process and argument, on the other hand, induction and deduction both have place, and are never separated from each other. Every such process begins with a principle or axiom. Under such principles, facts are induced and arranged: this is induction. From this principle and the facts ranged under it, a conclusion is deduced: this is deduction. Take the following example in illustration of what always does and must obtain in induction and deduction, in their only proper forms. Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another. Here we have our principle. A and B are each equal to C. Here we have our facts induced or ranged under our principle, and this is induction proper. Therefore, A and B are equal to one another. Here we have scientific inference or deduction. Any induction in which facts are not ranged under a principle is a meaningless and lawless procedure. Any deduction in which an inference is not deduced from a principle and facts ranged under it, is either a lawless leap, or a senseless petitio principii in logic or science.

3. This error of identifying principles in science with general judgments, that is, principles which lie at the basis of all scientific induction and deduction, with ultimate truths reached by such processes, has induced in Mr. Mill and other logicians the fundamental error which we have exposed in regard to the syllogism or argument. No thinker who understands the true scientific process, that is, the real nature and relations of scientific induction and deduction, would ever have given utterance to such a fundamental error in science as the following: 'All inference,' says Mr. Mill, 'is from particulars to particulars; general propositions are merely registers of such inferences already made, and short formulas for making more. The major premise of a syllogism consequently is a formula of this description; and the conclusion is not an inference drawn from the formula, but an inference drawn according to the formula; the real logical antecedent or premises being the particular facts from which the general proposition was collected by induction.' Every sentence in the above extract contains a fundamental error in science. No inference in science is 'from particulars to particulars,' but always, as we have shown, from a self-evident, universal, and necessary principle, and facts ranged by induction under such principle; and every scientific inference is not according to, but legitimately drawn from said principle. General propositions are not 'registers of inferences already made,' inferences from particulars to particulars, nor 'short formulas for making more' such lawless inferences, but ultimate truths reached by scientific induction and deduction under and from such self-evident principles. General propositions do have place, as major premises in syllogisms found in such logics as those of Mr. Mill; but never do they have place as such premises in any proper scientific syllogism or argument. Take, in illustration, a single example from Bacon, in which, like other Anglo-Saxon thinkers, he contradicts himself. A given class of facts is before us, facts for the character and occurrence of which an explanation is sought. Two contradictory hypotheses present themselves, one of which must be true, and the other false. In such a case, says Bacon, 'nothing remains to be done but to look out for a fact which can be explained by one of these causes [hypotheses], and not by the other.' This single fact, as Bacon affirms, verifies one hypothesis as true, and the other as false. Here we have 'a general proposition' which is not 'a register of inferences already wade, and a short formula for making more, but which is an ultimate truth deduced immediately from a single fact placed under a self-evident principle, to wit, that of two or more contradictory hypotheses, some one of which must be true, and the other, or others, false, any fact which one does and the other, or others, cannot explain, demonstrates the one to be true and th