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THE SECOND VOLUME OF THE

SPEAKER'S COMMENTAR

Four Thousand Copies of this volume of the SPEA COMMENTARY were sold in London, prior to its publication, at Mr. Murray's Tru attesting the high reputation the work has achieved in England.

THIS VOLUME COMPRISES:

JOSHUA. By Rev. T, E. Espin, D.D., Warden of Queen's College, Birmingham. JUDGES, RUTH, AND SAMUEL. By Right Rev. Lord ARTHUR HERVEY, M. of Bath and Wells, Author of "Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures," etc. FIRST KINGS. By Rev. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A., Camden, Professor of And Oxford, Author of "Five Great Monarchies of the East."

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"It bears marks of care, research, caution-of considerable learning and conscientious wo present volume will be welcomed as the best in the language. No other can be put in compa excellence."-London Athenæum.

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N. B.-A new Edition of Vol. I. of the Speaker's Commentary comprising the Pentateuch, is now re

THE HISTORY OF THE REFORMA
By GEORGE P. FISHER, D.D.

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Origin of Christianity," etc.

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1872,

By Dr. J. C. DRAPER, Professor of the College of the city of New Y

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THE

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AND

PRINCETON REVIEW.

NEW SERIES, No. 6.-APRIL, 1873.

ART. I. THE THREE IDEAS.

By Prof. HENRY N. DAY, New Haven, Conn.

EVER since the time of Plato, at least, the three so-called ideas. of the True, the Beautiful, the Good, have found free expression in the literature of the civilized world. The language of common life, as well as that of the schools, has recognized them, and has stamped them with its richest, best, most significant characters. No terms in any language speak more expressively to the intelligence and the feelings of men than those which denote these ideas.

That these terms in universal language are not meaningless symbols, denoting mere zeros of thought or phantoms of fancy, that they are on the contrary signs of actual verities, not a doubt seems to have arisen. The recognition and acceptance of the ideas as such verities have been unhesitating as they have been universal.

That these ideas, further, stand in some vital relationship to one another has also been accepted with a kind of spontaneous, instinctive faith. Universally has it been believed that the perfectly good must be in beauty and according to truth; that pure beauty must be in like conformity to truth and goodness; and that the true must of its own native tendency go forth in beauty and also be a blessing. In some respects it has been supposed they must be one and the same, while yet in some other respects they must be diverse; although the precise character of this identity and diversity may have escaped recogni

tion. The vital, necessary union has been confessed, if the exact nature of the relationship has been unknown.

These three ideas, moreover, have been recognized as all-comprehensive, in the sense that the human mind can take into its experience nothing but the true, the beautiful, or the good in their perfection, their imperfection, or their contradiction; that they are the three categories under which every object which can be apprehended by the soul of man is apprehended; that, in other words, all that is object to the human soul belongs to one or another of these categories.

It is proposed in this article to investigate the grounds of these claims on the part of the true, the beautiful, and the good, to such universal and unquestioning acceptance; and to determine, if possible, the nature of these ideas, the character of the relationship between them and also of the specific relationship between each of them and the human soul as capacity to apprehend them. The investigation will be pursued in the following order of particulars, viz.: The nature of an Idea; The specific nature severally of the true, the beautiful, and the good; The relationship between the three; and lastly the correlativeness of these several ideas as all-comprehensive object to the diversified capacity of the human soul or subject-the correlativeness, in other words, of the true, the beautiful, and the good, as object to the human intelligence, sensibility, and will respectively as subjects.

I. WHAT IS AN IDEA?

The general significance of the term idea is sufficiently definite and fixed for all popular uses. But in the scientific and speculative applications of the term and in its specific meanings, there is great diversity, and consequently great liability to confusion in the use of it. "Whole systems of philosophy," it has been well observed by an accurate thinker, "owe their origin to the confounding of these several meanings."

Locke sought to give to the term a meaning which should at once command acceptance as in accordance with the received use of it in discourse and which also should be definite and precise. He defines an idea to be "whatsoever it is the mind can be employed about in thinking." An idea, according to Locke, is simply an object of thought, as opposed to thought itself or thinking, whether taken as originative, communicative thought,

as when we speak of God's thought in the creation of the universe, or as receptive, interpretative thought, as when we speak of our thought of the universe as a creation. He of course meant to exclude all notions of an image-a species-intervening between the object and the apprehending mind; and accordingly sometimes speaks of ideas as immediate objects of thought.

It must be confessed that this definition, so carefully elaborated and so earnestly defended, with all its seeming correctness and correspondence with received usage, is yet obnoxious to criticism. Certain it is, that Locke was not always consistent with himself in the use of the term, and that his definition led to misapprehension and dispute, not to say to serious mistake and error. The definition, in fact, as is often the case, being framed to guard against only a part of the possibilities of mistake, was open and unguarded in respect to others. It was both inadequate and inexact.

Plato of old, as Locke of late, had much to say of ideas. He did not give a formal definition of the term idea; and his use of it in diverse specific applications, and in meanings correspondingly modified, has, like Locke's use of it, given rise to misapprehension and dispute. Both philosophers were alike misinterpreted as teaching that ideas were real entities. Aristotle, thus, in his Metaphysics, Book II., Chapter ix., repudiates the Platonic doctrine expressly on the ground that these ideas were held not only to be universal, but to subsist separately from individuals or singulars. Elsewhere, however, he seems to accept the doctrine without qualification.

Is it possible now to clear the definition of the term idea from all that is erroneously connected with it, and still preserve that which every body accepts as true in regard to it? We may not perhaps answer this question with an absolute affirmative. From the very necessities of the case, we use other words in our definition which are as truly liable to change of meaning in the progress of thought and of language, as the term itself which we seek to define by them. Moreover, our own views from the very finiteness of our thinking natures, can never embrace every feature and relation of any object which we think. But it may be practicable so to shape our definition, as to render it

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