lyzed thought, was suddenly stayed. The plague returned again, no doubt-an endemic malady in Germany, like the fevers of certain cities; but how new and suggestive the dogmatism of Schelling and of Hegel, how well reasoned and specious the dogmatism of Pessimists and Darwinists, how altered the whole tone of European speculation!

Even more remarkable is the periodical recovery of the Germans from their attacks of dogmatism, and their return to the sound attitude and critical caution of Kant. Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, have all waxed and waned: the former two, perhaps, swallowed up by the comprehensiveness and logical majesty of the last; but now even his day is gone by in Germany, and for one man who follows or reads or refutes Hegel, there are an hundred who follow and read and refute Kant. The nation has grown hot again over his interpretation, rival schools claim the ægis of his authority; and of late the Darwinists, the great apostles of Positivism, and the deadly enemies of metaphysic, have declared that he alone of the philosophers is worthy of study, and to him alone was vouchsafed a foreglimpse of the dawn of true science.

The common herd, indeed, of vulgar sciolists in the study of nature are still disposed to class him with the rest of pure philosophers, and deride him as an à priori theorist; but the deeper thinkers of the movement seem to have arrived at the truth which he long since inculcated, that the question for every thinker in every science was no question between metaphysic and no metaphysic, but between good metaphysic and bad metaphysic. Every human being that thinks enough to theorize must be a metaphysician of some sort, and the more ignorant, the more dogmatic; because such people argue upon theories which they have never stated to themselves, and assume results as attained which have defied the pursuit of centuries of learning.

Thus the old lady who maintains the sudden and instantaneous action of the Holy Spirit in conversion will tell us that there must be a moment-an indivisible point of time-before which the soul was in a state of condemnation, and after in a state of grace; and upon this ground we have the doctrine of gradual salvation rejected as absurd. Here is a theological argument

based on a thoroughly metaphysical assumption—on the denial of the infinite divisibility of time; for it implies the doctrine that time, which is continuous, and therefore necessarily divisible, is made up of moments which are not divisible, and therefore of moments which are themselves not time. Is not this a most subtle question of metaphysic, and yet it underlies the theological beliefs of our least philosophical people? If such a theory of time be indeed necessary to sound religion, we may well exclaim that it has been hidden from the wise and prudent and revealed unto babes!

This may serve as an example from the thinking of ordinary people; it hardly requires illustration to show that the startingpoint of every science, which is not a mere science of description, is a metaphysical starting-point, and that those very speculators who most deride metaphysic are compelled to employ it at the outset of their systems. The nature of Being and of Becoming, to use ancient phrases, is after all still the great question among scientific men; and there are few who are satisfied with a mere analysis of the ordinary facts of experience, without probing below the surface, and speculating on the real nature of space, the elements of matter, and the origin of life.

From this point of view we may describe metaphysic as the inquiry into the assumptions or pre-existing conditions of the sciences, as well as into the origin of the phenomena of experience. Neither nature, nor science, which is our thinking about nature, originates at random and without laws. What are these laws and these conditions? This is the form in which the scope of metaphysic has been described ever since Kant's time, and it marks the strongest contrast between our new philosophy and that of earlier centuries. Up to the eighteenth century, metaphysic had been allied with theology; the two sciences had been mixed together and confused, so that even the genius of Descartes, who was the first great lay speculator, could not break the fetters, and kept perpetually reverting to a theological basis in speculation.

The attitude of Kant was completely changed. Though himself a profoundly religious man, he lays it before him as his guiding principle that metaphysic must be reconciled, not with theology, but with science. He never considers whether his system

can harmonize with the dogmas of his church, for his whole attention is fixed on this question: Can metaphysic be brought into agreement with the necessary conditions of the exact sciences of mathematics, pure and applied? If it can, it is a true and real science; if it cannot, the positive sciences must remain, and metaphysic, or what has been called metaphysic, must be cast to the winds. This is in fact the result of his great book, that there are portions of metaphysic-speculations on the nature of space and time, and of the forms under which we obtain experience-which are consistent with science, nay, even necessary to explain science, and these are accordingly established. There are other portions of metaphysic which are inconsistent with these tests, and which are accordingly to be rejected. I need hardly remind the reader that these latter are precisely the theological aspects of metaphysic-the spirituality of the soul, the necessary existence of the Deity, the freedom of the will on all these the demonstrations of theological metaphysic are exposed and refuted.

The real reason of the permanent vitality of Kant's system, of its rapid conquest of the philosophic world, of its revival in an age of anti-speculative tendencies, is this strictly scientific spirit. He claims for it, indeed, no higher place than that of the police in an organized society, which is intended to leave peaceable and orderly citizens alone, and to interfere only in the interests of peace and order. But in speculation the disorderly are so numerous, their assumptions are so bold, their oppression so unjust, that the duties of metaphysic as the police of thought are constant and arduous; and it may safely be said that no man can start with security in the pursuit of any science, or expect to attain in it real eminence, who has not the avenues of his mind guarded and his freedom of thinking assured by a preparatory study of the critical philosophy. This is the negative aspect of the question; from a positive point of view it may be urged that, apart from the actual knowledge attained by the acute analysis and large insight of such a thinker as Kant, the mastering of his system implies a mental gymnastic superior to that which can be obtained even from the study of higher mathematics. The minuteness of detail in the Critick is not more remarkable than the extraordinary regularity of classification, by which every ques

tion and every fact finds its fixed place in the structure. So it comes that we cannot possibly master thoroughly one part of Kant's philosophy without obtaining the clue to all the rest. The proofs of the validity and of the scientific character of mathematics and physics in themselves imply the refutation of ontology and of its pretended demonstrations.

If these remarks be well founded, it must be of great importance to the philosophic temper of our own as well as of former generations, to keep rethinking in our own way, and reclothing in our own words, the main ideas of the great Critic. Perhaps, too, it may afford a welcome clue to the student who finds himself lost in the thorny maze of the great discoverer's own exposition, which is too big with thoughts, and perhaps too selfsurprised, to study elegance of form, and to avoid either ellipsis of thought or redundancy of expression. There are, moreover, many controversies prominent enough for the moment to excite the attention and divert the path of even great discoverers. These questions, which made perhaps most noise in their day, are now silent, or only live in the allusions of more lasting replies, and there is no need that in endeavoring to gather the wheat of a bygone generation we should gather the chaff also. The speculations concerning the proposition, Quodlibet ens est unum, verum, bonum, or the arguments of Moses Mendelssohn on the permanence of the soul, are now mere disturbances in the course of Kant's exposition, and may be passed over in silence. important, perhaps, as the illusion is not yet dead, is his refutation of the conditions assumed in Swedenborg's visionary system, and it is to be regretted that his best-known and greatest work does not contain his official discussion of this pseudo-philosophy. But, in any case, our present limits will permit no deviation, however interesting, into by-ways, and we will grasp broad principles as simply as we may.

More

If we desire to ascertain what can be learned by studying metaphysic, we must go back to the most elementary conditions, and examine the very roots of the matter. For there appears to be something radically wrong about the science, as it has been heretofore studied. All through the best periods of Greek philosophy, all through the middle ages, metaphysic in the strictest sense-the science of Being, as opposed to the mere analysis

of phenomena—was regarded as the Queen of the Sciences. It is indeed striking, but not strange, that the anti-theological, sceptical unrestrained Greek thinkers, and the professed supporters of the Christian faith, should unite in placing this study above that of other sciences. But we cannot here turn aside to show that the one sought to attain theology through it, the other to establish theology by means of it. In every case the close kinship of both sciences is manifest, and though men may succeed in hiding it from themselves, it is hard to conceive a metaphysical age not theological, or a theological age not metaphysical. Of course I mean by theology systematic or reasonedout religion. Hence we might have expected à priori what Kant notes in his Preface, that when theology went out of favor in the eighteenth century, when the sciences of observation and experiment began to fascinate the thinking world, metaphysic, once a queen and a despot, was left forsaken and neglected, to mourn the decay of her whilome greatness. Meanwhile pure mathematics, physical and natural sciences, which had begun modestly, and promised nothing, were advancing with giant strides, and showing now a promise of indefinite progress.

Can we say that metaphysic had a certain field or province to occupy, and that this was accomplished, so that the science might be rather regarded as wound up, than as a failure? Certainly not. We have a specimen of such a science in logic, which merely professes to analyze human reasoning. Now, although the term Logic may be used in wider senses, and extraneous variable matter may thus be imported into it, the strict province of the science was surveyed and occupied by Aristotle, and from his day to our own there has been no doubt or scepticism possible as to the main results once obtained. But in metaphysic we have no such fixed and undebateable ground. In every generation there rise up new inquirers, who refuse to accept any thing from their predecessors as established, and are even still groping about for a secure basis in a science which has been assiduously cultivated for ages. Surely there must be something radically wrong here. It is impossible, as has already been shown, to get rid of the incumbrance. The very sceptics who are most trenchant in their rejection of all existing metaphysic, are themselves metaphysicians, and carry on their attack by metaphysical