changing existences. Now, was there ever such a mass of contradictory statements as this?

Have we not already reached a point which enables us to say that existence cannot be other than changing existence, and that, therefore, unchanging existence is a contradiction in terms. May we not now call upon the skeptics to prove that there is such a thing as unchanging existence, before we can accept their statement that there is a noumenon, or a deeper source of truth than phenomena ?

Their assertion that perceptions bear no conformity to the objects perceived, or, if they did, that it could never be known, really amounts to this: A lady viewing herself in a mirror is bound to believe that she is looking at some one else, or that she is some one else; or if she is not, it does not matter, as she cannot know who she is. And it is said that

skeptics can believe nothing!

Of course Arcesilaus and Carneades would have thought this a frivolous way of meeting their profound arguments. But let us bear in mind that profundity is not necessarily proven by a confusion of ideas. Nor would we take advantage of the rich inheritance of our century in definite knowledge to make it appear that the acute intellects who puzzled the Greeks and confounded the Romans were stumbling over obvious errors. What we wish to prove is, that the Skeptics had beliefs as well as other people, but that these beliefs were divorced from facts by the tautologies and circumventions of reasoning from a false premise.

If belief is but a phase of knowledge, a natural movement of the mind which springs from the deeper impulses,—those dim, inarticulate perceptions which we call faith, then is not Skepticism an artificial and unnatural belief, but none the less a belief?

An analysis of these beliefs brings us inevitably to those deep movements of consciousness, those simple and natural perceptions upon which rests the whole structure of certitude.

Arcesilaus was born at Pitane in the 116th Olympiad (B.c.,

316). He was the successor of Crates to the Academic chair, and is said to have filled it with great ability. The difference between the views entertained by the Academicians and those of the absolute Skeptics, we are told, is that the former declared that all things were incomprehensible, and that the latter did not affirm any thing, not even that all things were incomprehensible. As it would be difficult to criticise the views of the latter class, we may consider the Academicians the most pronounced Skeptics, for we are in no danger of being contradicted by the other branch of the sect.

Carneades, the most illustrious of the Academicians, was born in the 141st Olympiad (B.C. 213), at Cyrene in Africa. Diogenes, the Stoic, instructed him in the art of disputation. He was sent to Rome as ambassador, and astonished all who heard him in that city by the brilliancy of his eloquence. He was much praised for his celebrated discourse on Justice; but when trying to prove the uncertainty of all human knowledge, he spoke against justice as strongly as he had spoken for it; Cato, the Censor, startled by these sophistries. hastened to have him dismissed from the city for fear that he would corrupt the Roman youth. One of the pupils of Carneades confessed that he could never discover what the real opinion of his master was, so skilled was he in the art of disputation.

Arcesilaus, while he admitted the arguments of Plato which destroyed the certainty of Opinion, also admitted those of Aristotle which destroyed the Ideal theory; thus he left himself nothing but absolute Skepticism. The chief problem which occupied the Academicians, briefly stated, is this: Does every modification of the mind exactly correspond with the external object which causes the modification; or, in other words, do we know things as they really are? The fact that all knowledge is derived through the senses made them doubt its accuracy. It is true that the senses are the outposts of the understanding, but what has that to do with what takes place within the citadel of thought?

Can the Skeptic say where sense leaves off and reason begins? He cannot. Then is it not safe to say that all reason has a sensuous aspect, and that all sense has a reasonable or logical aspect?

We know that such truth as we possess is the function of certain conditions; that these conditions are those of perception; that reason is one aspect of the mental procedure called perception, and that objective phenomena, or change, is the other. We know that phenomena and reason, therefore, are related to each other as cause and effect, and that cause and effect are simply two aspects of the same thing. When light awakens the phenomena of sight within us, and this, with the coöperation of other activities of our complex organism, is elaborated into an idea, or the phenomena of reason, we have but sequent groups of changes, natural chains of cause and effect, uniting and explaining observed phenomena, sensuous apprehension, and ideas. The greater the number of changes coördinated in the mind, made possible by accumulated modifications of the mental structure, the greater the extent of reason; the greater the command of facts, the wider and deeper the generalizations or the establishment of interdependencies among facts. To state, therefore, that things are not in reality what they seem, is an entirely gratuitous assertion. We know things as they affect, and to the extent that they affect, us. This effect is the function of a definite structure. As the modifications of the structure increase, this function or response becomes more extended. To know an object in the sense that the Skeptics imagined that we ought to know it (to have an absolute knowledge of it) could only be accomplished by changing identity with the object—by becoming the object; as then, and only then, the perception would be the function of its whole nature.

This is the way that God knows things, because God shares his existence with every thing.' We, whether it be regarded as fortunate or unfortunate, enjoy some sort of in

1 This expression, it is understood, is purely symbolical.

dividuality, and our perceptions are never more and never less than the natural relationship or interaction between ourselves and the things perceived. In the silent contemplation of nature we come face to face with the deepest realities, but the moment we would translate these realities into the metaphor of language we are defeated on every hand. What is more real than action? What is more unreal than its portrayal in words? What is more certain than a feeling, a sentiment, or a thought? What is more impotent than the best attempt at its conversion into symbols? The incontrovertible part of life is its action, the delusive part is its speech; words are forever meaningless to those who have not actually experienced the thoughts which they express. The whole history of thought is a struggle with metaphors, an effort to express thought and then a confusion of the expression with the thing expressed. As language, the great medium of thought and feeling, enriches the lives of all who use it, so it is the source of endless confusion and error to those who have not actually lived up to its significance.

The issue we take with those who are willing to surrender the results of philosophy to the Skeptic is now apparent. Skepticism is only an involved and obscure philosophy, a system of ultimate beliefs. Contrary to its teachings, we hold that there is a successful philosophy, a successful metaphysics, and that the most absolute Skepticism which it is possible to state in terms is both a positive and a mistaken belief.

These arguments, which seek to disclose the Scope of Language, cannot be further produced without attempting a close study of the Nature of Perception, which follows in its allotted place. I am content for the present if I have helped to dispel that logical presumption which has hung for so many centuries like a dark cloud over the entire field of thought.

CHAPTER V.

THE ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL, SCHOLASTICISM, AND THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING.

Philo-Plotinus-Abelard-Bruno-Bacon.

THE fall of Greek independence and the advent of Skepticism dethroned philosophy in Greece, and the centre of speculative thought was transferred to Alexandria. Here, during the first centuries of our era, Greek thought and oriental mysticism combined in the formation of Christian theology. Alexandria, for three centuries previous to this time, had been the centre of vast commercial as well as literary enterprise. Its celebrated library, which contained inestimable treasures of Egyptian, Indian, and Greek literature, (destroyed by Christian fanatics under the archbishop Theophilus, in 391 A.D.) had been enriched and fostered by such men as Euclid, Conon, Theocritus, Callimachus, Apollonius Rhodius, and Hipparchus.

For three centuries the Alexandrian school of philosophy contended with Christianity for the intellectual and moral control of Europe. It was not a fight between religious faith and reason, as might be supposed,-for religious faith was the foundation of the Alexandrian philosophy; it was a struggle between the special beliefs of Christianity, which were formed by the early Christian fathers into a complete organon of faith, and the incomplete beliefs which philosophy at that time offered. This struggle still continues, with the difference that the completeness of philosophical beliefs now is far in advance of the Alexandrian school. The chief objection to resigning Christian faith for Philosophy is that something is given up with the former which is not replaced