Hume's. And Hume's influence was so great that how a student unacquainted with his doctrines can be made to understand Kant, is itself a matter not easy to understand.

As to the other side of the book, on which the author appears as something more than a commentator, its characteristics, too, may be indicated by a quotation from the preface:

"Earnestly desiring to avoid prejudice on either side, and to welcome evidence and argument from whatever source they might come, without professional bias, and free from any external inducement to teach one set of opinions rather than another, I have faithfully studied most of what the philosophy of these modern times and the science of our own day assume to teach."

Thus disclaiming prejudice, he continues, not without a trace of emotion :

"And the result is, that I am now more firmly convinced than ever that what has been justly called "the dirt-philosophy" of materialism and fatalism is baseless and false."

He then declares himself a Christian; and accordingly the work is to a great extent apologetic from that point of view.

It occurs to me to ask what that "professional bias" can be which is mentioned in the above quotation. Is it possible that, as American students sometimes assert, a "Universitäts-Philosophie," such as stirs the indignation and darkens the prospects of Radicals on the European Continent and is not without example amongst ourselves, exists even in the land of the free? This question was suggested by the first sentence of our author's account of Schopenhauer (chap. xxi.), where he says that he had hesitated long before introducing any account of Schopenhauer's writings into this work. "To analyse them, even for purposes of censure and refutation, seemed too much like promoting the dissemination of evil." For this is just the attitude of mind which the great pessimist ascribed in an exaggerated form to the German professors of his day. And then one could not help wondering whether a dread of disseminating evil had suppressed a chapter on Hume; though, of course, on remembering that other reasons, however unsound, had been given in the preface, the wonder subsided.

Since now this work has avowedly two aspects, it will be well to consider it in both-first as a history of philosophy, and then as a contribution to philosophy. And since as a history it contains no ambitious theory of how philosophy must necessarily have grown and developed, our task under this head will be to examine, as well as space permits, how far the exposition is impartial and trustworthy. But before entering upon a course which may perhaps lead to fault-finding, it may be said at once that the book is always readable. Very few books of the sort are as little likely to make a beginner think philosophy harsh and crabbed; and so, if it is not altogether satisfactory itself, it may do good service by inducing its readers to pursue the subject elsewhere.

In an interesting chapter on Descartes, the author finds that

"The great defect of the Cartesian philosophy is, that it takes little notice of the idea of cause, and does not disentangle or present to distinct consciousness the great law of causality, though the whole system unconsciously pre-supposes the validity of this principle, not only as a law of thought, but also as a law of things" (p. 30).

And he charges Descartes with confusing "the relation between substance and attribute with that between cause and effect". By the law of causality, Prof. Bowen, I believe, does not mean the law of phenomenal antecedent and consequent, but a law expressing the necessity of an efficient noumenal cause. But in any sense it can hardly be maintained that Descartes' system only unconsciously presupposes such a principle. For although in the Discourse on Method it is not so explicitly stated as could be wished, it elsewhere has due prominence given to it. In the Principles of Philosophy, I. § 49, the axiom ex nihilo nihil fit is stated first in a list of eternal truths; and in II. § 36, Descartes says that it is intuitively evident to himself that God was the first cause of motion, having created matter with a certain quantity of motion and rest, which He has since preserved unchanged, thus manifesting His own unchangeableness; and he then goes on, in §§ 37-8, to state the first law of secondary causes, and to illustrate its quantitative aspect in the case of projectiles. The point appears important to Prof. Bowen, because he says that Descartes' expressions on this subject led to Spinoza's Pantheism, of which he has the deepest horror. But Descartes, when using the strongest expressions, as when he says that God upholds the world by the same action by which he originally created it, is careful to add that this view has the general sanction of theologians (Discourse, Pt. 5). It cannot be denied, of course, that the relations of the attributes to substance in Spinozism is derived from the relations of the three substances the dependence of mind and matter on God-in Cartesianism; but that Descartes adopted this conception immediately from the current theology is equally indisputable. And the difference between Spinoza's and Descartes' views is not less obvious than the derivation. For Descartes conceives of God in relation to mind and matter far less frequently as the substance of substances, than as the cause of effects; in so far, of course, as cause and substance are transcendentally distinguishable.

The tone of the chapter on Spinoza, elsewhere called "the remorseless Jew," and "the infidel Jew," seems to me unfairly disparaging; too much is made of his indebtedness to Descartes as a thinker; and his "irreproachable character" is accounted for by his having wanted the physique of a healthy sinner; "leading the life of an anchorite, not from principle or by any effort of self-denial, but simply for want of liking for the ordinary enjoyments of mankind". That ill health and virtue naturally go together is, however, contrary alike to reason and experience; it is not every invalid of whom it can be said that "he conciliated not only the goodwill, but even the strong affection of the few ordinary persons with whom the seclusion of his life allowed him to come in contact" (p. 60). Prof. Bowen's account of

Spinoza fails, like many others, by regarding him chiefly as a metaphysician, and almost forgetting that he was a moralist. Has any one explained why the Ethics of Spinoza has nearly always been treated as a volume of metaphysics? Is it that critics have not had patience to read far enough, or that dislike of the heretical metaphysician has made them willingly forgetful of the saintly moralist, or that the nature of substance and attribute is so supremely interesting to mankind that the conduct of life is comparatively unimportant? There are several mistakes in Prof. Bowen's chapter. Speaking of Spinoza's system as dependent on definitions, he says:

"Spinoza has no right subsequently, at the conclusion of his philosophy, to pass from his ideal distinctions to the world of real things, and take for granted that he has proved human beings and other finite existences not to be substances in any sense-i.e., not to be realities-because he has shown that they are not substance in his sense" (p. 63).

But, in the first place, reality and substance are not synonymous, and Spinoza does not deny the reality of finite existences "in any sense": they are real to him as Modes of the Attributes of God. And, secondly, Spinoza does not take for granted the passage from his ideal distinctions to the world of real things at the conclusion of his philosophy; but, quite early in the Ethics (Pt. II., Prop. 7), supposes himself to prove that the order and connection of ideas and of things is the same. Again, describing the necessity of natural law according to Spinoza, our author writes:

"Every volition even, every act of a conscious agent, is preceded by certain states of mind, all involuntary, on which it is necessarily consequent; and these mental states are the inevitable results of physical changes in the world without," &c. (p. 70).

But Spinoza says (Ethics, Pt. III., Prop. 2), the Body cannot determine the Mind to thought, nor the Mind the Body to motion. I must admit that in the last paragraph of the chapter (p. 72) Prof. Bowen shows himself aware of the truth on both points. But an historian cannot atone for having stated something wrongly on one page by stating it aright without any reference on another.

After a chapter on Malebranche we find one on Pascal: and our author's reason for giving so much space to one who is not usually regarded as marking an epoch in philosophy, is that he was the true originator of the "Philosophy of the Conditioned," which became a favourite doctrine with Hamilton. This is especially important, he thinks, because Mill attributed Hamilton's difficulties in dealing with the conception of Infinity to his ignorance of mathematics, whereas here we have them in Pascal, one of the greatest mathematicians. It is a little surprising that although Hamilton, when trying to show that his doctrine was as old as Philosophy (Discussions, Appendix I.), quotes from Pascal, he nowhere refers to one or two passages produced by Prof. Bowen (Pensées, Art. II.) which would have been much in point. It does not, however, surprise me that Mill did not notice them for if I have the right passage (the almost total absence of re

ferences is a grave defect in this book) the particular difficulty which he attributes to Hamilton's ignorance of mathematics lay in conceiving how one infinite could be less than another (Examination, p. 536, 3rd ed.); and these difficulties are not those which Hamilton may have taken hint of from Pascal. I regret to add that Prof. Bowen ascribes to Hamilton a mistake in the statement of his doctrine which was not one of those that he fell into: he represents him as supposing the infinitely great to be the contradictory of the infinitely small (p. 94). When Prof. Bowen has dissipated this illusion by re-perusing Hamilton's sixth Lecture on Logic, he may consider whether he has not himself fallen into a very similar error in attempting to state the doctrine at p. 93. It is a doctrine dear to him; for, "of course," he says, it is destructive of Empiricism. All the space of which we have had experience, either through the senses or by the imagination, is finite or limited." Astounding! No tidings that ever reached us from the New World have so stimulated our curiosity to visit it. The boundaries of space are there the most familiar objects of contemplation. This must give the inhabitants an unfair advantage over Europeans in philosophising on the subject.

In the chapter on Leibnitz we read that the Monadology was "in the main a deduction from the doctrine of Innate Ideas, and from the Principles of Sufficient Reason, &c.," but whoever turns to La Monadologie, § 7, must perceive that the doctrine of Innate Ideas is an immediate deduction from the nature of Monads.

In the chapter on Berkeleyanism, Professor Bowen takes occasion to denounce the "monstrous Egoistic Idealism, or Solipsismus, of Fichte, J. S. Mill, and the Positivists, who by denying both substance and cause, thereby deny the existence of any Non-Ego," &c. (p. 150). Dismissing the Positivists as an indefinite group of persons who, if really guilty of such incredible inconsistency, are justly to blame, it may be observed with reference to Fichte that to deduce is to establish, not to deny; and that the Non-Ego, cause and substance were, as he supposed, deduced in his system. Fichte did not, indeed, attribute. original reality to the Non-Ego; but he was not singular in that; no one who believes in an Absolute Being, under whatever name, can attribute original reality to another. Surely it was enough that the Non-Ego was, for Fichte, necessary to the Ego's self-consciousness, and thereby necessarily partook of its absolute reality. Does any orthodox theologian venture to ascribe more reality than that to all creation? Similarly of Mill: he did not deny the existence of either substance, or cause, or Non-Ego; but only endeavoured to analyse them into their simplest elements, and to find expressions for them in accordance with the principles of a particular school of philosophy. Such a sentence as the above suggests that the writer has not mastered either the expressions or the ideas of any school but his own.

He might at least have been careful in little matters; but he cannot be trusted to state correctly the smallest detail. The form of Kant's Prolegomena, he says, is synthetical (p. 158): that it is analytical Kant himself takes the trouble to tell us in his preface. The whole of

Vol. III. of K. Fischer's History of Modern Philosophy is, he says, devoted to the Critique of Pure Reason (p. 160): only half of it is so devoted. Professor Bowen himself has five chapters on Kant, of which it can only be said that they are well worth correcting. Perhaps the best chapters in the book are the three on Schopenhauer: the worst is certainly that on Positivism.

66

After a ludicrous introduction, in which we read that a reaction "has brought back in all its essential features the philosophy of the eighteenth century;" that Mr. Darwin "repeats Helvetius and Lord Monboddo"; that Mr. Spencer "develops at great length the noted hypothesis of Condillac;" that Prof. Huxley's sensible wish to be wound up every morning "to think what is true and do what is right," was such as a Danton or a Desmoulins might have uttered while projecting the September massacres (p. 261)-after this, we find Positivists distinguished into the disciples of Comte, and a group of thinkers who, our author says, are really disciples of Hume. From the account of Comtism proper take this choice sentence: its theology "inculcates the systematic worship of that gigantic idol representing humanity at large, or the whole human race, which Hobbes of Malmesbury called the Leviathan,'" &c. Perhaps that is enough. For the outer Positivists, really disciples of Hume, Professor Bowen takes J. S. Mill as their type, and associating with him Mr. Spencer, Mr. Lewes, Mr. Darwin, Profs. Helmholtz, Huxley, and Tyndall, empties his quiver at them indiscriminately. It would be well to re-write this chapter, or omit it altogether, from another edition.

We must now try to summarise Prof. Bowen's own views. He holds that our ideas of substance and cause are given in the self-consciousness of the Ego. In volition we are immediately conscious of originating force; and since matter and motion are reducible to forces, and these forces to one, we must infer that this also is the manifestation of a Will. Our author is a staunch upholder of Free Will; and the idea of invariable natural law determines him to strong language: “If one could believe it-thank God that I do not!-it would drive him to suicide (p. 71). It may be inferred from many indications that these chapters were originally lectures.

Innate ideas (which, with the testimony of consciousness, play a prominent part in our author's reasoning) are to be known by the mark of universality and necessity: but whether he holds that what is inconceivable is non-existent or absurd, cannot be clearly ascertained. For at p. 59 we read :

"I accept, therefore, the doctrine of Pascal, Hamilton, and Mansel. There is an absolute necessity, under any system of Philosophy whatever, of acknowledging the existence of a sphere of belief beyond the limits of the sphere of thought."

But when at p. 67 it becomes desirable to overwhelm Spinoza, we read:

"It (Spinoza's system) annihilates both God and the universe, by resolving both into the inconceivable abstraction of a universal Substance, which is to us, because inconceivable, a nonentity."