Inside Views of Methodism; or, a Hand-book for Inquirers and Beginners. By Rev. W. Reddy. Life of Adam Clarke, LL.D., etc. By Rev. J. W. Etheredge, M.A. A Pretty Little Library. 10 vols. 48mo. Stories in Verse, for Children. Facts about Boys: a Selection of Interesting and Instructive Anecdotes. New Sunday School Manual. Young Pilgrim. A Story illustrative of "The Pilgrim's Progress." By the Author of "The Giant-Killer," etc. The Arbor; or, Sequel to Voices from the Old Elm. THE METHODIST QUARTERLY REVIEW. OCTOBER, 1859. ART. I.-LEWES'S BIOGRAPHICAL HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. The Biographical History of Philosophy, from its Origin in Greece down to the Present Day. By GEORGE HENRY LEWES, In two vols. 8vo. New York: D. Appleton & Co. IT cannot be reckoned among the least of the many cheering signs of promise that now illuminate the moral horizon, that infidelity is shifting its ground-abandoning in despair the long-contested battle of the evidences, and seeking for a new point of attack upon Christianity. Nor should it be a matter of either surprise or alarm that the wonderful progress of scientific discovery, during the first half of the nineteenth century, should have awakened in the enemies of the cross the hope that at length the wished-for opportunity had come, and that science now offers a standpoint from which a new Archimedes may move, not the earth, but the heavens, by overturning and uprooting the last ground of intelligent faith in God and a future life. And the fact that the latest phase of skepticism (that is, Positivism) finds it necessary to prepare the way for its crusade upon religion by a sweeping attack upon philosophy, should not be without significance to those who have been accustomed to regard the latter as a handmaiden of infidelity. Mr. Lewes's work may perhaps be regarded as a formal announcement of the permanent domiciliation of the Positive Philosophy of M. Comte in the Anglo-Saxon mind; and it aims at nothing less than a demonstration of the impossibility of metaphysics, as the preparatory step to the inauguration of the new system. Its plan is somewhat novel, as the author, departing from the beaten track, attempts to individualize his theme, and to sketch the development FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XI.-34 and epochs of philosophy as they are presented in the opinions and labors of a few representative men, Chefs d'Ecole, leaving unnoted those less important features which have originated with their disciples. He has eliminated, moreover, all elements, however important in themselves, which in his judgment were not pertinent to the issue. He has wholly ignored the Egyptian, Indian, and Oriental systems; has barely glanced at the tentative efforts of scholasticism, and has neglected much in modern times that fills a large space in other histories. It is obvious that such a method is to the last degree subjective, and leaves the casual reader almost wholly at the mercy of the historian. This latter consideration was perhaps not without its influence upon one who had undertaken to write a history of philosophy "in order to prove that all attempts to solve its problems are nugatory." We cannot, perhaps, better characterize his labors and their results than by adopting his own significant language: "There are more false facts than false theories in the world." It is foreign to the purpose of this article to enter into any extended description or analysis of Mr. Lewes's work, interesting and profitable as such a task would be. We have to do only with his fundamental position and the results which he has reached, which may be fairly stated in the author's own brief summary, namely: "Modern philosophy opens with a method and ends with a method, (that is, with Bacon and Comte,) and in each case the method leads to positive science and sets metaphysics aside. . . . It has reproduced in philosophy all the questions which agitated the Greeks, which also pass through a similar course of development. Not only are the questions similar, but the evolutions are so. ... After the Eleatics had vexed the problems of existence to no purpose, there came Democritus, Anaxagoras, Plato, and Aristotle, who endeavored to settle the problems of the nature and origin of human knowledge. So in modern times, after Descartes came Hobbes, Locke, Leibnitz, Reid, and Kant. The ancient researches into the origin of knowledge ended in the skeptics, the Stoics, and the new academy; that is to say, in skepticism, common sense, and skepticism again. The modern researches ended in Berkeley, Hume, Reid, and Kant; that is, in idealism, skepticism, common sense, and skepticism again. These inquiries terminating thus fruitlessly, a new and desperate spring was made in Alexandria: reason was given up for ecstasy, philosophy merged itself into religion. In Germany a similar spectacle presents itself: Schelling identified philosophy and religion. . . . Thus has philosophy completed its circle, and we are left in the nineteenth century precisely at the same point in which we were in the fifth. Modern philosophy staked its pretensions on the one question: Have we any ideas independent of expe rience? This was asking, in other words, Have we any organon of philosophy? The answer must always end in a negative. If any one, therefore, remain unshaken by the accumulated proofs this history affords of the impossibility of a philosophy, let him distinctly bear in mind that the first problem he must solve is: Have we ideas independent of experience? Let him solve this ere he begins to speculate." Such is our author's conclusion, boldly stated, and in general fairly argued. That it is destructive to all philosophy (if true) is obvious; that it is equally fatal to religion and science, can, we think, be clearly proved. It is therefore of the last importance to determine the validity of his premises and the correctness of his logic, that we may intelligently accept or reject his conclusions, and decide whether valid knowledge and rational faith are possible to man, or whether we are doomed to vibrate perpetually between universal skepticism and a blind, unreasoning faith, or to wander like Noah's dove, to and fro, finding no rest amid the ever-surging tides of phenomena, causeless, purposeless, and objectless, as positivism declares them to be. Mr. Lewes's argument may be embodied in two general proposi tions, namely: 1. All attempts to construct a valid system of philosophy have failed, therefore must always fail; and, 2. All our ideas are derived from experience, hence are subjective, and therefore invalid as the basis of a rational system of philosophy. Other minor points, worthy of at least passing notice, are occasionally introduced, but all of them may be referred analytically to one or the other of the above cited propositions, and must stand or fall with them. It would not be pertinent to the present discussion for us to enter into any examination of the relative merit or demerit of the various systems of philosophy which are struggling for supremacy in the world of intellect. The issue, as we shall attempt to show, is independent of the question whether any one of them as a whole be true, or whether all alike be defective or false; unless, indeed, it can be demonstrated that speculation has exhausted the cycle of possible forms-a theorem which Mr. Lewes would hardly attempt to establish. His first proposition, "that all efforts to construct a valid system of philosophy have failed, ergo, must always fail," is nothing more than a plausible but baseless assumption—a repetition of the oft-exploded, but as oft-repeated fallacy, that negative experience can disprove the existence or possibility of any event whatever. And yet the sole and avowed object of our author's two elaborate volumes is to prove this failure as to the past, and to draw this conclusion as to the future. It is a sufficient reply, ad hominem at least, to retort, "all efforts to construct a valid system of sociology have failed;" ergo, the science is impossible. And yet the problems of sociology are confessedly less recondite than those of philosophy, and mankind had been engaged for ages in a practical effort to solve them before metaphysics were dreamed of as a distinct subject of human inquiry. It is worthy of notice here that our author has sought to lighten the burdens of his self-imposed task, by the assumption of a novel and unwarrantable definition of the term metaphysics, namely, "that its office is to penetrate into the essences of things;" that is, to determine the nature of substance considered apart from its attributes; a definition which, à priori, would seem to place it beyond the scope of human reason. But what school of philosophy proposes to do this? And, could such a one be found, its vagaries would not justify the "Io triumphe" with which Mr. Lewes celebrates his bloodless victory over this man of straw. The problem is not, what are substance, mind, God, apart from their attributes; but, are there essences or substances underlying the phenomena of sensation and consciousness, whose existence and attributes reason can authoritatively determine. This simple correction alone undermines one half of his labored arguments. Nor does his attempt to demonstrate, a priori, the impossibility of philosophy relieve the baldness of his miserable sophisms. Such an argument on positive principles can have no deeper basis than experience. And we hazard nothing in propounding it as an axiomatic truth, that no argument based upon phenomena can disprove the existence of causation, substance, or a Supreme Being; the relative cannot by any possibility exclude the absolute, nor can it even justify a denial of its probable existence. An affirmation of phenomena may not perhaps involve (theoretically) the idea of an underlying substance-may raise no logical presumption of real existence; but it is sheer absurdity to assume that it can throw any doubt, however slight, upon our practical faith in either. The Kantian theory is the logical limit in this direction. If the pure reason cannot transport its subjective processes beyond its own domain in order to establish the reality of objective existence, it is equally powerless to use them to disprove it. It cannot, therefore, invalidate the testimony of the practical reason, or the inherent faith of humanity in a Supreme Being. The fundamental postulate of positivism, namely, "that science is radically opposed to and excludes all philosophy and theology," is consequently a baseless chimera. Mr. Lewes's argument on his own principles (and by them it should be judged) is less forcible than it would be were it grounded upon some one of the systems which he repudiates. Having with M. Comte denied in advance the validity of all conceptions of first |