had certainly never proposed a controversy so lofty, nor one so decisive, either to break up the system of entities, or to suggest the relative nature of true philosophy. However this may be, it is clear that almost immediately after their combined victory over the monotheistic spirit, and therefore over the last remains of the religious system, the positive and the metaphysical spirit began that mutual divergence which could end only in the complete ascendancy of the one over the other. The conflict could not take place immediately; for the metaphysical spirit was busy in supporting the temporal against the spiritual power, while the positive spirit was engaged in amassing astrological and alchemical observations. But when, during the second phase, the metaphysical spirit was enthroned by Protestantism, at the same time that the positive was making discoveries which were as incompatible with the metaphysical as with the theological system, the state of things was changed. The story of the great astronomical movement of the sixteenth century, and many mournful instances of the fate of scientific men, prove how metaphysics had succeeded, under different forms, to the domination hitherto exercised by theology. But the logical evolution, properly so called, is the one which can be least effectually restrained, aided as it ever is by those who assume to impede it, and undervalued in its scope till it has proved that scope; and the struggle issued therefore, in the early part of the seven.teenth century, in the irreversible decline of the system of entities, which was abrogated in regard to the general phenomena of the external world, and virtually therefore in regard to all the rest.

All civilized Europe, except Spain, took part in this vast controversy, which was to decide the future of the human race. Germany had brought on the crisis, in the preceding century, by the Protestant convulsion, and by the astronomical discoveries of Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler: but she was now engrossed by political struggles. But England, France, and Italy each furnished a great warrior in this noble strife,-Bacon, Descartes, and Galileo, who will for ever be regarded as the founders of the positive philosophy, because each was aware of its true character, understood its conditions, and foresaw its final supremacy.

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Bacon and
Descartes.

Galileo's labours, which were purely scientific, wrought in this movement by freely extending science, and not byabstract philosophical precepts. The works of Bacon and Descartes were alike aimed against the old philosophy, and destined to form the new; and their differences are in remarkable ment with the nature of each philosopher and with their respective environment. Both showed the necessity of abandoning the old mental system; both set forth the genuine attributes of the new system; and both declared the provisional character of the special analysis which they prescribed as the path of approach to the general synthesis which must hereafter be attained. Agreeing thus far, all else proved the extreme unlikeness between these great philosophers, occasioned by organization, education, and position. Bacon had more natural activity of mind, butless rationality, and in every way less eminence; his education was vague and desultory, and he grew up in an environment essentially practical, in which speculation was subordinated to its application; so that he gave only an imperfect representation of the scientific spirit, which, in his teachings, oscillates between empiricism and metaphysics, and especially with regard to the external world, which is the immutable basis of natural philosophy. Descartes, on the other hand, was as great a geometer as philosopher, and derived positivism from its true source, thus being able to lay down its essential conditions with firmness and precision. The discourse in which he simply narrates his own evolution is an unconscious description of the course of the human mind in general, and it will still be read with profit when Bacon's diffuse elaboration will retain only an historical interest. But, in another aspect, the superiority of Bacon is no less striking,-in the study of Man and Society. Descartes constituted the inorganic philosophy as well as the age allowed, and abandoned the moral and social field to the old methods: whereas Bacon aimed chiefly at the renovation of this second half of the philosophical system, which he foresaw to be the ultimatemeans of regenerating the human race altogether. These differences must be attributed partly to the diversity of their genius, and partly to the opportunity afforded to

Descartes by his position of better estimating the revolutionary state of modern Europe. It must be observed that the tendency of the Cartesian school has been to correct the imperfections of its head, whose metaphysics did not rise in honour with his corpuscular theory; whereas, in England and elsewhere, the Baconian school has applied itself to restrict the noble social spirit of its founder, and - exaggerate its abstract inconveniences, sinking his conception of observation into a kind of sterile empiricism, such as is always within the reach of patient mediocrity. Thus, when our men of science desire to give a philosophical appearance to their narrow specialities, they appeal to Bacon, and not to Descartes, whose scientific character they depreciate; and yet the precepts of Bacon are quite as hostile as the conceptions of Descartes to pursuits like theirs, which are completely opposed to the common aim of the two great philosophers. Important as were these two schemes, they were not sufficient, even when united, to constitute the positive philosophy. That philosophy had as yet scarcely touched Physics, and had not reached Chemistry; and its extension to moral and social conceptions, which was Bacon's noble aim, was impossible before the advent of biological science. The point of time was remarkable therefore as introducing a new philosophy, and vaguely disclosing the conditions of its development; and all that the two great philosophers proposed was a provisional method, which might render positive all the elements of speculation, in preparation for an ultimate system, which they knew to be unattainable without such preparation. The transitional state of the human mind must therefore endure till Chemistry and Biology should have taken their place among the sciences. Till that should happen, there was really nothing to be done but to modify once more the original separation, decreed by Aristotle and Plato, between natural and moral philosophy, by bringing each of them forward one stage, and thus showing their difference to be more marked than ever; for there is wider difference when natural philosophy is in the positive stage, and moral philosophy in the metaphysical stage, than when one was in the metaphysical and the other in the theological. Descartes saw the state of things more clearly and deeply

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than Bacon, and he applied himself to the extension of positivity to the utmost limit that could be then ventured, even including in it the intellectual and moral study of animals, under his famous hypothesis of the automatism of brutes, thus leaving to metaphysics only the domain which could not be emancipated from it in those days-the study of Man, moral and social. In doing this, he made useless efforts to invest the last functions of the old philosophy with more rationality than really belonged to an expiring doctrine; and therefore the second part of his work was less adapted to his time, and less successful than the first. Bacon's object being, not the distribution of the sciences, but the regeneration of moral and social. science, he did not fall under the same liability; but the impossibility of rendering moral philosophy positive at that time compelled his school to recognize the old division, modified by Descartes, provisionally, though not doctrinally. Any attempt at a premature union could merely have set back everything under metaphysical domination, as we see by the attempts of Malebranche and Leibnitz, who laboured to set up a consistent system,-the one with his monads and the other with his pre-established harmony. Neither of them succeeded, more or less, in effacing the distinction between natural and moral philosophy; and though we now see the really contradictory nature of that division, we also perceive how its temporary admission must have been absolutely necessary, since the genius of a Leibnitz failed to abolish it.

We thus see the first result of the philosophical stimulus imparted by Bacon and Descartes. The positive spirit obtained complete possession of natural philosophy, while the metaphysical spirit was left for awhile in possession of moral philosophy; and thus the reign of entities, which had been universal, was fatally encroached upon. In the intervening period it appears to me that the pursuit of specialities in study has broken up the metaphysical régime, thoroughly and finally. The best minds have, with a few exceptions, turned to science; and philosophy, released from the grave, preparatory study, which was once thought necessary, and floating between science and theology, has fallen into the hands of men of letters, who have made use

of it for the demolition of the old system, thus concealing for awhile its organic impotence. It cannot be necessary to treat of the varieties of a philosophy which has no adaptation to the needs of the times. It is notorious that it contemplates the abstract action of the human understanding, in one case through the external conditions, and in another through the internal; and that thus two systems, or two modes, have arisen, equally vicious, because alike separating the two indispensable considerations of the medium and the organism, the combination of which furnishes the only sound basis of biological speculation of any kind. It appears to me that the two errors represent the Catholic and Protestant aspects of the philosophy of Europe: the Catholic metaphysics being more critical, and therefore more tending to the positive, and to the consideration of the external world; whereas, the Protestant metaphysics, incorporated with the governments, and tending to the theological state, must naturally take its stand in Man, and proceed thence to the study of the universe. In England however the school of Hobbes formed a memorable exception to this. This transitory school, represented by Locke, undertook, under the Baconian instigation, a direct regeneration of moral and social study, and began by a radical criticism, which was therefore of an Aristotelian character, and must be developed and propagated in another direction.

Political

Before I go on to the next phase, I ought philosophy. to point out that some preparation for the renovation of political philosophy was already made by Hobbes and Bossuet. Machiavel had before made some able partial attempts to connect the explanation of certain political phenomena with purely natural causes, though he spoiled his work by a thoroughly vicious estimate of modern society, which he could never sufficiently distinguish from the ancient. Hobbes's famous view of primitive war and the supposed reign of force has been usually misunderstood; but, impartially considered, it will be granted to be a striking primitive view, statical and dynamical, of the preponderance of temporal influences among permanent social conditions, taken as a whole; and also, of the necessarily martial condition of primitive