2

security.' These sentences occur in the very work in which that theory of Causation is elaborated, of which Comte says that malgré toutes ses graves imperfections, ce travail constitue, à mon gré, le seul pas capital qu'ait fait l'esprit humain vers la juste appréciation directe de la nature purement relative propre à la saine philosophie, depuis la grande controverse entre les réalistes et les nominalistes.' And what is that historical hierarchy of the Sciences which is put forward as, next to the Law of the Three Periods, Comte's greatest achievement, but a working-out, and, (as I trust that the New Classification of the Sciences which, in the foregoing Section, I have set forth, will practically have demonstrated,) but a very partial, and onesided working-out of the great Scottish thinker's profound conception of a complete System of the Sciences founded on the principles of Human Nature'? Let me not, however, be understood as denying the ori-. ginality, as well as breadth and vigour, with which the ideas of Hume were conceived, and elaborated by Comte. My object here is only to point-out the important historical fact that Comte's chief scientific ideas were in Hume. Whether these ideas were drawn by Comte from Hume is a question of mere biographical interest into which I do not care to enter.

12. But, further, with reference to the general speculative development of our Ultimate Law of History, I would point out that, in the above statement of it, the theory of Hume is completed through

1 Treatise of Human Nature. Phil. Works, vol. 1. p. 8.

1 Thilosophie positive, t. vI. p. 319.

an integration of the conceptions of those illustrious thinkers with whom closed the Thought-period initiated by him and Kant. For the assertion by this Law of an advance from the conception of Onesided, to the conception of Mutual Determination is evidently but a new expression, at once more general, and more definite, of that great fact of a change in our notions of the causes of change first stated by Hume, afterwards formulised by Comte, and more lately verified by vast collections of evidence with respect to 'Primitive Culture.' Evidently, also, the further assertion made by the above-stated law, namely, that this change is effected by a Differentiation of the Subjective and the Objective, is in accordance with that Law of Thought first presented in the Begriff of Hegel, and verified, as we have seen, by the general results of modern thought respecting Thought. But not only does this new Law thus integrate what is true in the theories and laws of Hume, of Hegel, and of Comte, but it gives to the truth contained in these theories and laws a more complete and accurate expression. The Transitional or Metaphysical Stage of Comte, in particular, this new Law far more broadly and accurately generalises as that great Intermediate Age of the Differentiation of the Subjective and Objective necessary to the development of the true conception of Causation as Mutual Determination-an Intermediate Age, of which the beginning must, as we shall presently see, be dated from a vastly more remote century than that from which Comte dates his Transitional or Meta

1 See the admirable compilations of Sir J. Lubbock, Mr. Tylor, &c.

physical stage. And the Law of the Three Periods, as a whole, the integration by this new Law, of a Law of Thought, converts from an Empirical into a Rational or Ultimate Law. Nor is this new Law of

a less completing character in its relation to the Law of Hegel, though in a converse fashion. For the primitive and ultimate stages of the conception of Causation, either vaguely or inaccurately generalised in the theory of the Begriff, are by this new Law clearly and verifiably defined. And as the process of Thought, absolutely conceived in the Hegelian theory, is, in that synthetic theory of Mutual Determination which led to this new Law, relatively conceived; the history of Thought is, in this new Law, expressly stated to be determined, in its manifestations, by terrestrial conditions. This new Law, therefore, is thus seen to be an integration of those Causation-theories, systematic and historic, into which the Causation theory, systematic and historic, of Hume was differentiated— an integration resulting in a Law, at once rational as a Law of Thought, and empirical as a Law of Facts—a verifiable Ultimate Law.

13. Finally, this Law it is which, though not improbably in some more accurate statement of it, must, as I venture to think, be made the basis of that Reconciliative Philosophy, the elaboration of which is the great task of the third era of Modern European Speculation that on which we have now entered. This New Philosophy, of which the fundamental historical Law is derived, as I have shown, from the true founder of the Scottish School, may still have applied to it the name

distinctive of Scottish Philosophy, and be called the Philosophy of Common Sense.' But the truth of knowledge and the morality of actions,' will now be tested by accordance with Common Sense, not as meaning 'the complement of those cognitions or convictions which we [primitively] receive from Nature,'1 but as denoting the complement of those cognitions or convictions,' which we ultimately win from Nature. And the Principles of Common Sense, or rather, as it may now appear more accurate to say, the Principles of the Common Sense, to which appeal is made are, therefore, now, generalisations of the common Consciousness-of the Consciousness of the objective world which is common to all of us-conclusions whereon the methods of Logic give us the means of general agreement. Of these generalisations, -certainly the greatest is that fact of the historical development of Consciousness, of the ultimate law of which I have above endeavoured to give what I trust may be found to be, at least, an approximately true expression. And hence, the appeal to the Common Sense will now be an appeal, first, of the individual to the Community; then, of the temporary, to the progressive Consciousness; and hence, of the man to Humanity. And defining our position thus in its relation to the Scottish; to define it also in its relation to the German School. As Kant compared his Critical Philosophy to that Copernican Astronomy which had asked whether the phenomena

1 Hamilton, The Philosophy of Common Sense, Reid's Works, pp. 756-7. Compare Lectures on Metaphysics, vol. II. p. 16.

2 Second Preface to the Kritik der Reinen Vernunft.

of the heavens would not be better explained if, instead of supposing the starry host to circle round the spectator, the spectator were supposed to move, and the stars to remain at rest; so, I would compare this Synthetic Philosophy to that Newer Astronomy, which supposes both spectator and stars to move; and, in the solution of such a more complicated problem as this, endeavours to explain the supremer phenomena of the Stellar Universe. For, in our theory of Knowledge, the two great correlates, the World and the Mind, are conceived as so determining each other that neither would be as it is, were not the other as it is; and, in our theory of History, the Individual and Humanity are similarly conceived to be mutually related; and hence the truth of individual conceptions with respect to such supremer phenomena as are, for us students of History, the great religious ideas of Immortality, Incarnation, and God, is determined by their relation to the fact of a great historical movement in Consciousness, a movement which enables us to interpret their past changes, and to forecast their future transformations, and even such a movement as is now known to comprehend the whole system of those starry spheres which alone parallel in sublimity the phenomena of the history of Man.

SUBSECTION III.

The Deductive Verification of the Law of History.

1. But, if I have thus ventured boldly to state what such a Law as that which we have speculatively