what antecedent circumstances of an internal character have swayed the will. These causes certainly do not operate as causes operate in physical nature, or as causes operate in our intellectual being. I have shown that cause in the mind is not of the same character as cause in physical nature. I believe that cause, as operating on the will, is of a different character from cause as acting in the intellectual or emotive parts of our nature. It is here, I believe, that is, in the peculiar nature of cause as operating on the will,-that the means of clearing up this subject, and effecting a reconciliation between the seeming incongruities, are to be found. But I do not say that man can find them, for I am convinced he cannot penetrate this region, and determine the nature and mode of operation of the power which sways the will. We can point to the place where lies the means of clearing up the mystery, but then we cannot reach that place. It is the region where operate the agencies which come between God and the will of His rational and responsible creatures. Well may we pause here, and lay our hands on our mouths, as we say in our hearts, "Once have I spoken, but I will nɔt answer; yea, twice, but I will proceed no further.”

PART THIRD.

INTUITIVE PRINCIPLES AND THE VARIOUS SCIENCES.

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BOOK I.

METAPHYSICS.

CHAPTER I.

METAPHYSICS, GNOSIOLOGY, AND ONTOLOGY.

THE phrase Metaphysics is believed to have taken its rise from the title given to one of the treatises of Aristotle. There is no reason to think that the name was given to the work referred to by the author. It does not even appear that it was meant to denote the nature of the contents. Andronicus, it is said, inscribed on the manuscripts, Ta μera ra voixá, to intimate that these books were to follow the physical treatises. In the writings of Aristotle this department is called, not Metaphysics, but the First Philosophy.

Metaphysical speculation is usually supposed, and I believe correctly, to have originated with the Eleatics, who flourished four hundred and fifty or five hundred years before our era. Separating from the physiologists, that is, physical speculators, of the Ionian school, they directed their attention to the dicta of inward reason Going far below what they represented as the illusion of the senses, they sought to penetrate the mystery of being. With them all things were one, and thus incapable of motion or of change.

Metaphysics are treated, along with all other topics, by Plato, under the somewhat unfortunate name of Dialectics, which has nearly the same meaning as Speculative Philosophy has in modern times, only the former meant discussion in conversation, the

1 On the title, see Bonitz, "Commentarius" appended to his edition of the Metaphysics. See also M'Mahon's translation of the Metaphysics, p. 1, where Clemens Alexandrinus and Philoponus are quoted as understanding the phrase to denote the supranatural.

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latter, discussion in the head or in books. According to Plato, it was the science which treated of the one Real Being (rò ov)and the Real Good. This one Real Being was not with him, as with the Eleatics, inconsistent with the existence of the many. It embraced the inquiry into the nature of the Good and the Beautiful, and expounded the Eternal Ideas which had been in or before the Divine Mind from all eternity, to the contemplation of which man's soul could rise by cogitation, because it had been formed in the Divine image, and in which the sensible universe participated, thereby having a stability in the midst of its mutability.'

According to Aristotle, the First Philosophy treats of entity so far forth as it is entity, and of quiddity or the nature of a thing, and of that which is universally inherent, so far as it is in entity. He argues that if there were not some substance (ovóia) other than those that exist in nature, then Physics would be the first science, but if there be an eternal and unmovable substance, then there must be a prior science to treat of it, and this is to be honoured as the first and highest philosophy. But the inquiry into entity is, in fact, an inquiry into causes, or what makes a thing to bo what it is; and he shows that such an investigation conducts to four causes :-(1.) the Formal (rýv ovóíav nai tó tɩ ýv eivai); (2.) The Material (tỳv ôλŋv nai tỏ vñoneiμévov); (3.) The Efficient (ὅθεν ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς κινήσεως); (4.) The Final (τὸ ὁὗ ἕνεκεν καὶ τὸ ἀγαθόν).

2

From the bent of his genius, Bacon was no way addicted to Metaphysics, but he allots it a separate and a most important place. He says that Physics regard what is wholly immersed in matter and movable, supposing only existence and natural necessity, whereas Metaphysics regard what is more abstracted and fixed, and suppose also mind and idea. To be more particular, he represents Physics as inquiring into the efficient and material cause, and Metaphysics into the formal and final."

1 In our language we have now three great works on Plato: that of Archer Butler, of Grote and of Fowett. Of these Archer Butler has entered most fully into the spirit of the positive teaching of Plato.

2 Metaph., Book 1. Chap. iii. sect. 1, compared with Book 1, Chap. i. and Book v. Chap. i. sect. 3.

3 De Augmentis, iii. 4.