ever accurately we may estimate the controlling conditions which may attach to an individual, from the general circumstances in which he may be placed, his age, his associations, his nationality, &c., a free will can never be calculated like a mathematical problem. History is no example for a strict arithmetical calculation. The history of philosophy, therefore, cannot admit of an apriori construction; the actual occurrences should not be joined together as illustrative of a preconceived plan; but the facts, so far as they can be admitted, after a critical sifting, should be received as such, and their rational connection be analytically determined. The speculative idea can only supply the law for the arrangement and scientific connection of that which may be historically furnished.

A more comprehensive view, which contradicts the abovegiven Hegelian notion, is the following. The actual historical development is, very generally, different from the theoretical. Historically e. g. the State arose as a means of protection against robbers, while theoretically it is derived from the idea of rights. So also, even in the actual history of philosophy, while the logi cal (theoretical) process is an ascent from the abstract to the concrete, yet does the historical development of philosophy, quite generally, descend from the concrete to the abstract, from intuition to thought, and separates the abstract from the concrete in those general forms of culture and those religious and social circumstances, in which the philosophizing subject is placed. A system of philosophy proceeds synthetically, while the history of philosophy, i. e. the history of the thinking process proceeds analytically. We might, therefore, with great propriety, adopt directly the reverse of the Hegelian position, and say that what in reality is the first, is for us, in fact, the last. This is illustrated in the Ionic philosophy. It began not with being as an abstract conception, but with the most concrete, and most apparent, e. g. with the material conception of water, air, &c. Even if we leave the Ionics and advance to the being of the Eleatics or the becoming of the Heraclitics, we find, that these, instead of being pure thought determinations, are only unpurified conceptions, and

materially colored intuitions. Still farther, is the attempt impracticable to refer every philosophy that has appeared in history to some logical category as its central principle, because the most of these philosophies have taken, for their object, the idea, not as an abstract conception, but in its realization as nature and mind, and, therefore, for the most part, have to do, not with logical questions, but with those relating to natural philosophy, psychology and ethics. Hegel should not, therefore, limit his comparison of the historical and systematic process of development simply to logic, but should extend it to the whole system of philosophical science. Granted that the Eleatics, the Heraclitics and the Atomists may have made such a category as the centre of their systems, and we may find thus far the Hegelian logic in harmony with the Hegelian history of philosophy. But if we go farther, how is it? How with Anaxagoras, the Sophists, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle? We cannot, certainly, without violence, press one central principle into the systems of these men, but if we should be able to do it, and could reduce e. g. the philosophy of Anaxagoras to the conception of "the end," that of the Sophists to the conception of "the appearance," and the Socratic Philosophy to the conception of "the good," yet even then we have the new difficulty that the historical does not correspond to the logical succession of these categories. In fact, Hegel himself has not attempted a complete application of his principle, and indeed gave it up at the very threshold of the Grecian philosophy. To the Eleatics, the Heraclitics and the Atomists, the logical categories of "being," "becoming," and being per se may be successively ascribed, and so far, as already remarked, the parallelism extends, but no farther. Not only does Anaxagoras follow with the conception of reason working according to an end, but if we go back before the Eleatics, we find in the very beginning of philosophy a total diversity between the logical and historical order. If Hegel had carried out his principle consistently, he should have thrown away entirely the Ionic philosophy, for matter is no logical category; he should have placed the Pythagoreans after the Eleatics and the Atomists, for in logical order the categories of

quantity follow those of quality; in short, he would have been obliged to set aside all chronology. Unless this be done, we must be satisfied with a theoretical reproduction of the course which the thinking spirit has taken in its history, only so far as we can see in the grand stages of history a rational progress of thought; only so far as the philosophical historian, surveying a period of development, actually finds in it a philosophical acquisition,-the acquisition of a new idea: but we must guard ourselves against applying to the transition and intermediate steps, as well as to the whole detail of history, the postulate of an immanent conformity to law, or an organism in harmony with our own thoughts. History often winds its way like a serpent in lines which appear retrogressive, and philosophy, especially, has not seldom withdrawn herself from a wide and already fruitful field, in order to settle down upon a narrow strip of land, the limits even of which she has sought still more closely to abridge. At one time we find thousands of years expended in fruitless attempts with only a negative result;-at another, a fulness of philosophical ideas are crowded together in the experience of a lifetime. There is here no sway of an immutable and regularly returning law, but history, as the realm of freedom, will first completely manifest itself at the end of time as the work of reason.

SECTION II.

CLASSIFICATION.

A FEW words will suffice to define our problem and classify its elements. Where and when does philosophy begin? Manifestly, according to the analysis made in § I., where a final philosophical principle, a final ground of being is first sought in a philosophical way,—and hence with the Grecian philosophy. The OrientalChinese and Hindoo-so named philosophies, but which are rather theologies or mythologies,-and the mythic cosmogonies of

Greece, in its earliest periods, are, therefore, excluded from our more definite problem. Like Aristotle, we shall begin the history of philosophy with Thales. For similar reasons we exclude also the philosophy of the Christian middle ages, or Scholasticism. This is not so much a philosophy, as a philosophizing or reflecting within the already prescribed limits of positive religion. It is, therefore, essentially theology, and belongs to the science of the history of Christian doctrines.

The material which remains after this exclusion, may be naturally divided into two periods; viz :-ancient-Grecian and Græco-Romanic-and modern philosophy. Since a preliminary comparison of the characteristics of these two epochs could not here be given without a subsequent repetition, we shall first speak of their inner relations, when we come to treat of the transition from the one to the other.

The first epoch can be still farther divided into three periods; (1.) The pre-Socratic philosophy, i. e. from Thales to the Sophists inclusive; (2.) Socrates, Plato, Aristotle; (3.) The post-Aristotelian philosophy, including New Platonism.

SECTION III.

GENERAL VIEW OF THE PRE-SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY.

1. THE universal tendency of the pre-Socratic philosophy is to find some principle for the explanation of nature. Nature, the most immediate, that which first met the eye and was the most palpable, was that which first aroused the inquiring mind. At the basis of its changing forms,-beneath its manifold appearances, thought they, lies a first principle which abides the same through all change. What then, they asked, is this principle? What is the original ground of things? Or, more accurately, what element of nature is the fundamental element? To solve this inquiry was the problem of the Ionic natural philosophers. One

proposes as a solution, water, another, air, and a third, an original chaotic matter.

2. The Pythagoreans attempted a higher solution of this problem. The proportions and dimensions of matter rather than its sensible concretions, seemed to them to furnish the true explanation of being. They, accordingly, adopted as the principle of their philosophy, that which would express a determination of proportions, i. e. numbers. "Number is the essence of all things," was their position. Number is the mean between the immediate sensuous intuition and the pure thought. Number and measure have, to be sure, nothing to do with matter only in so far as it possesses extension, and is capable of division in space and time, but yet we should have no numbers or measures if there were no matter, or nothing which could meet the intuitions of our sense. This elevation above matter, which is at the same time a cleaving to matter, constitutes the essence and the character of Pythagoreanism.

3. Next come the Eleatics, who step absolutely beyond that which is given in experience, and make a complete abstraction of every thing material. This abstraction, this negation of all division in space and time, they take as their principle, and call it pure being. Instead of the sensuous principle of the Ionics, or the symbolic principle of the Pythagoreans, the Eleatics, therefore, adopt an intelligible principle.

4. Herewith closes the analytic, the first course in the development of Grecian philosophy, to make way for the second, or synthetic course. The Eleatics had sacrificed to their principle of pure being, the existence of the world and every finite existence. But the denial of nature and the world could not be maintained. The reality of both forced itself upon the attention, and even the Eleatics had affirmed it, though in guarded and hypothetical terms. But from their abstract being there was no passage back to the sensuous and concrete; their principle ought to have explained the being of events, but it did not. To find a principle for the explanation of these, a principle which would account for the becoming, the event was still the problem. Heraclitus solved