Geschichte der Philosophie kritisch dargestellt of Dühring. The latter, although so far as we are aware untranslated at present, is as remarkable for the brilliancy and clearness of its style as for its strongly marked tendency-character, The Latin nations, not excepting France, have failed in achieving great original research in the history of philosophy. Among the principal modern French treatises on the subject may be mentioned Dégérando's Histoire comparée des Systèmes de la Philosophie (4 vols.; Paris, 1822-3). J. F. Nourrisson's Tableau des progrès de la pensée humaine de Thales jusqu'à Hegel (Paris, 1858). Laforet's Histoire de la Philosophie (Brussels and Paris, 1867). Alfred Weber's Histoire de la Philosophie Européenne; Alfred Fouillée's Histoire de la Philosophie (Paris, 1874). The best-known French history is Victor Cousin's Histoire Générale de la Philosophie depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu'à la fin du XVIIIe siècle (5th ed.; Paris, 1863). The few Italian and Spanish treatises do not call for any special notice.

The first English history of philosophy, after Stanley's, was the execrable compilation from Brucker by William Enfield, first published towards the close of the last century. This was followed by Johnson's translation of Tennemann's small manual (subsequently reprinted, with additions and annotations, in Bohn's Philosophical Library). Robert Blakey's History of the Philosophy of Mind' appeared in 1848; and shortly after the late F. D. Maurice's, so far as style is concerned, cleverly written History of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy.' But more widely read than any of these was the "Biographical History of Philosophy' of the late George Henry Lewes, first published in 1845, in four pocket. volumes, and expanded in 1867 (2nd ed., revised 1871) into The History of Philosophy from Thales to Comte,' in two thick volumes (crown 8vo.). Lewes, who writes more particularly from the standpoint of the Philosophie positive, but generally from that of English empiricism, furnishes an example of a probably unique development of the tendency-history, to wit, the didactic-history. There is no positive reading of the author's own position into the systems of older thinkers, or distortion of those systems in the course of their development, as in the ten

dency-history proper, but they one and all serve as foils to the superior wisdom of the empirical philosophy in general, and the positive philosophy in particular. This is their only purpose save in so far as they, here and there, show weak and faltering adumbrations of the "one true method."

To Mr. Hutchison Stirling's highly successful translation of Schwegler reference has already been made. The latest, and perhaps most important contribution to. works in English on the general history of philosophy is the translation of Ueber weg's work, published a few years since by Messrs. Hodder & Stoughton. The present work, although limited in point of size, it is our aim to render as complete as possible in all points essential to the student, while omitting unimportant details.

THE ORIENTALS.

AT the outset of the history of philosophy, as of other departments of culture, we are confronted with the prehistoric region occupied by the primitive theocratic civilisations of the Oriental world, of Egypt and Asia. The view largely prevalent, at the end of the last and beginning of the present century, was that these social organisations were the surviving monuments of a high primitive culture. In the light of the scientific conception of history, to which modern research and criticism has accustomed us, they are seen to be cases of arrested development, or of premature decay. The evolutionary principle in them, so to speak, their capacity for spontaneous development and progress, exhausted itself before the birth of that great world-evolution constituting the history of Humanity proper, and of which ancient Greece and modern Europe, with its colonies, are the extreme terms. The sixth century before Christ, or thereabouts, the age of Gautama, Confucius, Zoroaster and Thales, is the dawn of history in the latter sense. The history of the modern world is closely and definitely knitted to that of the Middle Ages, and this again to the history of ancient Greece and Rome, the whole forming an organisel system. But the direct influence. upon the classical civilisations of those of Assyria, Babylonia, Palestine, China, India, or even Egypt, is at best obscure. For this reason we do not purpose dwelling at any length on the quasi-philosophies, or more properly theosophies, of the East.

It is probable that a considerable body of theosophic lore was enshrined in the Egyptian temples; but encased as it

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was in mythological language, and coming to us as most of it does through Greek sources, it is impossible to give anything approaching a coherent and correct view of its general features. The Semitic race, on the other hand, has never in any of its branches produced an original philosophic or even theosophic system of its own. Semitic mind is, in its pure state, anti-philosophical. Though it has given to the world no less than three important ethical religions, we search in vain through the whole body of pure Semitic literature, that is, such as reflects the Semitic intellect unaffected by non-Semitic culture (e.g. the Hebrew Scriptures and the Koran), for a single trace even of a philosophic thought, much less a system, unless indeed we choose, as some have done, to read a metaphysical meaning into the old Hebrew formula, "I am that I am"-the general character and isolated position of which, however, would give colour to the hypothesis of an Egyptian origin. The fragments of reputed Assyrian and Akkadian literature are likewise entirely destitute of a philosophical side. In the Medo-Persian literature, as that of an Aryan race, we might naturally expect to find something like a philosophy, and, in fact, the latter portions of the Zend-Avesta show attempts to render the theological doctrine of the dual principle philosophic. But there is even here no sign of an independent and original philosophical movement. In China the only ancient writing possessing any speculative interest is that of Lao-tse, born B.C. 604, and the main position of which is practically identical with that of Indian Metaphysic, though alleged to have been uninfluenced by it; but there is much in the treatise of a purely theological. character, and devoid of all philosophic interest.

It is in India, that we first find a distinct and unmistakable philosophic development. In the sixth century before Christ, when the non-Aryan monarchies of Egypt, Phoenicia, Babylonia, and Assyria, were sinking into decay, and their empires fast becoming disintegrated by foreign influences, the Hindoos felt the thrill of that mighty wave of energy heralding the birth of the new human consciousness-moral, intellectual, and religious -which was consequent on the decline of the earliest

forms of civilisation. But the philosophic development of India is deprived of the interest which would otherwise attach to it, owing to its separation from that of the main trunk of the historic races, and its consequent crudity and limitation in scope.

The sacred philosophy (so-called) of India is contained in the Upanischads, or third section of the Vedic scriptures. Their main thesis consists of the monistic idea of the one true existent Absolute, spoken of variously under the names of Paramathman, Brahman, as opposed to the world of falsity and appearance, or the Maya. The Maya is the negation of Brahman. In itself, Brahman is unthinkable and undifferentiated in-ness of Being; only through the illusion, or the Maya, does it become conscious, mutable, undividualised. "As the colours in the flame or the red-hot iron proceed therefrom a thousandfold, so do all beings proceed from the Unchangeable, and return again to it." "As the web issues from the spider, as little sparks proceed from fire, so from the one soul proceed all living animals, all worlds, all the gods and all beings." "Two birds (the Paramathman, the universal soul, and Jivathman, the individual soul) inhabit the same tree (abide in the same body), &c."

"As from a blazing fire substantial sparks proceed in a thousand ways, so from the imperishable various souls are produced, and they return to him." These, and numberless other passages of similar purport, are to be found scattered throughout the Upanischads. The one theme is varied in a hundred different ways, but its substance is the same. This Metaphysic of the Upanischads, as will be readily seen, is, to the last degree, abstract. No modus vivendi exists between the Absolute One and the world of " manyhued reality"—between the real and the non-real. The practical consequence of this is an Ethic of Asceticism, which has absolute indifference and passivity for its ideal of life.

A little later than the Upanischads, which are for the most part poetic in character-and rather semi-conscious attempts to picture the mystery vaguely felt, than conscious efforts to explain it come the six philosophical systems-properly so-called. Their dates are supposed

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