491 LEWES
erected in the 15th century; St John's, Southover, is of mixed architecture, but preserves some specimens of Early Norman. There are only slight remains of the old castle, occupying a picturesque situation on the height, and supposed to have been founded by Alfred and rebuilt by William de Warren, In the grounds of the old Cluniac priory of St Pancras, founded in 1078, the leaden coffins of William de Warren and Gundrada were dug up during an excavation in 1845. There is a free grammar school dating from 1512, and among the other public buildings are the county-hall, the prison, and the Fitzroy memorial library. The industries include the manufacture of agricultural implements, brewing, tanning, and iron and brass founding. The population of the urban sanitary district in 1871 was 6010, and in 1881 it was 6017, the population of the parliamentary borough (area 1087 acres) in the same years being 10,753 and 11,199. Lewes was incorporated by royal charter in 1881.
From various discoveries that have been made of Roman coins, and the traces that still remain of old mounds and tumuli, the town is believed to be of very ancient origin. It was a royal demesne of the South Saxon kings. Mints were established at it by Athelstan, which were in operation till the reign of Harold. At the battle of Lewes, May 13, 1264, Simon de Montfort defeated Henry III. From the time of Edward I. until 1868 the town returned two members to parliament, but now it returns only one.
See, besides the histories of Sussex, Horsfield, History of Lewes, 2 vols., 1824-27, and several interesting papers in the Sussex Archæological Collection.
LEWES, George Henry (1817-1878), a prolific and versatile writer, born in London in 1817, was a grandson of Charles Lee Lewes, a comedian who had a considerable reputation in his day. He was educated in London, Jersey, and Brittany, and began active life by attempting business and afterwards medicine. Later he appears to have had serious thoughts of making the stage his profession. He finally fixed his choice on a literary career. His early writings belong mainly to the lighter departments of letters. He contributed a large number of critical studies to the leading quarterly and other reviews. These discuss a wide variety of subject, and, though often characterized by hasty impulse and imperfect study, betray a singularly acute critical judgment, which has been enlightened by philosophic- study. Of these critical writings the most valuable are those on the drama, which were afterwards republished under the title Actors and Acting (1875). With this may be taken the volume on The Spanish Drama (1846). The combination of wide scholarship, philosophic culture, and practical acquaintance with the theatre gives these essays a high place among the best effort's in English dramatic criticism. In 1845-1846 he published The Biographical History of Philosophy, an attempt to depict the life of philosophers as an ever-renewed fruitless labour to attain the unattainable. In 1847-1848 he made two attempts in the field of fiction – Ranthrope, and Rose, Blanche, and Violet – which, though displaying considerable skill both in plot, construction, and in characterization, have taken no permanent place in literature. The same is to be said of an ingenious attempt to rehabilitate Robespierre (1849). The culmination of the author's work in prose literature is the Life of Goethe (1855), probably the best known of his writings. Lewes's many-sidedness of mind, and his combination of scientific with literary tastes, eminently fitted him to appreciate the large nature and the wide-ranging activity of the German poet. The high position this work has taken in Germany itself, notwithstanding the boldness of its criticism and the unpopularity of some of its views (e.g., on the relation of the second to the first part of Faust), is a sufficient testimony to its general excellence. From about 1853 Lewes's writings show that he was occupying himself with scientific and more particularly biological work. He may be said to have always manifested a distinctly scientific bent in his writings, and his closer devotion to science was but the following out of early impulses. Considering the author's want of the usual course of technical training, these studies are a remarkable testimony to the penetration of his intellect. The most important of these essays are collected in the volumes Seaside Studies (1858), Physiology of Common Life (1859), Studies in Animal Life (1862), and Aristotle, a Chapter from the History of Science (1864). They are much more than popular expositions of accepted scientific truths. They contain able criticisms of authorized ideas, and embody the results of individual research and individual reflexion. He struck out a number of impressive suggestions, some of which have since been accepted by physiologists at home and abroad. Of these the most valuable is that now known as the doctrine of the functional indifference of the nerves – that what are known as the specific energies of the optic, auditory, and other nerves are simply differences in their mode of action due to the differences of the peripheral structures or sense-organs with which they are connected. This idea has since been independently arrived at by Wundt (Physiologische Psychologie, 2d ed., p 321). In 1865, on the starting of the Fortnightly Review, Lewes became its editor, but he retained the post for less than two years. This date marks the transition from more strictly scientific to philosophic work. He had from early youth cherished a strong liking for philosophic studies; one of his earliest essays was an appreciative account of Hegel's Æsthetics. Coming under the influence of positivism as unfolded both in Comte's own works and in J. S. Mill's System of Logic, he abandoned all faith in the possibility of metaphysic, and recorded this abandonment in the above-mentioned History of Philosophy. Yet he did not at any time give an unqualified adhesion to Comte's teaching, and with wider reading and reflexion his mind moved away further from the positivist's standpoint. In the preface to the third edition of his History of Philosophy he avowed a change in this direction, and this movement is still more plainly discernible in subsequent editions of the work. The final outcome of this intellectual progress is given to us in The Problems of Life and Mind, which may be regarded as the crowning work of his life. His sudden death in 1878 cut short the work, yet it is complete enough to allow us to judge of the author's matured conceptions on biological, psychological, and metaphysical problems.
The first two volumes on The Foundations of a Creed lay down what he regarded as the true principles of philosophizing. He here seeks to effect a rapprochement between metaphysic and science. He is still so far a positivist as to pronounce all inquiry into the ultimate nature of things fruitless. What matter, form, spirit are in themselves is a futile question that belongs to the sterile region of "metempirics." But philosophical questions may be so stated as to be susceptible of a precise solution by scientific method. Thus, since the relation of subject to object falls within our experience, it is a proper matter for philosophic investigation. It may be questioned whether Lewes is right in thus identifying the methods of science and philosophy. Philosophy is not a mere extension of scientific knowledge; it is an investigation of the nature and validity of the knowing process itself. In any case Lewes cannot be said to have done much to aid in the settlement of properly philosophical questions. His whole treatment of the question of the relation of subject to object is vitiated by a confusion between the scientific truth that mind and body coexist in the living organism and the philosophic truth that all knowledge of objects implies a knowing subject. In other words, to use Mr Shadworth Hodgson's phrase, he mixes up the question of the genesis of mental forms with the question of their nature (see Philosophy of Reflexion, vol. ii. pp. 40-58). Thus he reaches the "monistic" doctrine that mind and matter are two aspects of the same existence by attending simply to the parallelism between psychical and physical processes given as a fact (or a probable fact) of our experience, and by leaving out of account their relation as subject and object in the cognitive act. His identification of the two as phases of one existence is open to criticism, not only from the point of view of
