three centuries ago. A series of profound thinkers, grouped more or less distinctly into schools, had produced all the systems of thought which it is possible to produce on the problem. Materialism and Idealism, Monism and Dualism, Empiricism and Transcendentalism, had successively struggled from the seventh to the fourth century. Then came a natural relaxation into the weary scepticism of the immediate pre-Socratic school. In the interests of morality, Socrates and Plato lent all their genius to the resuscitation of dogmatism, and Aristotle imparted to it the utmost of purely logical strength of which it is susceptible; but it relapsed once more into the scepticism of the Neo-Academics and Neo-Peripatetics. The philosophical history of the last century and a half is a curious parallel to that brilliant Greek period, and its issue is a not dissimilar collapse. Transcendentalists will, of course, claim that certain elements, at least, of Kantism or Hegelianism are permanent acquisitions; but even Eclecticism, such as Victor Cousin advocated, is an utter failure. There is no important element of any purely philosophical system (i.e., apart from certain physico-philosophical theories) which would be recognised with any approach to unanimity to be permanent. Our thinkers have but rung the changes on the old views of Xenophanes and Parmenides, of Leucippus and Democritus, of Pythagoras, and Zeno, and Plato, and Aristotle, and they have largely ended in the abyss of Gorgias and Protagoras, or of Pyrrho or Arcesilaus or Carneades. Germany's cynical abandonment of philosophy, to which the closing pages of Erdmann's history bear eloquent witness, after a century of amazing productiveness, is an impressive warning. France is in little better condition; England does little but fan the expiring embers of German systems—almost extinct in the land of their birth.
It would be impossible here to summarize the many systems that have reigned in the philosophical world during the present century; and, in fact, it is unnecessary for our purpose. Philosophy is a science of so comprehensive a range that innumerable issues are raised of a purely speculative character which have no power to affect the religious or social life of humanity. Here it will be sufficient to discuss philosophical controversies and estimate their issues in the bearing which they have upon religious tradition.
