Least of all, do I understand the claims made in behalf of this department to supply the spiritual void in case the old theology is no longer accredited. When one looks closely at the stream and tendency of thought, one sees a growing alliance and kinship between religion and poetry or art. There is, as we know, a dogmatic, precise, severe, logical side of theology, by which creeds are constructed, religious tests imposed, and belief made a matter of legal compulsion. There is also a sentimental, ideal, imaginative side that resists definition, that refuses dogmatic prescription, and seeks only to satisfy spiritual needs and emotions. Metaphysics may no doubt take a part in the dogmatic or doctrinal treatment, but it must qualify itself by biblical study, and become altogether theology. In the other aspect, metaphysics, as I conceive it, is unavailing; the poet is the proper medium for keeping up the emotional side, under all transformations of doctrinal belief. But as conceived by others, metaphysics is philosophy and poetry in one, to which I can never agree. The combination of the two, as hitherto exhibited, has been made at the expense of both. The leading terms of philosophy—reason, spirit, soul, the ideal, the infinite, the absolute, phenomenal truth, being, consciousness—are lubricated with emotion, and thrown together in ways that defy the understanding. The unintelligible, which ought to be the shame of philosophy, is made its glory.

These remarks prepare for the conclusion that I arrive at as to the scope of metaphysics with reference to the higher questions. That it has bearings upon these questions I allow; and those bearings are legitimately within the range of metaphysical debates. But I make a wide distinction between metaphysical discussion and theological discussion; and do not consider that they can be combined to advantage. In the great latitude of free inquiry in the present day, theology is freely canvassed, and societies might be properly devoted to that express object; but I cannot see any benefit that would arise by a philosophical society undertaking, in addition to its own province, to raise the questions belonging to theology. I am well aware that there is one society of very distinguished persons in the metropolis, calling itself metaphysical, that freely ventures upon the perilous seas of theological debate.[[14]] No doubt good comes from any exercise of the liberty of discussion, so long restrained in this region; yet, I can hardly suppose that purely metaphysical, studies can thrive in such a connection. Many of the members must think far more of the theological issues than of the cultivation of mental and logical science; and a purely metaphysical debate can seldom be pursued with profit under these conditions.

[POLEMICS IN GREECE.]

I now pass to the POLEMICAL handling of the metaphysical subjects. We owe to the Greeks the study of philosophy through methodised debate; and the state of scientific knowledge in the age of the early Athenian schools was favourable to that mode of treatment. The conversations of Socrates, the Dialogues of Plato, and the Topics of Aristotle, are the monuments of Greek contentiousness, turned to account as a great refinement in social intercourse, as a stimulus to individual thought, and a means of advancing at least the speculative departments of knowledge. Grote, both in his "Plato," and in his "Aristotle," while copiously illustrating all these consequences, has laid extraordinary stress on still another aspect of the polemic of Socrates and Plato, the aspect of free-thought, as against venerated tradition and the received commonplaces of society. The assertion of the right of private judgment in matters of doctrine and belief, was, according to Grote, the greatest of all the fruits of the systematised negation begun by Zeno, and carried out in the "Search Dialogues" of Plato. In the "Exposition Dialogues" it is wanting; and in the "Topica," where Eristic is reduced to method and system by one of Aristotle's greatest logical achievements, the freethinker's wings are very much clipt; the execution of Socrates probably had to answer for that. It is to the Platonic dialogues that we look for the full grandeur of Grecian debate in all its phases. The Plato of Grote is the apotheosis of Negation; it is not a philosophy so much as an epic; the theme— "The Noble Wrath of the Greek Dissenter".

At all times, there is much that has to be achieved by solitary thinking. Some definite shape must be given to our thoughts before we can submit them to the operation of other minds; the greater the originality, the longer must be the process of solitary elaboration. The "Principia" was composed from first to last by recluse meditation; probably the attempt to discuss or debate any parts of it would have only fretted and paralysed the author's invention. Indeed, after an enormous strain of the constructive intellect, a man may be in no humour to have his work carped at, even to improve it. In the region of fact, in observation and experiment, there must be a mass of individual and unassisted exertion. The use of allies in this region is to check and confirm the accuracy of the first observer.

Again, an inquirer, by dint of prolonged familiarity with a subject, may be his own best critic; he may be better able to detect flaws than any one he could call in. This is another way of stating the superiority of a particular individual over all others in the same walk. Such a monarchical position as removes a man alike from the rivalry and from the sympathy of his fellows, is the exception; mutual criticism and mutual encouragement are the rule. The social stimulants are of avail in knowledge and in truth as well as everything else.

A comparison of the state of speculation in the golden age of debate, with the state of the sciences in the present day, both metaphysical and physical, shows us clearly enough, what are the fields where polemic is most profitable. I set aside the struggles of politics and theology, and look to the scientific form of knowledge, which is, after all, the type of our highest certainty everywhere. Now, undoubtedly, it is in classifying, generalising, defining, and in the so-called logical processes—induction and deduction—that a man can be least left to himself. Until many men have gone over the same field of facts, a classification, a definition, or an induction, cannot be held as safe and sound. In modern science, there are numerous matters that have passed through the fiery furnace of iterated criticism, seven times purified; but there are, attaching to every science, a number of things still in the furnace. Most of all does this apply to the metaphysical or subject sciences, where, according to the popular belief, nothing has yet passed finally out of the fiery trial. In psychology, in logic, in eudaemonics, in sociology, in ethics, the facts are nearly all around our feet; the question is how to classify, define, generalise, express them. This was the situation of Zeno, Socrates, and Plato, for which they invoked the militant ardour of the mind. Man, they saw, is a fighting being; if fighting will do a thing, he will do it well.

[MOST USEFUL CLASSES OF DEBATES.]

In conformity with this view, the foremost class of debates, and certainly not the least profitable, are such as discuss the meanings of important terms. The genius of Socrates perceived that this was the beginning of all valid knowledge, and, in seeing this, laid the foundation of reasoned truth. I need not repeat the leading terms of metaphysical philosophy; but you can at once understand the form of proceeding by such an instance as "consciousness," debated so as to bring out the question whether, as Hamilton supposed, it is necessarily grounded on knowledge.