s, to a
suspicion of the futility of human knowledge; and looking at the
results reached by the successive philosophical schools, we cannot fail
to remark that there was a general tendency to scepticism. We have seen
how, from the material and tangible beginnings of the Ionians, the
Eleatics land us not only in a blank atheism, but in a disbelief of the
existence of the world. And though it may be said that these were only
the isolated results of special schools, it is not to be forgotten that
they were of schools the most advanced. The time had now arrived when
the name of a master was no more to usurp the place of reason, as had
been hitherto the case; when these last results of the different methods
of philosophizing were to be brought together, a criticism of a higher
order established, and conclusions of a higher order deduced.

[Sidenote: Commencement of the higher analysis.]

Thus it will ever be with all human investigation. The primitive
philosophical elements from which we start are examined, first by one
and then by another, each drawing his own special conclusions and
deductions, and each firmly believing in the truth of his inferences.
Each analyst has seen the whole subject from a particular point of view,
without concerning himself with the discordances, contradictions, and
incompatibilities obvious enough when his conclusions come to be
compared with those of other analysts as skilful as himself. In process
of time, it needs must be that a new school of examiners will arise,
who, taking the results at which their predecessors have arrived from an
examination of the primary elements, will institute a secondary
comparison; a comparison of results with results; a comparison of a
higher order, and more likely to lead to absolute truth.

[Sidenote: Illustration from subsequent Roman history.]

Perhaps I cannot better convey what I here mean by this secondary and
higher analysis of philosophical questions than by introducing, as an
illustration, what took place subsequently in Rome, through her policy
of universal religious toleration. The priests and followers of every
god and of every faith were permitted to pursue without molestation
their special forms of worship. Of these, it may be supposed that nearly
all were perfectly sincere in their adherence to their special
divinity, and, if the occasion had arisen, could have furnished
unanswerable arguments in behalf of his supremacy and of the truth of
his