se; and herein lies the secret of
man's well-being. In the exaltation of the reason or intellect, in the
denial of the voluntariness of evil (Timaeus; Laws) Spinoza approaches
nearer to Plato than in his conception of an infinite substance. As
Socrates said that virtue is knowledge, so Spinoza would have maintained
that knowledge alone is good, and what contributes to knowledge useful.
Both are equally far from any real experience or observation of nature.
And the same difficulty is found in both when we seek to apply their
ideas to life and practice. There is a gulf fixed between the infinite
substance and finite objects or individuals of Spinoza, just as there is
between the ideas of Plato and the world of sense.

Removed from Spinoza by less than a generation is the philosopher
Leibnitz, who after deepening and intensifying the opposition between
mind and matter, reunites them by his preconcerted harmony (compare
again Phaedrus). To him all the particles of matter are living beings
which reflect on one another, and in the least of them the whole is
contained. Here we catch a reminiscence both of the omoiomere, or
similar particles of Anaxagoras, and of the world-animal of the Timaeus.

In Bacon and Locke we have another development in which the mind of
man is supposed to receive knowledge by a new method and to work by
observation and experience. But we may remark that it is the idea
of experience, rather than experience itself, with which the mind is
filled. It is a symbol of knowledge rather than the reality which is
vouchsafed to us. The Organon of Bacon is not much nearer to actual
facts than the Organon of Aristotle or the Platonic idea of good. Many
of the old rags and ribbons which defaced the garment of philosophy have
been stripped off, but some of them still adhere. A crude conception of
the ideas of Plato survives in the 'forms' of Bacon. And on the other
hand, there are many passages of Plato in which the importance of the
investigation of facts is as much insisted upon as by Bacon. Both are
almost equally superior to the illusions of language, and are constantly
crying out against them, as against other idols.

Locke cannot be truly regarded as the author of sensationalism any more
than of idealism. His system is based upon experience, but with him
experience includes reflection as well as sense. His analysis and
construction of ideas has no foundation in fact; it is only the
dialectic of the mind 'tal