and no farther does metaphysics prevail in the
region of English politics. But politics is not the entire art of social
existence: ethics is a still deeper and more vital part of it: and in
that, as much in England as elsewhere, the current opinions are still
divided between the theological mode of thought and the metaphysical.
What is the whole doctrine of Intuitive Morality, which reigns supreme
wherever the idolatry of Scripture texts has abated and the influence of
Bentham's philosophy has not reached, but the metaphysical state of
ethical science? What else, indeed, is the whole _a priori_ philosophy,
in morals, jurisprudence, psychology, logic, even physical science, for
it does not always keep its hands off that, the oldest domain of
observation and experiment? It has the universal diagnostic of the
metaphysical mode of thought, in the Comtean sense of the word; that of
erecting a mere creation of the mind into a test or _norma_ of external
truth, and presenting the abstract expression of the beliefs already
entertained, as the reason and evidence which justifies them. Of those
who still adhere to the old opinions we need not speak; but when one of
the most vigorous as well as boldest thinkers that English speculation
has yet produced, full of the true scientific spirit, Mr Herbert
Spencer, places in the front of his philosophy the doctrine that the
ultimate test of the truth of a proposition is the inconceivableness of
its negative; when, following in the steps of Mr Spencer, an able
expounder of positive philosophy like Mr Lewes, in his meritorious and
by no means superficial work on Aristotle, after laying, very justly,
the blame of almost every error of the ancient thinkers on their
neglecting to _verify_ their opinions, announces that there are two
kinds of verification, the Real and the Ideal, the ideal test of truth
being that its negative is unthinkable, and by the application of that
test judges that gravitation must be universal even in the stellar
regions, because in the absence of proof to the contrary, "the idea of
matter without gravity is unthinkable;"--when those from whom it was
least to be expected thus set up acquired necessities of thought in the
minds of one or two generations as evidence of real necessities in the
universe, we must admit that the metaphysical mode of thought still
rules the higher philosophy, even in the department of inorganic nature,
and far more in all that relates to man