elevating
influence on philosophy. The conception of the world as a whole, a
person, an animal, has been the source of hasty generalizations; yet
this general grasp of nature led also to a spirit of comprehensiveness
in early philosophy, which has not increased, but rather diminished, as
the fields of knowledge have become more divided. The modern physicist
confines himself to one or perhaps two branches of science. But he
comparatively seldom rises above his own department, and often falls
under the narrowing influence which any single branch, when pursued
to the exclusion of every other, has over the mind. Language, two,
exercised a spell over the beginnings of physical philosophy, leading
to error and sometimes to truth; for many thoughts were suggested by
the double meanings of words (Greek), and the accidental distinctions
of words sometimes led the ancient philosopher to make corresponding
differences in things (Greek). 'If they are the same, why have they
different names; or if they are different, why have they the same
name?'--is an argument not easily answered in the infancy of knowledge.
The modern philosopher has always been taught the lesson which he still
imperfectly learns, that he must disengage himself from the influence
of words. Nor are there wanting in Plato, who was himself too often the
victim of them, impressive admonitions that we should regard not words
but things (States.). But upon the whole, the ancients, though not
entirely dominated by them, were much more subject to the influence
of words than the moderns. They had no clear divisions of colours
or substances; even the four elements were undefined; the fields of
knowledge were not parted off. They were bringing order out of disorder,
having a small grain of experience mingled in a confused heap of
a priori notions. And yet, probably, their first impressions, the
illusions and mirages of their fancy, created a greater intellectual
activity and made a nearer approach to the truth than any patient
investigation of isolated facts, for which the time had not yet come,
could have accomplished.

There was one more illusion to which the ancient philosophers were
subject, and against which Plato in his later dialogues seems to be
struggling--the tendency to mere abstractions; not perceiving that
pure abstraction is only negation, they thought that the greater the
abstraction the greater the truth. Behind any pair of ideas a new
idea which comprehend