gorilla,” on the other side he is a mystic animal, and that in “a double nature, mysterious hymen,” as Hugo wrote, lay the explanation of all the baseness in ideas and actions as well as all the sublimity in ideas and actions of humanity. Personally he was a Stoic and his practice was the continuous development of the intelligence regarded as the condition and guarantee of morality.
RENAN.–Renan, destined for the ecclesiastical profession and always preserving profound traces of his clerical education, was, nevertheless, a Positivist and believed only in science, hoping everything from it in youth and continuing to venerate it at least during his mature years. Thus formed, a “Christian Positivist,” as has been said, as well as a poet above all else, he could not proscribe metaphysics and had a weakness for them with which perhaps he reproached himself. He extricated himself from this difficulty by declaring all metaphysical conceptions to be only “dreams,” but sheltered, so to say, by this concession he had made and this precaution he had taken, he threw himself into the dream with all his heart and reconstituted God, the immortal soul, the future existence, eternity and creation, giving them new, unforeseen, and fascinating names. It was only the idea of Providence–that is, of the particular and circumstantial intervention of God in human affairs, which was intolerable to him and against which he always protested, quoting the phrase of Malebranche, “God does not act by particular wills.” And yet he paid a compliment, which seems sincere, to the idea of grace, and if there be a particular and circumstantial intervention by God in human affairs, it is certainly grace according to all appearances.
He was above all an amateur of ideas, a dilettante in ideas, toying with them with infinite pleasure, like a superior Greek sophist, and in all French philosophy no one calls Plato to mind more than he does.
He possessed a charming mind, a very lofty character, and was a marvellous writer.
TO-DAY.–The living French philosophers whom we shall content ourselves with naming because they are living and receive contemporary criticism rather than that of history, are MM. Fouillee, Theodule Ribot, Liard, Durckheim, Izoulet, and Bergson.
THE FUTURE OF PHILOSOPHY.–It is impossible to forecast in what direction philosophy will move. The summary history we have been able to trace sufficiently shows, as it seems to us, that it has no regular advance such that by seeing how it has progressed one can conjecture what path it will pursue. It seems in no sense to depend, or at all events, to depend remarkably little, at any period, on the general state of civilization around it, and even for those who believe in a philosophy of history there is not, as it appears to me, a philosophy of the history of philosophy. The only thing that can be affirmed is that philosophy will always exist in response to a need of the human mind, and that it will always be both an effort to gather scientific discoveries into some great general ideas and an effort to go beyond science and to seek as it can the meaning of the universal enigma; so that neither philosophy, properly speaking, nor even metaphysics will ever disappear. Nietzsche has said that life is valuable only as the instrument of knowledge. However eager humanity may be and become for branches of knowledge, it will be always passionately and indefatigably anxious about complete knowledge.
INDEX OF NAMES
A
Aelard
Aenesidemus
Agrippa
Agrippa, Cornelius
Ailly, Peter d’
Albertus Magnus
Alexander the Great
Anaxagoras
Anaximander
Anselm, St.
Antisthenes
Apollodorus
Arcesilaus
Arete
Aristippus
Aristo
Aristobulus
Aristophanes
Aristotle
Arius
Arnauld
Atticus
Augustine, St.
Averroes
Avicenna
B
Bacon, Francis
Bacon, Roger
Beaconsfield
Bergson
Berkeley
Bonaventura, St.
Bossuet
Bruno, Giordano
Brutus
Buridan
C
Calvin
Campanella
Cardan
Carneades
Cato
Champeaux, William of
Charles the Bald
Christina of Sweden
Chrysippus
Cicero
Cleanthes
Clement, St., of Alexandria
Comte, Auguste
Cnodillac
Corneille
Cousin, Victor
Crantor
Crates
D
Damiron
Darwin
Democritus
Descartes
Diderot
Diogenes
Durand de Saint-Pourcain
Durckheim
E
Empedocles
Epictetus
Epicurus
Euhemerus
F
Fenelon
Fichte
Fontenelle
Fouillee
Franklin
G
Gassendi
Gerbert
Gerson
Gorgias
H
Harvey
Havet, Ernest
Hegel
Hegesias
Helvetius
Heraclitus
Herillus
Hermarchus
Hobbes, Thomas
Holbach, d’
Horace
Hugo, Victor
Hugo de Saint-Victor
Hume, David
I
Iamblichus
Izoulet
J
James I
Jesus Christ
Joan of Navarre
Jouffroy
Justinian
K
Kant
L
La Bruyere
Lamarck
Lamennais
Laromiguiere
Leibnitz
Leo X
Leucippus
Liard
Locke
Louis XIV
Lucian
Lucretius
Lulle, Raymond
M
Maine de Biran
Malebranche
Manes
Marcus Aurelius
Menippus
Metrodorus
Moderatus
Moliere
Montaigne
Moses
N
Nemesius
Nero
Nicomachus
Nietzsche
O
Ockham, William of
Origen
P
Paracelsus
Parmenides
Pascal
Paul, St.
Pericles
Philips the Fair
Philo
Pico della Mirandola
Plato
Pliny the Younger
Plotinus
Plutarch
Poincare, Henri
Polemo
Polystratus
Pomponazzo
Porphyry
Prodicus
Protagoras
Pyrrho
Pythagoras
R
Reid, Thomas
Renan
Renouvier
Reuchlin
Ribot, Theodule
Richard de Saint-Victor
Roscelin
Rousseau, J. J.
Royer-Collard
S
Saisset, Emile
Schelling
Schopenhauer
Scotus Erigena
Seneca
Servetus, Michael
Sextus Empiricus
Shakespeare
Simon, Jules
Socrates
Spencer, Herbert
Speusippus
Spinoza
Stewart, Dugald
T
Taine, Hippolyte
Thales
Theodosius
Theophrastus
Thomas Aquinas, St.
Thrasea
Timon
V
Vanini
Vauvenargues
Vico
Villon
Vincent of Beauvais
Voltaire
W
William of Auvergne
Wolf
X
Xenocrates
Xenophanes
Xenophon
Z
Zeno (of Citium)
Zeno (of Elea)
Zoroaster