character and position, and of the aims which are placed above the Actual. Each of these is in conflict with the other; each modifies and moulds the other. We can never escape the control of the first; we must ever cease to strive to extend the sway of the second. In these cases, indeed, the Ideal Element assumes a new form. It includes the Idea of Duty. The opposition, the action and re-action, the harmony at which we must ever aim, and can never reach, are between what is and what ought to be;-between the past or present Fact, and the Supreme Idea. The Idea can never be independent of the Fact, but the Fact must ever be drawn towards the Idea. The History of Human Societies, and of each Individual, is by the moral philosopher, regarded in reference to this Antithesis; and thus both Public and Private Morality becomes an actual progress towards an Ideal Form; or ceases to be a moral reality. I have made very slight alterations in the first edition, except that the First Book is remodelled with a view of bringing out more clearly the basis of the work; this doctrine of the Fundamental Antithesis of Philosophy. This doctrine, and its relation to the rest of the work, have become more clear in the years which have elapsed since the first edition. A separate Essay, in which this doctrine was explained, and a few other Essays previously published in various forms, and containing discussions of special points belonging to the scheme of philosophy here delivered, have attracted some notice, both in this and in other countries. I have therefore added them as an Appendix to the present edition. I have added a few Notes, in answer to arguments brought against particular parts of this work. I have written these in what I have elsewhere called an impersonal manner; wishing to avoid controversy, so far as justice to philosophical Truth will allow me to do so. I have not given any detailed reply to the criticisms of this work which occur in Mr. Mill's System of Logic. The consideration of these criticisms would be interesting to me, and I think would still further establish the doctrines which I have here delivered. But such a discussion would involve me in a critique of Mr. Mill's work; which if I were to offer to the world, I should think it more suitable to publish separately. More than one of my critics has expressed an opinion that when I published this work, I had not given due attention to the Cours de Philosophie Positive of M. Comte. I had, and have, an opinion of the value of M. Comte's speculations very different from that entertained by my monitors. I had in the former edition discussed, and, as I conceive, confuted, some of M. Comte's leading doctrines*. In order further to show that I had not lightly passed over those portions of M. Comte's work which had then appeared, I now publish† an additional portion of a critique of the work which, though I had written, I excluded from the former edition. This is printed exactly as it existed in manuscript at the period of that publication. To return to the subject and to take it up in all its extent, would be an undertaking out of the range of a new edition of my published work. B. XI. c. vii. B. XIII. c. iv. + B. XII. c. xvi. Bacon delivered his philosophy in Aphorisms;-a series of Sentences which profess to exhibit rather the results of thought than the process of thinking. A mere Aphoristic Philosophy unsupported by reasoning, is not suited to the present time. No writer upon such subjects can expect to be either understood or assented to, beyond the limits of a narrow school, who is not prepared with good arguments as well as magisterial decisions upon the controverted points of philosophy. But it may be satisfactory to some readers to see the Philosophy, to which in the present work we are led, presented in the Aphoristic form. I have therefore placed a Series of Aphorisms at the end of the work. In the former edition these, by being placed at the beginning of the work, might mislead the reader; seeming to some, perhaps, to be put forwards as the grounds, not as the results, of our philosophy. I have also prefixed an analysis of the work, in the form of a Table of Contents to each volume. In that part of the second volume which treats of the Language of Science, I have made a few alterations and additions, tending to bring my recommendations into harmony with the present use of the best scientific works. |