92 ASSAYS SCIENTIFIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL. 



which was a principal before, sank into the acci- 

 dental and the neutral the mere scene on which 

 the great drama of real being was performed and 

 flung its lights and shades." Self-knowledge, the 

 sense of sin, the desire for reconciliation with a 

 personal God these, if not entirely new factors in 

 the ethical problem, assumed a prominence which 

 they had never had before. Hence " psychological 

 ethics is altogether peculiar to Christendom'' Yet, 

 if Spinoza is to be chosen to balance Plato, we 

 must remember that those who prepared the 

 problem for him were, in the one case, a pupil of 

 the Jesuits, in the other, an Oratorian Father. 

 And the change which had passed over meta- 

 physics was as great as that which had passed over 

 morals. Christian philosophy had, for a moment, 

 restored something of the old unquestioning faith 

 in reason as the organ of truth. But the separation 

 of reason and faith, in the later scholastic age, had 

 prepared for the scepticism of the Renaissance. 

 Descartes and his successors had, therefore, to 

 face a metaphysical problem which for Aristotle 

 would have been unintelligible : while the answer 

 ultimately given by Spinoza, though undoubtedly 

 an "immanental" theory, savours more of Plato 

 than of Aristotle. Dr. Martineau says, " The doc- 

 trine of immanency excludes theism, while that 

 of transcendency leaves it still possible." True, 

 so long as we are contrasting Plato and Spinoza 



