OF KNOWLEDGE. 



309 





those who would confine its speculations to the ultimate 

 presuppositions and who despise axiomata media as ex- 

 ternal to the sphere in which it moves." l It is quite 

 true that there were exceptions, and that attempts had 

 been made to build up coherent or monistic systems 

 similar to those which abound in the nineteenth cen- 

 tury; and this both with a materialistic tendency as 

 by Hobbes and with that towards spiritualism as by 

 Berkeley. But these systematic attempts were disre- 

 garded and stood outside of the prevailing currents of 

 philosophical thought. This was, in general, occupied is. 



Dispersive 



with a discussion of special problems, and did probably character of 

 more than either French or German philosophy to lead 

 up to special philosophical sciences, such as Psychology, 

 Logic, Theory of Method, Ethics, Economics, &c. Even 

 the most influential and far-reaching discussions which 

 mark an era in philosophical thought, those of David 

 Hume, appeared in the form of essays which stimulated 

 thought without exhausting their subject, and aimed as 

 little at building up a systematic whole as they emanated 

 from a universitas scientiarum et literarum. The opinion 

 sometimes expressed by foreign historians of philosophy, 

 that thinkers like Bacon, Locke, Newton, Mill, and 

 others shrank, through timidity, from expressing their 

 convictions regarding matters of faith or subjecting 

 them to the same penetrating analysis which they 

 practised with regard to science and natural knowledge, 

 can hardly be upheld. 2 It was rather a correct and 



1 Fraser, ' Locke,' p. 286. 



2 This opinion is, however, to 

 some extent borne out by what 

 John Stuart Mill tells us about his 



father, James Mill, in a well-known 

 passage of the 'Autobiography,' 

 p. 43. "I am one of the very few 

 examples, in this country, of one 



