178 Contemporary Evolution. 



mankind have eventually gone right, after trying all 

 possible ways of going wrong." * The same course man- 

 kind appears also to follow in philosophic speculation. 

 The great process of reductio ad absurdum has attended 

 the evolution of our post-mediaeval metaphysics ; the 

 logical result is scepticism. The intellectual paralysis (as 

 respects philosophy) attending the modern sensational 

 school, which is essentially the school of Hume, has 

 already been noted ; it remains to call attention to the 

 fact that Hume's philosophy is the logical consequence 

 of the metaphysics referred to. That such is the case, 

 indeed, the event has shown. Berkeley's mind was far too 

 acute not to build logically on the premisses he accepted 

 from Locke, and the same may be said of Hume with 

 respect to Berkeley. The refutation which Kant for a 

 time effected has been itself refuted by the aid of that 

 very evolutionary process which Kant himself favoured 

 and foreshadowed. In spite of the efforts of the phil- 

 osopher of Konigsberg, in spite of Reid and his followers 

 in England, and of Royer-Collard, Maine-de-Biran, 

 Jouffroy, and Cousin in France, the most extreme sensa- 

 tionalism is once more in possession of the field, ranging 

 from Naples to Aberdeen, and from Bordeaux to St. 

 Petersburgh. 



Thus the teaching of the whole school of modern meta- 



* " Study of Sociology," p. 306. 



