174 Contemporary Evolution. 



such as this the end of modern philosophic evolution ? As 

 the New Academy has seemed to some to close the cycle 

 of Greek speculative thought, is a hopeless and absolute 

 philosophic scepticism to close that of the modern period ? 

 That such is to be the end, Comte, as all know, has 

 broadly proclaimed, and his English sympathiser, Mr. G. 

 H. Lewes, for all his verbal changes about " metaphysics " 

 and " metempirics," is as persistent as ever in denying the 

 possibility of solving all those problems which have ever 

 occupied the minds of the highest intellects ; which pro- 

 blems he collectively stigmatises as " metempirical." 



So gloomy and despairing a view is by no means 

 shared by the present writer; on the contrary, he looks 

 forward with confident hope to great metaphysical pro- 

 gress at no very distant period, and he sees no cause of 

 discouragement in a certain apparent barrenness of results 

 attending recent speculation. Progress is not uniform, 

 but is effected by successively advancing waves, and even 

 thus very unequally advance in some directions being 

 generally accompanied by, at least temporary, retrogres- 

 sion in others. 



The artistic triumphs of Greece were not attained 

 without an accompanying ethical depression, and when 

 the decaying Graeco-Roman civilisation became largely 

 replaced by that of hardy Teutons, fresh from the bap- 

 tismal font, barbarian art accompanied the moral reno- 

 vation. The literary culture of the Renaissance was 



