100 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [pt. t 



of every Tcnlity by a simple process of reason independent 

 of all sensuous information, never flinching until by an act 

 of pure intelligence he has grasped the real nature of good, 

 he arrives at the very end of the intellectual world." 



Plato furnishes an excellent illustration of the statement 

 above made, that a false method leads to false doctrine, 

 which, reacting on the mind, confirms it in the employment 

 of the false method. From the fact that a comparatively 

 uninstructed mind can, with a little explanation, be made to 

 perceive the necessary truth of a few simple geometrical 

 axioms, and to follow the steps of a demonstration founded 

 thereon, — Plato, in that charming dialogue, the Meno, infers 

 that all knowledge is reminiscence. How could the un- 

 educated youth have come by that knowledge which enables 

 him to see at once that when a square is divided by a line 

 which bisects the two opposite sides, the two portions are 

 equal ? The naive reply is, that he must have acquired it in 

 a prior state of existence, when the soul, not yet encumbered 

 with the body, had free communion with Ideas. See what 

 an enormous hypothesis Plato erects upon a slender basis of 

 fact, and forthwith accepts as a justification of that very 

 subjective method by the aid of which it was erected. For 

 he elsewhere tells us that since all knowledge is a revival ot 

 pre-existent ideas, therefore " from any one idea we can 

 arrive at all others, owing to the logical connection existing 

 between them ; " and in this conclusion he states the funda- 

 mental canon of the subjective method, as employed by 

 modern metaphysicians from Descartes to Hegel. 



This illustration shows us, in a curious and unexpected 

 way, how intimately the Method of the a priori metaphy- 

 sician is wrapped up with his Psychology, and how closely akin 

 to each other have been the multifarious manifestations of 

 the two in ancient and modern times. Between the sub- 

 jective method and the doctrine of the a priori character 

 of necessary truths the kinship is so clvise that Mr. Lewes is 



