oh. v.] THE TWO METHODS. 117 



and apparently inevitable, produced a crisis in philosophy, 

 serving to raise doubts as to the validity of the subjective 

 method, and to call in question the truth of the postulate 

 that whatever is in the Idea is also in the Fact. It was 

 thought necessary to stop and reconsider the processes by 

 which our initial conceptions in metaphysics are obtained; 

 and thus for more than a century pure ontological specula- 

 tion w^s subordinated to psychological inquiries. Thus 

 arose the great English school, whose especial function, with 

 regard to metaphysics, has been to demonstrate, on psycho- 

 logical grounds, the relativity of all knowledge. This move- 

 ment, begun by Hobbes and continued by Locke and 

 Berkeley, though productive of many brilliant and perma- 

 nent scientific results, was suicidal so far as metaphysics 

 is concerned, for, as we saw in the preceding chapter, it 

 has ended in the Scepticism of Hume, and the Positivism of 

 Comte and Mill. The researches of Hobbes on the laws 

 of association, the admirable though incomplete analysis 

 of mental operations achieved by Locke, and Berkeley's 

 explanation of the phenomena of vision, were genuine 

 additions to our knowledge. But, as has frequently been 

 pointed out, they were obtained only through the employ- 

 ment of the objective method. The precepts of Bacon, so 

 thoroughly in harmony with the cautious and practical 

 temper of the English mind, led these great thinkers to 

 forsake the high road of d priori ratiocination for the surer 

 though more tortuous path of patient observation ; and 

 so long as they adhered to psychology, they were really 

 scientific inquirers, as much as if they had been physiologists 

 or chemists. This departure from metaphysics was carried 

 still farther by Hartley, who, working the deepest vein of 

 the Lockian philosophy, prepared the way for James Mill to 

 bring psychology still more thoroughly under the sway of 

 scientific methods. But the imperfect condition of biology 

 prevented the significance of this movement from being 



