the use of a language, learns to name many objects simultaneously with first seeing them, and thus inherits the general arrangement of objects which had been gradually worked out by his predecessors. In this respect, to use a mathematical illustration, Language prevents sudden discontinuities by securing that at every moment the initial direction of variation shall be the same for all, however much their private experience may commence, subsequently to that moment, to vary it. Had each one of us to commence anew for himself that process of analysis and synthesis by which an objective world is built up, we should probably differ amongst ourselves quite as much as the occupants of Bedlam, one of whose principal characteristics is their greater spontaneity and independence in the process of object construction-now do from us and from each other. As things now are, we think and speak under the powerful constraining influence of a common speech, and hence we see and think so nearly alike; though it must always be remembered,-what comes out clearly 'enough when we begin to define our terms, that as large a deviation of perception may actually exist under common terms, as of doctrine under common creeds.

(2) But when we proceed to look a long way back or a long way ahead, a very different state of things has to be contemplated. The thorough-going objective or material view of the world, that, for instance, of the ordinary man of science,is somewhat of the following kind. Fully admitting the enormous changes which have taken place over secular intervals: the introduction of new species and extinction of old, the rise and progress of social life with its infinitely varying and extending complications, the geological and climatic changes which the ages have worked out, and so forth: it is throughout our conceptions, those of the student and lecturer of the present day, which we are applying to construct and to explain this past course of events. To us the universe, when there was no man in it, is the picture of the action of physical forces as we should observe them if we could be put back into that period. The customs of the savage and the conceptions he entertains, are what we should make of them, and so forth. To the scientific man this is quite justifiable, since his purpose may avowedly be that of explaining the past from the point of view of the present, and since he does not trouble himself more than is

absolutely necessary about the language and conceptions in which things might be variously described at different times. To the logician, however, it is otherwise. He has made it his business to consider objects through their names, or through the conceptions corresponding to these. His doctrines of the Categories, of Connotation and the Definition of names, all imply this;-in fact an old description of Logic was that it 'referred first intentions to second', that is, that it was the function of Logic to arrange and infer the facts of nature in accordance with current conceptions or notions,—and therefore the contrast V between the way in which one generation and another views the world, is necessarily brought under his notice.

As already remarked, there is no trouble and dispute about the simpler and more obvious objects; they must always have been pretty much the same as they now are, at least to the mere observer who does not seek to analyze or account for them. But in the case of the more complex objects in which mental construction plays so large a part, it is by no means mere quibbling to raise the objection,-' But there were no such things then inasmuch as objects consist in great part as they are perceived, conceived, and named, they simply do not exist to those who do not perceive them and have therefore never thought of naming them.' To this objection the same answer may perhaps be suggested as is so often given to an analogous difficulty in the Berkeleyan hypothesis of Immateriality. When it is urged, as it was from the first, Then, the essence of objects lying in our perception of them, it follows that before there were any perceptive powers there could have been no objects: i.e. there could have been no material world before man existed upon it.' The usual answer is thrown into the hypothetical form,—' We mean that if there had been any being with perceptive organs like ours he would have perceived the world just as we do now'.' I am far from thinking this answer satisfactory; in fact it seems entirely to evade the difficulty. The objection starts from the postulate that there were no human beings at the time in question, and infers that consequently there was no material world. The answer really starts from the postulate that there

1 This is the answer given by Mill (Exam. of Sir W. Hamilton). Berkeley's Theism, of course, gave him a second string to his bow, and a much stronger one: the world had always existed in the mind of the Deity.

might have been such beings, and replies that if such th the world would have been perceptible to them.

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In the case before us, however, such an answer is fair or rather it is not called for, since the difficulty it is int! meet is frankly admitted. The very point I am here urg that many of the objects which fill our categories, and ... to our general names, simply did not exist in the days of earliest savage ancestors. But this does not signify; because the position we take up is that in these matters, so far as Logic is concerned, the present is to legislate for the past. We fully admit that such and such objects were not perceived, so that the corresponding notions and names did not exist; yet still we consider them to have been existing because we know that they would or might have done so to us. Had we been there we should have seen them. (That is, what we do is to project our own present view of the world into remote times and places We thus postulate a world, or aggregate of objects,—not out of relation to human faculties in general, which would of course be absurd,—but conditioned in relation to one representative state of faculties, namely that of our own time and society We conceive some mature mind, at the present standard of civilization, and we assume that such a constitution and arrangement of the detailed phenomena,-such objects in fact, as would present themselves to him, are to be regarded as universally admissible at all times. And this is quite fair, for our logical scheme is avowedly constructed from the present point of view. It does not, or should not, profess to be anything else than an interpretation of remote times by the schedules and forms of our own time.

So far then as regards the past, however remote the period to which we recede, there does not seem to be any serious difficulty; but it must be remembered that there is also a future to reckon with, and the application of the same principle in this direction will bring about results that deserve close scrutiny. The past, as I say, offers no difficulty. We are well accustomed to observing and reasoning for others in a way which we know to be far over their heads, and therefore we can readily extend our categories and terms backwards into times and places where they could not originally have gained acceptance or even appreciation. To imagine how men of the past might have enter

tained our ideas and used our terms, though in fact we are aware that they did nothing of the kind, is a process of mental expansion or progress, and is so far in order. But clearly if we are to take up the same attitude towards those who come after us, we should have to adopt a process of mental curtailment and retrogression. It would be absurd to suppose that our way of regarding the world can be final. Future generations will completely set aside our classifications, and will find very many of our notions and terms quite unsuitable to express their way of regarding and grouping the facts. At some future stage they will presumably stand to us much as we do to the prehistoric

savage.

Now as we clearly cannot raise our notions up to the standard of the future, we must adopt the opposite course and estimate the future by the narrower standard of the present. Hence, when any one lets his imagination wander into the abyss of the past and the future, he must remember that he is really behaving in a somewhat different way in these two directions. He may justify his modern point of view, in the former case, on the ground that our ancestors at any rate might, though they unquestionably did not, see what we with our eyes should see. But to suppose our remote successors to see things as we see them is to suppose them to consent to a deliberate retrogression.

A single example will serve to explain what is meant by this, and as it is offered merely for illustration it may pass as such even with those who reject its correctness, viz. that of Religion, with all the group of notions involved in this general term. We can trace the evolution of sentiments which we should now refer to this head back to the lowest strata of savage life. But it needs very little consideration to convince us that the terms in which we express our statements on this subject, though they indicate tolerably definite notions (ed unities) to us, would not do so to very primitive men. It is our grouping, not theirs, of the sentiments which form the raw material of all objects of thought. Could those men have risen to our standard of intelligence whilst retaining their own. standard of belief, they would probably have utterly refused not merely to accept or deny our statements but even to realize the admissibility of the very terms in which they are couched.

The difficulty above discussed will perhaps be better appreciated if we revert for a moment to a phraseology which I have rather avoided in this work, and which seems to me to be likely to be superseded in the present predominantly objective and material treatment of Logic. Many logicians hold that what they have to deal with in their science is a stock of ideas or notions; the act of judgment consisting in the combination of two such elements. The sum total of all such 'concepts', to use a current modern term, or 'voces' to use a common old term, forms so to say the stock in trade of every logician. All logical processes, judgment, reasoning, definition, and so forth,-are nothing but the transfer, authentication, and analysis of these notions. Now it is perfectly undeniable that such an aggregate of notions as this is strictly conditioned as to time and place,— for they can only exist in so far as they are entertained in the mind, and therefore few if any of those now in currency can be really identified with such as were entertained by our primitive ancestors. Speaking objectively, as we did before, the, reader might have some trouble in conceiving how things could be said not to exist, because there was no one then to perceive them. But when we use the really equivalent expression of 'viewing objects under such and such concepts', we see more easily how necessarily all our statements are couched in the frames or forms of the present day.

IV. Another difficulty, of a very distinct kind from that last noticed, but which is an equally serious one from a speculative point of view, must now be discussed. The reader will have gathered that what the logician strives after is the attitude of the observer or judge, pure and simple, who contemplates the world for the purpose of drawing inferences about it. He is to stand entirely apart, his function being to think but not to act, to observe but not to influence. We have seen, just above, that we have to regard his present standing point as a sort of representative one which is to serve equally well for any other time or place; though it came out in the course of enquiry that the attempt to secure such a representative or common standpoint involved a certain anachronism both prospective and retrospective. There did not however, so far, appear to be any inevitable inconsistency in the mere attempt to take up this purely contemplative position. There did not seem any reason