performed "with joy." A fundamental law of all things and especially of human nature is consciously or unconsciously to "seek the highest, to covet the participation of God himself." This seeking has various degrees, but the end is always the same, viz., God or goodness. The first degree of seeking is the desiring the continuance of existence. A second degree is the striving to resemble God in constancy and excellency of operation. This seeking is in man conscious, and as such constitutes his essence. Man attains to full consciousness in his seeking, by degrees. Until he distinguishes "differences of time, affirmation, negation, and contradiction in speech," he is on a level with the lower animals. When he does so he has some use of natural reason." By reason he comprehends the laws of his true being, the laws by which his actions are by him to be guided. Human action has for its end either mere action for its own sake, or action for

Like that of God,

the sake of procuring an ulterior object. it is, ideally speaking, witting and free: desire only solicits, will controls, it. Actions determined by appetite are voluntary in the sense that they are subject to the control of the will, though the will may not be exercised, but yields assent, as it were by silence. The good, or whatever is an object of real desire (since desire is everywhere the Good (God) seeking itself), does not move to action merely by being, but by being apparent or the object of a consciousness. Evil as such is never really desired or willed: men choose evil, when they choose it, from habits overpowering reason in them. The good and the evil are known by one and the same criterion. We judge of the good and evil of things by means of their causes and effects and signs. The main principles of judgment are self-evident, "for to make nothing self-evident of itself unto man's understanding were to take away all possibility of knowing anything." Examples of self-evident principles are: the greater good is to be chosen before the less; it profits a man nothing to gain the whole world and lose his own soul; obey

the mind rather than the body (the highest law of action), etc. The marks of the laws of reason are, — likeness to the laws of nature, accessibility to human understanding (without revelation), universality of recognition. Society has its origin in the inability of the individual to "furnish himself with the store of things needful for such a life as our nature doth desire, a life fit for the dignity of man." It has a double bond, the natural inclination of men to social communion, and an 66 agreement, expressed or tacit, as to the manner of union or living together." The latter — the agreement is the law of the commonweal, which has for its object the public good. The chief ends of living are wisdom, virtue, and religion. Laws of the commonweal are natural laws, positive laws, and laws of nations. Divine laws are such as are "supernatural both in respect of the manner of deducing them, and also in regard of the things delivered" (viz., the objects of faith, hope, and charity). Hooker's discussion on the subject of law closes with the following assertions, which may be taken as a brief summing up of his general meaning: "Of law there can be no less acknowledged, than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world: all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power: both angels and men, and creatures of what condition soever, though each in a different sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy."

Result. There are in Hooker's conception of law two features of primary importance, to which special attention may be directed,1 viz., the notion that law, instead of being merely a mode of mechanical operation, is ultimately an expression of rational will or living reason, and the notion of the universality of law. By the first, the philosophy of Hooker is absolutely distinguished from all mechanistic

1 See British Thought and Thinkers (by the late Prof. G. S. Morris), pp. 71-79.

philosophies, and especially mechanistic philosophies of the State, like that of Hobbes, for example; and even more, were that possible, is it by the second taken in connection with the first, universal living reason is wholly another thing than blind necessity. — The influence of Hooker appears in later political philosophies, particularly (strange as it may seem as regards the first and the last) those of Hobbes, Cumberland, and Locke. He has received too little attention from historians of philosophy, has, in fact, generally been entirely ignored or overlooked.

DIVISION II. SECOND PERIOD OF MODERN

PHILOSOPHY.

§ 43.

The Characteristics of the Second Period of Modern Philosophy. The Second Period of Modern Philosophy -extending from the beginning of the seventeenth century to the third quarter of the eighteenth is characteristically a period of analysis and formal reflection. A leading problem the leading problem of the second period is the problem of the method of philosophical inquiry and reflection and of the sources of knowledge. As regards method and its view of the sources of knowledge, thought in this period is, predominantly, either empiricistic, intuitionalistic, or rationalistic. As analytic, the standpoint of this period is that of (phenomenal) consciousness rather than of selfconsciousness. The most common results of thinking of the period, accordingly (that is, in consequence of the fact that on the standpoint of mere consciousness subject and object are separated), are, in the theory of knowledge and being as such, subjective idealism or else scepticism, on the one hand, and, on the other, dogmatism, or the arbitrary affirmation of a supersensible existence; in the theory of nature, mechanism; in that of will, determinism. The truth of the foregoing assertions can, of course, be established only in connection with the presentation and characterization of the systems of the period. The actual historical connection of systems in this period is such that it is impracticable to attempt to group them under the separate heads of "empiricistic," "intuitionalistic," and "rationalistic" systems. The systems will be characterized as they are individually dealt with.

§ 44.

Francis Bacon (1561-1626). Francis Bacon was the son of Nicholas Bacon, for many years lord-keeper of the great seal under Elizabeth, and Anne Cooke, daughter of

Sir Anthony Cooke and said to have been a woman of extraordinary learning, culture, and piety. At the age of twelve, the "young lord-keeper," as Elizabeth styled the rather precocious youth, entered the University of Cambridge. Here he acquired, if not a very profound knowledge of Aristotle himself, a decided antipathy to the Aristotelian philosophy as then taught, regarding it as disputatious and barren. He left the university, at the age of fifteen, to study law in Gray's Inn, London. Soon afterwards he was sent with the English embassy to Paris to acquire a knowledge of the human "world" in general, and of diplomacy in particular. The death of his father, in 1579, recalled him from Paris to England, and threw him entirely on his own resources. He decided to practise law; but he had a larger than merely professional ambition, namely, that of being grandly useful to "his country, the Church, and humanity at large." He had, as he himself avowed, "early taken all knowledge for his province," and had conceived a design of beginning a revolution in human knowledge and action by the discovery of a method that would supplant the empty Scholastico-Aristotelian logic, on the one hand, and a blind, slavish, and delusive empiricism on the other. Passing through Gray's Inn, he took a place at the bar (1582); sat several times in Parliament during the reign of Elizabeth, at one time seriously offending the Queen and damaging his prospects of advancement by honest opposition to a certain plan cherished by her Majesty ; acquired standing as queen's counsel, after having failed in an attempt to secure an appointment as attorney-general, then as solicitor-general, and, again, as master of the rolls; held, in the reign of James I., successively the positions of king's counsel, solicitor-general, attorney-general, privy councillor, lord-keeper, and lord-chancellor (1618); was knighted, and invested with the titles of Baron Verulam and Viscount St. Albans (1621). That he really served his country is doubtful, since he was always an upholder of royal prerogative as against the privileges of the Commons, and was guilty of political corruption (though not of receiv