it to
its true province--fiction. Lewes was, in fact, an excellent
critic, and it is by his splendid critical work, the "Biographical
History of Philosophy," that he is now best remembered. In this
remarkable book, which appeared in 1845-46, Lewes the novelist and
the journalist collaborates with Lewes the philosopher and man of
science. He has the rare art of making an abstruse subject clear
and attractive; he does not give a dry summary of the ideas of the
great thinkers, but depicts the living man and relates his way of
life to his way of thinking. The result is that in his hands
metaphysic becomes as interesting as history did in the hands of
Macaulay.

_I.--The Early Thinkers_

It is the object of the present work to show how philosophy became a
positive science; to indicate by what methods the human mind was enabled
to conquer its present modicum of certain knowledge. The boldest and the
grandest speculations came first. Man needed the stimulus of some higher
reward than that of merely tracing the laws of phenomena. Nothing but a
solution of the mystery of the universe could content him. Astronomy was
derived from astrology: chemistry from alchemy, and physiology from
auguries. The position occupied by philosophy in the history of mankind
is that of the great initiative to positive science. It was the forlorn
hope of mankind, and though it perished in its efforts, it did not
perish without having led the way to victory.

Thales, who was born at Miletus, in Asia Minor, and flourished in 585
B.C., is justly considered the father of Greek speculation. The step he
took was small but decisive. He opened the physiological inquiry into
the constitution of the universe. Seeing around him constant
transformations--birth and death, change of shape, of size, and of mode
of being, he could not regard any one of these variable states of
existence as existence itself. He therefore asked, What is the beginning
of things? Finding that all things were nourished by moisture, he
declared that moisture was the principle of everything. He was mistaken,
of course, but he was the first man to furnish a formula from which to
reason deductively.

Anaximenes (550 B.C.) pursued the method of Thales, but he was not
convinced of the truth of his master's doctrine. He thought that the air
was the prime, universal element, from which all things were produced
and into which all things