us in detail the nature of the
process. Like many other thinkers both in ancient and modern times
his mind seems to be filled with a vacant form which he is unable to
realize. He supposes the sciences to have a natural order and connexion
in an age when they can hardly be said to exist. He is hastening on to
the 'end of the intellectual world' without even making a beginning of
them.

In modern times we hardly need to be reminded that the process of
acquiring knowledge is here confused with the contemplation of absolute
knowledge. In all science a priori and a posteriori truths mingle in
various proportions. The a priori part is that which is derived from the
most universal experience of men, or is universally accepted by
them; the a posteriori is that which grows up around the more
general principles and becomes imperceptibly one with them. But Plato
erroneously imagines that the synthesis is separable from the analysis,
and that the method of science can anticipate science. In entertaining
such a vision of a priori knowledge he is sufficiently justified, or at
least his meaning may be sufficiently explained by the similar attempts
of Descartes, Kant, Hegel, and even of Bacon himself, in modern
philosophy. Anticipations or divinations, or prophetic glimpses of
truths whether concerning man or nature, seem to stand in the same
relation to ancient philosophy which hypotheses bear to modern inductive
science. These 'guesses at truth' were not made at random; they arose
from a superficial impression of uniformities and first principles
in nature which the genius of the Greek, contemplating the expanse of
heaven and earth, seemed to recognize in the distance. Nor can we deny
that in ancient times knowledge must have stood still, and the human
mind been deprived of the very instruments of thought, if philosophy had
been strictly confined to the results of experience.

2. Plato supposes that when the tablet has been made blank the artist
will fill in the lineaments of the ideal state. Is this a pattern laid
up in heaven, or mere vacancy on which he is supposed to gaze with
wondering eye? The answer is, that such ideals are framed partly by the
omission of particulars, partly by imagination perfecting the form which
experience supplies (Phaedo). Plato represents these ideals in a
figure as belonging to another world; and in modern times the idea will
sometimes seem to precede, at other times to co-operate with the hand
of th