e style and
manner of the Aristotelian folly which held Europe fast in that
wretched period called the Dark Ages, which preceded the dawn of
intelligence with Galileo.

About one half of the reported lectures on Aristotle is, though
cloudy, intelligible. The remainder is a fair specimen of that
skimmy-dashy style of thought which glances over the surfaces of
things and never reaches their substance or reality, yet boasts of its
unlimited profundity because it does not know the meaning of profound.
Such thinking must necessarily end in falsity and folly, of which the
lecture gives many specimens, which it is worth while to quote, to
show what the devotees of antiquity call philosophy--thus:

"If we cannot know the ultimate nature of being, then philosophy
is impossible, for philosophy differs from other kind of knowing
by seeking a first principle." "The objects of philosophy then
include those of ontology. They are first the nature of the
ultimate being of the universe, the first principle, the idea of
God."

This is not philosophy, but might be called theology, and not
legitimate theology even, but supra-theological--for all sane theology
admits that man cannot know God. It is a desperate, insane suggestion
that we must know the unknowable, and that if we cannot do that we can
have no philosophy. Of course men who think this way know nothing of
philosophy, and are beyond the reach of reason.

Again, "in the nature of the truly independent and true being, it sees
necessary transcendence of space and time, and this is essential
immortality." This is a fair specimen of the skimmy-dashy style.
Immortality is not a "transcendence of space," if that means anything
at all, but a conscious existence without end. Perhaps by
"transcendence of space" he means filling all the space there is, and
going considerably beyond it where there is no space.

His idea of infinity is worthy of Aristotle or Hegel, to whom, in
fact, it belongs--he says, "self-conditioning is the form of the
whole, the form of that _which is its own other_." That something
should be "its own other" is just as clear as that it should be its
own mother or father. Do such expressions represent any ideas, or do
metaphysicians use words as a substitute for ideas--verily they do, in
Hegelian metaphysics, and the same thing is done in asylums for the
insane.

Again, "our knowledge of quantity is a knowledge of what is universal
and nec