ONE:It seems as if we were witnessing a revival of Mediaevalism277 under another form; as if, after neo-Gothic architecture, pre-Raphaelitism, and ritualism, we were threatened with a return to the scholastic philosophy which the great scientific reformers of the seventeenth century were supposed to have irrevocably destroyed. And, however chimerical may seem the hopes of such a restoration, we are bound to admit that they do actually exist. One of the most cultivated champions of Ultramontanism in this country, Prof. St. George Mivart, not long ago informed us, at the close of his work on Contemporary Evolution, that, if metaphysics are possible, there is not, and never was or will be, more than one philosophy which, properly understood, unites all truths and eliminates all errorsthe Philosophy of the PhilosopherAristotle. It may be mentioned also, as a symptom of the same movement, that Leo XIII. has recently directed the works of St. Thomas Aquinas to be reprinted for use in Catholic colleges; having, according to the newspapers, laid aside 300,000 lire for that purposea large sum, considering his present necessities; but not too much for the republication of eighteen folio volumes. Now, it is well known that the philosophy of Aquinas is simply the philosophy of Aristotle, with such omissions and modifications as were necessary in order to piece it on to Christian theology. Hence, in giving his sanction to the teaching of the Angelic Doctor, Leo XIII. indirectly gives it to the source from which so much of that teaching is derived.The scepticism of Protagoras went beyond theology and extended to all science whatever. Such, at least, seems to have been the force of his celebrated declaration that man is the measure of all things, both as regards their existence and their non-existence.67 According to Plato, this doctrine followed from the identification of knowledge with sensible perception, which in its turn was based on a modified form of the Heracleitean theory of a perpetual flux. The series of external changes which constitutes Nature, acting on the series of internal changes which constitutes each mans personality, produces particular sensations, and these alone are the true reality. They vary with every variation in the88 factors, and therefore are not the same for separate individuals. Each mans perceptions are true for himself, but for himself alone. Plato easily shows that such a theory of truth is at variance with ordinary opinion, and that if all opinions are true, it must necessarily stand self-condemned. We may also observe that if nothing can be known but sensation, nothing can be known of its conditions. It would, however, be unfair to convict Protagoras of talking nonsense on the unsupported authority of the Theaettus. Plato himself suggests that a better case might have been made out for the incriminated doctrine could its author have been heard in self-defence. We may conjecture that Protagoras did not distinguish very accurately between existence, knowledge, and applicability to practice. If we assume, what there seems good reason to believe, that in the great controversy of Nature versus Law, Protagoras sided with the latter, his position will at once become clear. When the champions of Nature credited her with a stability and an authority greater than could be claimed for merely human arrangements, it was a judicious step to carry the war into their territory, and ask, on what foundation then does Nature herself stand? Is not she, too, perpetually changing, and do we not become acquainted with her entirely through our own feelings? Ought not those feelings to be taken as the ultimate standard in all questions of right and wrong? Individual opinion is a fact which must be reckoned with, but which can be changed by persuasion, not by appeals to something that we none of us know anything about. Man is the measure of all things, not the will of gods whose very existence is uncertain, nor yet a purely hypothetical state of Nature. Human interests must take precedence of every other consideration. Hector meant nothing else when he preferred the obvious dictates of patriotism to inferences drawn from the flight of birds.
TWO:"Von Buelow."She did so just as a telegraph boy came along with one of the orange-coloured envelopes in his hand. He looked at the address and at the number of the box.
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