I.

In studying the growth of philosophy as an historical evolution, repetitions and anticipations¹ must necessarily be of frequent occurrence. Ideas meet us at every step which can only be appreciated when we trace out their later developments, or only understood when we refer them back to earlier and half-forgotten modes of thought. The speculative² tissue is woven out of filaments³ so delicate and so complicated that it is almost impossible to say where one begins and the other ends. Even conceptions which seem to have been transmitted without alteration⁴ are constantly acquiring a new value according to the connexions into which they enter or the circumstances to which they are applied⁵. But if the method of evolution, with its two great principles of continuity and relativity, substitutes a maze⁶ of intricate lines, often returning on themselves, for the straight path along which progress was once supposed to move, we are more than compensated⁷ by the new sense of coherence⁸ and rationality where illusion and extravagance once seemed to reign⁹ supreme¹⁰. It teaches us that the dreams of a great intellect may be better worth our attention than the waking perceptions of ordinary men. Combining fragments of the old order with rudimentary outlines of the new, they lay open the secret laboratory of spiritual chemistry, and help to bridge over the interval¹² separating the most widely contrasted phases of life and thought. Moreover, when we have once accustomed ourselves to break up past systems of philosophy172 into their