a total intellectual cramp or by a colossal folly. This thoughtful dog has dropped the substance he held in his mouth, to snatch at the reflection of it which his own mind gave him. It is wonderful with what a light heart, with what self-satisfaction and even boasts, the youngest children of the philosophical family jettison all their heirlooms. Fichte and Nietzsche, in their fervid arrogance, could hardly outdo the mental impoverishment of Berkeley and Hume in their levity: it had really been a sight for the gods to see one of these undergraduates driving matter out of the universe, whilst the other drove out spirit. 51 IDEAS How comes it that the word Idea, so redolent of Platonism, has been the fulcrum on which British philosophy has turned in its effort to dislodge Platonism from its foundations, and to lay bare the positive facts? The vicissitudes of words are instructive; they show us what each age understood or forgot in the wisdom of its predecessors, and what new things it discovered to which it gave the old names. The beauty which Plato and the English saw in Ideas was the same beauty; they both found in Ideas the immediate, indubitable object of knowledge. And nevertheless, hugging the same certitude, they became sure of entirely different things. The word Idea ought to mean any theme which attention has lighted up, any aesthetic or logical essence, so long as it is observed in itself or used to describe some ulterior existence. Amid a thousand metaphysical and psychological abuses of the term this purely ideal signification sometimes reappears in polite speech; for instance when Athalie says, in Racine: J'ai deux fois, en dormant, revu la même idée.