_'Encheiresin Naturae_ nennt's die Chemie, Spottet ihrer Selbst, und weiss nicht, wie: Hat die Teile in Ihrer Hand Fehlt leider nur das geistige Band.' Analysis starts from the concrete; and the possession of this material gives it a considerable advantage over the abstract thinking of the old metaphysics. It establishes the differences in things: and this is very important: but these very differences are nothing after all but abstract attributes, _e.g._ thoughts. These thoughts, it is assumed, contain the real essence of the objects; and thus once more we see the axiom of bygone metaphysics reappear, that the truth of things lies in thought. Let us next compare the empirical theory with that of metaphysics in the matter of their respective contents. We find the latter, as already stated, taking for its theme the universal objects of the reason, viz. God, the Soul, and the World: and these themes, accepted from popular conception, it was the problem of philosophy to reduce into the form of thoughts. Another specimen of the same method was the Scholastic philosophy, the theme pre-supposed by which was formed by the dogmas of the Christian Church: and it aimed at fixing their meaning and giving them a systematic arrangement through thought.--The facts on which Empiricism is based are of entirely different kind. They are the sensible facts of nature and the facts of the finite mind. In other words, Empiricism deals with a finite material--and the old metaphysicians had an infinite,--though, let us add, they made this infinite content finite by the finite form of the understanding. The same finitude of form reappears in Empiricism--but here the facts are finite also. To this exigent, then, both modes of philosophising have the same method; both proceed from data or assumptions, which they accept as ultimate. Generally speaking, Empiricism finds the truth in the outward world; and even if it allow a super-sensible world, it holds knowledge of that world to be impossible, and would restrict us to the province of sense-perception. This doctrine when systematically carried out produces what has been latterly termed Materialism. Materialism of this stamp looks upon matter, _quâ_ matter, as the genuine objective world. But with matter we are at once introduced to an abstraction, which as such cannot be perceived: and it may be maintained that there is no matter, because, as it exists, it is always something definite and concrete. Yet the abstraction we term matter is supposed to lie at the basis of the whole world of sense, and expresses the sense-world in its simplest terms as out-and-out individualisation, and hence a congeries of points in mutual exclusion. So long then as this sensible sphere is and continues to be for Empiricism a mere datum, we have a doctrine of bondage: for we become free, when we are confronted by no absolutely alien world, but depend upon a fact which we ourselves are.