In a very famous analysis and panegyric of the philosopher, Plato claimed that he is a man magnificent in mind and the spectator of all time and all existence. These are great words, and words made venerable by ancient repute and centuries of citation. Unfortunately, however, like many such utterances they can only be regarded as hyperbolic and rhetorical; and in an age that, failing in inspiration and fecundity of intuition, seeks at least to be precise, thay must suffer limitation. For the lumen siccum of reason shows that the phrase “all time” involves a contradiction, and that the human mind, by nature limited both in amplitude and in profundity,

Locke is the first English philosopher to be considered in this series, and that fact of itself is worthy of attention. Philosophy, of course, like science, knows no frontiers and no national boundaries. Yet it is true to say that Locke’s contribution to philosophy is typically and peculiarly English. His moderation, his emphasis upon experience, his tolerant spirit of compromise, his dislike of mystical extravagance and of metaphysical speculation, even that elusive quality of his which people call his “common sense”, are English traits. His very defects, illogicality leading to inconsistency and an awkward disorderliness of thought so abhorrent to the

The more elementary student used to be left with four main impressions of Locke. Firstly, he was an “empiricist”; secondly, he occupied an inconsistent intermediate position on the road to Berkeley and Hume; thirdly, he was pre-eminently the philosopher of common sense; fourthly, he committed the epistemological error of teaching that our only objects of knowledge were ideas in our mind which copied reality. All these dicta contain an important element of truth, but are misleading by reason of the excessive emphasis which has been placed upon them.

Positivists have excelled at destructive criticism. This criticism has been useful for pruning away absurd and superfluous theories but it is liable to be used to prune away everything else. The latest exponents, the Logical Positivists, are no less adept at criticism than their predecessors. The doctrines of this school have been surrounded with an air of mystery and inquirers have been frightened off by alarming technical apparatus. We all know that the Logical Positivists had proved that everybody else talked nonsense, but we did not know what they themselves talked. Mr. A. J. Ayer's exposition of the doctrine, Language, Truth and Logic, is therefore welcome as it is simple,

The following considerations have been styled “simple thoughts” for two reasons.

“All verbal forms of statement,” says Whitehead, “that have been long before the world disclose ambiguities, and sometimes the ambiguities strike at the very heart of the meaning. The effective sense in which a doctrine has been held in the past cannot be determined by a logical analysis of statements made in ignorance of the logical trap.... Religion collapses unless its main positions command immediacy of assent.”

An understanding of the Chinese mind, and Chinese Art and Literature that are the expression of it, cannot be achieved without an examination of the fundamental elements that have gone to the building of Chinese mysticism.