viewed in relation to another. Now the matter of any representation is that part of it which with reference to any given law is non-formal.* Thus in our stone, the weight, size, temperature are parts of the matter, as far as the law of colour is concerned, for they are all non-formal, and the colour of the stone alone is formal. The matter is that which, when added to the form (essential part), gives it extraneity outness-objectivet existence. Without something more than the mere form, there can be no

* Hence the same thing is alternately form and matter. See Ritter's History, 111. p. 121 (Eng. trans.), for this point in Aristotle's doctrine.

† It will be well once for all to explain the modern use of the words subject and object — subjective and objective. The subject is the mind that thinks; the object is that which it thinks about. A subjective impression is one which arises in and from the mind itself; an objective arises from observation of external things. A subjective tendency in a poet or thinker would be a preponderating inclination to represent the moods and states of his own mind; whilst the writer who dwells most upon external objects, and suffers us to know little more of his own mind than that it has the power to reproduce them with truth and spirit, exhibits an objective bias. As the mind, however, sometimes regards its own states, of feeling or sensation, as objects, it has been proposed to call them, when so employed, subject-objects, i. e. parts of the subject regarded as objects; whilst purely external things might be called objects. (Krug's Phil. Lexicon, under Gegenstand.) These words have undergone great changes of meaning, excellently traced out in Sir W. Hamilton's Reid, p. 806., in a note which only the Editor of that work could have written.

instance of a law, an instance being the presence of the law in an object capable of containing it, and thus presupposing two things, the law and the capable object, whereof we term one the form and the other the matter. Ex. gr. triangle may be conceived by means of its own form or definition alone, but it must have a material part, it must become a triangle of stone, or wood, or ink on paper, as the condition of its external existence. When no separation, according to some law or other, of a representation into its formal and material part takes place, that is, where it is referred to no law or conception already in the mind, there must be total ignorance of the object represented the representation must remain obscure, and can never amount to a cognition. The absolutely material part of a cognition would be that which remains unknown after it has been brought under as many forms as the mind can reduce it to: that which never becomes the condition of its ranking under a law. Forms have a triple mode of existence they exist in the Divine Mind as ideas, and are the archetypes of creation; they exist as embodied in "instances" or examples, in which mode they are laws; they exist, lastly, in the human mind as ideas thus they precede creation, they are in it, they succeed it.

§ 14. Writers of this school give yet a third sense to the word form; as it denotes the law, so by an easy

transition it stands for the class of cases brought together and united by the law. Thus to speak of the form of animal might mean, first, the law or definition of animal in general; second, the part of any given animal by which it comes under the law, and is what it is; and last, the class of animals brought together under the law.

§ 15. The sense attached at the present day to the words form and matter is somewhat different from, though closely related to, these. The form is what the mind impresses upon its perceptions of things, which are the matter; form therefore means mode of viewing objects that are presented to the mind. When the attention is directed to any object, we do not see the object itself, but contemplate it in the light of our own prior conceptions. A rich man, for example, is regarded by the poor and ignorant under the form of a very fortunate person, able to purchase luxuries which are above their own reach; by the religious mind, under the form of a person with more than ordinary temptations to contend with; by the political economist, under that of an example of the unequal distribution of wealth; by the tradesman, under that of one whose patronage is valuable. Now the object is really the same to all these observers ; the same "rich man " has been represented under all these different forms. And the reason that the observers are able so to find many in one, is that they

connect him severally with their own prior conceptions. The form then in this view is mode of knowing; and the matter is the perception, or object we have to know.* Hence, when we call Logic a

* A few passages to illustrate these various meanings may be added here. Plato uses form in all the three senses, of law, distinctive or essential part, and species (which last word means form); as these places will show.

"Remember then, that I directed you not to teach me some one or two holy acts out of many, but that very form by which all holy acts are holy Teach me, then, the nature of that form itself, that looking to it and using it for our example, I may declare any of the actions of yourself or any other, which partake of this nature, to be holy, and any not so partaking, not to be holy."-Plat. Euthyp. 6. D. E. "And of the just, the unjust, the good, the evil, of all the forms, in short, the same holds true, that each is one and simple, but because every where appearing by incorporation with actions, or matter, or other things, that each appears many."- Resp. 476. A. "For we have been accustomed to lay down one form for many particular cases, on which we impose the same name."-Resp. 596. A. "And according to the same form of justice, a just man will nowise differ from a just city, but will be like it."- Resp. 435. B. See also Symp. 205. D.; Resp. 581. E.; Polit. 258. E. Lord Bacon says, "The form of any nature is such that where it has place the given nature is also, as an infallible consequence. Therefore it is ever present where the given nature is so, it attests that nature's presence, and is in it all. The same form is such that upon its removal the given nature infallibly vanishes. Therefore it is invariably absent where that nature is so, it in those cases disavows that nature's presence, and is in it alone."Nov. Org. II. 4. "The examination of forms proceeds thus. Concerning the given nature we must first bring together before the intellect all the known instances, agreeing in that nature,

science of the formal laws, or the form, of thinking, we mean that the science is only concerned with

though manifesting it in vehicles [i. e. in matter] the most dissimilar."-Nov. Org. 11. 11. Again, "When we speak of forms, we understand nothing else than those laws and manifestations of the pure act, which order and constitute any simple nature, as heat, light, weight, in any sort of matter and subject that can contain them. Therefore, the form of heat or form of light, and the law of heat or light, is the same thing, nor do we ever abstract our thoughts from actualities and active manifestations.”—Nov. Org. 11. 17. Again, "For since the form of a thing is the very thing itself (ipsissima res), and the thing no otherwise differs from the form, than as the apparent differs from the existent, the outward from the inward, or that which is considered in relation to man from that which is considered in relation to the universe [or universal mind], it follows clearly that no nature can be taken for the true form, unless it ever decreases when the nature itself decreases, and in like manner is always increased, when the nature is increased."- Nov. Org. II. 13.

Ritter in his History shows the analogy between form and difference, matter and genus respectively, in the writings of Aristotle ; Plotinus indeed asserts their absolute identity. Ennead. II. iv. 4. For a collection of passages to illustrate Aristotle's doctrine, see Waitz' Organon. comm. on 94. a. 20. To our own great writers the philosophical senses of the word form were well known. Taylor, Andrewes, Hooker, Berkeley, Butler, Sir Thomas Brown, Coleridge—supply instances which are now before us. But the subject has already occupied our attention long enough. Keckermann's Logic affords materials for understanding the views of the old logicians.

The philosophic value of the terms matter and form is greatly reduced by the confusion which seems invariably to follow their extensive use. Whilst one writer explains form as "the mode of knowing" an object, another puts it for "distinctive part,"