mainly concerned with ideas of mixed modes and relations, in which there is no direct implication of actual existence. The attempt in the Essay to demonstrate certain propositions in ethics, did not meet with much success. L. himself seemed later to realize this; but he never really wavered in his conviction that a strictly demonstrative method could be applied to ethics. Turning now to the predecessors of L., we see that it was natural for the opponents of Hobbes, who attempted to construct a rational system of morality, to take mathematics as their ideal, since that was the only department of knowledge which had yet been reduced to the form of a science. Indirectly the Cambridge Platonists exerted an influence in this direction. Cumberland went further, and avowed his intention of constructing a science of ethics that should be analogous to mathematics. Where pure geometry would fail, the analytical method may succeed; hence C. attempts to discover a connection between the methods of ethics and algebra. L. seems to have been influenced by C.'s treatise.
The Logos of Heracleitus has been interpreted as an ontological principle which is only the spiritual expression of that creative Force from which all reality is derived. As against this, it is argued that the principle is not ontological at all, but belongs to a system of ethical and aesthetic reflections, which Heracleitus never attempted to connect with his theory of physical being. Upon this interpretation, the Logos must be taken as meaning the Universal Reason which controls the course of change, not in the sense of a divine personality, but rather as that rational order, law, or excellence which the wise man finds in every event of life, but which passes unheeded before the eyes of the ordinary man and the fool.
