A History of Philosophy[Christmas Summary Classics]

GEORGE HENRY LEWES
George Henry Lewes, born in London on April 18, 1817, was the grandson of a famous Covent Garden comedian. As an actor, philosopher, novelist, critic, dramatist, journalist, man of science, Lewes played many parts in the life of his time, and some of them he played very well. George Eliot owed him a great deal; he turned her genius away from pure speculation, and directed it to its true province--fiction. Lewes was, in fact, an excellent critic, and it is by his splendid critical work, the "Biographical History of Philosophy," that he is now best remembered. In this remarkable book, which appeared in 1845–46, Lewes the novelist and the journalist collaborates with Lewes the philosopher and man of science. He has the rare art of making an abstruse subject clear and attractive; he does not give a dry summary of the ideas of the great thinkers, but depicts the living man and relates his way of life to his way of thinking. The result is that in his hands metaphysic becomes as interesting as history did in the hands of Macaulay.