Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/599

Rh N O R N ft 553 of Locke s doctrine of nominal essences, showing how it ignores the relation of the human mind to objective truth, and instancing mathematical figures as a case &quot;where the nominal essence and the real essence are all one.&quot; In 1691 Norris was transferred to Bemerton, a pleasant rural charge near Salisbury, where George Herbert had been parish priest in the earlier part of the century. A few miles distant is Langford Magna, where from 1704 onwards Norris had a congenial metaphysical neighbour in the person of Arthur Collier, the future author of Clavis Universalis. The remaining twenty years of Norris s life were spent at Bemerton, the flight of time marked only by the works that still came in rapid succession from his pen. In 1691-92 he was engaged in controversy with his old enemies the &quot; Separatists,&quot; and with the Quakers, his Malebranchian theory of the divine illumination having been confounded by some with the Quaker doctrine of the light within. In 1697 he wrote An Account of Reason and Faith, one of the best of the many answers to Toland s Christianity not Mysterious. Norris adopts the distinction between things contrary to reason and things above reason, and maintains that the human mind is not the measure of truth. In 1701 appeared the first volume of the systematic philosophical work by which he is remembered, An Essay towards the Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World. The first volume treats the intelligible world absolutely ; the second, which appeared in 1704, considers it in relation to human understanding. In 1708 Norris wrote A Philo sophical Discourse concerning the Natural Immortality of the Soid, defending that doctrine against the assaults of Dodwell. But after the completion of his magnum opus his appearances in print became less frequent. His health was not robust, and perhaps he was a little disappointed at his failure to reach the larger public. Norris died in 1711 at the comparatively early age of 54. It will hardly be claimed for Norris that he was either an original thinker or a master of style. As Molyneux writes to Locke, he is &quot;overrun with Malebranche and Plato ;&quot; his philosophy is hardly more than an English version of Malebranche, enriched by wide reading of Platonic &quot; thinkers of every age and country. His style is too scholastic and self-involved. Nevertheless he was an acute and strenuous thinker. His Theory of the Intelligible World is an attempt to explain the objective nature of truth, which he blamed Locke for leaving out of regard. By the intelligible world Norris understands the system of ideas eternally existent in the mind of God, according to which the material creation was formed. This ideal system he identifies with the Logos the second person of the Trinity, the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. For it is these ideas and their relations that are alone the object-matter of science ; whenever we know, it is because they are present to our mind ; or, as Malebranche says, we see all things in God. Material things are wholly dark to us, except so far as the fact of their existence is revealed in sensation. The matter which we say that we know is the idea of matter, and belongs, like other ideas, to the intelligible world. When stripped of its semi-mythical form of statement, Norris s emphatic assertion of the ideal nature of thought and its complete distinction from sense as such may be seen to contain an important truth. He stands some what aside from the main course of English philosophical thought. But, as the disciple and correspondent of More, he is, in a sense, the heir of the Cambridge Platonists, while, as the first critic of Locke s Essay, he may be said to open the protest of the church against the implicit tendencies of that work. He occupies a place, there fore, in the succession of churchly and mystical thinkers of whom Coleridge is the last eminent example. (A. SE. ) NORRISTOWN, a borough of the United States, capi tal of Montgomery county, Pennsylvania, lies on the north bank of the Schuylkill river, opposite Bridgeport (with which it is connected by two bridges), and 16 miles north west of Philadelphia by the Germantown and Norristown branch of the Philadelphia and Reading Eailroad. It is a well-built and pleasant town, and contains blast-furnaces and rolling-mills, wool and cotton mills, glass-works, an oil refinery, and various other manufacturing establishments, considerably indebted for their success to the water-power of the Schuylkill river. The hospital for the insane of the south-eastern district of Pennsylvania is situated here. The most conspicuous buildings are the marble county court house (1855), the music-hall, and the jail. The population was 6024 in 1850, 8848 in 1860, 10,753 in 1870, and 13,063 in 1880. The town occupies the site of the old Swedes Ford, and owes its name to Isaac Norris, who purchased the ground from William Penn. It was incor porated as a borough in 1812, and enlarged in 1853. NORRKOPING, the &quot; Manchester of Scandinavia,&quot; a town of Sweden in the province of Ostergb tland, 113 miles south-west of Stockholm by rail, situated on both banks of the Motala, the wide and rapid emissary of Lake Wetter, and not far from the head of Bravik Fjord. The river, which here forms the two islands of Laksholm and Brux- holm, is spanned by a number of bridges. Having been burned by the Russians in 1719 and visited by further con flagrations in 1812, 1822, and 1826, the whole town, since rebuilt, has quite a modern appearance, with wide and regu lar streets. Among the more conspicuous buildings are. St Olaf s church (erected by Gustavus Adolphus in 1616, and rebuilt after 1765-67) ; St Hedwig s, built by the German colony in 1670 ; the town-house, dating from the beginning of the 19th century; the theatre, the Gustavus orphanage, and the palatial high school (1868). The industrial im portance of Norrkoping has steadily increased from the close of the 18th century Woollen cloth is the great staple (thirty-three factories in 1876), but cotton goods, paper, sugar, flour, tobacco and snuff, soap, starch, &c., are also manufactured. Steamers, gun-boats, and ironclads, as well as smaller craft, are constructed in the ship-yards on the lower Motala. At the close of the 17th century Norr koping was a place of from 5000 to 6000 inhabitants ; after the Russian invasion it sank to 2600, but afterwards gradually rose, until in 1861 the total amounted to 20,828, and in 1878 to 27,410. A bull of Pope Lucius III. shows that Norrkoping existed in 1185. Margaret held a meeting of the states in the town in 1404. Its fortress, known as Knappingsberg, was destroyed in 1567. At the meeting of the states in 1604 Duke Charles assumed the Swed ish crown as Charles IX. ; and not long afterwards Duke John of Ostergotland introduced German craftsmen into Norrkoping, and thus originated its industrial activity. Under Charles XII. the town suffered not only from war but from pestilence, 2700 of its inhabitants perishing in 1710-11. NORTH, LORD (1732-1792). Frederick North, second earl of Guilford, but better known by his courtesy title of Lord North, was prime minister of England during the important years of the American War. The only son, by his first marriage, of Francis, seventh Lord North (grandson of Lord Keeper North), who was created earl of Guilford in 1752, Frederick was born on 13th April 1732, and after being educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, was sent to make the grand tour of the Continent. On his return he was, though only twenty- two years of age, at once elected M.P. for Banbury, of which town his father was high steward ; and he sat for the same toAvn in parliament for nearly forty years. In 1759 he was chosen by the duke of Newcastle to be a lord of the treasury, and continued in the same office under Lord Bute and George Grenville till 1765. He had shown himself such a ready debater that on the fall of the first Rockingham ministry in 1766 he was sworn of the privy council, and made paymaster-general by the duke of Grafton. His reputation for ability grew so high that in December 1767, on the death of the brilliant Charles Townshend, he was made chancellor of the exchequer. His popularity with both the House of Commons and the people continued to increase, for his good temper was never ruffled, and his quiet humour perpetually displayed ; and, when the retirement of the XYTT. 70