the great human interests of thought and action These tendencies have on the whole been antago nistic; and the clear-cut and momentous systems of philosophy have been fundamentally determined by either the one or the other.

Thus materialism is due to the attempt to re duce all of experience to the elements and principles of connection which are employed by the physical sciences to set in order the actual motions, or changes of place, which the parts of experience undergo. Materialism maintains that the motions of bodies are indifferent to considerations of worth, and denies that they issue from a deeper cause of another order. The very ideas of such nonmechanical elements or principles are here provided with a mechanical origin. Similarly a phenomenalism, like that of Hume, takes immediate presence to sense as the norm of being and knowledge. Individual items, directly verified in the moment of their occurrence, are held to be at once the content of all real truth, and the source of those abstract ideas which the misguided rationalists mistake for real truth.

But the absolutist, on the other hand, contends that the thinker must mean something by the reality which he seeks. If he had it for the looking,

thought would not be, as it so evidently is, a purposive endeavor. And that which is meant by reality can be nothing short of the fulfilment or final realization of this endeavor of thought. To find out what thought seeks, to anticipate the consummation of thought and posit it as real, is therefore the first and fundamental procedure of philosophy. The mechanism of nature, and all matters of fact, must come to terms with this absolute reality, or be condemned as mere appearance. Thus Plato distinguishes the world of "generation" in which we participate by perception, from the true essence " in which we participate by thought; and Schelling speaks of the modern experimental method as the "corruption" of philosophy and physics, in that it fails to construe nature in terms of spirit.

199. Now it would never occur to a sophisticated philosopher of the present, to one who has Concessions thought out to the end the whole tra

from the Side

of Absolutism. dition of philosophy, and felt the gravity of the great historical issues, to

Recognition

of Nature.

The Neo-
Fichteans.

suffer either of these motives to domi

nate him to the exclusion of the other. Absolutism has long since ceased to speak slightingly of physical science, and of the world of perception.

It is conceded that motions must be known in the mechanical way, and matters of fact in the matterof-fact way. Furthermore, the prestige which science enjoyed in the nineteenth century, and the prestige which the empirical and secular world of action has enjoyed to a degree that has steadily increased since the Renaissance, have convinced the absolutist of the intrinsic significance of these parts of experience. They are no longer reduced, but are permitted to flourish in their own right. From the very councils of absolute idealism there has issued a distinction which is fast becoming current, between the World of Appreciation, or the realm of moral and logical principles, and the World of Description, or the realm of empirical generalizations and mechanical causes.1 It is indeed maintained that the former of these is metaphysically superior; but the latter is ranked without the disparagement of its own proper categories.

With the Fichteans this distinction corresponds to the distinction in the system of Fichte between the active moral ego, and the nature which it posits to act upon. But the neo-Fichteans are

1 Cf. Josiah Royce: The Spirit of Modern Philosophy, Lecture XII; The World and the Individual, Second Series.

concerned to show that the nature so posited, or the World of Description, is the realm of mechanical science, and that the entire system of mathematical and physical truth is therefore morally necessary.2

The Neo

§ 200. A more pronounced tendency in the same direction marks the work of the neo-Kantians. These philosophers repudiate Kantians. the spiritualistic metaphysics of Schopenhauer, Fichte, and Hegel, believing the real significance of Kant to lie in his critical method, in his examination of the first principles of the different systems of knowledge, and especially in his analysis of the foundations of mathematics and physics. In approaching mathematics and phys

2 Cf. Hugo Münsterberg: Psychology and Life. The more important writings of this school are: Die Philosophie im Beginn des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts, edited by Wilhelm Windelband, and contributed to by Windelband, H. Rickert, O. Liebmann, E. Troeltsch, B. Bauch, and others. This book contains an excellent bibliography. Also, Rickert: Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis; Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung, and other works. Windelband: Präludien; Geschichte und Naturwissenschaft. Münsterberg: Grundzüge der Psychologie. Eucken: Die Grundbegriffe der Gegenwart.

Cf. F. A. Lange: History of Materialism, Book II, Chap. I, on Kant and Materialism; also Alois Riehl: Introduction to the Theory of Science and Metaphysics. Translation by Fairbanks. The more important writings of this school are: Hermann Cohen: Kant's Theorie der Erfahrung; Die

ics from a general logical stand-point, these nee Kantians become scarcely distinguishable in inter est and temper from those scientists who approach logic from the mathematical and physical standpoint.

Personal

4

§ 201. The finite, moral individual, with his peculiar spiritual perspective, has long since been Recognition of recognized as essential to the meaning the Individual. of the universe rationally conceived. Idealism. But in its first movement absolute idealism proposed to absorb him in the indivisible absolute self. It is now pointed out that Fichte, and even Hegel himself, means the absolute to be a plurality or society of persons. It is commonly conceded that the will of the absolute must coincide with the wills of all finite creatures in their severalty, that God wills in and through men.5 Corresponding to this individualistic tendency on the part of absolute idealism, there has been recently Logik der reinen Erkenntniss, and other works. Paul Natorp: Sozialpädagogik; Einleitung in die Psychologie nach kritischer Methode, and other works. E. Cassirer: Leibniz' System in seinen wissenschaftlichen Grundlagen. Riehl: Der philosophische Kriticismus, und seine Bedeutung für die Positive Wissenschaft. Cf. also E. Husserl: Logische Untersuchungen. 1 Cf. J. M. E. McTaggart: Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, Chap. III.

Cf. Royce: The Conception of God, Supplementary Essay, pp. 135-322; The World and the Individual, First Series.