PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 201 



On the continent -- at least in France, where it had attained 

 its highest development - - the scientific spirit was, at the close 

 of the eighteenth century, on the whole opposed to systematization. 

 The impulse to both science and philosophy during both the eight- 

 eenth and the nineteenth centuries, over the entire continent of 

 Europe, was chiefly due to the epoch-making work of that greatest 

 of all titles in the modern scientific development of the Western 

 World, the Principia of Newton. In mathematics and the phys- 

 ical sciences, during the early third or half of the last century, Great 

 Britain also has a roll of distinguished names which compares most 

 favorably with that of either France or Germany. But in England, 

 France, and the United States, during the whole century, science has 

 lacked the breadth and philosophic spirit which it had in Germany 

 during the first three quarters of this period. During all that time 

 the German man of science was, as a rule, a scholar, an investi- 

 gator, a teacher, and a philosopher. Science and philosophy thrived 

 better, however, in Scotland than elsewhere outside of Germany, so 

 far as their relations in interdependence were concerned. Into the 

 Scottish universities Playfair introduced some of the continental 

 suggestions toward the end of the eighteenth century, so that there 

 was less of exclusiveness and unfriendly rivalry between science and 

 philosophy; and both profited thereby. In the United States, during 

 the first half or more of the century, so dominant were the theo- 

 logical and practical interests and influences that there was little 

 free development of either science or philosophy, - - if we interpret 

 the one as the equivalent of Wissenschaft and understand the other 

 in the stricter meaning of the word. 



The history of the development of the scientific spirit and of the 

 achievements of the particular sciences is not the theme of this 

 paper. To trace in detail, or even in its large outlines, the reciprocal 

 influence of science and philosophy during the past hundred years, 

 would itself require far more than the space allotted to me. It must 

 suffice to say that the various advances in the efforts of the par- 

 ticular sciences to enlarge and to define the conceptions and prin- 

 ciples employed to portray the Being of the World in its totality, 

 have somewhat steadily grown more and more completely meta- 

 physical, and more and more of positive importance for the recon- 

 struction of systematic philosophy. The latter has not simply been 

 disciplined by science, compelled to improve its method, and to ex- 

 amine all its previous claims. But philosophy has also been greatly 

 enriched by science with respect to its material awaiting synthesis, 

 and it has been not a little profited by the unsuccessful attempts of 

 the current scientific theories to give themselves a truly satisfactory 

 account of that Ultimate Reality which, to understand the better, 

 is no unworthy aim of their combined efforts. 



