PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 199 



I believe, that it has been peculiarly characteristic and especially 

 powerful as an influence during the last hundred years. The opin- 

 ions, sentiments, and ideals which shape the development of the 

 institutions of the church and state, and the freer activities of the 

 same opinions, sentiments, and ideals, have been in this century, 

 as they have been in every century, the principal factors in deter- 

 mining the character of its philosophical development. 



But a more definite and visible kind of influence has constantly 

 proceeded from the centres of the higher education. The univers- 

 ities -- especially of Germany, next, perhaps of Scotland, but 

 also of England and the United States, and even in less degree of 

 France and Italy - - have both fostered and shaped the evolution 

 of critical and reflective thought, and of its product as philosophy. 

 In Germany during the eighteenth century the greater universities 

 had been emancipating themselves from the stricter forms of polit- 

 ical and court favoritism and of ecclesiastical protection and con- 

 trol. This emancipation had already operated at the beginning of 

 the nineteenth century, and it continued more and more to operate 

 throughout this century, for participation in that free thought 

 whose spirit is absolutely essential to the flourishing of true philo- 

 sophy. All the other colleges and universities can scarcely repay 

 the debt which modern philosophy owes to the universities of Ger- 

 many. The institutions of the higher education which are moulded 

 after this spirit, and which have a generous share of this spirit, 

 have everywhere been schools of thought as well as schools of learn- 

 ing and research. Without the increasing numbers and growing 

 encouragement of such centres for the cultivation of the discipline 

 of critical and reflective thinking, it is difficult to conjecture how 

 much the philosophical development of the nineteenth century would 

 have lost. Libertas docendi and Acadcmische Freiheit without these 

 philosophy has one of its wings fatally wounded or severely clipped. 



Not all the philosophy of the last century, however, was born 

 and developed in academical centres and under academical in- 

 fluences. In Germany, Great Britain, and France, the various 

 so-called "Academies" or other unacademical associations of men 

 of scientific interests and attainments notably, the Berlin Acad- 

 emy, which has been called "the seat of an anti-scholastic popular 

 philosophy" - were during the first half of the nineteenth century 

 contributing by their conspicuous failures as well as by their less 

 conspicuous successes, important factors to the constructive new 

 thought of the latter half of the nineteenth century. In general, 

 although these men decried system and were themselves inade- 

 quately prepared to treat the problems of philosophy, whether 

 from the historical or the speculative and critical point of view, they 

 cannot be wholly neglected in estimating its development. Clever 



