368 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



assumption, that knowledge comes from the senses, did not suffice to 

 explain experience. Man's mind is endowed with certain forms or 

 principles of synthesis, by means of which the sense-material is orga- 

 nized into knowledge. Vernunft is the faculty whereby such principles 

 may be apprehended. It implies a higher range and a deeper insight 

 than Verstand. This superior faculty, in combination with an am- 

 plified reading of Herder's theory of historical evolution, was to be 

 responsible for much, as we shall see in the sequel. 



Herder, a younger contemporary of Kant, turned away from the 

 mathematico-physical sciences, to which nearly all great intellects had 

 been attracted for two centuries, and entered enthusiastically upon 

 the study of the history of culture, of culture in the spacious sense of 

 civilization. Even in this line of research, he can not be called an 

 exact student. But his was a vitalizing personality, and so, his limita- 

 tions notwithstanding, he originated the evolutionary and organic idea 

 which may be termed appropriately the nineteenth century standpoint. 

 He took particular delight in poetry, religion, language and the like. 

 As early as 1767, he enunciated the conception which was to create 

 historical science. "There is the same law of change in all mankind 

 and in every individual, nation and tribe. From the bad to the good, 

 from the good to the better and best, from the best to the less good, 

 from the less good to the bad — this is the circle of all things. So it is 

 with art and science; they grow, blossom, ripen and decay. So it is 

 with language also." In the realm of the human spirit, all things work 

 together; "history leads us into the council of fate, teaches us the 

 eternal laws of human nature and assigns us our own place in that 

 great organism in which reason and goodness . . . must create 

 order." 



At this point we strike the psychological moment when the con- 

 ditions that led to the conflict between science and philosophy were 

 assembling. Evidently, the center of gravity of philosophical inquiry 

 would be shifted from the old mathematico-physical parallelism, if a 

 professed philosopher were to appear equipped with the insight and 

 speculative daring requisite to unite Kant's conception of Vernunft 

 with Herder's fruitful suggestion, that history is a vast organism 'in 

 which reason must create order.' This epoch-making thinker did arise, 

 in the person of Hegel. We can not stay to outline the Hegelian sys- 

 tem, but must rest content to state its germinal idea. Following upon 

 Herder's pregnant thought, Hegel conceived of the universe as a single 

 unity, inspired and controlled by a principle of reason, a principle 

 in and through and for which everything has being. Obviously, if the 

 human mind can grasp such a principle, Kant's faculty of Vernunft 

 is the one power endowed with the necessary ability. As obviously, on 

 these conditions, if a thinker can pick out, as it were, the rational 



