MODERN THOUGHT 135 



of experiment, who is to be considered, the thinker whose aims and 

 works give character to the age. 



Attempts have been made from time to time by men who have felt 

 themselves masters of the thought and learning of their era to bring 

 these results together and unify them under some comprehensive term. 

 Thus Herder in his " Ideas for the History of the Human Race " em- 

 phasizes Humanity as the proper subject of study, Humanity in the 

 large all-embracing sense. To Hegel it was the Geist, or the spirit of 

 an age which deserves attention. Lotze, a philosopher of great repute 

 not long since deceased, believing that men are living in that sphere 

 of the cosmos of which Humboldt wrote, directed the thought of his time 

 to man as the chief figure of the universe, the microcosmus in the 

 cosmos. Herbert Spencer, without denying the existence of the un- 

 knowable or the absolute, testified to his belief in the unity of all things 

 by the prominence he gives in his writings to the social organism. This 

 organism he admits may be, probably is, under the control of an intelli- 

 gent power but of which we can, he thinks, have no trustworthy knowl- 

 edge. In these efforts to find some single expression under which all 

 knowledge may be grouped and estimated at its real value, the tendency 

 of the age toward unity is seen. What is desired and sought for is some 

 theory which may be characterized by a single term by means of which 

 whatever is can be explained, or its meaning clearly set forth. Hum- 

 boldt in the cosmos sought to describe and explain the striking features 

 of the physical world from the standpoint of a philosophical traveler. 

 Hegel wrote as an idealistic philosopher, as a descendant, though not a 

 follower of Kant. Herder and Lotze were, influenced by the poetry and 

 the current philosophy of their time, while men like Du Bois Eeymond, 

 denying that they were under the influence of any guiding star, adopted 

 as their motto Ignoramus, Ignorabimus, Dubetemus, Laboremus. 

 Haeckel as a pronounced materialist is still trying to guess the meaning 

 of the riddles of the universe. In his position he is valiantly and ably 

 opposed by the spiritualist, Sir Oliver Lodge. 



It is not easy to find a road which will take one through the diver- 

 sified and often confused thought of a single age, or a race, to say 

 nothing of the thought of all the ages. Here and there events are 

 prominent enough to characterize a century, or several centuries. Such 

 was the case in the history of the Hebrew people, the early centuries of 

 the Christian church, the century in which the power of the Pope 

 culminated, the age of the revival of learning, the era of the reforma- 

 tion, the period of the French revolution, the beginning of the still 

 continuing tendency among the more intelligent nations toward self- 

 government, the most successful example being our own republic. Yet 

 as a thinking age the nineteenth century has no distinguishing title. 

 If it had we might have been spared such philosophies as those of the 



