136 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



unconscious, or the unknowable, and many others whose life has been 

 short. Still, careful investigation into the leading traits of past cen- 

 turies often reveals the existence of at least one thinker, sometimes of 

 several thinkers, whose ideas and accomplishments have given character 

 and prominence to his century. Thus we have the century of Augustine, 

 that of Scotus Erigena, that of Anselm, that of Thomas Aquinas, that 

 of Lord Bacon, that of Rousseau and Voltaire, who in a time of com- 

 parative quiet really prepared the way for the strife and destruction of 

 the revolution. Perhaps there are men now living, even if we do not 

 recognize them, whose thought and deeds will in the distant future 

 characterize our times. 



It has been well said that thought runs from the exact mathematical 

 form to the vaguest religious form, from demonstration to feeling, from 

 knowledge to faith. By this it is not meant that faith does not lay hold 

 of realities, but that its objects are not the objects which awaken and 

 retain the interest of the man of science, or of the lover of exact thought. 

 Philosophy occupies herself with the region which lies between that of 

 science and that of faith. We have therefore three kinds of thought, 

 scientific, philosophical, religious, or as Kant might express it, transcen- 

 dental. These may be united in a mind sufficiently capacious, as they 

 surely are in the divine mind, but of this union this is not the place to 

 speak. 



In Germany from 1800 to 1830, perhaps a little later, the chief 

 interest was in philosophy, as well it might be when such men were 

 living as Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and their illustrious pupils. In 

 France it was in science, of which the results were set forth in books 

 or reports whose literary form was well nigh perfect, when men like 

 Arago, Cuvier and their associates in the Paris Academy of Sciences 

 were in their prime. In England it was the influence of individual 

 thinkers, appearing here and there, often unexpectedly. For a time the 

 writings of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Shelley and later of 

 Browning and Tennyson affected thought, as in Germany the writings 

 of Schiller, Lessing and Goethe had done. In a certain sense, as Merz 

 remarks, the century began and ended in a ferment of opinion. In 

 England and Scotland Wordsworth, Coleridge and Burns are followed 

 by Byron. In Germany Kant is followed by degenerate materialistic 

 systems of philosophy which he would have abhorred, as well as by some 

 that were idealistic which yet would not have won his approval. It 

 will be observed that the destructive schools of philosophy introduce 

 nothing that is entirely new to the thinking world. Yet the cultivated 

 mind is seriously at work, so that as the century progresses new ideas 

 are formulated and are proving themselves constructive in character. 

 This the words employed indicate, e. g., energy, its conservation or 

 dissipation. The words, individualism, personality recall Lotze with 



