74 INTRODUCTION. 



point from which to set out. In dealing with the 

 thought of our age, I have been obliged to divide what 

 is in reality connected and coherent ; and I am further 

 forced, in examining more closely its different aspects, 

 to select one as the most prominent with which to make 

 a beginning. In reality such a preference does not exist 

 in my plan. I recognise all the aspects of thought as 

 equally important, and I feel that I might begin with 

 any one of the three, and that I should in due course be 

 23. led on to a consideration of the other two. They are in 



Difficult to . , 



separate the their actual historical appearance in the course of our period 

 so interwoven that they cannot practically be separated. 

 And it is indeed not difficult to assume various positions 

 in contemplating the whole subject from which either one 

 or the other of the three forms of nineteenth-century 

 thought assumes as it were the ascendancy. Thus it 

 would be undeniable that from a German point of view 

 the great movement of ideas centred in the first third of 

 the century in what I have called philosophy. The 

 number of systems which succeeded each other was 

 astonishing, the influence they had on literature, science, 

 and practical life was without precedent, the enthusi- 

 asm with which students from all parts gathered in the 

 lecture-rooms of the great metaphysicians was quite 

 extraordinary, and probably equalled only in the schools 

 of Athens in antiquity, or in the lecture-room of Abelard 

 in the middle ages. From this point of view an account 

 of this great movement how it grew, flourished, and 

 died away would no doubt afford a suitable introduc- 

 tion to the history of thought in our century. If after 

 this we were to turn to France and try to fix upon the 



