ON THE PSYCHO-PHYSICAL VIEW OF NATURE. 531 



ternal manifestations in history, society, science, art, 

 industry, and religion, in fact, in the history of culture 

 and civilisation. If Bishop Berkeley has, with some 

 propriety, been called " the historical starting-point " of 

 psycho-physical investigation of the first kind, the im- 

 portance of that of the second and wider kind is 

 nowhere more clearly and definitely expressed than 

 over a century ago in the writings of Johann Gott- its study 



11 , TT n i- T prepared by 



fried Herder. His influence in this direction was very Herder. 



1 The influence of Herder (1744- 

 1803) on German literature and 

 thought was fully acknowledged by 

 his contemporaries, as is testified 

 by the frequent references to him 

 in the biographies of nearly all the 

 eminent men who lived at the end 

 of the eighteenth and the beginning 

 of the nineteenth centuries, as also 

 in the voluminous correspondence 

 which he carried on with many 

 eminent cou temporaries. Had it 

 not been for the overpowering and 

 one-sided influence which the criti- 

 cal, and, later, the transcendental, 

 schools of thought gained, not- 

 ably at the German universities, 

 Herder's ideas would have been 

 more generally acknowledged as 

 forming, to a very great extent, 

 the starting-point of many lines of 

 research which were not exclus- 

 ively controlled by the ruling 

 philosophies, and which gradually 

 and imperceptibly united at a later 

 date to form the more modern 

 current of German thought. 

 Herder was much more allied 

 with the historical studies refer- 

 ring alike to nature, literature, 

 and culture, than with the critical 

 and metaphysical systems, being 

 also well acquainted with con- 

 temporary English thought, as, 

 inter alia, with the curious writ- 

 ings of Lord Monboddo. Through 

 Madame de Stael, who was in- 



timate with Herder, his writings 

 were early known in France, 

 whereas Carlyle's studies in 

 German literature, though most 

 valuable and original in their 

 way, do not give that prominence 

 to Herder's writings which they 

 deserve. In more recent times, 

 after the indefatigable Diintzer, 

 through the publication of his 

 correspondence, had done much 

 to revive the interest in Her- 

 der, full justice has been done 

 to his great merit by Rudolf 

 Haym, whose great work, ' Herder 

 nach seinem Leben und seinen 

 Werkeu' (2 vols., Berlin, 1885), 

 is a perfect mine of informa- 

 tion. The side of Herder's influ- 

 ence which is not sufficiently 

 dwelt on by Haym, but which in- 

 terests us most at present, what 

 we may call his anthropological 

 view, had already been exhaust- 

 ively dealt with by Dr Heinrich 

 Boehmer in his little - known 

 ' Geschichte der Entwickelung der 

 Naturwissenschaftlicheu Weltan- 

 schauung in Deutschland ' (Gotha, 

 1872), who especially draws at- 

 tention to the psycho- physical ideas 

 of Herder. It has been truly said 

 that there is hardly any modern 

 idea which has found widespread 

 application that cannot be traced 

 in the writings of Herder ; but 

 Herder had no method, having 



