ON THE PSYCHO-PHYSICAL VIEW OF NATURE. 535 



lated : l the critical spirit of Kant, and the constructive 

 canons of his successors, each of these distinct and separate 

 movements, supplied exactly what was wanting in the 

 prophetic, not to say dithyrambic, utterances of Herder ; 

 they supplied coherence and method. Earlier chapters 

 of this book have shown how the mathematical spirit 

 has permeated and revolutionised the natural sciences, 

 and latterly how it has, in the science of psycho-physics, 

 led philosophers back to the problem which Herder had 

 adumbrated at the end of the previous century. A 

 second large department of my task will consist in 

 showing how what in Germany are called the mental 

 sciences have been developed independently of the 

 natural sciences, how the study of the mind as such 



1 During the latter part of his 

 life Herder was occupied to a great 

 extent with those publications in 

 which he gave expression to the 

 opposition which he consistently 

 maintained to the critical writings 

 of his master Kant. His two princi- 

 pal works referring to this are ' Eine 

 Metakritik zur Kritik der Reinen 

 Vernunft ' (2 parts, 1799) and ' Kal- 

 ligone ' (1800). Kant had reviewed 

 the first volume of Herder's greatest 

 work, the ' Ideen, ' anonymously, 

 criticising the absence of logical 

 acumen and clear definitions, and 

 also the attempt towards a genetic 

 as opposed to a critical treatment 

 of the intellect, the former being 

 an enterprise "which transcends 

 the powers of human reason, whe- 

 ther the latter gropes with physi- 

 ology as a leader, or attempts to 

 soar with metaphysics." In the 

 second part of the ' Ideen ' Herder 

 had taken up a polemical attitude 

 to Kant's teachings, and Kant had 

 again reviewed it, dwelling upon 

 the uncritical manner in which 

 Herder had built up his hypotheses 



on unsifted material gathered from 

 all sides. In the ' Metakritik ' 

 Herder, irritated by what he con- 

 sidered the arrogance of the Kant- 

 ian school, undertook to put into 

 systematic form his criticism of 

 Kant's principal work, following 

 to a great extent the suggestions 

 thrown out by a mutual friend of 

 himself and Kant, Johann Georg 

 Hamann (1730-80), and falling back 

 upon the earlier philosophies of 

 Spinoza and Leibniz on the one 

 side, and upon the common-sense 

 philosophy of the Scottish school on 

 the other, seeking for a solution 

 of the problems raised by both, 

 not in abstract reasoning, but in 

 the realism of the concrete and the 

 historical sciences. In the ' Kal - 

 ligone,' Herder similarly attacks 

 Kant's aesthetical philosophy (' Kri- 

 tik der Urtheilskraft,' 1790), which 

 had been enthusiastically received 

 in Herder's immediate neighbour- 

 hood by Schiller. A full account of 

 these controversies will be found in 

 the 2nd vol. of Haym's work. 



