GROWTH AND DIFFUSION OF CRITICAL SPIRIT. 121 



date. A great authority on Spinoza, who, for the first 

 time, put before the English public an exhaustive 

 study of his personality and teachings, sums up his 

 appreciation of this remarkable thinker in the words : 

 " Spinozism, as a living and constructive force, is not a 

 system but a habit of mind, and as science makes it 

 plainer every day that there is no such thing as a fixed 

 equilibrium either in the world without or in the mind 

 within, so it becomes plain that the genuine and durable 

 triumphs of philosophy are not in systems but in ideas. 

 Wealth in vital ideas is the real test of a philosopher's 

 greatness, and by this test the name of Spinoza stands 

 assured of its rank among the greatest." l 



As these words express most clearly likewise the 

 position which in this History I am taking up, not only 

 to philosophical but also to scientific thought, it may be 

 well to note here that the breaking up of the strict 

 logical formalism introduced into German philosophy by 

 Wolff, and continued by Kant, through the Spinozistic 

 thought of viewing everything sub specie ceternitatis, 

 marks one of the great characteristics not only of Gernmn* 

 German Idealism but indeed of the whole of the class- 

 ical and romantic literature in that country from 1780 

 up to 1840, a characteristic which is totally absent in 

 contemporary philosophical literature in France as well 

 as in this country. English philosophers about the year 

 1860 began to make a serious study of modern German 

 Idealism, starting with Hegel and going back to Kant 

 as its origin. Twenty years later they recognised that 



1 Sir Frederick Pollock, 'Spinoza: His Life and Philosophy," 1st ed., 

 p. 408. 



