126 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



(Erlcenntnisstheorie) was established and named by 

 Eduard Zeller (1862). Since that time it has become 

 and remained a favourite subject for lectures at the 

 German Universities. 1 



II. 



The great influence of the critical spirit in Germany, 

 of which we have considered Lessing to be the first and 

 most liberal representative, did not emanate either from 

 him or from the great heroes of the classical period in 

 German literature, but made itself felt only when it 

 became introduced into academic teaching as a definite 

 method, when it became domiciled at the German 

 Universities. This took place, about the time when 

 Lessing published his first critical writings, at the 

 University of Gottingen. It there met another im- 

 portant tradition, which assisted, and in many ways 

 strengthened it: the connection with English literature 

 and learning. Many academic teachers contributed 

 there to introduce and establish what mav still be con- 



1 It may here be mentioned that ' matter whence our ideas come, and 



Lotze forms in this respect an ! how they form themselves within 



exception among modern German us psychologically, but what is of 



philosophers. In many passages of j consequence is to know whether, 



his writings he has denounced j when we have them, we may halt 



what, he maintains, has been falsely with them, or must go farther and 



considered to be Kant's real object, \ necessarily make judgment upon 



by "drawing attention to the in- I them, in order to secure the com- 



evi table circle in which a theory of ' plete harmony of our reason with 



knowledge must move." Most j itself and with the given facts, the 



clearly has he put this in one of 

 his last deliverances (" Philosophy 

 in the Last Forty Years," 1880, 

 ' Contemporary Review'): " It is no 



only goal which is at all attain- 

 able by us " (reprinted in ' Kleine 

 Schriften,' ed. Peipers, voL iii.) 



