176 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



56. 



Material- 

 istic con- 

 troversy. 



time when Feuerbach published his celebrated treatise, 

 the view he took had much to recommend it in the 

 eyes of many intelligent persons, and it must be 

 admitted that it has gained much support from that 

 other great movement of nineteenth century thought, 

 which has alone resisted the disintegrating action of the 

 critical spirit : the astounding progress of natural 

 philosophy under the influence of the exact or mathe- 

 matical methods. The latter had, at the time when 

 Strauss's and Feuerbach's writings appeared, at last 

 attained to a firm position in German thought and 

 become domiciled at the German universities. More- 

 over, it had done so with a silent disregard of or in 

 ostentatious opposition to that current of thought which, 

 through the systems of Schelling and Hegel, had. for a 

 long time the upper hand in the German mind. There 

 now resulted from all this an open conflict, which 

 is usually termed the materialistic controversy. It 

 broke out about the time when a general wave of 

 radicalism swept over Continental Europe, an open 

 revolt, without any very definite programme, against 

 the spirit of reaction which had gradually supervened 

 in all the larger and smaller German States, and which 

 had allied itself in single instances with Hegelian 

 philosophy and ecclesiastical orthodoxy. The result 



From a purely philosophical point 

 of view we have the elaborate work 

 of Arthur Drews (' Die Deutsche 

 Spekulation seit Kant,' 2nd ed., 2 

 vols., 1895), which deals specially 

 with the central problems of the 

 Absolute and of Divine Personality, 

 and treats of theological as well as 

 of purely philosophical writers. 



Although the author leads up to the 

 idea of the "Unconscious," which 

 he traces like a red line through all 

 previous speculation down to its 

 clear enunciation by E. von Hart- 

 mann, his historical analysis, like 

 that contained in Hartinann's own 

 critical and historical works, is ex- 

 tremely minute and instructive. 



