GROWTH AND DIFFUSION OF CRITICAL SPIRIT. 183 



general distrust and agnosticism with regard to the 

 powers of the human mind, by any form of methodical 

 thought, be it scientific or philosophical, to arrive at 

 that certainty which, if not theoretically necessary, is 

 at least practically indispensable in order to secure 

 definite aims and steadfastness of purpose in practical 

 life. 



In dealing with the subject of this chapter, the 

 growth and diffusion of the critical spirit or of the 

 spirit of free inquiry, my readers will have noticed that 3. 



u J ' J Philosophi- 



only little reference has been made to the course which cai thought 



J outside 



philosophical thought has taken outside of Germany. German y- 

 It is only through a few great names belonging to 

 France and Great Britain, that in the course of the 

 nineteenth century German thought has been influenced 

 at all. This explains why the histories of modern 

 philosophy which have appeared in Germany have up 

 to quite recent times taken little notice of the contribu- 

 tions of French and English thinkers during the last 

 hundred years. It is only since Auguste Comte's and 

 Herbert Spencer's systems have become known in 

 Germany that German students of philosophy have 

 realised the fact that both England and France had 64. 



French and 



developed systems of their own, which had but little, English 



philosophy 



if any, contact with German thought. This is notably }j 

 the case as regards the philosophy of Herbert Spencer, 

 who professedly did not study the system of any other 

 contemporaneous thinker, and, in fact, declared that he 

 refrained from reading any philosophical work from 

 which he found that he differed on perusal of the first 

 pages. Nothing is more striking than that the author 



