GROWTH AND DIFFUSION OF CRITICAL SPIRIT. 185 





large materials for the modern science of psychology. 

 Through the first-named tendency it came into intimate 

 relations with French philosophy, from which it had, 

 indeed, already during the eighteenth century learnt 

 much in economic science. In France the rupture with 

 all the traditions of the past which was produced by 

 the Eevolution urged the necessity of reconstructive 

 work in two distinct and opposite directions, of which 

 the one relied upon the rehabilitation of older authorities, 

 whilst the other trusted to empiricism. 

 ;;. Nevertheless, it may be said that the critical spirit 

 has entered fully into the philosophical literatures of 

 France and England during the last quarter of the century. 

 In France the philosophy of M. Eenouvier has adopted 

 the name of Neo-Criticism. It emanated from Kant's 

 ' Critique/ which it remodels in important points. 1 Before 

 Eenouvier, critical and historical studies in philosophy 

 had been largely cultivated in the school and by the 

 pupils of Victor Cousin. 2 In England by far the most 

 important philosophical works, outside of the writings 



ee. 



The philo- 



Renouvier. 



1 I am inclined to think that no 

 recent philosopher has grasped the 

 meaning of Criticism in a larger 

 sense than Renouvier. It is also sig- 

 nificant that of the several larger 

 encyclopaedic works published in 

 the three countries the ' Grande 

 Encyclopedic ' alone has an article 

 on " Criticism," in which all the 

 different sides of its function, as I 

 have endeavoured to sketch them 

 in this chapter, are referred to. 



2 Quite recently what may be 

 called a new school of criticism has 

 come to the fore mainly through 

 the work of Dutch and French 

 critics, beginning with Maspero and 



continued through the labours of 

 Salomon Reinach, Ed. Dujardin, 

 Maurice Vernes, Ernest Havet, and 

 others. Mr Whittaker, in a recent 

 work ( ' Priests, Philosophers, and 

 Prophets,' A. & C. Black, 1911), 

 has made an attempt to give a 

 synoptic, as distinguished from a 

 specialist view, of the results of the 

 anthropological school of inquiry of 

 religious criticism. He terms the 

 latter the ' ' new criticism ' ' as dis- 

 tinguished from the "higher criti- 

 cism," which is mainly the work of 

 German and Dutch theologians, and 

 has largely influenced theology in 

 this country. 



