OF THE SOUL. 



255 



are maintained. In fact the phenomenon of individuality 

 or personality of the human soul was lost sight of. The 

 individual self was conceived as being merged into a 

 general self, the individual mind in the general mind, 

 and for a long time the interest of philosophical thought 

 lay in showing how the general mind, which gradually 

 drifted into the position of the Absolute, the spiritual 

 One, developed and manifested itself in the many things 

 and processes of nature and the community of individual 

 minds which we call society or mankind. In the process 

 of elevating the philosophical view above the individual, 

 the casual, and the subjective, the greatest problem of 

 psychology, the phenomenon of individuation, of Person- 

 ality, was either forgotten or its existence was actually 

 denied. 



As I stated above, this process of raising the discussion 

 from the empirical, subjective, and individual level on to 

 a higher abstract, objective, and ideal level was only the 

 philosophical reflex of that ideal movement * which char- 



37. 



Individual 

 self merged 

 into general 

 self. 



1 That this movement was very 

 general before the appearance of the 

 critical philosophy may be proved 

 in many instances to which I shall 

 have occasion to refer in the sequel. 

 That Kant himself was an independ- 

 ent representative of this movement 

 before he became generally known 

 may nowhere be seen better than if 

 we study the personal life and de- 

 velopment of Herder. This sub- 

 ject has been so fully and so ably 

 treated by R. Haym in ' Herder 

 nach seiuem Leben und seinen 

 Werken' (2 vols., 1880-85), that a 

 perusal of this work will go a long 

 way to introduce the reader to the 

 connection in which the spirit of 

 Kant's philosophy stands with the 

 general thought of the age, as also 



to the very important contrasts 

 which exist between them. Herder 

 was an enthusiastic pupil of Kant, 

 as he himself fully testified in 

 many of his writings, even when 

 he later on declined to adopt and 

 entirely failed to grasp what was 

 most original, stimulating, and 

 fruit-bearing in Kant's systematic 

 works. He has proclaimed, in terms 

 which remind us of passages in the 

 Prelude of Wordsworth, how he, 

 a youth of eighteen years (1762), 

 felt himself elevated and borne 

 aloft by Kant's teaching which 

 formed an epoch in his life. " I 

 have had the good fortune," he 

 says, " to know a philosopher who 

 was my master. He, in the years of 

 his prime, had the cheerfulness of a 



