264 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



its head, oscillated between the empirical and tran- 

 scendental, an idealistic and a traditional, point of 

 view, without consistently maintaining either. 



III. 



In consequence of the different points of view from 

 which the psychological problem had been approached, 

 and which began to influence each other shortly after 

 the middle of the century, a varied and widespread 

 interest was created in this, the oldest of philosophical 

 problems. To grasp and do justice to the many-sided 

 aspects which it now presented there was required 

 an intellect of the high order represented in modern 

 European philosophy pre-eminently by Leibniz. It had 

 to combine the common-sense aspect of Britain with the 

 metaphysical of Germany; the physiological and patho- 

 logical of the Continental naturalists with the spiritual- 

 istic of the religious thinker ; and lastly, the mathematical 

 with the poetical spirit. At the same time, it had to 

 rise to a higher form of eclecticism than that which was 

 characteristic of the French school which bore the name. 

 There lived at that time only one thinker of the first 

 order who, through education and individual taste and 

 sympathy, possessed both the universal knowledge and the 

 high mental qualifications necessary for this task. This 

 47. was Hermann Lotze (1817-81), who for this reason 



Lotze. 



stands, as it were, in the centre of the philosophical, 

 and especially the psychological, thought of the century. 

 His points of contact with all the then existing move- 



