374 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



interest of these thinkers lay more in replying to the 

 question, What is the truly real ? l than in solving the 

 critical problems which Kant had put forward in his 

 writings: they desired to solve the problem of reality 

 rather than the problem of knowledge. Accordingly I 

 propose to relegate the exposition of the more system- 

 atic views of these thinkers to other chapters, where we 

 shall deal with the problem of reality and other related 

 problems which again and again present themselves to 

 the philosophical mind. At present we must look for 

 the beginnings of the modern theory of knowledge in a 

 different direction. 



III. 



In spite of the small interest that J. S. Mill's 

 ' System of Logic ' aroused in philosophical circles in 

 Germany, 2 it is nevertheless true that what is now 



1 " With Schelling the speculative 

 form has been re-established, and 

 philosophy has become again some- 

 thing specific ; the principle of 

 philosophy, thought in itself, rea- 

 soned thought, has again received 

 the true form of thought. Thus in 

 Schilling's philosophy the content, 

 truth, has again become the prin- 

 cipal object, whereas in the Kantian 

 philosophy interest attached main- 

 ly to this, that knowledge, under- 

 standing, subjective reasoning, were 

 to be examined : it appeared plaus- 

 ible, first, to investigate the in- 

 strument, the process of reasoning. 

 It is the story of the trxo\furruc6t 

 who would not go into the water 

 before he could swim. To examine 

 the reasoning process means, to 



reason about reasoning, but how 

 we can reason without reasoning 

 cannot be stated " (Hegel, ' Werke,' 

 voL xv. p. 657). 



2 It was owing to the influence 

 of Liebig, who probably came 

 across Mill's writings during his 

 repeated visits to England in the 

 'Forties, that the ' System of Logic,' 

 which appeared in 1843, was trans- 

 lated into German by J. Schiel 

 (1849), and published by the firm 

 of Vieweg in Brunswick, who for a 

 considerable period brought out the 

 principal scientific works in physics, 

 chemistry, and the natural sciences. 

 It does not appear to have had any 

 influence on philosophical thought 

 till much later, when the same 

 subject viz., the foundations and 



