OF KNOWLEDGE. 



389 



this history, a great body of new knowledge had been 

 launched into existence during the first half of the 

 century. To this all the three countries contributed, 

 though, as has been shown before, science was most 

 systematically cultivated in France and the higher 

 criticism in Germany, whilst English learning preserved 

 its traditional character by adhering to the experimental, 

 historical, and inductive methods of investigation and 

 exploration, without attempting that unification of 

 thought which was such a prominent characteristic of 

 Continental learning. This country has, however, the 

 merit of having, under the influence of Mill and 

 Hamilton, laid the beginnings in the theory of those 

 modern processes of thought and methods of research 

 which were practised with so much success in the exact 

 and historical sciences abroad. The problem of know- 

 ledge became accordingly a definite subject of a new 

 science about the middle of the century : in England 

 through Mill and Hamilton, abroad as a reaction against 

 the perplexities which the criticism of the abstract, not- 

 ably the dialectic methods had revealed. In Germany 

 and France l the problem of knowledge became identified 



1 I must here draw attention, as 

 I did on a former occasion (supra, 

 chap, iii., p. 274, note 1), to the 

 work of Charles Renouvier, who at- 

 tempted from the year 1854 on- 

 ward a reconstruction of the 

 fundamental doctrines of logic and 

 psychology on the lines of Kantian 

 criticism. He proposed as did, 

 twenty years later, a school of 

 thinkers in this country with 

 reference to Hegel to do the 

 work of Kant over again, adhering 

 more strictly than Kant himself to 



the lines of criticism and discard- 

 ing the dualism which Kant had 

 introduced into his system by 

 adopting, in a special form, the old 

 Platonic conception of the difference 

 of appearance and reality. By 

 doing this Renouvier deserves not 

 only to be termed the first in time 

 of the Neo-Kantians, but also the 

 first of modern thinkers who aimed 

 at a consistent system of pure 

 phenomenism. This has been well 

 brought out by Mr Shadworth H. 

 Hodgson, who in two articles in 



