OF REALITY. 523 



rarely even professed to take any other than a national 

 point of view. Moreover, this national point of view 

 did not, as it usually has done in Germany, secure a 

 complete or exhaustive survey even of its own restricted 

 subject. The ' History of Modern Philosophy ' of 

 Professor Hoffding is distinguished not least by the 

 fact that it is, so far, the only work on the subject 

 written from an international point of view ; and the 

 author has in subsequent writings l done still more to 

 counteract the impression, not unusual in Germany, 

 that higher speculation in modern times is an ex- 

 clusively German occupation. That this has been the 

 case until within the last generation is, however, quite 

 as true as that it has now ceased to be so. And 

 one of the indications that this change has taken place 

 is to be found in the fact that the central problem of 

 philosophy the Ontological problem, or the problem 55. 



Return to 



of Reality has in the same degree ceased to interest ontology m 



England and 



German thinkers as it has been taken up in this France, 

 country and also in France. 



The causes which have led to this change have to 

 some extent been already pointed out in past chapters 

 of this section of 'The History of Thought,' but it 

 will be useful to dwell somewhat more fully upon 

 them. 



British thinkers have not, till quite recently, ex- 

 perienced the necessity of formulating a Philosophical 

 Creed. I have stated before that this was, since 

 the seventeenth century, the main task set before 

 the mind of Continental philosophers ever since 

 1 See for these, supra, p. 57. 



