372 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



Viewed in this light, the more important works of 

 English philosophers, leaving out those which cluster 

 around the name of Herbert Spencer, may be said to be 

 occupied with the problem of the Spirit, with establish- 

 ing the spiritual view of things. But, as already stated, 

 eo. this whole tendency had not at the end of the century 



Absence of 



definite resulted in any great consummation ; it has not 



ideas com- 



thMeof*" 411 succeeded in concentrating its teaching in definite ideas, 

 Mn * expressed in appropriate language, such as can compel 

 the attention of a large number of thinking persons, 

 giving a definite direction to the thought of the age 

 and something substantially new whereon and where- 

 with to construct a reasoned creed. Such formulae and 

 watchwords, without which no current of thought ever 

 flows in great volume and with decisive force, have 

 rather been the intellectual product of the Positivist 

 and Naturalistic schools of thought which, notably under 

 the banner of evolution with a distinctly mechanical 

 interpretation still held at the end of our period the 

 first place in popular esteem. The idealistic, or rather 

 the spiritualistic, tendencies form, in opposition to this, a 

 deep undercurrent which may in the near future gain 

 the upper hand, but which, at the moment, is still doing 

 preparatory work ; partly by destructive criticism of the 

 opposite view, partly by isolated contributions of a more 

 constructive character. Among the latter we find in 

 this country the discussion turning around the same 



1 An indication of what has been 

 done about and since the end of the 

 century, in the direction of more 



constructive work, will be at- 

 tempted in the final chapter of this 

 volume. 



