THE RATIONALE OF PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 757 



Wundt in Germany and consistently followed up. What 21. 



Wundt. 



had been recommended since the time of Francis Bacon 

 in England, and attempted in a fragmentary manner by 

 various thinkers, was here done with perfection and com- 

 pleteness. Without, as it appears, any preconceived 

 notion as to the final result, Wundt approached the 

 phenomena of Mind from the outside, and with the ap- 

 proved methods of the experimental and exact sciences, 

 taking up what Fechner had termed the psycho-physical 

 problem : this led him on to a critical examination of 

 the principles of exact reasoning, and, in the sequel, to 

 that remarkable discovery of the essential difference 

 between psychical and physical phenomena of which he 

 has given such a penetrating account. 



The outcome may be shortly expressed as the growth 

 of mental as compared with the mere preservation of 

 physical energy. This produced a change and widening 

 in Wundt's philosophical horizon, and his speculation 

 assumed a distinctly idealistic character : his studies 

 moved more and more away from the psycho-physical 

 field of research, in which he will always stand out as 

 the most prominent and leading figure. The conception 

 of the growth and expansion of mental energy would 

 necessarily lead to historical studies, to the wide region 

 of objective mental life, of which language, custom, 

 religious rites and systems form the documentary 

 evidence, what is termed in Germany Vdlker-Psychologie. 

 Yet, what had happened to Lotze repeated itself to some 

 extent in Wundt's philosophical reputation. One-sided 

 Materialists had hailed in the young Lotze, as they did 

 later in the younger Wundt, the champion of their own 



