OF THE GOOD. 129 



stimulus at the end of the eighteenth century and the 

 beginning of the nineteenth through Kant, Fichte, and 

 Schleiermacher, but it had fallen into the background 

 during the exclusive sway of the metaphysical systems 

 of Schelling, Hegel, and Herbart. When the spell of 

 these systems was broken and the disintegration of 

 philosophical thought had set in, two distinct interests 

 asserted themselves : the Theory of Knowledge, on the one 

 side, which reverted to Kant, and Practical Philosophy, 

 or Ethics, on the other, which, to a great extent, 

 abandoned the Kantian position and came under the 

 influence of foreign, notably of English, thought. An 

 attempt was then made to gain for Ethics a new foun- 

 dation, independent alike of metaphysics and religious 

 doctrine. In France, moral philosophy as such had 

 practically no independent existence during the first two- 

 thirds of the nineteenth century, and it is only within 

 the last quarter that its problems have been taken up 

 afresh ; but since then, that country can claim to have 

 produced some of the most remarkable and original 

 works on the subject. 



Moral philosophy, being thus much older in this 3. 



. Different 



€Ountry than abroad, grew up also in an entirely atmosphere 



'' ' o r J of moral 



different atmosphere and environment, and this accounts P'"thfs°^'^^ 

 for some of the traits which are peculiar to its growth ^°^'^^^- 

 and development. It will be of interest to realise 

 how this environment differed from the conditions 

 existing in the two other countries in which we are 

 specially interested. There is one word which character- 

 ises the surroundings in which thinkers of this country 

 have lived and worked ever since the Restoration, and 

 VOL. IV. I 



