OF THE GOOD. 201 



premises of the Hegelian philosophy. In him a con- 

 clusion or consummation of a certain line of thought was 

 attained similar to that which Auguste Comte had reached 44. 



Feuerbach 



about the same time and from quite different beginnings <in'i comte 



^ 00 compared 



in France. What Feuerbach did not see as clearly as 

 Comte did, was the necessity of establishing, on this 

 new anthropocentric foundation, the whole edifice not 

 only of theoretical but also of practical philosophy. For 

 this purpose his writings contain only hints but no 

 attempt towards systematic completeness. He was too 

 much a child of the age of the German Eevolution ; this 

 was characteristically much less a political than an intel- 

 lectual revolution ; for in the same degree as the former 

 was incomplete and abortive, the latter has turned out to 

 be consummate and radical, a complete subversion of the 

 older foundations, a " revaluation," as it has been termed, 

 of all existing values. And this has been popularly 

 brought about not so much by a slow process of 

 critical sifting and mental discipline such as always 

 had its home in the German universities, as by the 

 hasty steps and brilliant flashes of an extra-academic 

 literature, by writers who addressed mature as well as 

 immature intellects, and did not feel the responsibilities 

 imposed upon the teachers and educators of young and 

 impressionable minds. Thus we find that a large portion 

 of the philosophical labours within the universities has, 

 during the last third of the century, been directed 

 against the pernicious effects of a popular philosophy 

 influenced and inspired by otherwise, and deservedly, 

 celebrated names, such as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and 

 Haeckel. 



