OF THE GOOD. 225 



thinkers — Lotze a generation earlier than Sidgwick — 

 recognised the necessity of a minute investigation of the 

 existing and frequently conflicting trains of reasoning 

 supplied by different schools of thought as well as by 

 common-sense. Both thinkers, though not sceptics in 

 the current sense of the term, were sceptical in so far as 

 they entertained but small faith in the capacities of the 

 human mind to solve the fundamental philosophical 

 problem as this presented itself to them.^ Both attached 

 much value to faithfulness in detail and to appreciative 

 criticism : both also agreed in this, that they opposed 

 the exaggerated pretensions of the historical and critical 

 schools of philosophy ; that to them an account of the 

 history, genesis or origin of existing notions, even if it 

 could be correctly given, furnished no clue for deciding 

 the correctness or otherwise of such notions ; for in 

 fact statements of being and becoming cannot furnish 

 reasons for that which ought to be. Lotze on his side, 

 as we have seen, found the key to the understand- 

 ing of what is and has been, in that which ought to 

 be; whereas Sidgwick maintains that it is quite illegiti- 

 mate to infer that a moral judgment is valid because 

 it exists, because it is original or innate in the indi- 

 vidual, or to discredit it because it is evolved. Thus 

 he maintained that we cannot get behind our ultimate 

 intuitions ; something among these must be accepted 

 though unproved. From their respective positions both 

 thinkers likewise object to the main drift of the critical 

 philosophy — viz., that before starting to reason, the 



^ " On the whole I harbour only these problems completely " 

 very modest expectations as to the (Lotze. ' Streitsclirifteu,' 1857, p. 

 power of human thought to solve 58). 



VOL. IV. P 



