258 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



77. which have grown out of the problem of the Good and 



Problems of 



t^e Spirit which lead back to it: the problem of Humanity or 

 Society. human society on the one side, the problem of the 

 spiritual world, or the Spirit, on the other. The latter 

 is the older of the two ; for although the problems of 

 human society have always been before the minds of law- 

 givers, statesmen, and reformers, it is only since the nine- 

 teenth century began that the sciences of Sociology and 

 Anthropology have received special attention and been 

 placed upon an independent basis. The other problem, 

 that of the Spirit, or as we may also call it, the religious 

 problem, is, as has been said, much older, at least so far 

 as its systematic and philosophical treatment is concerned. 

 In fact it has been observed with some justice, that an 

 exclusive occupation with things of another world, with 

 transcendent problems, has at times unduly diverted the 

 attention of foremost thinkers from the important ques- 

 tions which lie immediately in front of them ; the solution 

 of these having frequently been left in the hands of casual 

 and untrained thinkers who, through premature conclu- 

 sions, through startling, plausible theories, attained popular 

 favour and passing notoriety. It is only since the great 

 popular movement, which began with the Preformation and 

 culminated in the French Eevolution, has brought into 

 the foreground the rights, the demands, and the interests 

 of the masses, as against those of the aristocracy on the 

 one side, and the literary and learned on the other, that 

 a systematic attempt has been made to understand, to 

 define, and to solve the social problem. In the two 

 following chapters I shall accordingly deal with these two 

 distinct problems, first with the older, and, as it seems to. 



