OF THE SPIRIT. 



363 



merits, as already stated, are of first-rate importance, 

 forming centres around which an enormous controversial 

 literature has sprung up, the chief characteristic of 

 which, however, as of these fragments themselves, has 

 invariably been its inconclusiveness. 



Leaving out Carlyle's earlier writings as hardly belong- 

 ing to philosophical literature and to be thoroughly ap- 



scientific writers to such as live on 

 the borderland of prose and poetry, 

 and the list might have been pro- 

 fitably extended by drawing even 

 more fully on imaginative writers, 

 such notably as Tennyson and 

 Robert Browning, who have, to- 

 gether with Wordsworth, perhaps 

 more than any other writers, not 

 only supplied thoughtful minds in 

 this country with as much phil- 

 osophy of religion as they required 

 or could assimilate, but exhibit 

 more than any others those specific 

 characteristics of British thought 

 which are so difficult for the 

 foreigner to get hold of. Most of 

 the writers mentioned in Caldecott's 

 work do not come within the region 

 of philosophic thought as it is con- 

 ceived in this history. This claims 

 to be first of all methodical, and 

 though not necessarily, it is usually 

 systematic. But outside of this 

 region, which, so far as the problem 

 before us is concerned, is somewhat 

 limited in English literature, there 

 is a large volume of religious 

 thought which is purely subjec- 

 tive and individual, exhibiting 

 frequently merely the doubts, diffi- 

 culties, or conclusions which intel- 

 lects of high order have encountered 

 or arrived at. Thus very few of 

 the writers reviewed in the work 

 mentioned take sufficient note of 

 what others have said before them 

 on their subject. The subjectivity 

 which makes the works of some 

 of them peculiarly fresh and in- 

 teresting, but for a historical review 



difficult and perplexing, through 

 unavoidable repetition of similar 

 points of view, contrasts very 

 forcibly with the methodical 

 manner in which the foremost 

 thinkers in Germany have dealt 

 with the subject, clustering mostly 

 around a few prominent names 

 and a few leading ideas. This we 

 see very clearly in such a work as 

 that of Professor 0. Pfleiderer, 

 quoted already {ante, p. 304 n.) ; 

 whereas in the English work among 

 the names mentioned there is only 

 a small number of philosophers, in 

 the narrowest sense of the word, 

 but a very large number of writers 

 who have become famous in other 

 branches of literature. The bulk 

 of the German history is occupied 

 with representatives of philosophy 

 proper, and a comparatively small 

 amount of space is given to 

 unsystematic writers who have 

 dealt casually with the subject. 

 All this testifies to that individual- 

 ism so peculiar to the English 

 mind, and leads us to anticipate 

 that the last and completing section 

 of a History of Thought, which 

 should deal with individual, poeti- 

 cal, and religious thought, will find 

 this region much more extensively 

 and originally cultivated in this 

 country than abroad. To repeat 

 and sum up, we may say that 

 certainly in recent times France is 

 the home and centre of scientific, 

 Germany of philosophic, and Great 

 Britain of spontaneous individual 

 thought. 



