584 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



It is thus that Dilthey attaches special importance 

 to the study of the development of individual minds 

 and of the great intellectual periods of history. As 

 already stated, his earliest larger work consisted in a 

 study of Schleiermacher, of that German philosopher 

 who stood in the most intimate contact not only with 

 the intellectual but also with the poetic and religious 

 life of his age and country. This great work which 

 promises, if finished, to be a unique biographical, literary, 

 and philosophical monument, opens our eyes as does no 

 other similar work to the innermost connections and 

 relations between the workings of the poetical, religi- 

 ous, and speculative mind. But we have from his pen, 

 in addition, studies of many other original figures in 

 modern literature, and of several important phases in 

 the historical development of modern culture. His 

 main interest, however, seems to return always towards 

 what he calls the mental sciences as distinguished from 

 the natural sciences. Their peculiarity is that they treat 

 of things which have a history, and the end and aim of 

 his endeavours seems to be to arrive through psycho- 

 logical analysis at a peculiar logic or canon of thought 



Dilthey is particularly intent upon 

 the essential difference of the 

 methods employed in the natural 

 sciences from those of the mental 

 sciences — a difference which he has 

 not succeeded in making convincing 

 to some of his critics of the opposite 

 school (see Earth, loc. cit., p. 371 

 sqq. ), who consider that to give up 

 the methods of the natural sciences 

 is equivalent to giving up scientific 

 treatment altogether . But Dilthey 

 brings out an important point when 

 he argues that in the analysis of 

 physical phenomena the ultimate 



units out of which they are com- 

 posed are unknown to us, and, as 

 such, conjectural ; whereas the 

 units out of which mental, social, 

 and historical [ihenomena are com- 

 posed are known to us, being living 

 experiences. " The primordial unit 

 {UrzeUe) of the historical world is 

 the living experience of a subject 

 through the interaction of its life 

 and its milieu. This environment 

 acts on the subject and receives re- 

 actions from it. It is a compound 

 of physical and mental surround- 

 ings ""(p. 93). 



