596 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



Thus Fries and others introduced Anthropology, Schleier- 

 maeher religious and moral philosophy on a positive or 

 Christian foundation; others, like Wilhelm von Hum- 

 boldt, followed by philologists and philosophers alike, 

 worked at the philosophy of language. Then again we 

 have philosophy of law, political economy, and philosophy 

 of the state and society, all treated more or less inde- 

 pendently, with only a slight reference to and in only 

 slender connection with the central problems of systematic 

 thought ; and lastly we have Psychophysics. 



In consequence of these various influences and 

 through this enlargement of philosophical interest, 

 systematic philosophy became less and less possible 

 unless the word " system " acquired an altered mean- 

 ing. This altered meaning comes out fully and clearly 

 for the first time in the philosophy of Lotze. It 

 is characteristic of this stage of philosophical thought 

 that the attempt to work out a system was the last of 

 Lotze's performances. The systematisation of his ideas 

 came at the end of his career and was never completed ; 

 whereas with Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Schopenhauer 

 the principle and the method of the system are the first 

 thing that we meet with, subsequent treatment being 

 mostly in the form of illustration or application. The 

 older conception of systematic treatment, such as we 

 find in the celebrated work of Schopenhauer, was con- 

 tinued in the labours of Hartmann, who put forward his 

 leading and systematising principle in the earliest of his 

 larger works, and whose subsequent literary career con- 

 sisted mainly in treating a great variety of special jJrob- 

 lems or special subjects in the light of that principle. 



