OF THE UNITY OF THOUGHT. 



607 



correcter psychology ^ and a new and less formal system 

 of logic. 



Both these desiderata were to some extent supplied ii. 



British con- 



by the labours of the English school. In it the first tnbutionsin 



" " psychology 



important work that was, after the lapse of nearly a '^"^ '°s'*^- 

 century, again to affect German thought, was the treatise 

 on ' Logic ' by John Stuart Mill. That side of Mill's 

 treatise which attracted attention in Germany was his 



^ 111 Germany this revision of the 

 Kantian position was started, after 

 the general ideas contained in the 

 idealistic sj^stems had lost their ab- 

 sorbing interest, mainly by two 

 thinkers, Lotze and Trendelenburg, 

 whose merits are being more and 

 more acknowledged in the present 

 day. One of the principal results 

 of this revising process has been to 

 bring out a marked difiFerence in 

 the conception as to the foundation 

 of philosophical reasoning : Is it to 

 be psychological or logical ? Two 

 schools have sprung up in Ger- 

 many, termed psychological and 

 anti - psychological. Of the for- 

 mer Prof. Franz Brentano (born 

 1838) may be considered the 

 earliest and most pronounced re- 

 presentative ; of the latter Prof. 

 Edm. Husserl is the great pro- 

 tagonist, and this in conscious op- 

 position to Brentano, under whose 

 influence his earlier writings were 

 composed. Both schools are much 

 influenced by Lotze, who, probably 

 first among modern thinkers, tried 

 to bring some clearness into the sub- 

 ject, which was quite insufficiently 

 treated by Kant. It belongs, 

 however, so much to what Lotze 

 would have termed the domestic 

 affairs of the philosophical schools, 

 that it hardly enters into a history 

 of philosophical thought. To give 

 the general reader some indication 

 of the import of the controversy, 

 I may refer to Lotze's distinction 



of the three regions into which the 

 experience of the contemplating 

 mind may be divided — the region 

 of definite things, the region of 

 relations, and the region of judg- 

 ments of value. Things exist or do 

 not exist, relations obtain (are 

 valid) or do not obtain, and judg- 

 ments of value are either approval 

 or disapproval. This distinction 

 no doubt is ultimatelj^ a psychologi- 

 cal one, i.e., gained by reflection ; 

 but the question arises whether 

 each <jf these regions of thought 

 contains a sufficiently definite and 

 permanent foundation to form the 

 separate sciences or bodies of 

 methodical thought and knowledge. 

 The modern theory of develop- 

 ment has introduced the idea of 

 a continuous change, to which 

 the human mind must be as sus- 

 ceptible as everything else. It 

 is quite evident that so far as 

 logic and morals are concerned, no 

 satisfactory theorj' of either is 

 possible without the belief in the 

 existence of some unalterable truth 

 and some supreme law of conduct. 

 It is difficult to see how a thorough- 

 going philosophy of Evolution can 

 furnish these. To those who desire 

 to be introduced into the details of 

 the controversy as it exists in 

 German literature, I recommend 

 the first part of a tract by Dr Karl 

 Heim, with the title : ' Psychologis- 

 mu8 Oder Anti - Psychologismus ' 

 (1902). 



