OF THE UNITY OF THOUGHT. 715 



both Lotze and Spencer, the necessity of a reconciliation 

 of the two great regions of thought which in modern 

 times have so frequently come into conflict, the scientific 

 and the religious. But here also his line of reasoning 

 differs both from that of Lotze and from that of Spencer. 

 His position is an independent one, and was probably 

 arrived at, not in the beginning but gradually, in the 

 course of the development of his philosophical ideas. 



In contrast with Spencer's formula the unifying 

 tendency of thought is not expressed as the uni- 

 fication of knowledge. Wundt does not consider it 

 sufficient to trace an ever-recurring scheme or method of 

 thought through the different regions of actual existence. 

 True to the central conception of his psychology, which 

 looks upon the mind as an active propelling principle, he 

 notifies in his ' Theory of Knowledge ' the inherent 

 tendency of thought to go beyond the facts and data 

 supplied by experience. The formation of ideas by 

 which experience is transcended, reminds us of similar 

 views contained in the philosophy of Kant. Both the 

 suggestiveness of experience and its incompleteness 

 stimulate the activity of the intellect to complete and 

 supplement the lines of reasoning which start and must 

 always start from given facts and data. Wundt shows 

 how in its simplest and most abstract nature this tend- 

 ency of thought is exemplified by mathematical reason- 

 ing which, starting from number and measure, forms 

 transcendent conceptions, such as the Infinite, and 

 ventures further into the region of the imaginary. In 

 this way Wundt defines this transcendency of thought 

 as of a twofold nature : he distinguishes between a real 



