OF THE UNITY OF THOUGHT. 729 



important and extensive literature is even more frag- 

 mentary than the literature itself. In order not to 

 part from my readers without giving them some idea of 

 the tendencies of recent thought, I must briefly re- 

 capitulate what has been shown more in detail in 

 preceding chapters. 



The highest aim of philosophy has always been to 

 search for unity of thought. At the beginning of the 

 nineteenth century Kant had firmly established in the 

 minds of his followers the conviction that this unity 

 can only be found in the unity of consciousness — i.e., 

 of the inner life ; but he had still left the possibility 

 of another unity in the " Thing in Itself," the caput 

 mortuum of external reality. The immediate followers 

 of Kant, in what they considered the true spirit of his 

 teaching, consistently destroyed this phantom, and sought 

 for unity and harmony in the inner world, confining 

 themselves finally to the world of thought — i.e., of 

 logical thought. This movement culminated in Hegel. 



Quite independent of this, which is usually termed 

 the Idealistic movement, the natural sciences approached 

 unity of thought from the other side — i.e., from the side 

 of the external or material world, concerning the ultimate 

 reality of which they entertained no doubt. Their 

 researches, which were not conducted with the object 

 of establishing a reasoned creed, but simply in order to 

 gain natural knowledge, led, nevertheless, to a surprising 

 though partial unification of such knowledge, and when 

 the endeavours of the Idealistic school failed, some 

 thinkers, trained in the methods of the natural sciences, 

 and impressed with the increasing simplification of their 



