756 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



interest among the younger generation, mainly at the 

 Universities of Oxford and Glasgow, where Wallace, 

 the Cairds, and later, F. H. Bradley, produced standard 

 works, all of which professed to be expressions of the 

 spirit, not the letter, of Hegel's philosophy. 

 IS- Quite independently of this movement, a new era 



Ethics °^ thought was prepared by Henry Sidgwick's epoch- 

 making criticism of ethical theories. The revival of the 

 study of Berkeley's writings through Campbell Fraser in 

 Edinburgh tended likewise in the direction of a spiritual 

 philosophy, at present represented by some of the lead- 

 ing thinkers in this country. At this period philosophi- 

 cal thought in all the three countries was much occupied 

 in destroying the older metaphysic, the place of which 

 was in general taken by what is called Theory of Know- 

 ledge, a critical investigation of the fundamental principles 

 or categories of thought in the sense of Kant. At this 

 20. problem the Neo-Kantians in Germany, Edward Caird 



Theory of ^ "^ 



Knowledge, in this couutry, and Eenouvier in France, worked inde- 

 pendently, not without the hope on the part of some 

 of them that a new metaphysic might arise out of 

 their investigations : such was indeed, according to some 

 of his interpreters, the implied aim of Kant himself. 

 Lotze alone put Metaphysics at the entrance of his 

 systematic work, his aim being not to decide as to the 

 limits of human reason, but rather to fix the meaning of 

 the abstract terms or categories of thought in and through 

 which language expresses the ideal content of the human 

 mind ; a deep-lying conviction of an essentially ethical 

 character. 



An independent line of research was struck out by 



