INTRODUCTION. 



53 



course of its history in the great totality of nature?" 1 

 And in collecting the answers to this question which 

 suggest themselves both in and outside of the study, 

 Lotze professes only to renew the enterprise brilliantly 

 begun by Herder in his ' Ideen zur Geschichte der 

 Menschheit.' Both Herder's 'Ideen' and Humboldt's 

 'Kosmos' belong to the age in which philosophy and 

 poetry largely influenced science and history. Many may 

 now think it premature or altogether impossible to try 

 to combine the detailed studies of modern science and 

 modern history with the comprehensive view demanded 

 by philosophers and poets, or to grope through the laby- 

 rinth of external phenomena and events to their under- 

 lying significance and unity. They may, whilst fully 

 maintaining the existence of an all - pervading power, 

 nevertheless relegate it with Mr Spencer to the region 

 of the Unknowable. 2 Without desiring at present to 



1 Microcosmus, 1st ed., Leipzig, 

 1856, Preface. Hermann Lotze was 

 born in 1817, and died in 1881. 

 His first philosophical essay of im- 

 portance was the ' Metaphysik ' 

 (Leipzig, 1841). 



2 Herbert Spencer's philosophy 

 of the " Unknowable " is laid down 

 in his Introduction to ' First Prin- 

 ciples.' I believe the first appear- 

 ance of the first part of this book 

 was in 1860, and the first collected 

 publication in the year 1867. In 

 defining the region of the Know- 

 able an opposite course has been 

 adopted by Emil du Bois-Reymond, 

 who in a series of addresses and 

 articles, now collected in two vol- 

 umes with the title ' Reden ' (Ber- 

 lin, 1886 and 1887), tried to lead 

 up to the limits which are fixed 

 around scientific knowledge. The 

 purport of his teaching on the 



highest " World - problem " is con- 

 tained in the four words, ignoramus, 

 ignorabimus, dubitemus, laboremus. 

 The first of these addresses, which 

 are full of brilliant suggestions and 

 vivid illustrations, furnishing in the 

 notes especially an invaluable store 

 of historical references on the sub- 

 ject of the philosophy of the sci- 

 ences, was delivered at the forty- 

 fifth meeting of the German " Natur- 

 forscher und Aertze," and published 

 at Leipzig, August 1872, with the 

 title ' Die Grenzen des Natur- 

 erkennens.' It made a great sensa- 

 tion, and was translated into several 

 languages. It was followed some 

 years later by an address delivered 

 in the Berlin Academy, 1880, and 

 published with the title ' Die sieben 

 Weltrathsel.' If H. Spencer's phil- 

 osophy is termed the philosophy 

 of the Unknowable, Du Bois-Rey- 



