INTRODUCTORY. 



and, by doing so, to bring home to the common under- 

 standing a sense of the deeper meaning or ideal content 

 which is embodied in them. 



During the period which covers roughly ninety years, 

 from 1780 to 1870, the languages of the western 

 European nations have been enriched by a long list of 

 new terms. 1 Around these, separate philosophical schools 

 have grown up which have made them their watchwords. 

 These terms have not always been the outcome of abstract 

 philosophical reasoning ; they have often been suggested 

 by practical demands or borne in the wake of political 

 and social movements. Thus the French Eevolution in 

 its shibboleths of liberty, equality, and fraternity has 

 furnished an inexhaustible material not only for political 

 agitation but also for philosophical speculation ever since. 

 In the more restricted province of philosophical literature 

 itself the names of Adam Smith, Bentham, and Mill in 

 this country, of Comte in France, of Kant and his suc- 

 cessors in Germany, are connected with well-known words 

 and phrases, each of which has enriched common language 

 and made whole regions of thought accessible to the 

 general understanding which were unknown or unex- 

 plored before. "Free trade" and the " wealth of nations," 

 the "greatest happiness of the greatest number," the 

 " categorical imperative," " intellectual intuition," " posi- 

 tivism," the " world as will and intellect," the " ob- 



1 The ' Critique of Pure Reason ' 

 appeared in 1781 and gave to the 

 world the larger portion of the 

 vocabulary of the Kantian system, 

 which has played such a great part 

 in subsequent German, English, 

 and French philosophy. About the 



year 1870 I believe the larger part 

 of the vocabulary of evolution had 

 been formulated. Probably no 

 philosophical treatise of any im- 

 portance could now be written 

 without making free use of these 

 two vocabularies. 



