18 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



correspond to them, and which form the only real basis 

 by which definite location in time and space and con- 

 tinuity of existence are secured. 



In the sequel we shall see that about sixty years 

 before the psycho-physical methods were invented an 

 opposite view had been introduced into German philo- 

 sophy mainly through the influence of Kant. Admitting 

 the correctness of the position taken up by Locke and 

 his followers, viz., that all the material for our thinking 

 is furnished by the senses, he nevertheless pointed out, 

 following a suggestion forcibly put by Leibniz, that in 

 addition to the material supplied by the senses there 

 must be the mind or intellect itself, which forms the 

 centre and point of reference and effects the synthesis of 

 is. all this material. The emphasis with which he urged this 

 idealism the latter point suggested to his followers the possibility that 



antithesis 1 



to this. it might be quite as legitimate and perhaps more pro- 

 mising to start from the centre than it would be to 

 study and analyse the peripheral world of sensations 

 themselves. The latter had been undertaken with con- 

 siderable success by the contemporary school of philo- 

 sophers in this country. To place oneself at once at 

 the centre and point of reference of all our thinking, and 

 to work from this outward, seemed a promising and 

 novel way of proceeding. It was supported and greatly 

 favoured by the circumstance that, about the same time, 

 German literature, poetry, and art had taken an unex- 

 pected and unexampled development through which an 

 ideal force was launched into the world which had the 

 greatest practical influence not only in literature but 

 also in education, legislation, and the political life of the 



