INTRODUCTORY. 67 



formulae of Comte and Spencer, no less than those of 

 Schelling, Hegel, and Schopenhauer, have been tried and 

 found wanting. Not indeed without leaving lasting 

 marks of their originality and power in special direc- 

 tions, affording many fresh glimpses which had escaped 

 the glance of earlier thinkers. To show to what extent 

 they have done this will form the main task of the 

 following pages. During the last quarter of the cen- 

 tury, systems of philosophy have been rare, if one can 

 say that they have been produced at all. The largely 

 increased number of students and writers on philosophy 

 are content to devote themselves to the examination of 

 special questions, to write preliminary and preparatory 

 treatises, 1 to content themselves at best with a kind of 

 eclecticism, following the course begun by Victor Cousin 

 in France, and adopting the maxim of Lotze, " that after 

 such a lengthy development of philosophy, during which 

 every point of view has been set up, abandoned, and 

 tried again, there no longer exists any merit in 

 originality but only in accuracy." ' Others have put 

 forward their attempts towards a Unification of Know- 

 ledge as subjective endeavours, in the same way as 



1 The first among the leading i quite the order of the day. 



philosophers of the earlier part of | Among these, those of Wundt, 



the century who adopted this posi- j Paulsen, and Ku'lpe, have a large 



tion was Herbart, whose ' Lehr- 1 circulation. Prof. Wundt has 



buch zur Einleitung in die Phil- crowned the large array of his 



osophie ' was published in 1813, , separate philosophical Treatises by 



and went through several editions. \ publishing in 1889 his ' System of 



It is also characteristic of Herbart ; Philosophy.' He is almost the 



that he never attempted a system- j only thinker of the last generation 



atic exposition of his philosophical ; with whom we shall have to deal 



ideas, and left some of the highest at length in the last chapter of this 



problems, notably that of Religion, section, which will bear the title 



undiscussed. Since his time the " Of Systems of Philosophy. " 



writing of Introductions to Phil- 2 See Lotze, ' Streitschriften ' 



osophy has been, in Germany, ! (1857), p. 5. 



