76 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



great practical achievement the foundation of that great 

 scheme of higher and popular education which other 

 nations have found it impossible to imitate. When, 

 however, after a considerable lapse of time, the outcome 

 of the new philosophy proved to be delusive, when it 

 failed to appreciate the growing importance of the 

 Natural Sciences, when it entered into an alliance with 

 the reactionary movement in politics and the intolerance 

 of ecclesiastics, when finally it appeared that the canons 

 of the Hegelian philosophy were used alike by the 

 orthodox and by unbelievers, the popular interest and 

 60. belief in this philosophy began to wane. For a moment 



Materialism 



f Fortie " ^ appeared as if the belief in Idealism might be replaced 

 by that in Materialism : there is no doubt that a certain 

 section of the intelligent public in Germany was, and still 

 is, strongly imbued with and influenced by the teachings 

 of the materialistic writers of the Forties. For the more 

 thinking section these crude doctrines could, however, 

 have no lasting attraction. At that moment there 

 existed in Germany only two thinkers who might have 

 met the much felt need of a new doctrine, namely, 

 Lotze and Fechner. The causes which prevented either 

 of them forming a school of followers will have our 

 attention in the sequel of this History ; perhaps it is 

 sufficient to say here that neither of them, for different 

 reasons, took up a clearly defined position, or summed 

 up his teachings in an easily intelligible formula, 1 such 

 as the speculative mind had been accustomed to find in 



1 Lotze was, in the beginning, Fechner, he was known at that 



quite misunderstood. His real time as a scientific writer and as a 



position came out clearly only in humourist under the pseudonym of 



his later writings ; and as regards Dr Mises. 



