80 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



I have already referred to the fact that, whereas 

 philosophical thought in the beginning of the century 

 moved mainly in the realm of logic, metaphysics, and 

 psychology, at the end of the century the study which 

 seems to be gradually superseding all others is the 

 63. study of Sociology, a term which was introduced by 



Comte's 



sociology. Auguste Comte, and has latterly become a watchword 

 in the literature of the whole of Western Europe 

 latest in Germany. This phenomenon has various and 

 very deep-seated causes, which have shown themselves 

 in all the three countries, but in different forms. They 

 showed themselves first of all, and most drastically, in 

 France, where the Ee volution had made a clean sweep 

 of many of the older foundations of society, and where 

 men of the highest order and in almost every depart- 

 ment of science and literature had speculated or prac- 

 tically worked in the direction of a reconstruction of 

 society. A temporary check was indeed put upon 

 these endeavours by the reactionary movement during 

 the Eestoration. Nevertheless, all through the cen- 

 tury, French literature has systematically, or in more 

 general ways, worked at the great social problems. In 

 England, though the movements were less convulsive, 

 the interests of the Masses, as opposed to those of the 

 Classes, have increasingly occupied the attention of both 

 statesmen and thinkers, the reform movement having 

 been the leading feature of internal politics during the 

 greater part of the century. It was in England that 

 the problem of population and the evils of overcrowding 

 were first openly discussed, and it is not too much to 

 say that the misery of the residuum which the con- 



