178 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



tion and survey of the large field of new knowledge and 

 research which had been opened out from many sides 

 during the first half of the century. This survey had to 

 be undertaken with a pronounced regard for those higher 

 ethical and religious interests which were in jeopardy 

 through the scientific, philosophical, social, and political 

 convulsions of the middle of the century. By far the 

 most important representative of this attitude, which, 

 57. moreover, was very widespread, was Hermann Lotze 

 tirnTof 018 (1817-81), who was better qualified than any other 



premature 



i^tee ioll8: thinker f that time to do justice to the many potent 

 influences and constructive ideas which had sprung up 

 in such abundance between the years 1780 and 1850. 

 To find the rationale of all this accumulated thought 

 was indeed a task to which few were equal. Most of 

 those who in essentials probably agreed with Lotze's great 

 aim, betook themselves to the cultivation of more re- 

 stricted regions. They succeeded in establishing, in the 

 widest sense of the word, the spirit of free inquiry or 

 of historical and philosophical criticism which had, up 

 to that date, been loudly proclaimed, but had usually 

 been hampered in its full and free development by the 

 overpowering influence of certain dominant ideas which, 

 mainly through the literature of the great classical 

 period, swayed the German intellect. 



Also the several systems of philosophy which the 

 classical period of German literature had produced or 

 suggested furnished new material for the critical process, 

 both from an historical and from a logical point of view. 

 Their principles had to be justified or refuted, their 

 historical antecedents and logical foundations had to be 



