248 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



manner, the problem which Kant had defined for all 



time, namely this : How is the human soul passively and 



Y actively engaged in rearing the great edifice of knowledge, 



in instituting moral life and culture, and ' in producing 



and appreciating the creations of art and poetry ? Looked 



Ranks' a t i n this wav > we mav Sa 7 that Kant has formulated 



Fo S gfcai" ^e psychological programme down to the present day, 



" although it may be urged with some propriety that he 



himself was not pre-eminently a psychologist, and that 



his philosophy discarded the genuine psychological 



method. 



But for those who do not look for the working of the 



human mind and the life of the soul only within the 



narrow limits of individual experience, but who use the 



. 34 - . terms mind, soul, and spirit in the larger sense, as denot- 



The way out 



aiism dividu " i n o that unseen agency which underlies the history of 

 mankind, the manner in which mental phenomena were 

 studied in the philosophy of Kant, and still more in 

 that of his immediate successors, constitutes an era in 

 philosophical thought. As I remarked above, the dis- 

 cussion of things referring to the soul was lifted on to 

 an entirely different and higher plane. We may call 

 this transcendental if we choose to do so, but this term 

 should not suggest the idea that we have not to do 

 with actual realities. Although it may be difficult or 

 impossible to define these realities in such a manner 

 that a minute analysis becomes possible, few persons 

 ^ will deny that such expressions as the spirit of the age, 

 the essence of culture, the soul in nature and history, 

 and thought as used in the English language and by 

 the writer of this History, that all these terms have a 



