OP KNOWLEDGE. 317 



Locke and Hume being the only British thinkers to 

 whom was accorded an influence, the main importance 

 of which lay in the fact that Locke provoked the 

 elaborate refutation of Leibniz in the 'Nouveaux 

 Essais,' and that Hume " roused Kant out of his 

 dogmatic slumbers." Against this view it must be 20. 



Two lines of 



recognised that the philosophical thought of this ^ e e v n e t lop ' 

 country presents from Bacon to Spencer an independent 

 line of development which was no doubt influenced 

 by Descartes and Kant very much as the unbroken 

 tradition of Continental thought was influenced by 

 Locke and Hume. Towards the end of the nineteenth 

 century it seems as if these two independent lines of 

 philosophical tradition have crossed each other in a 

 characteristic manner. When the need of a philosophic 

 creed made itself felt in this country, several thinkers of 

 the first order recognised that this problem was exactly 

 that which had occupied Continental thought from the 

 time of Descartes. Accordingly the philosophical writ- . 21. 

 ings not only of Kant but of Hegel, of Spinoza, of Lotze, these - 

 and latterly of Leibniz, have been studied in this country 

 with growing interest, and a school of thinkers has arisen 

 which tries to assimilate, to co-ordinate, and to systematise 

 the ideas contained in those formerly neglected or for- 

 gotten writings. On the other side, when, after the 



of Philosophy.' The important 

 works on ' History of Philosophy ' 

 by Erdmann (see supra, p. 37 note 

 1) have, in later editions, taken 

 more and more notice of other 

 collateral schools of thought pre- 

 viously ignored. But the one- 

 sidedness of giving undue and 

 exaggerated prominence to Ideal- 

 istic, or even only to German, 



philosophical thought (as, e.g., is 

 the case with v. Hartmann) has 

 now been finally overcome and a 

 new spirit infused into the treat- 

 ment of the subject by Windelband 

 and by Hoffding. A still more 

 one-sided but opposite view of the 

 History of philosophy is repre- 

 sented by G. H. Lewes's later work 

 on the 'History of Philosophy.' 



