368 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



to impress upon the minds of their hearers and readers 

 the existence of a higher, more unified, and more spiritual 

 knowledge than that which the separate sciences afforded. 

 With the conviction that such a higher field of mental 

 activity really exists, and is within the reach of the 

 human intellect, they started on their way. We must 

 remember that they were neither surrounded by growing 

 material prosperity and industrial enterprise, to which 

 contemporary thinkers in this country might direct their 

 attention, nor had they grown up in the midst of the 

 great achievements which the exact scientific spirit could 

 boast of in France at the end of the eighteenth century. 

 Industrial progress and economic wealth were just as 

 much wanting in Germany at that time as was the 

 correct appreciation of the exact methods of research, 

 notably of applied mathematics. The only thinkers of 

 importance who were acquainted with what we nowadays 

 look upon as exact knowledge were Fries and, somewhat 

 later, Herbart. Both these thinkers stood, however, too 

 much outside of the interests and aspirations which 

 then guided German literature and German thought to 

 earn speedily from their contemporaries the recognition 

 which they deserved. No better example exists of the 

 defects as well as the peculiar kind of inspiration which 

 characterises the more impressive deliverances of the 

 idealistic school, than the introduction to the series of 

 lectures which Schelling delivered at Jena in 1802 "On 

 the method of academic study." Without leading up to 

 the elevated position which he desires to occupy, he at 

 once propounds the idea of an unconditional and unified 

 knowledge, and he bases this on the conviction that the 



