552 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



What prevented these suggestions receiving at the time 



that recognition which was later on given to them in a 



degree greatly exceeding the importance which Laplace 



9- himself presumably attached to them, was the circum- 



Absence of J 



sutjective d s t ance that they contained no reference to the phenomena 

 of organic or to those of conscious life. Laplace, like so 

 many other philosophers, places himself, as it were, out- 

 side of the Universe which he wishes to explain ; and 

 like the spectator in a play, forgets himself entirely in 

 the contemplation of the scenery before him. 



But what Laplace had thus forgotten, the subjective 

 factor, the position, reflections, and emotions of the be- 

 holder, constituted exactly that problem which, since the 

 time of Kant, was attracting thinkers of the opposite 

 school, notably in Germany. Not a comprehensive ex- 

 position of the system of the Universe allured them, 

 but the problem how the human mind came to con- 

 template and comprehend such a system and what part 

 it played itself in this process of contemplation and 

 comprehension. And so great became this subjective 

 interest, notably in the philosophy of Fichte, that 

 the details of the scenery were, so to speak, entirely 

 forgotten in the interest of studying the attitude and 

 the emotions of the beholder. Nature, or the external 

 world, came to be regarded merely as an opportunity for 

 developing and exercising the intellectual and active 



in his ' Cosmos ' does more than 

 just mention it, attaching to it 

 little scientific importance ; and 

 even at the present day it figures 

 much more largely in popular than 

 in scientific works on Astronomy. 



as an extreme expression, but also 

 as indicating the limits of a purely 

 mechanical view of nature, through 

 an Address of Emil Du Bois Rey- 

 mond, delivered in the year 1872 at 

 the meeting of the German Associa- 



The so - called Laplacian world- [ tion of Naturalists in Leipzig, 

 formula gained popular reputation 



