OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 93 



This leads us to an understanding of the importance 

 of Lange's view, a view which is, consciously or un- 

 consciously, explicitly or implicitly, shared by many 

 thoughtful minds in Germany at the present day. I 

 have had occasion to point out in an earlier portion 

 of this chapter, as likewise on former occasions, how the 

 aspirations of German poetry and the courageous efforts 

 of German speculation, at the end of the eighteenth cen- 

 tury and at the beginning of the nineteenth, were a 

 reflection of the new interests and the youthful ideals 

 of the age an expression of the general hope that a 

 new er-a had dawned for human history and human cul- 

 ture ; also, how this universal and widespread feeling 

 received an extreme expression through the French 

 Kevolution ; and, lastly, how the disenchantment which 

 followed upon its exaggerations and excesses led to two 



in the same person ; Vaihinger speculations is not yet clear. Al- 

 having written the book more than though the main title of the work 

 thirty years ago (1875-1878), but ; is repellent to common-sense, it is 

 allowed it to remain unpublished, of value to the historian of thought 

 as it seemed to him that the age was , to see it clearly expressed in the 

 not ripe for its reception. During sub-title that according to this 

 the generation, however, which fol- j tendency in philosophy all progress 

 lowed the publication of Lange's in culture and society seems to be 

 ' History ' and the composition of based on fictions or on inventions 

 his own work, he recognises that j of the human mind, without any 

 Lange's ideas have been more underlying conviction that they 

 and more assimilated by other are, if not the expression, yet at 

 thinkers. Of these he gives a long j least a reflection of the truly Real 

 list in his Preface as the author, ! in fact, the latter seems to 

 pointing especially to the similarity vanish altogether out of existence, 

 of his views to such popular It will be evident to my readers 

 philosophies of modern times as , that the whole tendency which I 

 those of the Pragmatists in this j desire to bring out in this History 

 country and of Fr. Nietzsche in is exactly the opposite of what 

 Germany. His relation to Henri Prof. Vaihinger considers to be the 

 Bergson, which has been pointed drift of recent thought; but it is 

 out (see Dr K. Oesterreich in : of advantage for both sides that 

 ' Deutsche Literaturzeitung, ' 1913, I through the use of the word 

 p. 199), is less evident, inasmuch " fiction " this contrast should be 

 as the final drift of M. Bergson's distinctly defined and emphasised. 



