116 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



phenomenon of life. To him the entire unfolding of 

 life is the key to the world-process ; through this view 

 he shows himself to be the child of his age, of the age 

 which revolutionised Biology and placed it on an entirely 

 novel foundation. The idealistic school in the beginning 

 of the nineteenth century was no less the child of its 

 time, an offspring of the movement of ideas which were 

 characteristic of the end of the eighteenth. During that 

 period a great revolution had likewise taken place in the 

 world of thought. This was most prominent and most 

 complete in Germany. It was the reconstruction of what 

 are there termed the mental sciences (Geisteswissen- 

 schaften), which, in this country, were at that time 

 frequently termed the Humanities. In the course of 

 this history I have marked the distinction by using the 

 two expressions of scientific thought and philosophical 

 thought. The age which brought forth the idealistic 

 philosophies in Germany was not the age which revolu- 

 tionised the mathematical and mechanical sciences this 

 had been done in France and England during the 

 eighteenth century; nor was it the age which revolu- 

 tionised the natural and biological sciences this was 

 done later by the combined labours of France, Germany, 

 and England ; and the revolution centred in Darwin. 



What the term life now means to the philosopher of 



evolution, what it conveys to him as an expressive term 



for the underlying essence and power in the world, the 



65. same meaning and function belonged, during the idealistic 



Life substi- 

 tuted for period, to the word mind and its many synonyms, it 



was therefore as natural for the idealist thinker to 

 bring unity and harmony into his speculations by re- 



