OF THE SPIRIT. 



267 



departments, as shown, e.g., in the attitude which pro- 

 fessional philosophers for a long time took up to the 

 natural sciences. There also an opinion once pre- 

 vailed that the speculations of professional naturalists 

 were of little or no philosophical value, and might be 

 disregarded. 1 In the philosophy of nature, however, this 

 attitude has entirely disappeared ; some of the best phil- 

 osophical contributions to the subject have of late ad- 

 mittedly come from the pen of physicists and naturalists ; 

 and even the more superficial speculations of the mate- 

 rialists in the middle of the century, and of Haeckel in 

 recent times, now find a place in hand-books of the history 

 of philosophy. Still more recently we find that profes- 

 sedly theological speculation is receiving more adequate 

 recognition from professional philosophers. This more 

 generous tendency goes hand in hand with the breaking 

 down of that exclusively professional spirit which marks 

 the strength as well as the weakness of German academic 

 learning, and which, for a long time, prevented German 

 philosophers from recognising, inter alia, the importance 

 and originality of modern philosophy in foreign countries, 

 especially those in which the academic system is less 

 developed. 



Of the great number of writers who have treated the 

 religious problem in Germany during the nineteenth 

 century there is only one who was equally equipped 

 by disposition and learning on the theological and on 



1 A prominent example of this has 

 already been given (supra, vol. iii. 

 p. 519 n.). I refer to the philo- 

 sophical writings of Fechner, who 

 was not taken au serieux by philo- 



sophers, except perhaps by Lotze, 

 till his ideas fructified in the writ- 

 ings of Wundt and Paulsen, and 

 his system was expounded by Lass- 

 witz. 



