614 , PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



as another school of thinkers maintains, then the philo- 

 sophical problem presents itself as to the source of 

 certitude in matters of faith. The mediating task of 

 philosophical thought cannot be undertaken till the 

 questions have been answered : knowledge or no know- 

 ledge ? certainty or no certainty ? something that is 

 intrinsically good and valuable or a mere semblance and 

 passing illusion ? Philosophically expressed, it is the 

 problem of the Absolute. As to the existence of this 

 the beginning of the century harboured no doubt, the 

 end of the century, the present age, has no certainty. 

 is. In the third part of the general Introduction to this 



Retrospect. 



Work I indicated the position which I would assign to 

 philosophy in the ' History of Nineteenth Century 

 Thought.' It was to occupy an intermediate position 

 between scientific and religious thought; its principal 

 task being to effect a reconciliation between these 

 two regions the region of methodical knowledge 

 on the one side, and the region of personal convictions 

 on the other. Upon this, as it would seem to many, 

 modest task of mediating between, or reconciling, 

 two distinct aspects of thought, philosophy has only 

 retired during the second half of the century. At the 

 end of the eighteenth, and through the greater part of 

 the first half of the nineteenth century, the pretensions 

 of philosophy, at least in Germany, were of a much 

 higher order. It was nothing less than the attempt to 

 elevate subjects of Faith into subjects of Knowledge. 

 This involved two distinct assumptions which the present 

 age is not generally prepared to allow. The first as- 

 sumption is : the existence of a distinct and tolerably 



