654 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



in his later speculation, but without any conspicuous 

 success : whereas Spencer leaves it altogether outside 

 of his system, though he does not denounce it in the 

 categorical manner so prevalent and so repellent with 

 some extreme schools of thought on the Continent. 

 35. What is characteristic both of Comte's and of Spencer's 



The 



scientific system is the entry of the scientific spirit as opposed to 

 interests ^he metaphysical, and the recognition of the growing 

 importance of the social problem. Neither of these two 

 sides of modern thought neither the scientific nor the 

 social had been distinctly recognised in the idealistic 

 movement which culminated in Hegel, though we find in 

 Fichte's later writings and addresses distinct beginnings 

 of a philosophy of human society. The idealistic systems 

 were essentially philosophies of religion in the sense 

 which I have so frequently emphasised : they aimed at 

 establishing a reasoned creed which should satisfy the 

 highest demands of the modern educated European mind, 

 and they were religious in the further sense that they 

 desired to absorb, to incorporate, and to interpret not 

 only the moral, but essentially also the spiritual truths 

 of Christian faith. 



They were, however, primarily neither philosophies of 

 science nor philosophies of society. Beginnings of the 

 former are, indeed, contained in Kant's earlier writings, 

 but they date from a time when what we now term 

 science or exact reasoning was limited almost entirely to 

 the Newtonian philosophy. Nevertheless, as Fichte's 

 later writings exhibit the first signs of an appreciation 

 of the social problem in Germany, so Kant's earlier 

 writings mark the first beginning in Germany of a 



