708 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



had set himself to do in Germany, adopted many of the 

 watchwords and canons which Spencer and Darwin had 

 introduced into philosophical literature ; but it has not 

 so far succeeded in fixing upon any well-defined novel 

 principle by which to characterise its speculations and 

 make them generally intelligible to the thinking public. 

 It is still only the watchwords of Spencer and Darwin 

 on the one side, or of Hegel on the other, which 

 are proclaimed in endless variations. French thought 

 has in this respect been more original. But, before I 

 deal with the important contributions of recent French 

 philosophy to European thought, it is necessary to be- 

 come acquainted with the latest and only comprehensive 

 74. systematic attempt that, since the age of Lotze and 



W. Wundt. 



von Hartmann, has been made in Germany : this is the 

 system of Professor Wilhelm Wundt of Leipsic. 



In time the important volumes in which Professor 

 Wundt has gradually matured and unfolded his sys- 

 tematic view are almost contemporary with those of 

 Spencer in England, but their respective systems were 

 independently built up without, at least for a consid- 

 erable time, any mutual influence. Although both 

 thinkers may with some propriety be termed scientific 

 philosophers, the part which science, in the narrower 

 sense of the word, plays in the two philosophies is very 

 different. As I stated above, Spencer gives us no 

 philosophy of science. The work begun in England by 

 Whewell and Mill, and continued by Stanley Jevons and 

 others, was not taken up by Spencer at all. On the other 

 side Wundt's earliest studies led him to attack those 

 very problems involved in scientific thought which had 



