718 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



Wundt in his tendency manifested already in his ear- 

 lier writings to consider individual mental life in its 

 social and living environment and also in its historical 

 development. Although psychology forms the entrance 

 to his philosophy, his psychology is not limited to that 

 of the individual mind, but is enlarged by the psycho- 

 logy of the collective mind. To this subject Wundt has 

 devoted the latter years of his laborious researches and 

 ever extending studies. He thus shares, though in an 

 independent spirit and with a special object in view, 

 the tendency of modern speculation : to look for the ex- 

 planation and definition of existing forms of knowledge 

 and belief in their genesis or historical becoming. His 

 philosophy is therefore distinctly evolutionary, and, as 

 such, marks an advance upon the pre-evolutionary phil- 

 osophy of Lotze. From this point of view we have 

 also to understand the position which Wundt takes up 

 to the religious question. 



He has neither put forth a philosophy of religion, 

 such as Schleiermacher and Lotze have given us from 

 different points of view, nor a religious philosophy such 

 as was developed in the later writings of Fichte and in 

 those of the right wing of the Hegelian school. His in- 

 terest in the subject was not that which originally led him 

 to philosophise, as it led most of the great Continental 

 thinkers in modern times ; neither was the philosophic 

 impulse in his case connected with the social problem as 

 it was in the case of Comte in France and of most phil- 

 osophers in this country. His original interest was purely 

 scientific; but as he was early led beyond a mere intellec- 

 tualism to a study of the active and emotional side of 



