48 ALOIS RIEHL 



poses. Historians, not professional investiga- 

 tors, seriously endeavored to make a natural 

 science of history itself. For them man was a 

 product of his environment. To turn a pro- 

 verb round, they did not see the trees for the 

 wood, the personal forces of history for the 

 massive groupings of phenomena and their 

 statistics. No, came the rejoinder, science is 

 inhuman. It has as good as nothing to do 

 with us and with the true tendencies of our 

 spiritual life. It cannot take the place of re- 

 ligion. It cannot take the place of art. It 

 only thinks, it does not act. Its kingdom is the 

 dead. In face of its conceptions the living 

 turns to stone. 



Where opposing currents meet, the usual 

 course of events is a onesided movement fol- 

 lowed by another in the opposite direction. So 

 it happened now. The reaction against Scien- 

 tific Intellectualism passed beyond the mark. 

 Men went so far as to deny all intrinsic 

 epistemological value to the science of Galileo 

 and Newton, restricting its legitimacy to the 

 sphere of practical and technical application. 

 Once more men began to philosophize without 



