IDEALISM IN GERMANY 



suffers especially from his unfamiliarity with 

 those natural sciences, without which no sound 

 theory of understanding can exist, namely com- 

 parative physiology, biology, and sociology. He 

 never realized, that philosophy requires not alone 

 the direct co-operation of these special sciences, 

 but in the last analysis of every department of 

 human knowledge. Even if we admit that this 

 defect was largely due to the scantiness of the 

 empirical material of his time and to the incom- 

 plete equipment of the Prussian universities under 

 Frederick the Great, it was also a consequence 

 of his extreme philistinism and book-worm ten- 

 dencies. He certainly made more liberal con- 

 cessions to the arrogance of orthodox and 

 bureaucratic censorship, than many of his 

 humbler intellectual contemporaries in Prussia. 



But in spite of his mental gymnastics in the 

 matter of a god, the fact remains, that his nebular 

 theory of the origin of the universe, in its logical 

 application, knocks the main prop from under 

 the Mosaic world-conception, which had already 

 been considerably shaken by the discoveries and 

 demonstrations of Copernicus, Galilei, Kepler, 

 and Newton. Laplace was more consistent and 

 courageous than Kant and did not hesitate to 

 declare in reply to a question of Napoleon I., that 



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