102 £SSAVS m PHILOSOPHY 



In the total stream of this movement there are 

 discernible three main currents, the ideaHstic, the 

 materialistic, and the agnostic, — or " critical," as its 

 adherents prefer to name the last. This division, 

 however, is not distinctive of the period, being merely 

 the continuation of a world-old divergence in doc- 

 trine. But it is distinctive of the new situation that 

 these several views are all defended from standpoints 

 more or less empirical. The rallying-cry of " Back to 

 Kant!" with which the movement began, was soon 

 succeeded by a more adventurous cry of " Beyond 

 Kant ! " This " Beyond," owing mainly to the pre- 

 dominant interest in the theories of evolution and 

 natural selection, was construed as lying in the 

 region indicated by the empirical method of which 

 these theories are the extolled result. In the case 

 of materialism, to be sure, this empiricism is natural 

 and nowise unexpected ; but the occurrence of it in 

 the case of idealism and of agnosticism, after Kant's 

 day and in his own land, and among thinkers long 

 given to the study of his works, is a genuine surprise. 

 That the very principles of the Critique of Ptire 

 Reason, the historic stronghold of the a priori, 

 should suffer the complete transformation of being 

 made to support a posteriori philosophy, is a per- 

 formance not far from astonishing. Yet it was 

 managed, and constitutes the distinguishing feat of 

 the school callinof themselves Neo-Kantians. 



