LATER GERMAN PHILOSOPHY 143 



and intellectualised materialism have alike brought 

 monism to a rednctio ad absiirduvi when they faced 

 those problems of practice which are the touchstone 

 of all philosophy. It was only natural that meta- 

 physics of this order should give way, then, to an 

 agnostic interpretation of the critical principle, and 

 that philosophy should at length undertake a return 

 to Kant, in the hope of some sounder development 

 from his doctrines. We have next to see how this 

 renewed agnosticism, in its aim to be completely 

 rigorous, also comes to self-dismemberment, and sup- 

 plants itself against its own intent. 



In passing thus to Lange, it is not surprising to 

 find him animated by the desire to lay a better foun- 

 dation for ethics than either pseudo-idealism or mate- 

 rialism has proved able to build. His History of 

 Materialism is not properly a history, but a philoso- 

 phy buttressed by history, in which, by exhibiting 

 materialism in the utmost possibilities that ages of 

 restatement have been able to give it, he aims to 

 expose its deficiencies exhaustively, and to assign 

 the true weight which its principle and the principle 

 of idealism respectively should have in a rational 

 theory. 



There must be sought, Lange begins, some higher 

 standpoint than either materialism or current ideal- 

 ism affords ; and this, he is convinced, is to be found 

 in the doctrine of Kant, provided it be rigidly main- 



