144 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



tained and consistently carried out. In his own 

 words, " As a beaten army looks about for some 

 strong position on which it may hope to rally, so 

 now for some time the signal has been heard on all 

 sides. Fall back on Kant I Still, not till recently 

 has this retreat been really in earnest, and now it 

 is found that Kant's standpoint could never in strict 

 justice be described as left below. To be sure, 

 misconceptions of his meaning and the pressure of 

 the impulse to metaphysical invention did for a 

 while tempt his successors to endeavour the rupture 

 of the strict limits he had drawn to speculation. 

 But the sobering that has followed this metaphysical 

 debauch has compelled a return to the abandoned 

 position ; and all the more, that men see themselves 

 again confronted by the materialism which once, on 

 Kant's appearance, had fled and hardly left a trace." 

 Lange is deeply sensible of the deficiencies of mate- 

 rialism, but at the same time appreciates the truth 

 of a certain phase in it, as against the pretences of 

 what he takes for idealism. He says : "Materialism 

 lacks for rapports with the highest functions of man's 

 intelligence. Contenting itself with the mere actual, 

 it is, aside from the question of its theoretic admis- 

 sibility, sterile for art and science, indifferent or else 

 inclined to egoism in the relations of man to man." 



And yet, on the other hand, " the whole principle 

 of modern philosophy, outside of our German ' spell ' 



