154 .£SSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



on the other hand, we do know that in our relation 

 with mechanical Nature, in whose domain, after all, 

 the larger part of our action lies, we are not free ; we 

 know that time is exceeding short, and that enjoy- 

 ment is for the most part hope deferred. The lesson 

 of life is chiefly foTtiUtdc and resignation. Lange, 

 however, has no personal drawings toward egoistic 

 ethics, nor to hedonism, even in its most public or 

 social form. He announces himself as in ethics the 

 legitimate successor of Kant : he desires to act, and 

 to have men act, from duty solely ; to seek the ideal 

 and serve it at all personal hazard, though with due 

 regard to the imperfections of men and the obsti- 

 nacy of fact. 



Lange's sociology follows the lines we should 

 now expect. His doctrine of the Whole leads him 

 to a pronounced socialism, but he would have this 

 socialism a real one, in which organised society is 

 to correct the aberrations of the individual with 

 vigour. He sees, too, like Diihring, the import of 

 political economy in a comprehensive practical phi- 

 losophy, and some of his earlier writings were devoted 

 to vigorous discussions in it. Free-trade and laissez- 

 faire can find no place, of course, in the practical 

 theory of the moralist of the Whole. Spontaneous 

 " harmony of private interests," like the talk of the 

 Cobden school generally, is to him mere vagary, 

 springing from a fatuous social optimism. In many 



