denoted by that word will be other processes just as important and 

 just as essential. Modern experimental psychology, since the days 

 of Hegel, has vindicated its right to be the propaedeutic to philoso- 

 phy, and it is mainly because Hegel was not able to enter the domain 

 of philosophy through the gateway of an adequate psychology that 

 the system of absolute idealism does not to-day occupy the same 

 high pedestal that it once had. 



That this idealistic development finds its main source in Kant's 

 " work is evident. That there are other tendencies, which may, like- 

 wise, claim to be, in a measure at least, the result of the critical 

 philosophy is also true. Positivism, as taught by Auguste Comte, 

 and furthered in England by John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer, 

 emphasizes the positive sciences, which are placed over against a 

 philosophy or a metaphysics considered as mere speculation. The 

 first critique of Kant had shown the necessity of confining scientific 

 knowledge to phenomena, and, although it was certainly not the 

 author's final purpose, it had seemed, for the most part, to deny the 

 possibility of any further knowledge. Under any circumstances, 

 it was just this aspect of Kant's work that Comte emphasized. 

 True positive knowledge is to be had of phenomena only. To 

 observe the facts given in sense-experience, to determine by the 

 help of experiment the relations of these and therewith to discover 

 the laws of nature, this becomes, practically, the sole task of all 

 proper investigation. Such a work the different sciences are under- 

 taking. Metaphysics has had its day. Its importance is now only 

 historical, and, in its place, are the different positive sciences. 

 Still, since the different sciences themselves have certain relations, 

 it is possible to classify these, and this work a positive philosophy 

 may undertake. Comte's classification commences with the most 

 abstract science, and ascends to the most concrete. In this way we 

 pass from mathematics, which is most general and most abstract, 

 to astronomy, to physics, to chemistry, to biology, and, finally to 

 the most concrete of all, sociology. Each of these depends upon the 

 truths of all the preceding sciences. Certain of the sciences, the 

 more concrete, have not developed so rapidly as others. The more 

 complex and concrete a science is the longer it takes it to pass from 

 a theological phase through a metaphysical to the positive. In 

 the first of these phases, phenomena are supposed to be governed 



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