INTRODUCTION. 55 



of mental progress of which I have been able to take 

 personal notice and of which I have felt the immediate 

 personal influence. A tracing as concisely as possible 

 of this comparatively small portion of the course of 

 European thought may be the first approximation to 

 more accurate delineations, which . themselves will be 

 the means of gradually gaining a truer idea of the pur- 

 port and significance that belong to the larger dimen- 

 sions of the mental life of mankind. 



This life does not consist in the accumulated knowledge 

 of our century, not in the results of scientific inquiry de- 

 posited in libraries and museums, not in the many schools 

 for learning and study, not in educational and social re- 

 forms, least of all in political and economic institutions. 

 These are all external objects, which are capable of being 

 described or photographed like the external objects of 

 nature. The mental life of mankind consists in the inner so. 



What the 



processes of reflection, by which these external objects have 

 been produced, by which man has been able to add to the cc 

 physical creation of nature a new creation of his own, by 

 which he has been able to change the face of the earth, 

 and endow the objects of nature with an ideal meaning. 

 To this end he is always inventing and using methods 

 which change, suggesting and applying principles which 

 turn out to be half true or totally fallacious, guessing at 

 results and aims which have to be abandoned, inventing 

 theories which are short-lived in fact, erecting scaffold- 

 ings with the help of which he raises the structures of 

 Society, Art, and Science : these remain as the historical 

 testimonies of his activity ; the scaffoldings are removed as 

 of merely transient and temporary value ; and yet they 



