208 PHILOSOPHY 



in an important way to the proper conception of the task and the 

 method of philosophy, and influences greatly the development of 

 psychology, both as a science that is pedagogic to philosophy, and as 

 laying the basis for pedagogical principles and practice. But Herbart 

 commits again the ancient fallacy, under the spell of which so much of 

 the Kantian criticism was bound ; and which identifies contradictions 

 that belong to the imperfect or illusory conceptions of individual 

 thinkers with insoluble antinomies inherent in reason itself. In spite 

 of the little worth and misleading character of his view of perception, 

 and the quite complete inadequacy of the method by which, at a 

 single leap, he reaches the one all-explanatory principle of his philo- 

 sophy, Schopenhauer made a most important contribution to the 

 reflective thought of the century. It is true, as Kuno Fischer has 

 said, that it seems to have occurred to Schopenhauer only twenty- 

 five years after he had propounded his theory, that will, as it appears 

 in consciousness, is as truly phenomenal as is intellect. It is also true 

 that his theory of knowledge and his conception of Reality, as meas- 

 ured by their power to satisfy and explain our total experience, are 

 inflicted with irreconcilable contradictions. Neither can we accord 

 firm confidence or high praise to the "Way of Salvation" which 

 somehow Will can attain to follow by aesthetic contemplation and 

 ascetic self-denial. Yet the philosophy of Schopenhauer rightly 

 insists upon our Idealistic construction of Reality having regard to 

 aspects of experience which his predecessors had quite too much 

 neglected; and even its spiteful and exaggerated reminders of the 

 facts which contradict the tendency of all Idealism to construct a 

 smooth, regular, and altogether pleasing conception of the Being of 

 the World, have been of great benefit to the development of the latter 

 half of the nineteenth century. 



In estimating the thoughts and the products of modern Idealism 

 we ought not to forget the larger multitude of thoughtful men, both 

 in Germany and elsewhere, who have contributed toward shaping 

 the course of reflection in the attempt to answer the problems which 

 the critical philosophy left to the nineteenth century. It is a singu- 

 lar comment upon the caprices of fame that, in philosophy as in sci- 

 ence, politics, and art, some of those who have really reasoned most 

 soundly and acutely, if not also effectively upon these problems, are 

 little known even by name in the history of the philosophical develop- 

 ment of the century. Among the earlier members of this group, did 

 space permit, we should wish to mention Berger, Solger, Steffens, 

 and others, who strove to reconcile the positions of a subjective ideal- 

 ism with a realistic but pantheistic conception of the Being of the 

 World. There are others, who like Weisse, I. H. Fichte, C. P. 

 Fischer, and Braniss, more or less bitterly or moderately and reas- 

 onably, opposed the method and the conclusions of the Hegelian dia- 



