THE VOCATION OF PHILOSOPHY 47 



the example of Helmholtz, took part in the 

 philosophical controversies on the foundations 

 of knowledge. Those two long divided and 

 hostile forces, science and philosophy, did not 

 stop at a mere reconciliation, but went on to 

 establish something in the nature of a confed- 

 eracy. Yet, promising as was the movement 

 thus inaugurated, and short as is the interval 

 that has elapsed since then, the period of 

 Scientific Philosophy seems to many in our 

 day to be already at an end. 



The young generation of the nineties, com- 

 pared with the preceding, evinced a new spir- 

 itual attitude, a change of direction in their 

 thought. Mere science failed to satisfy them. 

 Nietzsche became their spokesman. Life, more 

 exultant Life, their cry. And who would deny 

 them a certain right to this change of view? 

 Science, or what then passed for almost the 

 same thing, natural science, had, one might 

 almost say, over-reached itself. It had ex- 

 tended its claim to dominion beyond its legiti- 

 mate province — not indeed on the part of its 

 proper representatives but of those who had 

 appropriated its conclusions to dogmatic pur- 



