52 ALOIS RIEHL 



thus erected the frame which, it is true, the 

 scientific investigation of following ages was 

 to fill out with a richer content, but which it 

 could not enlarge. For the general points of 

 view from which nature is investigated and 

 which these thinkers discovered one by one — 

 the conception of substance and the quantita- 

 tive invariability of the given, the subordina- 

 tion of events to law, the mathematical deter- 

 minateness of phenomena — are derived in the 

 last resort from the constitution of the human 

 spirit which carries out the investigation. 



But it was not possible that philosophy 

 should ever be content to remain mere science, 

 else it would not have been philosophy. For 

 the latter applies itself as such not only to 

 the whole of things but also to the whole spirit- 

 ual life and its creative tendencies. 



Socrates, the pedagogical genius of phil- 

 osophy, discovered in man a spiritual force 

 superior to all the motives of the sensuous 

 nature. He not only discovered this, he lived 

 it out. His life and its culminating act, his 

 death, appear to us, as to the ancients, the rev- 

 elation of an unconditioned might of the spirit, 



