INTRODUCTORY. 



19 



nation. It does not seem unnatural that a movement 

 so sudden and rapid, which resulted in such momentous 

 changes and even formed an important factor in the 

 great anti-Napoleonic revolution of Europe/ should find 

 its counterpart in an idealistic school of philosophy 

 which started in a lordly manner from the inner world 

 of thought and the supposed data of consciousness, and 

 looked down with a certain amount of contempt upon 

 the opposite school of philosophy which dealt more 

 exclusively with the problems of wealth, industry, and 

 the interests of the masses. 



The history of this movement, which may be called i4. 

 the idealistic movement of thought, and which will methods 



° oven each 



occupy us more in detail in the course of this work, has their limit. 

 shown, quite as much as the history of the later or 

 psycho-physical movement, that any exclusive method 

 soon exhausts its resources. In trying to find the way 

 outside into nature and life it very soon arrived at 

 an impassable limit, just as I have had occasion to 

 show that the psycho-physical methods by themselves 

 lead to an impassable limit beyond which lies the inner 

 experience or introspective view which alone reveals to 

 us the specific nature of our mind. 



Both methods, the one that works from inside out 15. 



Their 



and the other that works from outside in, have been of pMinaueut 



value. 



great value. Perhaps one of the most important gains has 

 been the conviction to which both lines of reasoning have 

 led, that beyond the region from which each started separ- 



^ The history of this movement 

 has been written in a masterly 

 manner by the late Sir J. R. Seeley 

 in his ' Life and Times of Stein,' a 



work which largely, as it seems to 

 me, in consequence of its title, has 

 not gained that popularity in this 

 country which it richly deserves. 



