112 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



exact science. We may ask the question : What is the 

 reason that, in former instances, the critical movement 

 was so soon superseded by constructive efforts, whereas 

 modern criticism, notably in Germany, has become a 

 growing, all - destructive, and dominant current? The 

 20. answer to the question is this : Criticism in former 



Its method- 



acter''^' times was not really methodical ; it was casual, in many 

 cases brilliant, but it was not conducted on any fixed 

 principles, and was therefore easily overpowered by 

 novel and daring speculations and by that enthusiasm 

 of creative effort which is always absent in purely 

 negative movements. 



The critical movement both in the age of Socrates 

 and in the age of Descartes developed very rapidly 

 into scepticism, which, as it marks the last stage of the 

 destructive movement of thought, has not in itself the 

 germs of any further development, and is usually 

 followed by a complete reaction in favour of an un- 

 critical acceptance of some dogmatic position. Kant 

 was the first great thinker who desired to interpose 

 between the sceptical stage — -which had been reached 

 in England and France through the influence of Locke 

 and Hume, of Bayle and Voltaire — and a new posi- 

 tive philosophy, which he had in view, a methodical 

 examination of the ways and means by which the 

 human mind could arrive at certainty and knowledge. 

 He laid the foundation of a special philosophical dis- 

 cipline which has latterly received the name of 

 " Erkenntnisstheorie " (theory of knowledge) in Germany, 

 and which has become domiciled in England under the 

 name " Epistemology." But neither Kant, in the purely 



