OF KNOWLEDGE. 335 



surrounding us in time and space, and that which 

 deals with the highest questions of our life, our 

 destiny, and our duties.^ Occupying this position, the 

 object of the philosopher is not to increase our know- 

 ledge of things natural or spiritual, but to appreciate 

 the difference and importance of these two regions of 

 knowledge, to show how we acquire each, what kind of 

 certainty is attainable in either, and, if possible, to make 

 sure that neither of the two should overstep its true 

 limits and interfere with the other. But the immediate 

 followers of Leibniz on the Continent did not maintain 

 this judicial attitude, but, as I stated above, devoted 

 themselves more exclusively to a rationalising of all 

 knowledge. This attempt was somewhat justified by 

 the necessity of teaching philosophy in the High Schools 

 and Universities. It entailed a systematisation of the so. 

 Leibnizian ideas, which by their author himself had tisationof 



Leibniz's 



never been developed in a final, systematic, and com- ''^^^■ 

 plete form. In this attempt many of the best sug- 

 gestions of Leibniz were lost — to be taken up again at 

 a much later period, as I shall have ample opportunity 

 to show in the sequel. 



All the foremost thinkers in the seventeenth and 

 eighteenth centuries on the Continent were guided by 

 the desire to arrive at a unity of philosophic thought 

 and to establish a consistent philosophic creed, which 

 should do justice to the claims of science as much as to 

 those of religion, affording equally the means of increas- 

 ing knowledge and of arriving at the ultimate grounds of 



1 Lotze has given a clearer world of things with their con- 

 definition to this twofold aspect nections and the world of values 

 by distinguishing between the or worths. 



