350 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



41 



Criticism 

 pre- 

 dominant. 



SO forcibly is owing to various circumstances, among 

 which the two following are of special interest in a 

 History of Thought. The first refers to the internal 

 character, the second to the external fate, of the new 

 doctrine. 



In Kant, the critical and analytical, the dividing and 

 dissecting spirit, cast into the background the synthetic 

 and constructive process of thought, and still more the 

 synoptic and comprehensive view.^ Although Kant had, 

 as stated above, a central conviction which was in the 

 end to be the crowning idea of his system, — the supreme 

 reality, importance, and dignity of the moral principle, — 

 this was not put forward with sufficient clearness and 

 emphasis as a constructive principle in the first of his 



and Windelband, who themselves 

 have made important contributions. 

 Prof. Vaihinger was also active, 

 on the occasion of the Kant 

 Centenary, 1904, in creating a 

 " Kant-foundation " and a " Kant- 

 Society." The Berlin Academy has 

 been publisliingsince then a complete 

 edition of Kant's Works and Corre- 

 spondence. As Professor Heinze 

 says, "a real comprehensive digest 

 of the results of recent Kant re- 

 searches has not yet appeared." 



1 Anticipating what I shall en- 

 deavour to bring out more clearly 

 in this and following chapters, I 

 may say that the synthetic and 

 constructive spirit gained the upper 

 hand in the most prominent of 

 Kant's immediate followers, in 

 Fichte. Subsequently, the synoptic 

 view was that peculiar to Schelling, 

 in whose writings the power of 

 synthesis and of construction, and 

 still more that of criticism and 

 patient analysis, was much less 

 conspicuous. The synthetical pro- 

 cess, although opposed by Kant 

 himself to the analytical in his 



celebrated distinction between syn- 

 thetic and analytic judgments, 

 leads always only to an artificial 

 product in which the constituent 

 elements are still discernible, as 

 the stones are in a building, the 

 particles in a mosaic, or the parts 

 in a machine. In order to come 

 nearer to the true nature of real, 

 physical or mental, things, we must 

 start with their Together as it pre- 

 sents itself in the expanded world 

 of time and space, or as it is con- 

 centrated in the totality of human 

 intellect and character. This was 

 the starting-point of Schelling's 

 original speculations, reached, to a 

 great extent, under the influence 

 of Goethe's poetical insight into 

 the world of nature and of mind. 

 Hegel, in his conception of the 

 absolute mind, tried to combine 

 the synoptical view of Schelling 

 with the constructive spirit of 

 Fichte, and in doing so has, in a 

 different way from Kant, issued 

 what has become the programme 

 of pliilosophical thought ever since. 



