390 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



54. 

 Epistem- 

 ology and 

 exact 

 sciences. 



with a solution of those questions which Kant had 

 placed at the entrance of his celebrated Critiques. It 

 may, however, be doubted whether these purely theoreti- 

 cal, logical, and psychological investigations would have 

 brought about, by themselves, that great change which 

 has come over our ideas on the nature and value of 

 knowledge during the last forty years, had it not been 

 that the exact sciences themselves, about the middle 

 of the century, outgrew the boundaries which the older 



'Mind' (vol. vi., 1881) has given, 

 as it seems to me, what is still the 

 best exposition of Renouvier's 

 fundamental conceptions, vyhich he 

 classes with his own as " Pheno- 

 menism." " Had I," he says {loc. 

 cit., p. 32), "been acquainted with 

 M. Renouvier's Works when I 

 published the ' Philosophy of 

 Reflection ' [2 vols., 1878] (as I must 

 now confess with shame I was not), 

 I should not have laid claim, in the 

 unqualified way I did, to have been 

 the first to dispense in a system of 

 philosophy with the notion of 

 substance" (vol. ii. p. 189), " though 

 basing that claim on my views 

 with regard to time and space. 

 It is equally dispensed with in M. 

 Renouvier's system, though its 

 place is not supplied in the same 

 way ; and this retractation, unim- 

 portant as it may be, is therefore 

 his due." Mr Hodgson states, 

 however, that "a prior name ought 

 not to be omitted when we speak 

 of a critical philosophy, the name 

 of a younger contemporary of Kant 

 himself, that of Salomon Maimon. 

 He too was phenomenist and criti- 

 cist, but he did not live to bring 

 hia philosophical system to comple- 

 tion. M. Renouvier's originality, 

 too, is in every way beyond ques- 

 tion. He can in no sense be called 

 the successor of Maimon. Their 

 ways diverge widely, though it is 



from a point within phenomenism. 

 Both go togetlier up to the point of 

 complete correlation between con- 

 sciousness and its objects, which is 

 the note of phenomenism ; but 

 when they come to the analysis 

 of phenomena within consciousness, 

 then immediately their differences 

 begin, diSerences which are of a 

 fundamental kind." 



If the painstaking investiga- 

 tion of the psychological and 

 logical foundations of philosophical 

 thought may be considered as one 

 of the most appropriate subjects 

 for philosophical teaching, then it 

 seems to me that a careful study of 

 M. Renouvier's earlier works would 

 serve as an Introduction quite as 

 valuable as that of Lotze's Logic 

 and Metaphysic in German or Mr 

 Bradley's Logic (assisted by Prof. 

 Bosanquet's ' Treatise on Logic,' 

 2 vols., 1888) in Enghsh literature. 

 Renouvier has the further advant- 

 age of being equally acquainted 

 with the two independent move- 

 ments bearing upon the problem of 

 knowledge, that originating with 

 Kant in Germany and that begin- 

 ning with Mill in England, al.so 

 with the one-sided development of 

 the former in the direction of 

 Idealism and Absolutism in Hegel, 

 and of that of the latter in the 

 direction of empiricism and natural- 

 ism under Spencer in England. 



