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PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



course of his philosophical career he came under the 

 influence of almost all the prominent systems and 

 doctrines of ancient and modern times. He assimilated 

 successively many of the suggestions and leading ideas 

 thrown out by his predecessors and contemporaries. He 

 was thus an eclectic in the best sense of the word, in the 

 sense in which Aristotle in ancient times, Leibniz in 

 more recent, Schleiermacher and Lotze in quite recent 

 times, may be called eclectics. Though very different 

 from Aristotle and Leibniz, who aimed at putting their 

 ideas into exact scientific language, and more akin to 

 Plato in his love of the poetical form of diction, he 

 nevertheless resembled Leibniz in his endeavour to re- 

 concile existing differences and contrasts, to mediate 

 between seemingly opposite points of view. His was an 

 exceedingly receptive mind, whose originality consisted 

 in finding unity among diversities and establishing sug- 

 gestive analogies. To him were attached also prominent 

 workers in very different regions of thought and learn- 

 ing : from the naturalistic pantheist Oken to the mysti- 

 cal theosophist Baader, from the pathologist Kieser to 



sophy. For Kuno Fischer saw the 

 consummation of this philosophy 

 and the programme for its future 

 in a form of spiritual rationalism 

 towards which Hegel had given, as 

 it were, a first approximation and 

 a comprehensive programme. He 

 did not recognise, as his disciple 

 Prof. Windelband has done, that 

 before this programme could or 

 would be more adequately car- 

 ried out a great reaction against 

 the whole of rationalistic thought 

 would set in and have to be dealt 

 with. Accordingly W'indelband's 

 profound and advanced insight into 

 the courses of quite recent thought 



has led him to add a new chapter to 

 the history of German — as indeed 

 also to that of European — specula- 

 tion. This chapter bears the title 

 of ' Irrationalism,' and compiises 

 such names as Schelling in his latest 

 phase, Feuerbach, Hartmann, and 

 others, ending for the moment with 

 Nietzsche. Out of the hopelessness 

 of this final ending of the philo- 

 sophy of Reason in Unreason the 

 way to new vigour of speculative 

 thought is, as is indicated in the 

 closing page of Windelbaud's 

 ' History of Philosophy,' to be 

 found in the conception of value. 



