OF REALITY. 481 



Schopenhauer on the other. These thinkers both start 

 from that outstanding problem of Kant's philosophy — 

 the conception of the " Thing in itself " or " Things in 

 themselves." Herbart agrees with Kant that no direct 32. 



" . Herbart. 



answer can be given to the question, What is the Thing 

 in itself ? Though he thus introduces or retains what 

 we nowadays should call the agnostic position regarding 

 the ultimate nature of Eeality, and agrees with Kant 

 that we only know appearance, he at once adds the 

 significan-fe remark, characteristic of his whole philosophy, 

 that appearances, though not Eeality, are indications of 

 Eeality. He maintains that we can make use of these 

 indications to arrive at a consistent conception of the 

 Eeal — the object of philosophy being, through a re- 

 modelling of our empirical notions, to introduce into 

 them agreement in the place of seeming contradictions. 

 The first result of this process of remodelling is the 

 necessity of acknowledging the existence of many things 

 in the place of only one substance ; whereupon we may 

 remark that Kant himself never thoroughly explained 

 the relation of the " Thing in itself " to " Things in them- 

 selves," and the precise usage of the two terms. Thus 

 Herbart opposes to the monistic view which the ideal- 

 istic systems had inherited from Spinoza's Substance the 

 pluralistic view inherited from Leibniz's Monads. In 

 doing this he approaches, as Leibniz did before him, 

 the atomistic view. At that time this view prevailed 

 and was being greatly developed in the natural sciences. 

 By adopting it Herbart prepared the way for a mechan- 

 ical construction of phenomena which he, as already 

 stated, subsequently introduced also into psychology. In 

 VOL. in. 2 H 



