504 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



show that speculation arrives finally at conceptions 

 which harmonise with the essence of these beliefs, 

 although it could not have produced them, is the task 

 of the philosophy of religion. Philosophy thus estab- 

 lishes an understanding between these two regions of 

 mental activity, the region of the intellect on the 

 one side and the region of the emotions and 

 moral impulses on the other. Ever since the time 

 of Leibniz this has been the aim of the idealistic 

 philosophy abroad. Even Kant, in whose writings the 

 critical spirit supervened, acknowledges this to be the 

 aim of his criticism ; in Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel the 

 dogmatic spirit asserts itself again with a greater con- 

 fidence in the constructive powers of the human intellect. 

 In Lotze, as already to some extent in Herbart, philo- 

 sophy returns again to the more modest task of under- 

 standing, interpreting, and harmonising the two large 

 and independent regions of thought — the intellectual and 

 emotional, the mechanical and spiritual view of things, 

 both of which spring from independent but equally real 

 sources in the human mind. 



Having arrived at this position, philosophical thought 

 encounters several new problems which had been tem- 

 porarily overlooked or forgotten during the creative 

 epoch. The differences which again and again manifest 

 themselves in human thought, point to different,sources 

 from which human thought takes its beginnings. This 

 is a psychological problem which demands a special 

 investigation as to the grounds of certainty in matters of 

 knowledge and in matters of belief — i.e., regarding things 

 sensuous and intellectual on the one side, and things 



