598 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



materialists, perhaps with more correctness than was the 

 case with Lotze and Virchow, the principal protagon- 

 ists in that celebrated battle with antiquated notions. 

 It was therefore with all the more authority that he 

 undertook, in the year 1872, to address the meeting of 

 German naturalists at Leipsic " On the Limits of Natural 

 Knowledge." The address created an enormous sensa- 

 tion, led to a great controversy and to many further 

 explanations by adherents as well as opponents, was 

 republished many times, and was latterly followed by 

 an equally celebrated oration before the Berlin Academy 

 (1880) entitled "The Seven World Riddles." ^ These 

 two deliverances contain a characteristic definition of 

 the ultimate bearing of recent scientific ideas upon the 

 great philosophical problems. And, inasmuch as they 

 emanated from a foremost representative of modern scien- 

 tific reasoning, and out of the centre of that eminent 

 scientific circle which counted among its members Helm- 

 holtz, Kirchhoff, and Virchow, and perpetuated the tradi- 

 tions of Johannes Mliller, it deservedly commands, up to 



^ This is the first and most con- 

 cise specimen in modern literature 

 of those attempts to revive, solve, 

 or declare insoluble the ancient 

 riddle of the Sphinx. On this 

 Kuno Fischer has a fine ironical 

 remark in the concluding para- 

 graph of his monumental ' History 

 of Modern Philosophy ' : " The 

 meaning of the world is not a 

 riddle as our modern Weltrdthsler 

 are fond of saying, in order either 

 to play or to vanquish the Sphinx, 

 but a problem which man puts to 

 himself, for he will and must know 

 the essence of his own being. The 



progressive solution of this pro- 

 blem, which can only take place in 

 the course of the ages of the world, 

 is the history of philosophy, for 

 the ages of humanity belong to the 

 theme of the problem, as in olden 

 times the four-footed, two-footed, 

 and three-footed ages of man be- 

 longed to the theme of the Sphinx. 

 In this connection with the ages of 

 mankind, in this light of a progress- 

 ive solution of the world-problem, 

 Hegel was the first to regard the 

 history of philosophy" (vol. viii., 

 p. 1190). 



