494 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



influence on E. H. Weber as the earlier philosophy of 

 nature, to which it formed a pronounced opposition. 

 20. Herbart was not an experimental philosopher ; never- 



Influence of . 



Herbart. theless a place in a history of scientific Thought belongs 

 to him. Indeed, his philosophy, like that of Kant, and, 

 in quite a different way, of Schelling, has had a marked 

 influence on many thinkers and men of science who have 

 prepared the ground for an exact treatment of the pheno- 

 mena of Life and Mind. Among exact psychologists I 

 need only name Volkmann, Drobisch, Lotze, and in our 

 time Professor Wundt * of Leipzig. It is therefore of 

 interest to mark the precise point where Herbart's in- 

 fluence comes in. 



Although an exact school of psychology might aim at 

 studying psychical and psycho-physical phenomena with- 

 out reference to any general theory of the soul as the 

 supposed centre and substance of these phenomena, 

 the existing ideas and theories as to soul and mind 

 have nevertheless always played a great part in these 

 researches, just as it has been found impossible to free 

 biological research altogether from some theory of life. 

 Older psychologists were consciously or unconsciously 

 governed by the conception of a number of distinct 

 mental faculties. Even Kant's philosophy is still 

 embarrassed by this view, which reigned supreme in 

 the teaching of his predecessor Wolf. The attempt of 



1 This is not the place to speak 

 about the Herbartian school, which 

 is almost entirely confined to Ger- 

 many. I have referred to Prof. 

 Wundt because, in spite of a run- 

 ning criticism, in the ' Physiologische 

 Psychologic,' of Herbart's special 



doctrines, the author of that im- 

 portant and comprehensive work 

 himself declares (Preface to the 1st 

 ed., 1874) that for the formation 

 of his own views he is, next to 

 Kant, most indebted to Herbart. 



