Conclusion 361 



power of impulse has been exalted, and the guidance of the intellect 

 abandoned. Theosophy, occultism, magic, and spiritualism have 

 returned to the places from which they seemed to have been 

 finally banished. The Professor traces for us the causes and pro- 

 gress of this astonishing revolt against the view of the world which 

 not long ago seemed to be triumphant. 



Even Kant, while discerning beyond the realm of mathematics 

 and physics that of ethics and aesthetics, considered these as out- 

 side the pale of true knowledge, which belongs to mathematics 

 and physics alone. Hence arose the agnosticism of writers like 

 Du Bois-Reymond, Huxley, and Spencer. But Spencer in his 

 language about the Unknowable was approaching the mystics 

 without knowing it. Since his time reflection has shown clearly 

 that mechanism and evolution are two concepts which do not 

 agree together. Mechanism asserts quantitative permanence and 

 determination by mathematical law ; evolution asserts qualitative 

 transformation which cannot be calculated mathematically. The 

 doctrine of evolution rehabilitates history, and destroys the rigidity 

 of the mechanical method. In practice it is associated with a 

 valuation for which mathematics can find no place. A still harder 

 blow was dealt when science itself began to be treated historically 

 as a mental habit in process of evolution, the direction of this 

 evolution being determined not by correspondence to external 

 truth, but by practical human needs. This is the genesis of 

 pragmatism, which disintegrates the whole structure of science, 

 and incidentally bids every superstition which seems to work, to 

 take heart of grace. 



The varieties of Voluntarism, which starts with Kant's 

 primacy of the practical reason, but carries this doctrine much 

 further, cannot here be discussed. On the other hand, the general 

 tendency of Hegelianism is to regard the world, both as given by 

 experience and as constructed by science in its concepts, as an illusory 

 appearance of a deeper reality, to the understanding of which we 

 are led by speculative philosophy. The Hegelians, however, 

 though their audacious claims for dialectic as the revealer of reality 

 may make them impatient of laborious research, are not such 

 enemies of science as the other schools enumerated by Professor 

 Aliotta. In this they resemble the school of Plato, which allowed 

 science to die, but welcomed its rebirth at the Renaissance. 



There is a French school which strikes at Naturalism by 



