THE WONDERS OF LIFE 



views of the two poets. Goethe notoriously described 

 himself as a "renegade non-Christian." The creed of 

 the -'great heathen" Goethe, as we find it in Faust and 

 Prometheus and God and the World, and a hundred other 

 magnificent poems, is pure monism, of the pantheistic 

 character which we take to be alone correct — ^hylozoism ; 

 he is equally far from the one-sided materialism of 

 Holbach or Carl Vogt and the extreme dynamism of 

 Leibnitz and Ostwald. Schiller by no means shared 

 this realistic view of things ; his idealistic sense fled be- 

 yond nature into the spirit world. However, our theo- 

 retic hylozoism does not exclude practical idealism, as 

 Goethe's whole life showed. On the other hand, princes 

 and priests often let us see how easily theoretical ideal- 

 ism goes with practical materialism, or hedonism. 



In the month of February, 1904, the centenary of 

 the death of Kant was celebrated throughout the world 

 of culture. In numbers of academic speeches and writ- 

 ings he was greeted as the greatest thinker of Germany. 

 He died on the same date (February 12th) on which Dar- 

 win was born five years later. It is unquestionable 

 that Kant has had an immense influence on the whole 

 development of German philosophy. But while recog- 

 nizing his extraordinary genius, we must not be blind to 

 the glaring contradictions and defects of his dualist 

 system. From the monistic point of view, we can only 

 regard his profound influence during the whole of the 

 nineteenth century as mischievous. Most certainly he 

 had a quite exceptional talent for philosophic specula- 

 tion and penetrating thought, and he added to his great 

 mental qualities a blameless character and an undeni- 

 able sense of truth in life (though not in thought). It 

 was a serious misfortune for Kant and for the philo- 

 sophic school he led that his education prevented him 

 from acquiring a thorough knowledge and correct con- 

 ception of the real world. Shut up throughout life 



442 



