" GERMANISM." 



141 



details to which the author allows himself to descend. Egmont 

 is not a bad play by any means. But to provide a father of a 

 family with a fiancee, as Goethe does, in violation of history, is 

 simply a confession of failure. One feels how Shakespeare 

 would have risen to the level of his hero, and provided us with 

 another portraiture, rivalling, if not excelling, his Othello, 

 Mad)eth, Hamlet, and Lear. As to Schiller, he does not seem 

 to me to rise to a high dramatic level. There is something 

 theatrical rather than dramatic about his heroes, and Max and 

 Thekla, in particular, are sentiment personified. The Lager 

 seems to me far the best in the Wallenstein trilogy. It is tiTily a 

 wondrous photograph, if I may so say, of war and its evils 

 and miseries. 



It is, however, to her philosophy that Germany owes her 

 pre-eminence. The long list of philosophers she can produce 

 far outweiorhs those of anv other countrv. And vet, thouorh I 

 shall be accused of prejudice in saying so, I must believe that her 

 credit in this sphere has been very seriously over-rated. Meta- 

 physics has been called a science, but I contend that, strictly 

 speaking, it has no right to that appellation. Only those forms 

 of research which can be tested by observation and experience 

 — or experiments — deserve the name of " science,'' because 

 the correspondence between theory and fact, displayed in endless 

 successions of applied tests, enables the inquirer to arrive at 

 practical certainty that his theory is true. But metaphysical 

 investigation does not conform to this rule. A philosophy it 

 may fairly be termed, because it is, no doubt, a genuine search 

 after truth. But a science, I believe, it is not, because there is 

 no testing of results. Its postulates may be true, or they may not ; 

 but there is no certainty about the matter. Sometimes these 

 postulates approach very near the truth, but still they are only 

 guesses. The ancient philosophers could only speculate more 

 or less wisely. Some of them did speculate, very wisely and very 

 well. Plato especially. Aristotle did even accumulate facts ; 

 but he did not test his theories by comparison with results. 

 His explanations of facts were therefore arbitrary, and not in- 

 frequently absurd. Modern psychology may some day grow 

 into a science. But it is as yet little more than a philosophy. Only 

 when its theories arise out of the facts, and are systematically 

 tested by comparison with facts, can they be regarded as demon- 

 strated. One blemish among German metaphysicians is the 

 habit of glorifying formulae of classification into living realities. 



