V
The great distinguishing feature of the last two decades of the century has been a movement of approximation, partly conscious and partly unconscious, between the representatives of science, and particularly of those sciences that deal with special aspects or elements of human life, on the one hand, and the representatives of idealistic philosophy on the other. The reconciling ideas of an earlier time have become better understood and have shown more effectively their power to reconcile. Not that this mediating power had previously been entirely unfelt. Even in the time when philosophy was most discredited in Germany, Lotze, in whom a cautious critical temper was combined with deep moral and religious sympathies, and a practical knowledge of the biological and medical sciences with careful studies of Kant and Hegel, sought to show how an idealistic view of the universe and of human life could be maintained consistently with the fullest recognition of scientific methods and results. And though his system was, on the whole, rather a compromise than a true reconciliation of philosophy and science, yet it has undoubtedly had very great influence in modifying the ideas of the opposing schools of thought and narrowing the ground of controversy between them. Thus the old English empirical psychology, which was represented by the Mills and by Mr. Bain, has gradually widened its scope in the hands of writers like Professor Ward and Mr. Stout, at first probably through the study of Herbart and then by contact with the revived idealistic movement. On the other hand, we may notice how idealistic writers, like Mr. Bradley and Mr. Bosanquet, have tried to absorb every lesson that can be learned from empiricism, and to shun with the utmost care the very suspicion of anything like dogmatism. Mr. Bradley’s denunciations of a “too easy monism” and a philosophy that turns the living world into a “ballet of bloodless categories” are too well known to be more than referred to. Nor is this the place to discuss whether his fear of such a result has not sometimes led him into compromises which are inconsistent with his own fundamental principle that the world must be conceived as an intelligible system. In any case, we may fairly point to his work and to the work of other writers animated by a similar spirit, as showing the growing prevalence of that reconciling spirit which seeks at once to do justice to all the results of empirical inquiry and of the investigations of the special sciences, and yet at the same time to give them a new interpretation in the light of an idealistic philosophy. It is impossible within our limits to illustrate this view of the tendencies of the time by further reference to the recent philosophical literature of England and America, or of Germany and France. Still less can I refer to the numerous books on special departments of inquiry in ethics and theology, in sociology and in history, in which the “ideally organic view of life and the world,” as we may call it, has shown its mediating and reconciling influence. Nor can I do more than refer to the counter current of pessimism, which has found its most distinguished representatives in Hartmann and Nietzsche; the former a man of great wealth of thought and dialectical power, whose philosophy is idealistic in all but its ultimate principle, and is indeed pessimistic only by an exaggeration of the opposition between the conscious and the unconscious working of reason; the latter, hardly a philosopher at all but rather a writer of pungent and suggestive aphorisms, winged with indignant passion against prevalent opinions—aphorisms which always contradict some one, and often contradict each other. From Nietzsche at his best we may receive a useful warning against too easily satisfying ourselves with the commonplaces of idealistic optimism; from Hartmann we may derive very considerable help in estimating the difficulties that have to be met by those who would seek to work out idealistic principles into a systematic view of the world. But, without attempting to enter upon any more detailed criticism of these or other important writers of recent years, I shall devote the space that remains to one general thought as to the present state of controversy, in relation to the fundamental principles of philosophy.