The speculative impulse, especially in the soul of the German people, is ineradicable. It has neither allowed itself to be discouraged by the collapse of the Hegelian edifice, nor to be led astray by the clamor of the apostles of empiricism, nor to be intimidated by the papal proclamation of the infallibility of Thomas Aquinas.[1] Manifold attempts have been made at a new conception of the world, and with varying success. Of the earlier theories[2] only two have been able to gather a circle of adherents—the dualistic theism of Günther (1783-1863), and the organic view of the world of Trendelenburg (1802-72).
[Footnote 2: In 1879 a summons was sent forth from Rome for the revival and dissemination of the Thomistic system as the only true philosophy (cf. R. Eucken, Die Philosophic des Thomas von Aquino und die Kultur der Neuzeit, 1886). This movement is supported by the journals, Jahrbuch für Philosophie und spekulative Theologie, edited by Professor E. Commer of Münster, 1886 seq., and Philosophisches Jahrbuch, edited, at the instance and with the support of the Görres Society, by Professor Const. Gutberlet of Fulda, 1888 seq. While the text-books of Hagemann, Stoeckl, Gutberlet, Pesch, Commer, C.M. Schneider, and others also follow Scholastic lines, B. Bolzano (died 1848), M. Deutinger (died 1864) and his pupil Neudecker, Oischinger, Michelis, and W. Rosenkrantz (1821-74; Science of Knowledge, 1866-68), who was influenced by Schelling, have taken a freer course.]
[Footnote 2: Trahndorff, gymnasial professor in Berlin (1782-1863), Aesthetics, 1827 (cf. E. von Hartmann in the Philosophische Monatshefte, vol. xxii. 1886, p. 59 seq., and J. von Billewicz, in the same, vol. xxi. 1885, p. 561 seq.); J.F. Reiff in Tübingen: System of the Determinations of the Will, 1842; K. Chr. Planck (died 1880): The Ages of the World, 1850 seq.; Testament of a German, edited by Karl Köstlin, 1881; F. Röse (1815-59), On the Method of the Knowledge of the Absolute, 1841; Psychology as Introduction to the Philosophy of Individuality, 1856. Emanuel Sharer follows Röse. Friedrich Rohmer (died 1856): Science of God, Science of Man, in Friedrich Rohmer's Wissenschaft und Leben, edited by Bluntschli and Rud. Seele, 6 vols., 1871-92.]
Anton Günther (engaged in authorship from 1827; Collected Writings, 1881; Anti-Savarese, edited with an appendix by P. Knoodt), who in 1857 was compelled to retract his views, invokes the spirit of Descartes in opposition to the Hegelian pantheism. In agreement with Descartes, Günther starts from self-consciousness (in the ego being and thought are identical), and brings not only the Creator and the created world, but also nature (to which the soul is to be regarded as belonging) and spirit into a relation of exclusive opposition, yet holds that in man nature (body and soul) and spirit are united, and that they interact without prejudice to their qualitative difference. J.H. Pabst (died in 1838 in Vienna), Theodor Weber of Breslau, Knoodt of Bonn (died 1889), V. Knauer of Vienna and others are Güntherians.
Adolf Trendelenburg[1] of Berlin, the acute critic of Hegel and Herbart, in his own thinking goes back to the philosophy of the past, especially to that of Aristotle. Motion and purpose are for him fundamental facts, which are common to both being and thinking, which mediate between the two, and make the agreement of knowledge and reality possible. The ethical is a higher stage of the organic. Space, time, and the categories are forms of thought as well as of being; the logical form must not be separated from the content, nor the concept from intuition. We must not fail to mention that Trendelenburg introduced a peculiar and fruitful method of treating the history of philosophy, viz., the historical investigation of particular concepts, in which Teichmüller of Dorpat (1832-88; Studies in the History of Concepts, 1874; New Studies in the History of Concepts, 1876-79; The Immortality of the Soul, 2d ed., 1879; The Nature of Love, 1880; Literary Quarrels in the Fourth Century before Christ, 1881 and 1884), and Eucken of Jena (cf. pp. 17 and 623) have followed his example. Kym in Zurich (born 1822; Metaphysical Investigations, 1875; The Problem of Evil, 1878) is a pupil of Trendelenburg.
[Footnote 1: Trendelenburg: Logical Investigations, 1840, 3d ed., 1870; Historical Contributions to Philosophy, 3 vols., 1846, 1855, 1867; Natural Law on the Basis of Ethics, 1860, 2d ed., 1868. On Trendelenburg cf. Eucken in the Philosophische Monatshefte, 1884.]
Of more recent systematic attempts the following appear worthy of mention: Von Kirchmann (1802-84; from 1868 editor of the Philosophische Bibliothek), The Philosophy of Knowledge, 1865; Aesthetics, 1868; On the Principles of Realism, 1875; Catechism of Philosophy 2d ed., 1881; E. Dühring (born 1833), Natural Dialectic, 1865; The Value of Life, 1865, 3d ed, 1881; Critical History of the Principles of Mechanics, 1873, 2d ed., 1877; Course of Philosophy, 1875 (cf. on Dühring, Helene Druskowitz, 1889); J. Baumann of Göttingen (born 1837), Philosophy as Orientation concerning the World, 1872; Handbook of Ethics, 1879; Elements of Philosophy, 1891; L. Noiré, The Monistic Idea, 1875, and many other works; Frohschammer of Munich (born 1821), The Phantasy as the Fundamental Principle of the World-process, 1877; On the Genesis of Humanity, and its Spiritual Development in Religion, Morality and Language, 1883; On the Organization and Culture of Human Society, 1885.
In the first rank of the thinkers who have made their appearance since Hegel and Herbart stand Fechner and Lotze, both masters in the use of exact methods, yet at the same time with their whole souls devoted to the highest questions, and superior to their contemporaries in breadth of view as in the importance and range of their leading ideas—Fechner a dreamer and sober investigator by turns, Lotze with gentle hand reconciling the antitheses in life and science.
Gustav Theodor Fechner[1] (1801-87; professor at Leipsic) opposes the abstract separation of God and the world, which has found a place in natural inquiry and in theology alike, and brings the two into the same relation of correspondence and reciprocal reference as the soul and the body. The spirit gives cohesion to the manifold of material parts, and needs them as a basis and material for its unifying activity. As our ego connects the manifold of our activities and states in the unity of consciousness, so the divine spirit is the supreme unity of consciousness for all being and becoming. In the spirit of God everything is as in ours, only expanded and enhanced. Our sensations and feelings, our thoughts and resolutions are His also, only that He, whose body all nature is, and to whom not only that which takes place in spirits is open, but also that which goes on between them, perceives more, feels deeper, thinks higher, and wills better things than we. According to the analogy of the human organism, both the heavenly bodies and plants are to be conceived as beings endowed with souls, although they lack nerves, a brain, and voluntary motion. How could the earth bring forth living beings, if it were itself dead? Shall not the flower itself rejoice in the color and fragrance which it produces, and with which it refreshes us? Though its psychical life may not exceed that of an infant, its sensations, at all events, since they do not form the basis of a higher activity, are superior in force and richness to those of the animal. Thus the human soul stands intermediate in the scale of psychical life: beneath and about us are the souls of plants and animals, above us the spirits of the earth and stars, which, sharing in and encompassing the deeds and destinies of their inhabitants, are in their turn embraced by the consciousness of the universal spirit. The omnipresence of the divine spirit affords at the same time the means of escaping from the desolate "night view" of modern science, which looks upon the world outside the perceiving individual as dark and silent. No, light and sound are not merely subjective phenomena within us, but extend around us with objective reality—as sensations of the divine spirit, to which everything that vibrates resounds and shines.
[Footnote 1: Nanna, or on the Psychical Life of Plants, 1848; Zend-Avesta, or on the Things of Heaven and the World Beyond, 1851; Physical and Philosophical Atomism, 1855; The Three Motives and Grounds of Belief, 1863; The Day View, 1879; Elements of Aesthetics, 1876; Elements of Psycho-physics, 1860; In the Cause of Psycho-physics, 1877; Review of the Chief Points in Psycho-physics, 1882; Book of the Life after Death, 1836, 3d ed., 1887; On the Highest Good, 1846; Four Paradoxes, 1846; On the Question of the. Soul, 1861; Minor Works by Dr. Mises (Fechner's pseudonym), 1875. On Fechner cf. J. E. Kuntze, Leipsic, 1892.]