GERMAN PHILOSOPHY. When'we speak of the philosophy of Germany, we do not necessarily imply that it differs from the philosophy of any other country in respect of the problems it seeks to solve, any more than when we compare the German chemistry with that of France or England. To characterise German philosophy, means nothing more than to point out the peculiar path that German thinkers have followed, and the degree of success that has attended their investigations, in seeking to answer those speculative questions which are understood to form the domain • of philosophy, and which concern all men, if they concern any. Understood in this sense, German philoso phy claims a high place—according to many, the highest. At least, for almost a century now, a more general interest has been taken in the cultivation of philosophy in Ger many then elsewhere, and abstruse and deep speculation has been chiefly represented by German thinkers. That country has thus made up for the ground she lost by 'con tinuing to adhere to the traditional forms of scholastic philosophy after they had been forsaken in France and England. 'lids spread of philosophic culture was coincident with the perfecting and adaptation of the German language to prose composition. For though Leibnitz confined himself, in his philosophical writings, to the Latin and French languages, Chr. Thomasius, about the same time, had begun to employ the mother tongue both in academic lecturing and in writing, a practice which was extended by the numerous writings of Chr. Wolf. The expansion of German literature in the last half of the 18th c. completely emancipated speculation from the trammels of a foreign idiom, ana alongside of a rich poetical literature there sprang up a philosophy which may claim comparison with that of Greece.
As regards the scientific characteristics German philosophy, it may be remarked that the systems put forth by Bacon in England, Descartes in France, and Spinosa in Holland, had but little influence in Germany at the time of their appearance. It was Locke that first awakened any considerable attention. The empiricism of this philoso pher, who grounds all knowledge on experience and makes psychology the regulator of metaphysics; called forth the opposition of Leibnitz, the first German that made an epoch in the history of modern philosophy, and who, from the varied impulse he com municated, must be looked upon as the creator of the philosophic spirit in Germany. At the same time the fundamental doctrines of Leibnitz s system—that of monads, of pre-established harmony, and of innate ideas—were rather genial hypotheses than regularly established propositions. To remedy this, Wolf endeavored to construct a system of philosophy complete in all its parts, as required by the forms of logic, in doing which, however, he set aside precisely those doctrines that formed the characteristics of Leibnitz's philosophy. The great influence exercised by Wolf is shown by the wide circulation of his writings, and the multitude of his disciples and adherents. Wolf him self, however, outlived his fame, and the original philosophic mind in Germany west to sleep for a period, during which a sort of eclecticism, without any fundamental principle—the so-called philosophy of "common sense," prevalent in England and France in the 18th c.—became generally spread. This period, however, was not without
great intellectual excitement of other binds. Poetry; reform in education, politics, and religious enlightenment. keenly occupied men's minds; .old customs and associations, both in family and political life, were shaken; and preparation was silently going oa for a great and radical revolution.
Kant. with whom the next period of German philosophy begins, thus found an age ready to receive impressions; And, although the Kritile der Reinen (Critique of the Pure Reason) was at first in danger of being overlooked, when a hearing was once obtained, that, and his other critical works; which, after long preparation, appeared in rapid succession, communicated a profound impulse to the scientific world. This arose, not more from the novelty and the comprehensiveness of his researches than from the circumstance that their aim fell in with the tendencies of the age. The exclusion of everything dictated by caprice or sentiment, the maintenance of the independence of speculative inquiry, the reference of all theoretical speculation to the field of experience accessible to it, and the elevation of the moral element to the highest and ultimate object of all human endeavor, form the leading traits of his philosophy, which he recommended consideration, more from its importance to man and society than to nature of the philosophers. He also entertained the hope that through the critical inquiry into the human mind, it might be possible to reconcile empiricism and rationalism, sensualism and spiritualism, and other philosophical opposites, and discover a series of compre hensive principles to which all philosophical disputes might be referred in the last resort. This hops was disappointed; among other causes, because Kant sought to ground the old metaphysic of the schools on a psychology which itself rested on the basis of that metaphysic. Besides, there was wanting in the heyday of Kantism any satisfactory point of unity for the several parts of philosophy. K. L. Reinhold was the first to point out this defect; and scepticism, as in C. Schulze's 2Enesidentus, and dog matism in the writings of Eberhard and others, carried on a war with the "critical ' philosophy, but not, it must be confessed, with any great success. It was Fichte who found, or thought he had found, in the fact of consciousness, that absolute point of unity which Kant's Critique" had always pointed to. Fichte, following out the path on which Kant had entered, changed the half-idealism of Kant into a complete idealism, by declaring the ego to be, not only the bearer and source of knowledge, but the only reality, the world being merely the ideas and active manifestations of • the ego. In the ego, being and knowing were identical, it was at once existence and knowledge, and nature appeared only as the reflex of its absolute activity.