The spirit of rationalism, in so far as it represents the claims of free scientific inquiry, may be said to have already won its triumph. This triumph too, it must be admitted, was largely the result of the enthusiastic zeal of the apostles of the enlightenment. Nevertheless, the spirit of modern inquiry has been profoundly modified in many respects during the 19th cen tury. In the first place, it has lost the narrow ness and hardness that it necessarily exhibited so long as a large share of its strength was expended in negative criticism and in making war upon prevailing creeds and institutions. In addition, it has been transformed by the his torical and evolutionary conceptions that have become dominant in every field of inquiry, lead ing men's thoughts to problems of genesis and origin, and so to understand and sympathize with much that appeared absurd and unmeaning to the older rationalists. The 18th century rationalists regarded the world as static; they looked at each thing as it actually stood before them in their own day, and judged it by the unfailing standard that each individual was supposed to possess in the clear and distinct ideas of his own individual reason. The his torical point of view has brought with it a broader conception of reason and what is ra tional; it has taught us that it is only in the light of its origin and function that a thing can properly be judged, and that, accordingly, there may be a truer rationality in historical creeds, beliefs and institutions than in the self-con fidence of the individual of clear and distinct ideas who ventures to criticize what he does not understand.
The philosophical doctrine known as Rational ism owes its origin to Descartes (1596-1650), and has its home mainly in France and Ger many, while empiricism (q.v.), the theory to which it was directly opposed, flourished mainly in England. The rationalistic philosophers take mathematical demonstration as the perfect type of knowledge and seek to model their pro cedure in all fields of inquiry on what they assumed to be its method. From the chaotic and contradictory material supplied by sense perception they believed that real knowledge, science, could not be attained. Mathematics., however, reaches its results in independence of such a source. It begins 'with fitudamental principles and conceptions which are dent and proceeds by means of logical analysis and reasoning to show what further results are necessarily involved and implied in the starting point. Now, the rationalistic thinkers maintain that what has been achieved in this particular science may be carried out universally by the application of the same method. That is, the
true method of knowledge consists in first dis covering by analysis the fundamental truths that lie at the basis of all thinking. These truths are not derived from experience, but, like the mathematical axioms and first principles, are native to the mind, innate ideas or a priori truths that are the starting-points for all demon stration and all science. When these are once discovered, it is the further task of philosophy to deduce by logical reasoning the further re sults that follow from them. In this way the rationalists supposed that it was possible to ar rive at conclusions in philosophy that are as demonstrably certain as the propositions of geometry.
Besides Descartes, the chief representatives of rationalism are Spinoza (1632-77), who adopted the geometrical form of proof in his chief work, the (Ethics' • Leibnitz (1646-1715), and Christian Wolff (1679-1754). The last mentioned philosopher, though the least original, exercised a great influence over the thought of Germany by his terminology and by. the sys tematic way in Which he divided the field of philosophy into the so-called sciences of rational cosmology or physics, rational psychology, and rational theology. The first of these seeks to furnish demonstrative proof of the fundamental nature of the physical universe; for example, that it is limited in space, had a beginning in time, is made.np of indivisible parts, etc. Ra tional psychology sets out from the conception of the soul as a spiritual substance and at tempts to prove that it necessarily follows as a result of this initial conception, that the soul is simple, indivisible, indestructible and, there fore, immortal, and, moreover, that it possesses facnities, such as those of representa tion, desire, as essential to its true nature. In like manner, rational theology dealt same a priori and deductive way with -the initiate proofs for the existence and attributes of God, This was the form of rationalism in which Kant was educated and it is against these so-called rationalistic sciences that he directs his attack in the dialectic of the 'Critique of Pure Rea gen.' The criticism 9f Kant was so penetrate ing and thoroughgoing that it annihilated at a blow the claims of rationalism. It did this by pointing out, in terms that could neither be mistaken nor denied the falsity of the as sumptions upon which this philosophical theory rests. Kant is thns the destroyer and finisher of rationalism.