CHAPTER XVI. GERMAN PHILOSOPHY SINCE THE DEATH OF HEGEL. With Hegel the glorious dynasty which, with a strong hand, had guided the fate of German philosophy since the conclusion of the preceding century disappears. From his death (i 831) we may date the second period of post-Kantian philosophy,* which is markedly and unfavorably distin- guished from the first by a decline in the power of specu- lative creation and by a division of effort. If previous to this the philosophical public, comprising all the cultured, had been eagerly occupied with problems in common, and had followed with unanimous interest the work of those who were laboring at them, during the last fifty years the interest of wider circles in philosophical questions has grown much less active; almost every thinker goes his own way, giving heed only to congenial voices; the inner connection of the schools has been broken down ; the touch with thinkers of different views has been lost. The latest decades have been the first to bring a change for the better, in so far as new rallying points of philosophical interest have been cre- ated by the neo-Kantian movement, by the systems of Lotze and Von Hartmann, by the impulse toward the philosophy of nature proceeding from Darwinism, by energetic labors in the field of practical philosophy, and by new methods of investigation in psychology.
- On philosophy since 1831 cf. vol. iii. of J. E. Erdmann's History;
Ueberweg, Grundriss, part iii. §§ 37-49 (English translation, vol. ii. pp. 292-516); Langc, History of Materialism; B. Erdmann, Die Philosophie der Gegenwart in the Deutsche Rundschau, vols. xix. , xx., 1879, June and July num- bers ; (A. Krohn,) Streifziige dtirch die Philosophie der Gegenwart in the Zeit- schri/tftir Philosophie und philosophische A'ritik, vols. Ixxxvii., Ixxxix., 1885-86 ; [Burt, History of Modern Philosophy, 1892], also the third volume of Windel- band's Gtschichte der neutren Philosophie, when it appears.
