630 RETROSPECT. Kantian period is pre-eminently characterized by natural^ ism. Nature, as a system of masses moved according to law, forms not only the favorite object of investigation, but also the standard by which psychical reality is judged and explained. The two directions in which this naturalism expresses itself, the mechanical view of the world, which endeavors to understand the universe from the standpoint of nature and all becoming from the standpoint of motion,* and the intellectualistic view, which seeks to understand the mind from the standpoint of knowledge, are most inti- mately connected. Where the general view of the All takes form and color from nature, a content and a mission can come to the mind from no other source than the ex- ternal world ; whether we (empirically) make it take up the material of representation from without or (rationalistic- ally) make it create an ideal reproduction of the content of external reality from within, it is always the function of knowledge, conceived as the reproduction of a completed reality, which, since it brings us into contact with nature, advances into the foreground and determines the nature of psychical activity. As is conceivable, along with dogmatic faith in the power of the reason to possess itself of the reality before it and to reconstrue it in the system of science, and with triumphant references to the mathe- matical method as a guaranty for the absolute certainty of philosophical knowledge, the noetical question emerges as to the means by which, and the limits within which, human knowledge is able to do justice to this great problem. Descartes gave out the programme for all these various tendencies — the mechanical explanation of nature, the absolute separation of body and soul (despirituali- zation of matter), thought the essence of the mind, the demand for certain knowledge, armed against every doubt, and the question as to the origin of ideas. Its execution by his successors shows not only a lateral extension in the ^ most various directions (the dualistic view of the world held by the occasionalists, the monistic or pantheistic view of Spinoza, the pluralistic or individualistic view of Leib-
- Even for Leibnitz the mind is a machine (automaton spirituale), and psy*
chical action a movement of ideas.
