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THE NEW IDEALISM IN GERMANY
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souls may interpose in material processes on the one hand just as material processes may be the causes of psychical phenomena on the other. The Monism of Haeckel therefore combines spiritualistic and materialistic ideas in a way that is not altogether clear. But Haeckel's significance, who in this respect shows an affinity to the thinkers of the Renaissance, does not consist in his logical consistency, but in the tremendous enthusiasm aroused by his ideas, and in the fanciful vividness of his expositions.

It appears therefore that dogmatic materialism, according to the testimony of the materialistic author himself, is no longer possible. The results of criticism have therefore not been in vain.

Another group of thinkers who still adhered to the fundamental principles of romanticism, even though they clearly saw the necessity of a reconstruction of the foundation and a restatement of deflations, elaborated the results of modern science in an entirely different way from the investigators just mentioned.


A. The New Idealism in Germany.

1. Hermann Lotze (1817–1881) began his scholastic career as a scientist and as a philosopher contemporaneously, but eventually devoted himself wholly to philosophy, in which capacity he served the University of Göttingen for a number of years. As a scientist he aimed to treat medicine and physiology as pure natural sciences, without reference to any appeal to a specific "vital force" such as was then still in vogue. He construes the phenomena which characterize organisms as the results of the coöperation of material elements according to the laws of physics and chemistry (Allgemeine Pathologie