6i2 THE IDEALISTIC REACTION. than success. The finely conceived ethics of Hoffding (p. 585) is an exception to the rule which *is the object of this remark. Besides the theory of knowledge, in the elaboration of which the most eminent naturalists * participate with acute- ness and success, psychology and the practical disciplines also betray the influence of the scientific spirit. While sociology and ethics, following the English model, seek an empirical basis and begin to make philosophical use of statis- tical results (E. F. SchafBe, Frame and Life of the Social Body, new ed., 1885 ; A. von Oettingen, Moral Statistic in its Significance for a Social Ethics, "i^^ ed., 1882), psychology endeavors to attain exact results in regard to psychical life and its relation to its physical basis — besides Fechner and the Herbartians, W. Wundt and A. Horwicz should be mentioned here. Wundt and, of late, Haeckel go back to the Spinozistic parallelism of material and psi^'^chical exist- ence, only that the latter emphasizes merely t^e insepar- ability {Nichtohneeinander) of the two sides (*he cell- body and the cell-soul) with a real difference between them and a metaphysical preponderance of the n^j^terial side, while the former emphasizes the essential unity of body and soul, and the higher reality of the spiritual side. (b) Idealistic Beaction against the Scientific Spirit. — Irv opposition to the preponderance of natural science and the empirico-skeptical tendency of the philosophy of the day conditioned by it, an idealistic counter-movement is mak' ing itself increasingly felt as the years go on. Wilhelm Dilthey t abandons metaphysics as a basis, it is true, but
- Helmholtz, Virchow (born 1821), ZoUner (1834-83 ; On the Nature of
Comets, 1872), and Du Bois-Reymond (born 1818) , who, in his lectures On the Limits of the Knowledge of Nature, 1872, and The Seven World-riddles, 1880 (both together in 1882, and reprinted in the first series of his Addresses, 1886), looks on the origin of life, the purposive order of nature, and thought as prob- lems soluble in the future, but declares, on the other hand, that the nature of matter (atoms) and force (actio in distans), the origin of motion, the genesis of consciousness (of sensation, together with pleasure and pain) from the knowable conditions of psychical life, and the freedom of the will, are absolute limits to our knowledge of nature.
Dilthey : Introduction to the Mental Sciences, part i., 1883 ; Poetic Creation
in the Z€Atx Aufsdtze, 1887 ; " Contributions to the Solution of the Question of the Origin of our Belief in the Reality of the External World, and its Validity,'
