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THE SPECIAL PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 625 consciousness, on whose anticipatory application our ex- perience is based throughout, assert something absolutely incapable of being experienced. If, in order to the pro- duction of a " pure experience," we eliminate all subjective additions of the understanding contained in experiential thought (all that cannot be present at the moment or locally at hand, in short, all that cannot be the direct object and content of actual observation), this breaks up into an unordered, unconnected aggregate of discontinuous per- ceptual fragments ; in order that a complete and articulated condition of experience may result, these fragments (the purely factual content of observation, the incoherent matter of perception) must be supplemented and connected by very much that is not observed. Further, a reaction against crude naturalism is observable in the practical field, though political economists (Roscher) and jurists take a more active part in it than the philoso- phers. Personally R. von Jhering (1818-92 ; Purpose in Law, 2 vols., 1877-83, 2d ed., 1884-86) stands on idealistic ground, although, rejecting the nativistic and formalistic theory, he is in principle an adherent of " realism," of the principle of interest and social utility (the moral is that which is permanently useful to society). Finally, similar motives underlie the growing interest in the history of philosophy. The idealistic impulse seeks the nourishment which the un-metaphysical present denies to it from the great works of the past, and hopes, by keep- ing alive the classical achievements of previous times, to enhance the consciousness of the urgency and irrepressible- ness of the highest questions, and to awaken courage for renewed attempts at their solution. Thus the study of his- tory enters the service of systematic philosophy. (c) The Special Philosophical Sciences. — The more the courage to attack the central problems of philosophy has been paralyzed by the neo-Kantian theory of knowledge and the coming-in of the positivistic spirit, the more lively has been the work of the last decades in the special departments: the transfer of the center of gravity from metaphysics to the particular sciences is the most prominent characteristic of the philosophy of the time. Logic sees century-old con-