In the total stream of this movement there are discernible three main currents, the idealistic, the materialistic, and the agnostic, — or “critical,” as its adherents prefer to name the last. This division, however, is not distinctive of the period, being merely the continuation of a world-old divergence in doctrine. But it is distinctive of the new situation that these several views are all defended from standpoints more or less empirical. The rallying-cry of “Back to Kant!” with which the movement began, was soon succeeded by a more adventurous cry of “Beyond Kant!” This “Beyond,” owing mainly to the predominant interest in the theories of evolution and natural selection, was construed as lying in the region indicated by the empirical method of which these theories are the extolled result. In the case of materialism, to be sure, this empiricism is natural and nowise unexpected; but the occurrence of it in the case of idealism and of agnosticism, after Kant’s day and in his own land, and among thinkers long given to the study of his works, is a genuine surprise. That the very principles of the Critique of Pure Reason, the historic stronghold of the a priori, should suffer the complete transformation of being made to support a posteriori philosophy, is a performance not far from astonishing. Yet it was managed, and constitutes the distinguishing feat of the school calling themselves Neo-Kantians.
