Page:A Brief History of Modern Philosophy.djvu/293

290 method to both the romantic speculation and the materialistic conception of nature. Like Fechner, he conceives the whole of material nature—including the brains of men and of animals—as explainable by means of continuously active material energies. So far as method is concerned, materialism is right. But the phenomena of consciousness are not to be construed as members of the material series; they are subjective experiences whose objective correlates constitute the brain processes.—That is to say, Lange, like Fechner and Wundt, accepts the Spinozistic hypothesis. He furthermore combines with this the Kantian point of view. For even if we should assume that our sensations and ideas are products of material processes, these material processes themselves would still be nothing more than objects of consciousness, ideas formed by us according to the laws of our mind. As a matter of fact, it may readily be that even the Kantian distinction between phenomenon and thing-in-itself is a product of our mental organization (Lange offers this suggestion in a letter published in Ellisen's Biographie Lange's, see p. 258 ff., published letters.)

In addition to natural science and epistemology, Lange likewise finds room for speculative and religious ideas. But he does not regard such ideas as having any theoretical and objective significance. They are subjective supplements of empirical reality, proceeding from the needs of the spirit. They must be understood from the viewpoint of their value to human life, and not from the viewpoint of their foundation and their origin. Lange here combines a liberal practical idealism with theoretical idealism. But it can only be expressed in figurative or symbolical form. Lange insists that criticism should place more stress on the ideal and psychologically valuable