Page:Essays in Philosophical Criticism (1883).djvu/15

 theless, so long as in such controversy it remains possible to appeal to one principle, so long as the differences are due to the various development of one way of thinking in different minds, the division and opposition is a sign of life, and may be expected ultimately to be overcome by the same spiritual energy which has produced it.

The writers of this volume agree in believing that the line of investigation which philosophy must follow, or in which it may be expected to make most important contributions to the intellectual life of man, is that which was opened up by Kant, and for the successful prosecution of which no one has done so much as Hegel. Such a statement of their philosophical creed, however, would be misleading, if it were not further explained and limited. For a reference to definite names is in philosophy often taken to imply a kind of discipleship which cannot be acknowledged by those who believe that the history of philosophy is a living development, and who, therefore, are adherents of a school only in the sense that they trace the last steps of that development in a particular way. The work of Kant and Hegel, like the work of earlier philosophers, can have no speculative value except for those who are able critically to reproduce it, and so to assist in the sifting process by which its permanent meaning is separated from the accidents of its first expression. And such reproduction, again, is not possible except for those who are impelled by the very teaching they have received to give it a fresh expression and a new application. Valuable as may be the history of thought, the literal importation of Kant and Hegel into another country and time would not be possible if it were desirable, or desirable if it were possible. The mere change of time and place, if there were nothing more, implies new questions and a new attitude of mind in those whom the writer addresses, which would make a bare reproduction unmeaning. Moreover, this change of the mental atmosphere and environment is itself part of a development which must affect the doctrine also, if it is no mere dead tradition, but a seed of new intellectual life. Anyone who writes about philosophy must have his work judged, not by its relation to the intellectual wants of a past generation, but by its power to meet the wants of the present time — wants which arise out of the advance of science, and the new currents of in-