Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/654

 632 RETROSPECT. to the specifically modern, to the naturalistic temper of the new period, as Plato stands out, a stranger and a prophet of the future, above the level of Greek modes of thought. More fortunate, however, than Plato, he found disciples who followed further in the direction pointed out by that face of the Janus-head of his philosophy which looked toward the future: the ethelism of Fichte and the histori- cism of Hegel have their roots in Kant's doctrine of the practical reason. These are acquisitions which must never be given up, which must ever be reconquered in face of attack from forces hostile to spirit and to morals. In life, as in science, we must ever anew *' win " ethical idealism " in order to possess it." As yet the reconcilia- tion of the historical and the scientific, the Christian and the modern spirit is not cfifected. For the inbred natural- ism of the modern period has not only asserted itself, amalgamated with Kantian elements, in the realistic meta- physics and mechanical pyschology of Herbart and in the system of Schopenhauer, as a lateral current by the side of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, but, under the influence of the new and powerful development of the natural sciences, has once more confidently risen against the traditions of the idealistic school, although now it is tempered by criticism and concedes to the practical ideals at least a refuge in faith. The conviction that the rule of neo-Kant- ianism is provisional does not rest merely on the mutability of human affairs. The widespread active study of the philosophy of the great Konigsberger gives ground for the hope that also those elements in it from which the systems of the idealists have proceeded as necessary consequences will again find attention and appreciation. The perception of the fact that the naturalistico-mechanical view represents only a part, a subordinate part, of the truth will lead to the further truth, that the lower can only be explained by the higher. We shall also learn more and more to distin- guish between the permanent import of the position of fundamental idealism and the particular form which the constructive thinkers have given it; the latter may fall be- fore legitimate assaults, but the former will not be affected by them. The revival of the Fichteo-Hegelian idealism bj