Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/490

 476 FEEDINAND TONNIES : of each respective country must do. This is important also for terminology, for the less valuable the thoughts of a man, the less remunerative it is to trouble oneself with his technical expressions. 71. (3) If at one time the universities were accused and with some truth of a useless refinement of terminology which forgot realities over words, or at any rate over concepts ; still we must look for the cause of the present dissolute condition to the decline of the scholastic tradition and the diminished position of philosophy in the instruction of scholars at least in Germany. Concerning this last point we should read Paulsen. The general fact is connected most closely with the subject we have just been dealing with. For through its hostile attitude to the universities and through its exclusion from them, the new philosophy gained, as well as by its inner tendencies, an approximation to the common rational mode of thought or, as it is said, to sound human understanding common sense and at the same time to the free, critically reasoning, literature of the native language, which especially since it became periodical is characteristic of the age. The great arena of public opinion is substituted for the disputations in cloisters and halls of audience. Mutual understanding therein is already made more difficult by the unlimited remoteness of opponents, by the lack of personal acquaintance, by the vast number of contending voices. And though the written word can be better weighed than the spoken, yet the haste of production, the absence of any authority, of any visible judge, and the success of boldness, of catch-words, do much to disaccustom literati from precision of thought, from the careful choice of words, from conscientiousness in attacking an established terminology, especially when it is used by opponents. The very heads of the anti-scholastic philosophy spoke indeed about exact terminology, but only partially busied them- selves about definitions ; and here it was in the hottest opponents that the influence of tradition showed itself strongest. But, above all, simplicity was aimed at ; a few and easily learned technical expressions, it was thought, must suffice. More and more there developed a philosophical popular literature, which spoke the language of courts, of salons, or of markets and public houses a danger to exact and strict thought which John Locke, one of the heads of this popular philosophy, has noted with great force. "I confess," he says, at the close of a long chapter on the abuse of words, "in discourses, where we seek rather pleasure and delight, than information and improvement, such ornaments