Page:Philosophical Review Volume 18.djvu/68

54 thought. About this date the eclectic philosophy declined and a new development began, of "metaphysical philosophy" on the one hand, and "experimental philosophy" on the other. The phases of this development may be divided into the metaphysical movement (in three forms, rationalism, criticism, experientialism), the psychological movement, the sociological movement, ethics as positive science, the philosophy of the sciences, the philosophy of religion, historical inquiries. The most salient characteristic of the whole has been the separation of the special philosophical sciences from philosophy proper. Nevertheless, these encounter in their own work epistemological, cosmological, and practical problems, the problems of philosophy itself. The conjecture, therefore, is not hazardous that the two are tending towards a reconciliation, the special philosophical sciences recognizing that they cannot dispense with metaphysics, and metaphysics assimilating more and more the methods and results of the sciences themselves.

The idea of law was traced by Windelband back to its historical and its psychological origins: the Greek and Renaissance views of the order of the heavens, the conflict between the individual and social forms. To-day we differentiate the factual and the ideal order; but a common element in the concept of law remains, die Bestimmung des Besonderen durch ein Allegemeines. Lotze's use of the expression Gelten fails, as did Plato's theory of ideas, to explain the connection of the logical and the real in this relation. The nominalistic theories are confronted by the necessity for grounding the order of ideal contents in an objective order. Kant's conjunction of legality and causality, more-over, has made it peculiarly difficult to avoid ascribing efficiency to the "universal rule." A way of escape seems to open if, in each particular case, the moment of action is ascribed to a unique Akt of the causal nexus, and the moment of regularity to the observing intellect. But under the uniformities of nature we unquestionably seek reality. The particular can never be grasped in its completeness, nor reality be understood without remainder; but it is equally certain that in the inquiry into laws a part or side of reality forms the object of knowledge. So this expedient is