Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/376

362 In the construction of the color triangle, the points 𝕽 and 𝕲 have been so chosen, that the straight line 𝕽𝕲 coincides as nearly as possible with the curve of the spectral colors. As for the position of 𝕭, it can only be said that the triangle 𝕽𝕲𝕭 contains the whole of the real portion of the color table.

E. B. T.

After speaking of Ellissen's biography of Lange, S. goes on to discuss Lange's views on the social problem. Lange acknowledged the fact that we possess an ideal of the world and life which reality only imperfectly satisfies, but which, if vividly grasped, is the most powerful motive for social reform. Whether, with him, we call devotion to this ideal religion or not, is of no importance. If we understand by religion the regulation of our relations to supersensuous Beings, then, inasmuch as we have no knowledge of any such, we have no religion; but if by religion we mean devotion to the ideal, which men must still to-day regard as the highest just as much as in the past, when they thought that ideal personified and embodied in Beings of another world, there is no objection to the name 'religion.' We must avoid, however, the error of Lange in supposing that we can still receive vital motives to action from the mythology of religion after this mythology is recognized as such. This is to confuse the aesthetic exaltation which we feel in sublime myths as in effective works of art, with the devotion to the ideal which can come only with the full conviction of its truth. Lange's ideal was: "Human perfection in human society." He was far in advance of the socialists of his time in seeing that this ideal could not be realized by riots and revolutions, but that it must come as the organic development of already existing social conditions. The growth of the spirit of community he regarded as the chief means to the victory of the socialistic tendencies. In all this the socialism of Lange and of the modern social-democracy are quite at one. But in one essential point there is a marked difference. The social-democrats are bending all their efforts toward the organization of the working classes and the possession of political power. Lange, on the other hand, addressed himself to the cultured classes, taught them to regard the movement of the people not as a danger, but as the beginning of