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Those who have read Külpe's Outlines of Psychology and his Introduction to Philosophy will be glad to know that another work of his has been translated into English. The Philosophy of the Present in Germany is an account of four of the modern tendencies of thought in Germany, those which Külpe regards as most representative of the movements of the present. It is not a "detailed study of aesthetical, logical, ethical, or psychological problems," but rather an attempt to present a "general world-view" and to make clear "the attitude of the several thinkers on the problem of knowledge." The tendencies taken up are those of Positivism, Materialism, Naturalism and Idealism, and the thinkers discussed are treated as types of these tendencies. The general world-view of these thinkers is not merely expounded but it is also criticized, and it is largely in the criticism that the value of the work lies.

Mach and Diihring are taken as types of positivists. The main criticism of Positivism is a good example of the sort of criticism offered. Külpe says Positivism is too limited and too insecure in basing everything on the given in consciousness. "If in the Absolute Philosophy the centre of gravity was found in the activity of pure thought, Positivism shifts the centre of gravity to the reality given in our consciousness. In this limitation and depreciation of thought Positivism betrays its deepest impulse, its most characteristic position. ... Positivism, therefore, is a standpoint of revision—an inventory, as it were, which precedes new enterprises and loads them in advance with a heavy ballast of critical foresight and caution. In order to do this work thoroughly, it opposes not only the all-too-many answers, but also the all-too-many questions. It is not content with representing the present metaphysical solutions of the world-riddle as untenable, unsafe and superfluous guesses, but it wishes also to suppress the very impulse toward such speculation. ... But in so doing, Positivism itself falls into a kind of dogmatism, since it starts with certainty instead of establishing it, and fixes in advance the goal of thought at the same time as the method" (pp. 76-7).

For Materialism he takes Haeckel as the type and for Naturalism Nietzsche. Under Idealism he gives us four thinkers as types, Fechner, Lotze, von Hartmann and Wundt.

His remarks on Wundt are especially interesting. For Wundt, he says, "experience and the laws of rational thought are the only