Page:The Idealistic Reaction Against Science (1914).djvu/40



1. The Return to the Critical Method. — The first indication of the awakening of the mind from the extremely negative attitude of the materialists may be seen in the return to the teaching of Kant; the activity of the subject in the elaboration of science, which had been for long ignored, and had been thrust into the background by the triumphs so easily achieved by the mechanical method, asserts its rights once more and inaugurates the fruitful work of salutary criticism. Scientific intellectualism, having experienced for itself in the failure of its bold attempts to exhaust the totality of things the limitations already denned by Kant, finds itself in the self-same position, face to face with the self-same problems which baffled the thought of the philosophy of Königsberg. It is natural that the solution of these difficulties should be looked upon as the necessary starting-point of the new criticism of value and the limits of human science; but at the same time the need is seen of modifying it to a certain extent in order to bring it into harmony with the results of the theory of evolution and of psycho-physiological research, and it is therefore incumbent upon us to define more clearly the meaning of the a priori element, and to assign limits thereto.

2. Lange. — Albrecht Lange recognises, as does materialism, the necessity of finding a mechanical ex-