fswald (_The World as
Percept and Concept_, 1880; "The Question of the Soul" in vol. ii. of the
_Zeitschrift fuer Psychologie_, 1891), A. von Leclair (_Contributions to
a_ _Monistic Theory of Knowledge_, 1882), and R. von Schubert-Soldern
(_Foundations of a Theory of Knowledge_, 1884; _On the Transcendence
of Object and Subject_, 1882; _Foundations for an Ethics_, 1887). J.
Bergmann[1] in Marburg (born 1840) occupies a kindred position.

[Footnote 1: Bergmann: _Outlines of a Theory of Consciousness_, 1870; _Pure
Logic_, 1879; _Being and Knowing_, 1880; _The Fundamental Problems of
Logic_, 1882; _On the Right_, 1883; _Lectures on Metaphysics_, 1886; _On
the Beautiful_, 1887; _History of Philosophy_, vol. i., _Pre-Kantian
Philosophy_, 1892.]

It is the same scientific spirit of the time, which in the fifties led many
who were weary of the idealistic speculations over to materialism, that now
secures such wide dissemination and so widespread favor for the endeavors
of the neo-Kantians and the positivists or neo-Baconians, who desire to see
metaphysics stricken from the list of the sciences and replaced by noetics,
and the theory of the world relegated to faith. The philosophy of the
present, like the pre-Socratic philosophy and the philosophy of the early
modern period, wears the badge of physics. The world is conceived from the
standpoint of nature, psychical phenomena are in part neglected, in part
see their inconvenient claims reduced to a minimum, while it is but rarely
that we find an appreciation of their independence and co-ordinate value,
not to speak of their superior position. The power which natural science
has gained over philosophy dates essentially from a series of famous
discoveries and theories, by which science has opened up entirely new and
wide outlooks, and whose title to be considered in the formation of a
general view of reality is incontestable. To mention only the most
prominent, the following have all posited important and far-reaching
problems for philosophy as well as for science: Johannes Mueller's (Mueller
died 1858) theory of the specific energies of the senses, which Helmholtz
made use of as an empirical confirmation of the Kantian apriorism; the law
of the conservation of energy discovered by Robert Mayer (1842, 1850;
Helmholtz, 1847, 1862), and, in particular, the law of the transformation
of heat into motion, which invited an examination of all the forces active
in the world to test their