ditions of psychical life, and the freedom of the will, are
absolute limits to our knowledge of nature.]

%(b) Idealistic Reaction against the Scientific Spirit.%--In opposition to
the preponderance of natural science and the empirico-skeptical tendency of
the philosophy of the day conditioned by it, an idealistic counter-movement
is making itself increasingly felt as the years go on. Wilhelm Dilthey[1]
abandons metaphysics as a basis, it is true, but (with the assent of
Gierke, _Preussische Jahrbuecher_, vol. liii. 1884) declares against the
transfer of the method of natural science to the mental sciences, which
require a special foundation. In spite of his critical rejection of
metaphysics, Wilhelm Windelband in Strasburg (born 1848; _Preludes_, 1884)
is, like Dilthey, to be counted among the idealists. In opposition to the
individualism of the positivists, the folk-psychologists--at their head
Steinthal and Lazarus (p. 536); Gustav Glogau[2] in Kiel (born 1844) is
an adherent of the same movement--defend the power of the universal over
individual spirits. The spirit of the people is not a phrase, an empty
name, but a real force, not the sum of the individuals belonging to the
people, but an encompassing and controlling power, which brings forth
in the whole body processes (_e.g._, language) which could not occur in
individuals as such. It is only as a member of society that anyone becomes
truly man; the community is the subject of the higher life of spirit.

[Footnote 1: Dilthey: _Introduction to the Mental Sciences_, part i.,
1883; _Poetic Creation_ in the Zeller _Aufsaetze_, 1887; "Contributions to
the Solution of the Question of the Origin of our Belief in the Reality of
the External World, and its Validity," _Sitzungsberichte_ of the Berlin
Academy of Sciences, 1890; "Conception and Analysis of Man in the
Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries" in the _Archiv fuer Geschichte der
Philosophie_, vols. iv., v., 1891-92.]

[Footnote 2: Glogau: _Sketch of the Fundamental Philosophical Sciences_
(part i., _The Form and the Laws of Motion of the Spirit_, 1880; part
ii., _The Nature and the Fundamental Forms of Conscious Spirit_, 1888);
_Outlines of Psychology_; 1884.]

If folk-psychology, whose title but imperfectly expresses the comprehensive
endeavor to construct a psychology of society or of the universal spirit,
is, as it were, an empirical confirmation of Hegel's theory of Objective
Spirit, Rudolf Eucken[1] (born 1846)