nnected experience). The most important of
these maxims are the principles of real identity, of the continuity of
existence, of causality, and of the continuity of becoming. Experience is
a gift of the understanding; the premises, as a rule, latent in ordinary
consciousness, on whose anticipatory application our experience is based
throughout, assert something absolutely incapable of being experienced.
If, in order to the production of a "pure experience," we eliminate all
subjective additions of the understanding contained in experiential thought
(all that cannot be present at the moment or locally at hand, in short, all
that cannot be the direct object and content of actual observation),
this breaks up into an unordered, unconnected aggregate of discontinuous
perceptual fragments; in order that a complete and articulated condition
of experience may result, these fragments (the purely factual content of
observation, the incoherent matter of perception) must be supplemented and
connected by very much that is not observed.

[Footnote 1: R. Falckenberg, _Ueber die gegenwaertige Lage der deutschen
Philosophie_, inaugural address at Erlangen, Leipsic, 1890.]

[Footnote 2: Wundt: _Essays_, 1885, including "Philosophy and Science";
_System of Philosophy_, 1889. On the latter cf. Volkelt's paper in the
_Philosophische Monatshefte_, vol. xxvii. 1891; and on the _Essays_ a
notice by the same author in the same review, vol. xxiii. 1887.]

Further, a reaction against crude naturalism is observable in the practical
field, though political economists (Roscher) and jurists take a more active
part in it than the philosophers. Personally R. von Jhering (1818-92;
_Purpose in Law_, 2 vols., 1877-83, 2d ed., 1884-86) stands on idealistic
ground, although, rejecting the nativistic and formalistic theory, he is in
principle an adherent of "realism," of the principle of interest and social
utility (the moral is that Which is permanently useful to society).

Finally, similar motives underlie the growing interest in the history
of philosophy. The idealistic impulse seeks the nourishment which the
un-metaphysical present denies to it from the great works of the past, and
hopes, by keeping alive the classical achievements of previous times, to
enhance the consciousness of the urgency and irrepressibleness of the
highest questions, and to awaken courage for renewed attempts at their
solution. Thus the study of history enters the service of syste