n inverted kind [p.20] of
Kantianism in regard to the problem of subject and object.

None of these has attempted a reconstruction of philosophy from the side
of the content of consciousness; in fact, they all find their
explanation of consciousness in connection with physical and organic
phenomena observed on planes below those of the mental and ideal life of
man. Such work is necessary; but if it comes forward as a _complete_
explanation of man, it is, as Eucken points out again and again, a
wretched caricature of life. To know the connection of consciousness
with the organic and inorganic world is not to know consciousness in
anything more than its history. It may have been similar to, or even
identical with, physical manifestations of life, but it is not so _now_.
Eucken admits entirely this fact of the history of mind; but the meaning
of mind is to be discovered not so much in its _Whence_ as in its
present potency and its _Whither_.[1] A philosophy of science is bound
to recognise this difference, or else all its constructions can
represent no more than a torso. Physical impressions enter into
consciousness, [p.21] and doubtless in important ways condition it,
but they are _not physical_ once man becomes _conscious_ of them. A union
of subject and object has now taken place, and consequently a new beginning
--a beginning which cannot be interpreted in terms of the things of
sense--starts on its course. This is Eucken's standpoint, and it is no
other than the carrying farther of some of the important results Kant
arrived at.

This difference between the natural and the mental sciences has been
emphasised, at various times, since the time of Plato. But the
difference tended to become obliterated through the discoveries of
natural science and its great influence during the latter half of the
nineteenth century. The key of evolution had come at last into the hands
of men, and it fitted so many closed doors; it provided an entrance to a
new kind of world, and gave new methods for knowing that world. But, as
already stated, evolution is capable of dealing with what _is_ in the
light of what _was_, and the _Is_ and the _Was_ are the physical
characteristics of things. In all this, mind and morals, as they are in
their own intrinsic nature operating in the world, are left out of
account. A striking example of this is found in the late Professor
Huxley's Romanes Lecture--_Evolution and Ethics_. In this remarkable
lecture