ermany. Nor does this arise from any wish to depreciate the
results of English speculation in general. On the contrary, we find that
Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume are treated with great respect. They
occupy well-marked positions in the progress of philosophic thought. Their
names are written in large letters on the chief stations through which the
train of human reasoning passed before it arrived at Kant and Hegel.
Locke's philosophy took for a time complete possession of the German mind,
and called forth some of the most important and decisive writings of
Leibnitz; and Kant himself owed his commanding position to the battle
which he fought and won against Hume. Bacon alone has never been either
attacked or praised, nor have his works, as it seems, ever been studied
very closely by Germans. As far as we can gather, their view of Bacon and
of English philosophy is something as follows. Philosophy, they say,
should account for experience; but Bacon took experience for granted. He
constructed a cyclopaedia of knowledge, but he never explained what
knowledge itself was. Hence philosophy, far from being brought to a close
by his "Novum Organon," had to learn again to make her first steps
immediately after his time. Bacon had built a magnificent palace, but it
was soon found that there was no staircase in it. The very first question
of all philosophy, "How do we know?" or, "How can we know?" had never been
asked by him. Locke, who came after him, was the first to ask it, and he
endeavored to answer it in his "Essay concerning Human Understanding." The
result of his speculations was, that the mind is a _tabula rasa_, that
this _tabula rasa_ becomes gradually filled with sensuous perceptions, and
that these sensuous perceptions arrange themselves into classes, and thus
give rise to more general ideas or conceptions. This was a step in
advance; but there was again one thing taken for granted by Locke,--the
perceptions. This led to the next step in English philosophy, which was
made by Berkeley. He asked the question, "What are perceptions?" and he
answered it boldly: "Perceptions are the things themselves, and the only
cause of these perceptions is God." But this bold step was in reality but
a bold retreat. Hume accepted the results both of Locke and Berkeley. He
admitted with Locke that the impressions of the senses are the source of
all knowledge; he admitted with Berkeley that we know nothing beyond the
impressions of our se