tence of a certain
unknown planet, but even calculated the position in the heavens which
this planet must necessarily occupy, and when Galles really found this
planet, then the Copernican system was proved. If, nevertheless, the
resurrection of the Kantian idea in Germany is being tried by the
Neo-Kantians, and of that of Hume in England (where they never died),
by the agnostics, that is, in the face of the long past theoretical and
practical refutation of these doctrines, scientifically, a step
backwards, and practically, merely the acceptance of materialism in a
shame-faced way, clandestinely, and the denial of it before the world.

But the philosophers were during this long period from Descartes to
Hegel and from Hobbes to Feuerbach by no means, as they thought,
impelled solely by the force of pure reason. On the contrary, what
really impelled them was, in particular, the strong and ever quicker
conquering step of natural science and industry. Among the materialists
this very quickly showed itself on the surface, but the idealistic
systems filled themselves more and more with materialistic content and
sought to reconcile the antagonism between spirit and matter by means of
pantheism, so that finally the Hegelian system represented merely a
materialism turned upside down, according to idealistic method and
content.

Of course Starcke in his "Characteristics of Feuerbach" enquired into
the fundamental question of the relations of thinking and being. After
a short introduction in which the ideas of preceding philosophers,
particularly since Kant, are portrayed in unnecessarily heavy
philosophical language and in which Hegel, owing to a too formal
insistence on certain parts of his work does not receive due credit,
there follows a copious description of the development of the
metaphysics of Feuerbach, as shown in the course of the recognized
writings of this philosopher. This description is industriously and
carefully elaborated, and, like the whole book, is overballasted with,
not always unavoidable, philosophical expressions, which is all the more
annoying in that the writer does not hold to the vocabulary of one and
the same school nor even of Feuerbach himself, but mixes up expressions
of very different schools, and especially of the present epidemic of
schools calling themselves philosophical.

The evolution of Feuerbach is that of a Hegelian to materialism--not of
an orthodox Hegelian, indeed--an evolution which