nderstand how to avail themselves of sufficiently?
The disgrace falls solely upon the miserable conditions in Germany owing
to which the chairs of philosophy were filled by pettifogging eclectic
pedants, while Feuerbach, who towered high above them all, had to
rusticate and grow sour in a little village. It is therefore no shame to
Feuerbach that he never grasped the natural evolutionary philosophy
which became possible with the passing away of the partial views of
French materialism.

In the second place, Feuerbach held quite correctly that scientific
materialism is the foundation of the building of human knowledge but it
is not the building itself. For we live not only in nature but in human
society, and this has its theory of development and its science no less
than nature. It was necessary, therefore, to bring the science of
society, that is the so-called historical and philosophical sciences,
into harmony with the materialistic foundations and to rebuild upon
them. But this was not granted to Feuerbach. Here he stuck, in spite of
the "foundations," held in the confining bonds of idealism, and to this
he testified in the words "Backwards I am with the materialists, but not
forwards." But Feuerbach himself did not go forward in his views of
human society from his standpoint of 1840 and 1844, chiefly owing to
that loneliness which compelled him to think everything out by himself,
instead of in friendly and hostile conflict with other men of his
calibre, although of all philosophers he was the fondest of intercourse
with his fellows. We shall see later on how he thus remained an
idealist. Here we can only call attention to the fact that Starcke
sought the idealism of Feuerbach in the wrong place. "Feuerbach is an
idealist; he believes in the advance of mankind" (p. 19). "The
foundations, the underpinning of the whole, is therefore nothing less
than idealism. Realism is for us nothing more than a protection against
error while we follow our own idealistic tendencies. Are not compassion,
love and enthusiasm for truth and justice ideal forces?"

In the first place, idealism is here defined as nothing but the
following of ideal aims. But these have necessarily to do principally
with the idealism of Kant and his "Categorical Imperative." But Kant
himself called his philosophy "transcendental idealism," by no means
because he deals therein with moral ideals, but on quite other grounds,
as Starcke will remember.

The super