4. THE GERMAN REFORMATION.-All the elements of the new age, the struggle against Scholasticism, the revival of letters and the more enlarged culture thus secured, the striving after national independence, the attempts of the state to free. itself from the Church and the hierarchy, and above all, the desire of the thinking self-consciousness for autonomy, for freedom from the fetters of authority-all these elements found their focus and point of union in the German Reformation. Though having its root at first in practical, and religious, and national interests, and expending itself mainly upon the Christian doctrine and Church, yet was the Reformation in principle and in its true consequences a rupture of the thinking spirit with authority, a protesting against the fetters of the positive, a return of the mind from its self-estrangement to itself. From that which was without, the mind now came back to that which is within, and the purely human as such, the individual heart and conscience, the subjective conviction, in a word, the rights of the subject now began to be of worth. While marriage had formerly been regarded, though not immoral, as yet inferior to continence and celibacy, it appeared now as a divine institution, a natural law ordained of God. While poverty had formerly been esteemed higher than wealth, and the contemplative life of the monk was superior to the manual labor of the layman supporting himself by his own toil, yet now poverty ceased to be desirable in itself, and labor was no longer despised. Ecclesiastical freedom took the place of spiritual bondage; monasticism and the priesthood lost their power. In the same way, on the side of knowledge the individual man came back to himself, and threw off the restraints of authority. He was impressed with the conviction that the whole process of redemption must be experienced within himself, that his reconciliation to God and salvation was his own concern, for which he needed no mediation of priests, and that he stood in an immediate relation to God. He found his whole being in his faith, in the depth of his feelings and convictions.

Since thus Protestantism sprang from the essence of the same spirit in which modern philosophy had its birth, the two have the closest relation to each other, though of course there is a specific

difference between the religious and the scientific principle. Yet in their origin, both kinds of Protestantism, that of religion and that of thought, are one and the same, and in their progress they have also gone hand in hand together. For religion, reduced to its simple elements, will be found to have its source, like philosophy, in the self-knowledge of the reason.

5. THE ADVANCEMENT OF THE NATURAL SCIENCES.-To all these phenomena, which should be regarded both as causes and as symptoms of the intellectual revolution of this period, we must add yet another, which essentially facilitated and gave a positive assistance to the freedom of the mind from the fetters of authority -the starting up of the natural sciences and the inductive method of examining nature. This epoch was a period of the most fruitful and influential discoveries in nature. The discovery of America and the passage to the East Indies had already widened the circle of view, but still greater revolutions are connected with the name of a Copernicus (died 1543), Kepler (died 1630), and Galileo (died 1642), revolutions which could not remain, without an influence upon the whole mode of thinking of that age, and which contributed prominently to break the faith in the prevailing ecclesiastical authority. Scholasticism had turned away from nature and the phenomenal world, and, blind towards that which lay before the very eyes, had spent itself in a dreamy intellectuality; but now nature rose again in honor; her glory and exaltation, her infinite diversity and fulness of life became again the immediate objects of observation; to investigate nature became an essential object of philosophy, and scientific empiricism was thus regarded as a universal and essential concern of the thinking man. From this time the natural sciences date their historical importance, for only from this time have they had an uninterrupted history. The results of this new intellectual movement can be readily estimated. Such a scientific investigation of nature not only destroyed a series of traditional errors and prejudices, but, what was of greater importance, it directed the intellectual interest towards that which is real and actual, it nourished and protected the selfthinking and feeling of self-dependence, the spirit of inquiry and

proof. The stand-point of observation and experiment presupposes an independent self-consciousness of the individual, a breaking loose from authority-in a word, scepticism, with which, in fact, the founders of modern philosophy, Bacon and Descartes, began; the former by conditioning the knowledge of nature upon the removal of all prejudice and every preconceived opinion, and the latter by demanding that philosophy should be begun with universal doubt. No wonder that a bitter struggle should soon break out between the natural sciences and ecclesiastical orthodoxy, which could only result in breaking the power of the latter.

6. BACON OF VERULAM.-Francis of Verulam was born in 1561, and was Lord High Chancellor of England and keeper of the king's seal under James I. From these offices he was subsequently expelled, and died in 1626, with a character which has not been without reproach. He took as his principle the inductive method, which he directed expressly against Scholasticism and the ruling scientific method. On this account he is frequently placed at the head of modern philosophy.

The sciences, says Bacon, have hitherto been in a most sad condition. Philosophy, wasted in empty and fruitless logomachies, has failed during so many centuries to bring out a single work or experiment of actual benefit to human life. Logic hitherto has served more to the establishment of error than to the investigation of truth. Whence all this? Why this penury of the sciences? Simply because they have broken away from their root in nature and experience. The blame of this is chargeable to many sources; first, the old and rooted prejudice that the human mind loses somewhat of its dignity when it busies itself much and continuously with experiments and material things; next, superstition and a blind religious zeal, which has been the most irreconcilable opposer to natural philosophy; again, the exclusive attention paid to morals and politics by the Romans, and since the Christain era to theology by every acute mind; still farther, the great authority which certain philosophers have professed, and the great reverence given, to antiquity; and in fine, a want of courage and a despair of overcoming the many and great difficulties

which lie in the way of the investigation of nature. All these causes have contributed to keep down the sciences. Hence they must now be renewed, and regenerated, and reformed in their most fundamental principles; there must now be found a new basis of knowledge and new principles of science. This radical reformation of the sciences depends upon two conditions, objectively upon the referring of science to experience and the philosophy of nature, and subjectively upon the purifying of the sense and the intellect from all abstract theories and traditional prejudices. Both conditions furnish the correct method of natural science, which is nothing other than the method of induction. Upon a true induction depends all the soundness of the sciences.

In these propositions the Baconian philosophy is contained. The historical significance of its founder is, therefore, in general this,—that he directed the attention and reflection of his cotemporaries again upon the given actuality, upon nature; that he affirmed the necessity of experience, which had been formerly only a matter of accident, and made it as in and for itself an object of thought. His merit consists in having brought up the principle of scientific empiricism, and only in this. Strictly speaking, we can allow no content to the Baconian philosophy, although (in his treatise de augmentis scientiarum) he has attempted a systematic encyclopedia of the sciences according to a new principle of classification, through which he has scattered an abundance of fine and fruitful observations, which are still used as apothegms.

7. THE ITALIAN PHILOSOPHERS OF THE TRANSITION EPOCH.— Besides Bacon, other phenomena must be noticed which have prepared and introduced the new age of philosophy. First among these is a list of Italian philosophers, from the second half of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth century. These philosophers are connected in a twofold manner with the movements already sketched of this transition period, first by an enthusiasm for nature which among them all partook in a greater or less degree of pantheism (Vanini e. g. gave to one of his writings the title "concerning the wonderful secrets of nature, the queen and goddess of mortals”), and second, by their connection with the systems of

ancient philosophy. The best known of these philosophers are the following: Cardanus (1501–1575), Campanella (1568–1639), Giordano Bruno (— 1600), Vanini (1586-1619.) They were all men of a passionate, enthusiastic and impetuous nature, unsteady and wild in character, restless and adventurous in life, men who were inspired by an eager impulse towards knowledge, but who were carried away by great fantasy, wildness of imagination, and a seeking after secret astrological and geomantic knowledge. For these reasons they also passed away, leaving no fruitful result behind. They were all persecuted by the hierarchy, and two of them (Bruno and Vanini) ended their lives at the stake. In their whole historical appearance they are like the eruption of a volcano, and are to be regarded more as forerunners and announcers than as beginners and founders of the new age of philosophy. The most important among them is Giordano Bruno. He reviewed the old idea of the Stoics, that the world is a living being, and that a world-soul penetrates it all. The content of his general thought is the profoundest enthusiasm for nature, and the plastic reason which is present in it. The reason is, according to him, the inner artist who shapes the matter and manifests himself in the forms of the universe. From the heart of the root or the germ he sends out the lobes, and from these again he evolves the shoots, and from the shoots the branches, until bud, and leaf, and blossom are brought forth. Every thing is arranged, adjusted, and perfected within. Thus the universal reason calls back from within the sap out of the fruits and flowers to the branches again, &c. The universe thus is an infinite living thing, in which every thing lives and moves after the most manifold way.

The relation of the reason to matter, Bruno determines wholly in the Aristotelian manner; both stand related to each other as form and matter, as actuality and potentiality, neither is without the other; the form is the inner impelling might of matter, and matter, as the unlimited possibility, as the capability for an infinite diversity of form, is the mother of all forms. The other side of Bruno's philosophizing, his elaboration of the topics of Lullus,