=The Three Characteristics of German Philosophy.= German philosophy will be seen to have three characteristics. (1) It is scholastic or academic. It is the philosophy of the professors of universities. At the same time it must be said to be the expression of the social genius of the German people. Napoleon testified to this when he said, “The English inhabit the sea, the French the land, the Germans the air.” (2) This German philosophy is mystical. It is profound rather than external. It is not founded upon external experience, but upon a questioning of the inner and spiritual life. It is inward, religious, and spiritual, like the philosophy of Plato. One of the most accurate interpreters of Kant has pointed out the many similarities between Kant and Plato (see Paulsen, _Immanuel Kant_). (3) German philosophy was nevertheless cosmic, or a description of the world. These men whom we are now to study were not ignorant of the world or of science. Political life offered them no attractions. The soul of man was regarded by them as too noble to be engrossed in external things. As Madame De Staël said of the time, “There was nothing to do save for him whose concern was with the universe.” Men, however, took the inner point of view, and regarded all things with reference to it. The Germans tried to humanize the universe. They looked upon nature as working out unconsciously those processes which consciously took place in man. The contemplation of beauty is not that of an external world, but of the inmost nature of reality. Thus individuality and cosmic reality are one and the same. Life has a joyful outlook, not because our tasks are easy, but because our strength is equal to them; for is not God in us? =The Two Periods of German Philosophy.= German philosophy is divided into two epochs: (1) the period of the formation of the critical theory of knowledge by Kant; (2) the period of the metaphysical development of Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Herbart, and Schopenhauer. Kant belongs both to the Enlightenment and to German idealism. He is the point of convergence of the intellectual forces that preceded him and the point of departure of the idealists who followed him. For this reason historians differ as to the period in which he is to be placed. In one sense he is the transition from the Enlightenment, in another sense he is the introduction of German idealism. But in reality he forms an epoch between the two. Although the dualism, which was always the background of the philosophy of the Enlightenment, formed too the background of his thought, although he on the other hand looked upon his _Critique of Pure Reason_ as only an introduction to a metaphysics, which he never wrote, nevertheless he occupies a unique place in drawing up for his time and for the future a new conceptual standard by which the new problems might be criticised. The problem that Kant set before himself was epistemological and not one of metaphysics.