at last, and men again knew _how_ they knew. From this point of view, which we believe to be that generally taken by German writers of the historical progress of modern philosophy, we may well understand why the star of Bacon should disappear almost below their horizon. And if those only are to be called philosophers who inquire into the causes of our knowledge, or into the possibility of knowing and being, a new name must be invented for men like him, who are concerned alone with the realities of knowledge. The two are antipodes,—they inhabit two distinct hemispheres of thought. But German Idealism, as M. Kuno Fischer says, would have done well if it had become more thoroughly acquainted with its opponent:— “And if it be objected,” he says, “that the points of contact between German and English philosophy, between Idealism and Realism, are less to be found in Bacon than in other philosophers of his kind; that it was not Bacon, but Hume, who influenced Kant; that it was not Bacon, but Locke, who influenced Leibnitz; that Spinoza, if he received any impulse at all from those quarters, received it from Hobbes, and not from Bacon, of whom he speaks in several places very contemptuously,—I answer, that it was Bacon whom Des Cartes, the acknowledged founder of dogmatic Idealism, chose for his antagonist. And as to those realistic philosophers who have influenced the opposite side of philosophy in Spinoza, Leibnitz, and Kant, I shall be able to prove that Hobbes, Locke, Hume, are all descendants of Bacon, that they have their roots in Bacon, that without Bacon they cannot be truly explained and understood, but only be taken up in a fragmentary form, and, as it were, plucked off. Bacon is the creator of realistic philosophy. Their age is but a development of the Baconian germs; every one of their systems is a metamorphosis of Baconian philosophy. To the present day, realistic philosophy has never had a greater genius than Bacon, its founder; none who has manifested the truly realistic spirit that feels itself at home in the midst of life, in so comprehensive, so original and characteristic, so sober, and yet at the same time so ideal and aspiring a manner; none, again, in whom the limits of this spirit stand out in such distinct and natural relief. Bacon’s philosophy is the most healthy and quite inartificial expression of Realism. After the systems of Spinoza and Leibnitz had moved me for a long time, had filled, and, as it were, absorbed me, the study of Bacon was to me like a new life, the fruits of which are gathered in this book.”