Kierkegaard, whose influence in the North has been profound, receives
only half a column, equal space with Andrew Baxter, the feeble Scottish
metaphysician; and only half the space given to Thomas Brown, another
Scotch “philosopher.” Fries who, with Herbart, was the forerunner of
modern psychology and one of the leading representatives of the critical
philosophy, is given just one column; but Beneke, a follower of Fries,
who approached more closely to the English school, is allotted twice the
amount of space that Fries receives.
The four men who marked the dissolution of the Hegelian school—Krause,
Weisse, I. H. Fichte and Feuerbach—receive as the sum total of all
their biographies less space than is given to the English divine, James
Martineau, or to Francis Hutcheson. (In combating Hegelianism these
four thinkers invaded the precincts of British admiration.) In the
one-column biography of Krause we are told that the spirit of his thought
is difficult to follow and that his terminology is artificial. Weisse
receives only twenty-three lines; and I. H. Fichte, the son of J. G.
Fichte, receives only two-thirds of a column. Feuerbach, who marked the
transition between romanticism and positivism and who accordingly holds
an important position in the evolution of modern thought, is accorded a
biography of a column and a half, shorter than that of Richard Price.
Feuerbach, however, unlike Price, was an anti-theological philosopher,
and is severely criticised for his spiritual shortcomings.
Let us glance quickly at the important philosophers of positivism
as represented in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_. At the end of the
seventeenth and at the beginning of the nineteenth centuries the
principal French philosophers representative of schools were de Maistre,
Maine de Biran, Ampère, Saint-Simon and Victor Cousin. De Maistre,
the most important philosopher of the principle of authority, is
given a biography of a column and a third, is highly praised for his
ecclesiasticism, and is permitted to be ranked with Hobbes. Maine de
Biran receives a little over a column; Ampère, less than a column; and
Saint-Simon, two and a third columns.
Victor Cousin is given the astonishing amount of space of eleven columns;
but just why he should have been treated in this extravagant manner
is not clear, for we are told that his search for principles was not
profound and that he “left no distinctive, permanent principles of
philosophy.” Nor does it seem possible that he should draw nearly as
much space as Rousseau and Montesquieu combined simply because he left
behind interesting analyses and expositions of the work of Locke and the
Scottish philosophers. Even Comte is given only four and a half columns
more.
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