It is difficult to determine more than approximately the beginning of special movements of thought; for the different nations of the civilized world are not exactly contemporaneous in their development, and in each nation there are always individuals who lag behind the time or hasten on before it. But, speaking generally, we may say that as early as the fourth decade of the century a certain reaction had set in against the conclusions of idealistic philosophy, and especially against the organic idea of human life; and a tendency was even shown to revert, so far as possible, to the methods and ideas of the eighteenth century. The reasons for this change are various. In Germany the succession of great philosophers had come to an end, and their followers were smaller men, who were inclined too much to repeat the formulas, but had little of the creative power, of their predecessors. More attention, therefore, began to be paid to the protests of writers like Herbart and Schopenhauer, who, even in the hour of its triumph, had criticised and attacked the prevailing philosophy. Again, the physical sciences were advancing by “leaps and bounds,” and there was a growing inclination to believe in the universal validity of the mechanical methods of explanation to which _they_ owed their success, and even in those sociological and historical studies to which the idealistic philosophy had given so great an impetus. The progress of empirical research and the increase of the materials of knowledge caused much of the work of Hegel and his followers to seem inadequate, if not entirely to set it aside. Even in Germany, where the new ideas had taken a distinctly philosophical shape, they seemed to lose their hold in the controversies that attended the breaking up of the Hegelian school; and in other countries, where they never found such a systematic expression, they were even less able to resist the attack now made upon them. Furthermore, as I have already indicated, writers of an idealistic tendency, in their recoil from the enlightenment, had devoted themselves so much to an appreciation of institutions derived from the past that they seemed to have no eyes for the defects of these institutions, and to confuse evolution with restoration.