On account of this new beginning to Philosophy we find in the old histories of Philosophy of the seventeenth century—_e.g._ that of Stanley—the philosophy of the Greeks and Romans only, and Christianity forms the conclusion. The idea was that neither in Christianity nor subsequently any philosophy was to be found, because there was no longer a necessity for it, seeing that the philosophic theology of the Middle Ages had not free, spontaneous thought as its principle (Vol. I. pp. 111, 112). But though it is true that this has now become the philosophic principle, we must not expect that it should be at once methodically developed out of thought. The old assumption is made, that man only attains to the truth through reflection; this plainly is the principle. But the determination and definition of God, the world of the manifold as it appears, is not yet revealed as necessarily proceeding from thought; for we have only reached the thought of a content which is given through ordinary conception, observation, and experience. On the one hand we see a metaphysic, and, on the other, the particular sciences: on the one hand abstract thought as such, on the other its content taken from experience; these two lines in the abstract stand opposed to one another, and yet they do not separate themselves so sharply. We shall indeed come to an opposition, viz. to that between _a priori_ thought—that the determinations which are to hold good for thought must be taken from thought itself—and the determination that we must commence, conclude and think from experience. This is the opposition between rationalism and empiricism; but it is really a subordinate one, because even the metaphysical mode in philosophy, which only allows validity to immanent thought, does not take what is methodically developed from the necessity of thought, but in the old way derives its content from inward or outward experience, and through reflection and meditation renders it abstract. The form of philosophy which is first reached through thought is metaphysics, the form of the thinking understanding; this period has, as its outstanding figures, Descartes and Spinoza, likewise Malebranche and Locke, Leibnitz and Wolff. The second form is Scepticism and Criticism with regard to the thinking understanding, to metaphysics as such, and to the universal of empiricism; here we shall go on to speak of representatives of the Scottish, German, and French philosophies; the French materialists again turn back to metaphysics. CHAPTER I THE METAPHYSICS OF THE UNDERSTANDING