This direct
form of imperialism does not seduce them. Not everybody can see his
country and the universe through the eyes of an oligarch of high
finance. A doctrine works with power when it appeals to instincts, when
it awakens collective emotions, diverse enough in themselves, and joins
them to each other with an appearance of logical deduction. It is not
indispensable, but it is useful that it should borrow the language of
the day. In the mediaeval epoch this language was religious. Beginning
with the seventeenth century it was metaphysical. In our own time it is
a scientific language set off by Greek words.
If the German philosophies of the second half of the nineteenth century
are considered, there are not many of them that pass beyond the limit of
the school. They are honest, scholarly productions elaborated by men who
have read much, of whom some, like Wundt, are eminent specialists, but
who have not conquered either their subjects or their readers. One feels
that they are not of their century.
It is not from them, it is not from Eucken, the pleasant popularizer, it
is not from Windelbund or Ostwald that the cultivated public sought the
direction for its thought. To satisfy the need of general ideas which
was everywhere felt, associations were formed, churches with or without
God, of which a very important one was the "Monistenbund," in which
Haeckel exploited his materialism transformed into a sort of biological
pantheism.
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