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The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 05 - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English by Various
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_a priori_ interpretation of nature that tended to withdraw the
mind from the actualities of existence; it often dealt with bold
assertions, analogies, and figures of speech, rather than with facts
and proofs. But it had its merits; for it aroused an interest in
nature and nature-study, it kept alive the _philosophical_ interest
in the outer world, the desire for unity, _Einheitstrieb_, which has
remained a marked characteristic of German science from Alexander von
Humboldt down to Robert Mayer, Helmholtz, Naegeli, Haeckel, Ostwald,
Hertz, and Driesch. It opposed the one-sided mechanical method of
science, and emphasized conceptions (the idea of development,
the notion of the dynamic character of reality, pan-psychism, and
vitalism) which are still moving the minds of men today, as is
evidenced by the popularity of Henri Bergson, who, with our own
William James, leads the contemporary school of philosophical
Romanticists.

Fichte's chief contribution to German thought was the
_Wissenschaftslehre_, Schelling's the _Naturphilosophie_, and
Schleiermacher's the philosophy of religion. All these thinkers took
account of the prevailing tendencies of the times--_Aufklärung_,
Kantian criticism, faith-philosophy, Romanticism, and Spinozism--and
were more or less affected by them. Schleiermacher also came under the
influence of Fichte, Schelling, and Greek idealism, particularly
of Plato's philosophy; many were the sources from which he drew his
material for the construction of a great system of Protestant theology
that exercised a profound influence far beyond the boundaries of his
country and won for him the title of the founder of the New Theology.

Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher, the son of a clergyman of
the reformed church, was born at Breslau, November 21, 1768, and was
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