geistigen Lebensinhalt_.

The philosophy of Germany at the present day is making several attempts
at a metaphysic of the universe. Much critical and constructive work has
been done during the past quarter of a century and is being done to-day.
The attempts to construct systems of metaphysics may be witnessed on the
sides of natural science and of philosophy. Haeckel, Ostwald, and Mach
have each given the world a constructive system of thought. But these
three systems have not, except in a secondary way, attempted a
metaphysic of human life. Haeckel's system is mainly poetico-mythical,
chiefly on the lines of some of the pre-Socratic philosophers. Ostwald's
attempt is to show the unity of nature and life through his principle of
Energetics; and Mach's may be described as an inverted kind [p.20] of
Kantianism in regard to the problem of subject and object.

None of these has attempted a reconstruction of philosophy from the side
of the content of consciousness; in fact, they all find their
explanation of consciousness in connection with physical and organic
phenomena observed on planes below those of the mental and ideal life of
man. Such work is necessary; but if it comes forward as a _complete_
explanation of man, it is, as Eucken points out again and again, a
wretched caricature of life. To know the connection of consciousness
with the organic and inorganic world is not to know consciousness in
anything more than its history. It may have been similar to, or even
identical with, physical manifestations of life, but it is not so _now_.
Eucken admits entirely this fact of the history of mind; but the meaning
of mind is to be discovered not so much in its _Whence_ as in its
present potency and its _Whither_.[1] A philosophy of science is bound
to recognise this difference, or else all its constructions can
represent no more than a torso. Physical impressions enter into