Excerpt from The Hundred Greatest Men: Portraits of the One Hundred Greatest Men of History, Reproduced From Fine and Rare Steel Engravings

In France, Locke was introduced by Voltaire, and, misrepresented by Condillac, became unwittingly authority for the sensualistic atheism of Helvetius and Lamettrie. The beginnings of a better philosophy were furnished by Maine de Birau, trained in the school of Leibnitz, and by Royer Collard, a pupil of Dugald Stuart. In Germany, Kant subjected the elements and the processes of human knowledge to a critical examination more severe and comprehensive than it had ever before received in the light of the achievements of modern science and of modern life, the result of which was to vindicate the d prior?) authority of necessary truths, and at the same time to bring into question the trustworthiness of the intellect that assumed or questioned them. But against the destructive consequences of this cautious criticism, Kant essayed to provide a sufficient barrier in the authority of the Practical Reason and its Categorical Imperative of duty. But Kant raised more questions than he could answer. Hence his philosophy has wrought like leaven in every speculative school since his time, and many of the problems which he started are still as unsolved and unsettled as ever. The service which he rendered to modern philosophy in widening its sphere and in deepening its inquiries cannot be over-estimated. Fichte followed Kant, making a strictly logical application of a part of Kant's theory. Schelling followed Fichte, and endeavoured to avoid the consequences of both by a corrected theory Of knowledge and its relation to the absolute in which nature and spirit were conceived as identical. Hegel astonished and captivated his generation by presenting the process and the Objects of scientific knowledge in a logical system, whose abstrae tions he personified into living agencies, capable of self-development, even up to the idea or the reality of God. The critics of these four coryphaei of German philosophy have been numerous, and among them are men of great learning and distinguished ability. The so-called German philosophy has exerted a potent influence over the entire civilized world, - in France, Italy, England, and America, and has given form and character to the most important questions and controversies in all these countries.

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