Excerpt from An Outline of Philosophy in America

VI. Reeent Idealism. Within the last twen ty-five years systematic and critical idealism has been greatly stimulated by the direct influence of the German Universities on American students. The works of British authors, chiefly those of A. Campbell Fraser, J. Hutcheson Stirling, Edward Caird and perhaps above all Thomas H. Green, have been widely read. The influence of Kant, Hegel and especially Lotze has been and is active. T. H. Green and Lotze are undoubtedly the more prominent influences among American thinkers at the present time. The former has the more influence in ethical speculation, the latter in metaphysics. The elements of mechanism and pantheism in Lotze's work are generally so construed as to bring them into essential harmony with Hegel and Green; and the'rnethod of Lotze in making reconciliations in metaphysics and epistemology, accompanied with his pronounced ethical and religious spirit, have brought his system into growing favor. But the most important step toward arousing interest in Idealistic Philosophy was made by pvil/iam T. Harris, born 1835, now United States Commissioner of Education. In 1867 he founded at St. Louis the Journal of Speculative Philosophy which, thoughprimarily devoted to Idealism, made its influ ence felt in every department of philosophy. Among its American contributors were Alcott, Brinton, Hall, James, Mead, Morris, Royce and Watson. Many works of German authors have received translation and exposition in its pages. For the first three years more than half of its articles were from the pen of Dr. Harris. He has also written an introduction to Kroeger's translation of Fichte's Science of Knowledge, London, 1889; an Exposition of Hegel's Logic, Chicago, 1890; Introduction to Philosophy, New York, 1890; and Philosophy in Johnson's Encyclopaedia. Leibniz, Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel have had special exposition in Grigg's Philos ophic Classics, edited by Professor George S. Morris, 1840-1889, who has also published British Thought and Thinkers, Chicago, 1880. Professor Charles C. Everett, of Harvard University, follows Hegel in Science of Thought, Boston, 1869. Professor John Watson, of Queen's College, Kingston, Canada, holds an intellectual Idealism by which he means, the doctrine that man is capable of knowing reality as it actually is, and that reality when so known is absolutely rational. Kant and his English Critics, 1881; Comte, Mill and Spencer; an Outline of Philosophy, 1895 Hedonistic Theories, from Aristippus to Spencer, 1895, New York.

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