PHILOSOPHICAL TERMINOLOGY. 47 sented are only gained by self-observation, which more than any other observation, being independent of the senses, demands a peculiar effort and practice, even a peculiar talent, which is generally only combined with a strong theoretical interest. But, in the second place (B), such an interest has been relatively little encouraged. There are no powerful practical interests behind, such as are so eminently beneficial to the development of mathematics, astronomy, physics and chemistry. The practical interests which go to strengthen Psychology, and the philosophising which is based upon it, are themselves ideal interests i.e., interests which make themselves felt very powerfully in feeling, hence in connexion with fancy, art and religion, but in conscious thought generally remain weak in proportion as they are, as it were, overspread by those forces. In the third place (C), it thus happens that the influence of the natural sciences upon general and philosophical thought has been, and still is, incomparably greater than the influence of that which we call the mental sciences. With this is connected a certain contempt of philosophy in those iparts which are most characteristic of it, the depreciation of Logic, the miscalling of Metaphysic. Now the natural sciences may indeed dispense with these branches of know- ledge ; the mental sciences cannot. It was especially fatal with reference to Metaphysic that it was banished, instead of being reformed ; banished because of connexions with theology which are in no way essential to its idea, however important they were for its historical phenomenon. Its idea is as supreme philosophy to present in concepts the necessary content of thought, the absolute existent (TO ov y oV), to classify and develop it, hence to establish and prove a system of judgments wherein such ideas are connected. Even now the proposition still holds good with which Chr. Wolff introduces and defends his Ontoloyia (" vix aliud hodie contemtius nomen quarn ontologiae ") : "In treating the supreme philosophy on scientific methods we do not recall to life the scholastic philosophy, but rectify it ". That sober thinker rightly emphasises the real services of the scholastics in this field, and rightly points to the practical value of ontology, seeing that everywhere we stumble upon premature ill-considered judgments, owing to the lack of clarified concepts of those objects of thought, the names of which are in every one's mouth, such as cause, end, necessary, fortuitous, possible, impossible, perfect, unity, true, order, space, etc. Wolff's work is really, in its essential content, an extraordinarily wide development of the idea of a universal
