Page:A Brief History of Modern Philosophy.djvu/217

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF ROMANTICISM

gories finally combine in the idea of personality, and that this idea must be accepted as the expression of the highest reality. C. H. Weisse (Das philosophische Problem der Gegenwart, 1842) and J. H. Fichte, the son of J. G. Fichte, (Grundzüge zum System der Philosophie, 1833-1846) were the chief representatives of this tendency. Lotze and Fechner joined them later so far as pertained to their ideas on the philosophy of religion. — As we have previously observed, the ideas of Schelling had been moving in the same direction for a long time already. — We find a peculiar combination of theistic philosophy of religion and humanistic philosophy of law in the voluminous writings of Ch. Fr. Krause, of which we can only mention Das Urbild der Menschheit (1811).

The most thorough criticism of the Hegelian philosophy, which is at the same time an important positive contribution to the theory of knowledge, is from the pen of the judicious and profound thinker, Adolph Trendelenburg, in his Logischen Untersuchungen (1840).

2. Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1866), under the influence of Hegel, gave up theology for philosophy. After serving in the capacity of Privatdocent at Erlangen for a time, he withdrew to the solitude of country life where he developed a fruitful capacity as an author. In his latter years he struggled with poverty and sickness.

Within the Hegelian school the foremost problem was whether religious ideas could be transformed into scientific concepts without losing the essential meaning. Feuerbach, on the other hand, as soon as he had definitely renounced the school, assumed the task of discovering the source of religious ideas in human affections and impulses, in fear and hope, in yearning and wish. He aims to explain the origin of dogmas psychologically, and in so