CHAPTER II
NEO-CRITICISM, VOLUNTARISM, AND THE PRIMACY OF PRACTICAL REASON
1. The Return to the Critical Method. — The first indication
of the awakening of the mind from the extremely negative
attitude of the materialists may be seen in the return
to the teaching of Kant; the activity of the subject in
the elaboration of science, which had been for long
ignored, and had been thrust into the background
by the triumphs so easily achieved by the mechanical
method, asserts its rights once more and inaugurates
the fruitful work of salutary criticism. Scientific
intellectualism, having experienced for itself in the
failure of its bold attempts to exhaust the totality of
things the limitations already denned by Kant, finds
itself in the self-same position, face to face with the
self-same problems which baffled the thought of the
philosophy of Königsberg. It is natural that the solution of
these difficulties should be looked upon as the necessary
starting-point of the new criticism of value and the
limits of human science; but at the same time the
need is seen of modifying it to a certain extent in order
to bring it into harmony with the results of the theory
of evolution and of psycho-physiological research, and
it is therefore incumbent upon us to define more clearly
the meaning of the a priori element, and to assign
limits thereto.
2. Lange. — Albrecht Lange recognises, as does materialism, the necessity of finding a mechanical ex-
