The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Reviews

[ 1 ] 1. Berliner Tageblatt. No. 179, Saturday, April 7, 1900, 1st supplement.

Rudolf Steiner: Worldviews and Views of Life in the Nineteenth Century. Part One. / Eduard Löwenthal: The Religious Movement in the Nineteenth Century.

Rudolf Steiner accomplishes his task of painting a philosophical picture (in the broadest sense) of the past century by presenting the worldviews and philosophies of life from Goethe and Kant to Darwin and Haeckel. There is no doubt that this is a tremendous struggle of the restless human spirit, which set out at the beginning of the century with bold thinking to solve the riddles of existence and found a certain satisfaction in the deepening of scientific knowledge at its end. Steiner distinguishes between an early period, which he calls idealistic, and a later, realistic period, which seeks to unravel the mystery of the world through observation of facts. One can praise his popular scientific work, which is adorned with all the hallmarks of German thoroughness and of which the first part is now available, even if one thinks somewhat differently than he does about D. F. Strauss, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Ernst Haeckel. Kant's three famous questions in the Critique of Pure Reason: What can I know? What should I do? What may I hope? are attempted to be answered in astute and well-rounded historical presentations. Shining through everything is the unanimous effort of the best to bring unity to diversity and thus grasp the truth, in accordance with Goethe's great, clear words: “If I know my relationship to myself and to the outside world, then I call it truth.” In 1783, Herder wrote quite heretically in his “Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Mankind”: "From stone to crystal, from crystal to metals, from these to plant creation, from plants to animals, from animals to humans, we see the form of organization rise, and with it the instincts of creatures become more diverse, finally uniting in the form of humans, insofar as humans could grasp them. And so we can assume that man is an intermediate creature among animals, that is, the developed form in which the characteristics of all species around him are gathered in the finest synthesis." However, no one has expressed more beautifully what they all actually meant, from Fichte to Haeckel, than Schiller in his wonderful expression to and about Goethe (August 23, 1794): “From the simple organization, you ascend, step by step, to the more complex, in order to finally construct the most complex of all, the human being, genetically from the materials of the entire structure of nature.”

We will probably know in six months' time what the second part of Steiner's work will bring; it will probably be just as solid and clear and one-sided as the first, and the spiritual link between the two parts will be Arthur Schopenhauer's meaningful bon mot to Wieland: “Life is a miserable thing; I have decided to spend mine thinking about it.”

Dr. E. Löwenthal contributes more to the book than R. Steiner because he is more concise, but of course he also delves less deeply than the latter. I would like to say this: Steiner's philosophical book will be read more by colleagues in the field and a small number of well-educated friends of intellectual gymnastics; Löwenthal's account of the religious movement of the century should only be read by non-specialists, who rightly call it “stimulating,” while connoisseurs, again rightly, call it “superficial” because of its sketchiness. More disturbing than the suggestive brevity, however, is the sometimes bitter sharpness with which the author turns against all ecclesiastical and religious phenomena that do not lie within the sphere of the Cogitantenbund (the German freethinkers) represented by Löwenthal. All justified and necessary polemics could have been a degree more moderate and understanding. The sections on the Friends of Light, the free religious communities, and the remarks on Old Catholicism, the Protestant Association, and the reform movements in Judaism contain much that is interesting. But the religious movement of the past century should not be written about by a polemicist, even if he has such a long and distinguished literary career behind him as the author of Cogitantentum. Th.K.

[ 2 ] 2. Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung. [From the publisher's advertisement; no further details known]

Rudolf Steiner: Worldviews and Life Views in the Nineteenth Century. Part One.

In many cases, we will adhere to the excellent orientation that Rudolf Steiner has given to this epoch in his book “World and Life Views in the Nineteenth Century.”

Professor Dr. Thomas Achelis-Bremen

[ 3 ] 3. Reports of the Freies Deutsches Hochstift, Frankfurt. New series. Seventeenth volume. Year 1901. Issue 2. Prof. Dr. Max Koch: “Neuere Goetheund Schillerliteratur XXI” (Recent Goethe and Schiller Literature XXI), pp. 140-247, here pp. 207-209.

Rudolf Steiner: World and Life Views in the Nineteenth Century. Part One.

In discussing “Worldviews and Views of Life in the Nineteenth Century,” Rudolf Steiner acknowledges that Schiller, in his “Letters on Aesthetic Education,” expressed what determined the direction of human action at the end of the 18th century (p. 15) . By seeking to transform the entire world into a realm of art, Romanticism merely pursued to its ultimate conclusion Schiller's statement in his aesthetic letters that man is only fully human when he plays (p. 74). That Romanticism at the same time formed a countercurrent to Fichte's worldview seems to me not only a highly questionable assertion by Steiner (p. 73); he also contradicts it himself by describing the Romantics two pages later as the heirs of Fichte's idea of the uniqueness of the ego. All the more apt is Steiner's observation that the Romantics, with their desire to make human beings appear as free as possible, had taken up the creed of Goethe and Schiller, to whom we owe the intimate bond between poetry and worldview. Goethe alone, through his exploration of the laws of nature, whose necessity was also attested to by the highest works of art, and Schiller, through incessant philosophical thinking, had created firm, unshakeable foundations for their views, while the Romantics leapt into the land of aesthetic freedom with a single sentence. Steiner had already expressed his conviction of the stark contrast between Goethe's understanding of phenomena and Kant's thinking in his book on “Goethe's Worldview” (cf. [Reports of the Free German High Foundation, New Series, 1897, “Recent Goethe and Schiller Literature XTV,”] Volume XII, [Issue 3/4,] p. 302 f.). When he titles the first chapter of his new work “The Age of Kant and Goethe,” he acknowledges that “the history of worldviews in the 19th century must begin with Kant and Goethe” [note, see below], but he also repeats that Kant's view of the world is in all essential respects the opposite of Goethe's (pp. 35 and 44). Goethe's favorable judgments of the Königsberg philosopher should not deceive us in this regard. Schiller, who as “a thoroughly independent thinker confronts his inspiration Kant” (p. 58), may well have found “a mediation between Kant's and Goethe's worldviews in virtue ennobled by beauty” (p. 62) . However, since studying “Wilhelm Meister,” Schiller himself had been increasingly drawn to Goethe's way of thinking. Goethe had a strictly uniform worldview. Because he did not regard humans as beings alongside other creatures of nature, but rather proceeded from the natural historical connection between humans and other living beings, the discovery of the intermaxillary bone was a necessity for him (p. 11) at a time when professional research still thoroughly resisted the natural worldview of Herder and Goethe. Since Goethe believed that the eternal laws of nature were revealed in the human spirit, for him the laws of the human spirit were the objective laws of the natural order itself (p. 37), and human beings were a link in this chain of necessities. And this worldview also gave rise to his belief in the cognitive ability and inner truth of the imagination (p. 69).

Steiner himself seems to have abandoned the strange opinion he previously advocated of a correspondence between Goethe and Hegel; at least he rejects the attempt made in K. L. Michelet's “Naturphilosophie” (1841) to link Goethe and Hegel as pioneers of a speculative physics of the future and unifiers of speculation with experience. In contrast, Steiner emphasizes Goethe's influence on Schopenhauer in the period from autumn 1813 to May 1814, going into more detail on Goethe's theory of colors (p. 126). Robert Saitschick also highlighted the boundless self-confidence that Schopenhauer displayed even towards his admired and revered master when the latter responded to Schopenhauer's objections to individual points in his theory of colors as characteristic of Schopenhauer's character (Genius and Character. Shakespeare. Lessing. Schopenhauer. Richard Wagner. Berlin 1900. Ernst Hofmann & Comp.).

[Note]: Goethe and Kant also appear, one as the spokesman for poets, the other at the head of philosophers and natural scientists in Walter Bernard's dramatic poem “Morgendämmerung” (Berlin 1901, Verlag Aufklärung), a bombastic and uninspired glorification of the great, i.e., the 19th century. Schiller is only Goethe's silent companion; the latter is given the verses to speak:

World soul, come and permeate us!
Then to wrestle with the world spirit itself
Will be the high calling of our powers.

Good spirits drove along, participating,
Gently guiding, supreme masters.
To the one who creates and created everything.

[ 4 ] 4. Deutsche Literaturzeitung. No. 20, XXI. Year, May 12, 1900, col. 1307-1310.

Rudolf Steiner: Worldviews and Views of Life in the Nineteenth Century. Part One.

At the end of the preface, Steiner expresses the hope that his “distinctly pronounced worldview” may have “sharpened rather than clouded his perception of the thoughts of others.” It goes without saying that an author expresses personal views and value judgments in a historical account, because this is inevitable; but if the reader is directly advised not to forget the author behind the content of his book, the latter cannot take offense if one explores the effects of this emphasis on his own point of view on the problems of life in a narrative. Steiner now professes his belief in individualism, whose ideas he formulates as follows: “Contemporary individualism sees in the free individual personality a type of human being who gradually develops out of unfree conditions, who has society as his prerequisite because he can only arise from it. He examines society and finds that, by its very nature, it produces the free individual” (p. 15f.). It will only be possible to deal with these views after the publication of the second volume; here, the quoted words suffice to make it clear to what extent they have influenced St[einer]'s view of the philosophy of history in general, his choice of material, and his judgments in detail. St[einer] writes a book about “worldviews and outlooks on life.” But he is only interested in the bearers of these views, only in the great personalities, not in the common ground on which they were formed. On the other hand, he takes a different interest in the individual personalities according to his point of view, quickly and casually dismissing worldviews that are contrary to his own. However, once he becomes interested in a personality and their teachings to a greater extent, he seems to be seized by a certain fear that he might be overwhelmed by them. In such cases, he finds—more or less unconsciously—a way out by emphasizing mainly those aspects of the system in question that conform to his own views, which may well give rise to the satisfaction of finding confirmation of his own views in the teachings of his predecessors, of being able to regard them as precursors, so to speak.

It is doubtful, to say the least, that such a standpoint would be particularly suitable for providing a faithful picture of the past. This can be demonstrated in detail in the present book, but in general it can be said that it represents a misunderstanding of the task of historiography. Anyone who fears that this will narrow their personality should stay away from it. For in a certain sense, it does require a renunciation: anyone who pursues the thoughts and expressions of another for the purpose of presenting them must consider them more significant than their own at that moment. Anyone who wants to tackle a book like the one Steiner writes must make this admission. But I cannot see that this renunciation necessarily entails a danger to one's own personality. No one needs to be dictated to in the choice of subject matter, and then, after serious immersion in the personality and teachings of a man, the truly historically minded person develops the awareness of now reshaping him, as it were, from within, which not only compensates for the effort expended, but also enriches them inwardly and creates inner bonds between the personality and its portrayer, which are far from being perceived as a bondage to the will of another. St[einer] apparently does not wait for this state to come about, I do not know whether time was pressing to actually have the book published at the end of the century, but there can certainly be no question of a loving approach to the essence of the personalities described and a reshaping of them; rather, one has the feeling that the author wants to get rid of them as soon as possible.

As appealing as it might be to show in detail how this view shifts the judgment of individual personalities, the space available to me compels me to briefly outline the content of the book, although some hints in the direction mentioned can be given. St[einer] divides the century into two parts: "The present [volume] deals with the first five decades of the century, during which minds were striving to extract truth from within themselves. This period could be called the idealistic period. The second volume will deal with the age of natural science, the realistic period. It seeks to approach the mysteries of the world by utilizing the significant advances made in the observation of facts over the last five decades" (preface). I will not yet discuss the validity of this view and its implementation; this can only be done once the second volume is available. The first volume is divided into an introduction and four chapters: The Age of Kant and Goethe. The Classics of World and Life Views. Reactionary World Views. Radical World Views. The first (17-76) deals successively with Kant, Goethe, Fichte, Schiller, and Romanticism. The one-sidedness of Kant's world view is emphasized—perhaps too one-sidedly—and contrasted with Goethe's. What St[einer] says about Kant is not always accurate; even his derivation of Kant's philosophy from the systems that preceded it is very poor and in some cases incorrect, while the presentation of the former itself suffers from a strange vagueness of formulation that should not be possible given his precise knowledge. What, for example, are we to make of the statement: “Kant made selfless devotion (!) to the voice of the spirit the basis of morality” (30). In contrast, the presentation of Goethe's worldview, as one would expect from a connoisseur like Steiner, is witty and appealingly written, and the fair appreciation of Fichte and, no less, of Schiller is gratifying. That Romanticism is then dismissed in less than three pages (73-76) and how this is done is less gratifying. It should not be overlooked in this way in a book about worldviews. It seems to be somewhat contrary to Steiner, as is Herder, whose fair assessment one searches for in vain. The second chapter (77-114) represents a high point in the presentation; despite some one-sidedness, what is said about Schelling is excellent and worth reading, and also warmer in tone, while Schleiermacher is again given very little attention. The feeling of “absolute dependence” is probably foreign to the modern individualist, and at this point one can clearly see the danger of such a view. St[einer] further earns credit for rehabilitating Hegel, only to then, strangely enough, unite Herbart and Schopenhauer in the third chapter (115-141) under the title “Reactionary Worldviews.” Otherwise, incidentally, what is said about Herbart (especially 121-3) about Herbart is not bad, while Schopenhauer, as a representative of a worldview, is decidedly neglected, and his unoriginal achievement, the theory of colors, is given undue prominence, to which St[einer]'s preoccupation with Goethe's work probably led. The conclusion of this chapter is then a summary treatment of the Hegelian(!). The fourth chapter (142-167) presents the teachings of Feuerbach, Strauss, Bruno Bauer, and Stirner, the latter of whom is described as the first of these, in whom thinking “has borne one of its ripest fruits” (158). I cannot share this view at all, but I do not feel called upon to refute it here.

One might say that Steiner's book is, after all, a history of philosophy in the 19th century. I also think that such a title, with the addition of “from the standpoint of modern individualism,” would better reflect the content of the book.

Berlin. Paul Menzer.

[ 5 ] 5. Deutsche Literatur Zeitung. No. 32; XXI. Year, August 10, 1901, col. 1995-1996.

Rudolf Steiner: World and Life Views in the Nineteenth Century. Part Two.

While the first volume of this work (cf. DLZ. Year 1900, col. 1307 ff.) aroused controversy in principle, it nevertheless offered some compensation in the form of a few well-written sections. Such merits cannot be claimed for the second volume. I will therefore refrain from discussing it in detail and merely point out that the arbitrariness in the selection of the subjects dealt with has possibly increased. Anyone who treats the social question only in passing in a book of the described content, who devotes 7 pages to a philosophy as ineffective as E. Dühring's and barely 4 pages to Nietzsche, and who finally has not a word to say about Bismarck, cannot claim to have given a historically accurate account.

I summarize my opinion by saying that the book is thoroughly compilatory in nature and can rightly be described as a product of the unfortunate turn-of-the-century literature.

Berlin. Paul Menzer.

[ 6 ] 6. Der Türmer. Monthly magazine for mind and spirit. Editor: Jeannot Emil Freiherr von Grotthutz. Fourth year. Volume I. (October 1901 to March 1902), 8. 312.

Rudolf Steiner: Worldviews and Views of Life in the Nineteenth Century. Parts One and Two.

The author, whose own views are in harmony with those of Ernst Haeckel (and in part also with those of Nietzsche), would, as he says in the preface to the first volume of his work, consider himself fortunate if experts found that his “distinctly pronounced worldview” had not clouded his view of the thoughts of others, but rather sharpened it. Whether this is the case can only be acknowledged to a very limited extent. In his discussion of some philosophers, mostly the older, speculative ones (Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, also F. A. Lange, among others), Steiner demonstrates that he has truly penetrated the essence of their thought structures; but whether he has a full understanding and proper appreciation of a number of more recent phenomena, such as those represented in Neo-Kantianism, phenomenalism, and indeed in neo-idealism of various hues, it is at least open to question. What is certain is that Steiner's expression of the currents in philosophy in the second half of the 19th century is rather one-sided; many important aspects were lost or not given their due, e.g., the direction of philosophy taken by W. Wundt. In detail, the book contains a number of apt remarks, and it often sheds new light on old ideas. Thus, if read with caution, it can provide many insights. For example, we can only agree with what Steiner says against absolute agnosticism (the view that the essence of things must always remain unknown to us). “Experiencing the power and scope of thought within oneself is the basic prerequisite for any worldview. And if one experiences the power of thought within oneself, one also has the confidence in it with which all knowledge begins.”

Dr. Rudolf Eisler.

[ 7 ] 7. Der Freidenker (The Freethinker). Organ of the German Freethinkers' Association. 9th year, No. 24, December 15, 1901, Berlin-Charlottenburg, pp. 185-187.

A Century of German Philosophy. By Julius Frisch (Vienna).

At the turn of the last century, especially in Germany, there was no shortage of men who set themselves the task of taking a critical look back at 100 years of human creativity in any field. It is not appropriate here to name the significant works of this kind; their impressive number suggests that such a review of a period rich in effort and success corresponds to a need of cultural humanity. And indeed, in our age of rapid progress that defies all the time scales of past centuries, it has become a necessity to look back from time to time on what has been achieved and to highlight what is valuable and of lasting benefit. On the other hand, such a review, which necessarily has an encyclopedic character, also meets the needs of educated people because, given the division of labor that now dominates every branch of human activity and research, it has become virtually impossible to draw knowledge from extensive specialist publications. One is dependent on works that treat the subject in question in a concise, clear manner that takes into account its essence.

However, these circumstances give men of science a powerful means of deceiving large circles of educated people through one-sided presentations influenced by party and other interests; the damage that such obscure gentlemen of research have caused in the minds of those seeking education, who blindly trusted the respected name or title, is truly not to be underestimated.

Particularly in the field of philosophy, where “words can be used to argue excellently and to construct a system,” much sin has been committed in popular writings. The Zionist watchmen and students of order of all kinds and their learned clique, to which unfortunately many university teachers belong, have much to answer for. Their endeavors often aim to portray our great revolutionary thinkers in popular writings either as naughty children of all-encompassing divine learning who ultimately returned remorsefully to their mother's bosom, or as hot-headed, bloodthirsty revolutionaries who belonged best in the madhouse or on the scaffold (e.g., Stirner in Treitschke).

It is therefore all the more gratifying that Dr. Rudolf Steiner, a writer known as a modern thinker and fighter, has undertaken to give the German public an objective account of the intellectual struggles over worldview that were fought out in Germany in the 19th century. (Dr. Rudolf Steiner: Die Welt- und Lebensanschauungen des 19. Jahrhunderts [The Worldviews and Life Views of the 19th Century]. 2 volumes. Berlin 1899, 1900. The work is dedicated to Ernst Haeckel.)

In the following, I will attempt to briefly summarize the content of this important publication. The work is divided into two main parts. The first deals with the first half of the 19th century. Steiner shows us how powerfully the great thinker Kant and our poets Goethe and Schiller influenced the worldview and outlook on life of this period. We are particularly grateful to the author for dealing not only with the poetic personalities of the two classics, but also with Goethe and Schiller as thinkers and world-wise men, and for describing their relationship to Kantian philosophy. In doing so, the author, who is always aware of the importance of a genetic presentation, draws on Kant's predecessors, namely Spinoza, who had such a powerful influence on Goethe.

In the second chapter, the classics of German philosophical idealism, Schelling, Fichte, and Hegel, are subjected to a thorough, in some cases completely new, appreciation. Steiner allows the philosophical triumvirate, whose influence on intellectual life in Germany we children of an empirical age can hardly imagine, to pass before our mind's eye. We become witnesses to the battle, fought with all the weapons of dialectics and profundity, for a worldview that satisfies both the intellect and the heart. The writings of these three thinkers are almost forgotten today. We appreciate Steiner all the more because his judgment of the three philosophers is drawn from their own works and informs us from the primary source about the essential content of their systems. The storm of empiricism that broke out in the second half of the 19th century left little of classical philosophy behind. Even men such as Lange, the author of “History of Materialism,” have circulated incorrect judgments about Hegel, for example, which make it incomprehensible that generations of the educated German public sought the salvation of philosophy in Hegel. If we follow Steiner's account, we understand that Schelling, Fichte, and Hegel could not have philosophized differently, given the state of natural science at the time and all other circumstances of the era. And it would be interesting for cultural philosophers and sociologists to investigate the secret connections between the milieu, political conditions, and social circumstances in order to explain classical academic philosophy. That would be a piece of truly modern cultural historiography. But Schelling, Fichte, and Hegel are also of interest to modern thinkers in other ways. Their powerful intellectual constructs have by no means fallen completely into ruin, and in some quarters there are still people whose metaphysical needs cannot be satisfied by Spencer's “unknowable” or Du Bois-Reymond's “ignorabimus.” Du Bois-Reymond's “ignorabimus,” are pushing for a revival of German classical philosophy and its reconciliation with the results of contemporary research.

After Steiner has considered German Romanticism and its main representatives, he deals with the worldviews of Herbart and Schopenhauer in Chapter 3. Herbart is known to have considered himself Kant's heir apparent. The way in which Herbart's expansion of Kant's philosophy is described is interesting. Anyone concerned with problems of the philosophy of art will also be aware of the significance of Herbart's philosophy of aesthetics, which in turn was developed by Zimmerman, the Viennese university lecturer who died a few years ago. The concise and clear description of Schopenhauer's philosophy and its influence on modern culture is downright brilliant. After discussing the less significant philosophers of the first half of the 19th century (Trahndorjf, Günther, Baader, Immanuel Hermann Fichte, etc.), Steiner leads us into the age of revolution. The German people had begun to realize that the great questions of the world and of the times could not be solved by “pure thinking” alone.

Arnold Ruge and Theodor Echtermayer, in whose “Hallische Jahrbücher” (Halle Yearbooks) the battles of worldviews were fought out, soon moved on to an independent development of Hegel's ideas and led to the viewpoints of philosophical radicalism. And soon their journal also devoted itself to the “struggle against political bondage, against feudalism and the theory of landed property.” “They thus distanced themselves,” as Steiner says, “from the spirit of Hegel, who did not want to make history, but to understand it.”

The next section provides an in-depth appreciation of the great thinker Feuerbach, the wayward offspring of German idealism, who overthrew religious dogmatism and shed entirely new light on the psychological origins of religions. The brilliant David Friedrich Strauss, originally a theologian, then a Hegelian, and later a materialist of the purest kind, is also dealt with exhaustively. This is followed by a discussion of the ideas of Max Stirner. It is not possible here to go into detail about the wealth of new ideas that Steiner conveys to us about Stirner, but it should be noted that, in Steiner's view, the German schoolmaster, reviled by the philistines of education as the “father of modern anarchism,” was one of the most important educational thinkers that the German people have produced. Stirner is the last offshoot of that strand of philosophical radicalism which believed it could resolve questions of existence and lifestyle without the empirical sciences. Steiner rightly points to John Henry Mackay's excellent characterization of Stirner (Max Stirner, Sein Leben und seine Werke [Max Stirner, His Life and Works]. Berlin 1898. Schuster & Löffler).

This chapter concludes the first volume of the work, after Steiner has reflected on the fact that Lamarck's ingenious view of the development of living beings, which he first put forward in 1809, was completely ignored in the first half of the 19th century. The world-shaking scientific discoveries of the 19th century belong to its second half, whose worldview struggles are dealt with in Volume II. Volume II, which takes us into the midst of the struggles of the present, demands the full interest of every modern educated person. We are first introduced to the “struggle for the mind.” The brave materialists Moleschott, Vogt, and Ludwig Büchner on the one hand, and their spiritualist opponents Rudolf Wagner and Czolbe on the other, fought each other with all the weapons that the knowledge of the 1850s had to offer. It is worth emphasizing here the just appreciation that Steiner gives to Büchner, a founder of the German Freethinkers' Association. Büchner had been portrayed by his opponents as an amateurish popularizer; but now, after his death, we recognize that he was one of the most important enlighteners of the German people.

Steiner then introduces us to the most important scientific discoveries, whose philosophical significance he assesses. Gustav Theodor Fechner, the imaginative thinker and founder of psychophysics, is discussed, and Lotze's position is honored. The materialists had won over the majority of thinkers, but their teaching had a flaw: it could not explain the origin and development of organisms. Then Darwin appeared, whose theory of descent and evolution instantly put the new materialism, which in its further development and deepening was given the name monism, on a firm footing. A separate chapter is devoted to the influence of Darwinism on worldview. Ernst Haeckel, the most brilliant representative of monism, to which Steiner also professes his allegiance, is discussed in detail. This chapter is undoubtedly the most interesting of the entire work, because it brings us into the immediate present, which, despite many attempts from the theological, scholastic philosophical, and even spiritualist sides, has not gone beyond Haeckel. From the extremely rich content of the following sections, “The World as Illusion,” “The Worldviews of Factual Fanaticism,” and “Idealistic Worldviews,” the discussions of Heimholtz, Du Bois-Reymond, F. A. Lange, Mills, Spencer, Comte, Dühring, and our contemporaries Windelband, Volkelt, Otto Liebmann, and others are highlighted.

Ed. v. Hartmann, the pessimistic latecomer of classicism, Mainländer, the philosopher of salvation, and Robert Hamerling, who is still far too little appreciated as a philosopher, are dealt with in depth. In my opinion, Wundt has been given too little attention. In the chapter “Modern Man,” the Austrian philosopher Carneri demonstrates the ethical value of monism. These discussions will reassure those who believe that true morality can only flourish on the basis of religious faith, and not on the basis of natural science, which has detached itself from any dogma. In the same chapter, Nietzsche, who developed his views on lifestyle based on the idea of evolution, also finds a place. Steiner names Marx as Nietzsche's counterpart. With a look to the future of philosophy, which, if one does not deny with Marx the idea of any part in historical development, is also a good part of the future of the human race, Steiner concludes his work after referring to his own “philosophy of liberation.”

Since Steiner wanted to describe the development of German philosophy in the 19th century, it is not surprising that the only foreign thinkers considered are those whose influence on German intellectual life was or is significant. On the other hand, German thinkers who dealt only with individual branches of philosophy have been treated superficially or not at all. Nevertheless, the absence of Germans such as Richard Wagner and Du Prel, as well as the Russian Tolstoy, is striking. Steiner even mentions this in the preface to the second volume, but without explaining the reason for this omission. Even if Du Prel's spiritualism and Tolstoy's anachoretic early Christianity are useless for cultural activity based on the idea of development, their symptomatic value cannot be overlooked. Similarly, Neo-Buddhism (theosophy), which has developed its own phraseology, a kind of “mystical Rotwelsch,” could have found a place. A psychology of modern belief in spirits by a man as witty as Steiner would certainly have been welcome to us.

The language of the work is easy to understand. No lengthy philosophical passages disturb the reader's enjoyment. The presentation is masterful and original in every respect. Steiner always strives to remain objective; as already mentioned, he himself takes Haeckel's point of view, but this does not prevent him from conceding that his most determined opponents are right. May this work, which is uniquely suited to awakening the interest of a wider audience in the highest questions of existence, find many attentive readers!