s of formalistic construction,
and to define the nature and limits of philosophical necessity. The
development of philosophy is, perhaps, one chief aim of the world-process,
but it is certainly not the only one; it is a part of the universal aim,
and it is not surprising that the instruments of its realization do not
work exclusively in its behalf, that their activity brings about results,
which seem unessential for philosophical ends or obstacles in their way.
Philosophical ideas do not think themselves, but are thought by living
spirits, which are something other and better than mere thought
machines--by spirits who live these thoughts, who fill them with personal
warmth and passionately defend them. There is often reason, no doubt, for
the complaint that the personality which has undertaken to develop some
great idea is inadequate to the task, that it carries its subjective
defects into the matter in hand, that it does too much or too little, or
the right thing in the wrong way, so that the spirit of philosophy seems
to have erred in the choice and the preparation of its instrument. But the
reverse side of the picture must also be taken into account. The thinking
spirit is more limited, it is true, than were desirable for the perfect
execution of a definite logical task; but, on the other hand, it is far
too rich as well. A soulless play of concepts would certainly not help
the cause, and there is no disadvantage in the failure of the history of
philosophy to proceed so directly and so scholastically, as, for instance,
in the system of Hegel. A graded series of interconnected general forces
mediate between the logical Idea and the individual thinker--the spirit of
the people, of the age, of the thinker's vocation, of his time of life,
which are felt by the individual as part of himself and whose impulses
he unconsciously obeys. In this way the modifying, furthering, hindering
correlation of higher and lower, of the ruler with his commands and the
servant with his more or less willing obedience, is twice repeated, the
situation being complicated further by the fact that the subject affected
by these historical forces himself helps to make history. The most
important factor in philosophical progress is, of course, the state of
inquiry at the time, the achievements of the thinkers of the immediately
preceding age; and in this relation of a philosopher to his predecessors,
again, a distinction must be made between a logical