lt up, and when above all genial prophecies of the later evolution
theory appeared at the very threshold of these new sciences (e. g.,
Goethe and Lamark), but the system so required it, and the method, for
love of the system, had to prove untrue to itself.

This unhistoric conception had its effects also in the domain of
history. Here the fight against the remnants of the Middle Ages kept the
outlook limited. The Middle Ages were reckoned as a mere interruption of
history by a thousand years of barbarism. The great advances of the
Middle Ages--the broadening of European learning, the bringing into
existence of great nations, which arose, one after the other, and
finally the enormous technical advances of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries--all this no one saw. Consequently a rational view of the
great historic development was rendered impossible, and history served
principally as a collection of examples and illustrations for the use
of philosophers.

The vulgarizing peddlers who during the fifties occupied themselves with
materialism in Germany did not by any means escape the limitations of
their doctrine. All the advances made in science served them only as new
grounds of proof against the existence of the Creator, and indeed it was
far beyond their trade to develop the theory any further. Idealism was
at the end of its tether and was smitten with death by the Revolution of
1848. Yet it had the satisfaction that materialism sank still lower.
Feuerbach was decidedly right when he refused to take the responsibility
of this materialism, only he had no business to confound the teachings
of the itinerant spouters with materialism in general.

However, we must here remark two different things. During the life of
Feuerbach science was still in that state of violent fermentation which
has only comparatively cleared during the last fifteen years; new
material of knowledge was furnished in a hitherto unheard of measure but
the fixing of interrelations, and therewith of order, in the chaos of
overwhelming discoveries was rendered possible quite lately for the
first time. True, Feuerbach had lived to see the three distinctive
discoveries--that of the cell, the transformation of energy and the
evolution theory acknowledged since the time of Darwin. But how could
the solitary country-dwelling philosopher appreciate at their full value
discoveries which naturalists themselves at that time in part contested
and partly did not u