and scientific discoveries and religious reforms which marked the entrance of the modern period.  It is true, indeed, that the transition brought about by Kant’s noetical and ethical revolution was of great significance,—­more significant even than the Socratic period, with which we are fond of comparing it; much that was new was woven on, much of the old, weakened, broken, destroyed.  And yet, if we take into account the historical after-influence of Cartesianism, we shall find that the thread was only knotted and twisted by Kantianism, not cut through.  The continued power of the pre-Kantian modes of thought is shown by the fact that Spinoza has been revived in Fichte and Schelling, Leibnitz in Herbart and Hegel, the sensationalism of the French Illuminati in Feuerbach; and that even materialism, which had been struck down by the criticism of the reason (one would have thought forever), has again raised its head.  Even that most narrow tendency of the early philosophy of the modern period, the apotheosis of cognition is,—­in spite of the moralistic counter-movement of Kant and Fichte,—­the controlling motive in the last of the great idealistic systems, while it also continues to exercise a marvelously powerful influence on the convictions of our Hegel-weary age, alike within the sphere of philosophy and (still more) without it.  In view of the intimate relations between contemporary inquiry and the progress of thought since the beginning of the modern period, acquaintance with the latter, which it is the aim of this History to facilitate, becomes a pressing duty.  To study the history of philosophy since Descartes is to study the pre-conditions of contemporary philosophy.

We begin with an outline sketch of the general characteristics of modern philosophy.  These may be most conveniently described by comparing them with the characteristics of ancient and of mediaeval philosophy.  The character of ancient philosophy or Greek philosophy,—­for they are practically the same,—­is predominantly aesthetic.  The Greek holds beauty and truth closely akin and inseparable; “cosmos” is his common expression for the world and for ornament.  The universe is for him a harmony, an organism, a work of art, before which he stands in admiration and reverential awe.  In quiet contemplation, as with the eye of a connoisseur, he looks upon the world or the individual object as a well-ordered whole, more disposed to enjoy the congruity of its parts than to study out its ultimate elements.  He prefers contemplation to analysis, his thought is plastic, not anatomical.  He finds the nature of the object in its form; and ends give him the key to the comprehension of events.  Discovering human elements everywhere, he is always ready with judgments of worth—­the stars move in circles because circular motion is the most perfect; the right is better than left, upper finer than lower, that which precedes more beautiful than that which follows.  Thinkers in whom this aesthetic reverence is weaker