This change in the spirit of thought is accompanied by a corresponding change in the object of thought:  theology must yield its supremacy to the knowledge of nature.  Weary of Christological and soteriological questions, weary of disputes concerning the angels, the thinking spirit longs to make himself at home in the world it has learned to love, demands real knowledge,—­knowledge which is of practical utility,—­and no longer seeks God outside the world, but in it and above it.  Nature becomes the home, the body of God.  Transcendence gives place to immanence, not only in theology, but elsewhere.  Modern philosophy is naturalistic in spirit, not only because it takes nature for its favorite object, but also because it carries into other branches of knowledge the mathematical method so successful in natural science, because it considers everything sub ratione naturae and insists on the “natural” explanation of all phenomena, even those of ethics and politics.

In a word, the tendency of modern philosophy is anti-Scholastic, humanistic, and naturalistic.  This summary must suffice for preliminary orientation, while the detailed division, particularization, modification, and limitation of these general points must be left for later treatment.

Two further facts, however, may receive preliminary notice.  The indifference and hostility to the Church which have been cited among the prominent characteristics of modern philosophy, do not necessarily mean enmity to the Christian religion, much less to religion in general.  In part, it is merely a change in the object of religious feeling, which blazes up especially strong and enthusiastic in the philosophy of the sixteenth century, as it transfers its worship from a transcendent deity to a universe indued with a soul; in part, the opposition is directed against the mediaeval, ecclesiastical form of Christianity, with its monastic abandonment of the world.  It was often nothing but a very deep and strong religious feeling that led thinkers into the conflict with the hierarchy.  Since the elements of permanent worth in the tendencies, doctrines, and institutions of the Middle Ages are thus culled out from that which is corrupt and effete, and preserved by incorporation into the new view of the world and the new science, and as fruitful elements from antiquity enter with them, the progress of philosophy shows a continuous enrichment in its ideas, intuitions, and spirit.  The old is not simply discarded and destroyed, but purified, transformed, and assimilated.  The same fact forces itself into notice if we consider the relations of nationality and philosophy in the three great eras.  The Greek philosophy was entirely national in its origin and its public, it was rooted in the character of the people and addressed itself to fellow-countrymen; not until toward its decline, and not until influenced by Christianity, were its cosmopolitan inclinations aroused.  The Middle Ages were indifferent to national distinctions, as