The predominantly practical aim of this History—­it is intended to serve as an aid in introductory work, in reviewing, and as a substitute for dictations in academical lectures, as well as to be a guide for the wider circle of cultivated readers—­has enjoined self-restraint in the development of personal views and the limitation of critical reflections in favor of objective presentation.  It is only now and then that critical hints have been given.  In the discussion of phenomena of minor importance it has been impossible to avoid the oratio obliqua of exposition; but, wherever practicable, we have let the philosophers themselves develop their doctrines and reasons, not so much by literal quotations from their works, as by free, condensed reproductions of their leading ideas.  If the principiant view of the forces which control the history of philosophy, and of the progress of modern philosophy, expressed in the Introduction and in the Retrospect at the end of the book, have not been everywhere verified in detail from the historical facts, this is due in part to the limits, in part to the pedagogical aim, of the work.  Thus, in particular, more space has for pedagogical reasons been devoted to the “psychological” explanation of systems, as being more popular, than in our opinion its intrinsic importance would entitle it to demand.  To satisfy every one in the choice of subjects and in the extent of the discussion is impossible; but our hope is that those who would have preferred a guide of this sort to be entirely different will not prove too numerous.  In the classification of movements and schools, and in the arrangement of the contents of the various systems, it has not been our aim to deviate at all hazards from previous accounts; and as little to leave unutilized the benefits accruing to later comers from the distinguished achievements of earlier workers in the field.  In particular we acknowledge with gratitude the assistance derived from the renewed study of the works on the subject by Kuno Fischer, J.E.  Erdmann, Zeller, Windelband, Ueberweg-Heinze, Harms, Lange, Vorlander, and Puenjer.

The motive which induced us to take up the present work was the perception that there was lacking a text-book in the history of modern philosophy, which, more comprehensive, thorough, and precise than the sketches of Schwegler and his successors, should stand between the fine but detailed exposition of Windelband, and the substantial but—­because of the division of the text into paragraphs and notes and the interpolation of pages of bibliographical references—­rather dry outline of Ueberweg.  While the former refrains from all references to the literature of the subject and the latter includes far too many, at least for purposes of instruction, and J.B.  Meyer’s Leitfaden (1882) is in general confined to biographical and bibliographical notices; we have mentioned, in the text or the notes and with the greatest possible regard for the progress of the exposition, both the