Thus, it must be confessed, not only were the illegitimate pretensions of the Hegelian system to subordinate to itself all other studies rejected, but no regard was paid to the rightful claims of philosophy, that is, the criticism of the sources of cognition, and the definition of the functions of the intellect. And so it came about that men of science began to lay some stress on the banishment of all philosophic influences from their work while some of them, including men of the greatest acuteness, went so far as to condemn philosophy altogether, not merely as useless, but as mischievous dreaming. The philosophers accused the scientific men of narrowness the scientific men retorted that the philosophers were crazy. It started with the hypothesis that not only spiritual phenomena, but even the actual world-nature, that is, and man-were the result of an act of thought on the part of a creative mind, similar, it was supposed, in kind to the human mind. The sole object of Kant's "Critical Philosophy" was to test the sources and the authority of our knowledge, and to fix a definite scope and standard for the researches of philosophy, as compared with other sciences. The opposition has, in fact, been long apparent, and seems to me to have grown up mainly under the influence of the Hegelian philosophy, or, at any rate, to have been brought out into more distinct relief by that philosophy. It has been made of late a reproach against natural philosophy that it has struck out on a path of its own, and has separated itself more and more widely from the other sciences which are united by common philological and historical studies.
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