This difference between the natural and the mental sciences has been emphasised, at various times, since the time of Plato.  But the difference tended to become obliterated through the discoveries of natural science and its great influence during the latter half of the nineteenth century.  The key of evolution had come at last into the hands of men, and it fitted so many closed doors; it provided an entrance to a new kind of world, and gave new methods for knowing that world.  But, as already stated, evolution is capable of dealing with what is in the light of what was, and the Is and the Was are the physical characteristics of things.  In all this, mind and morals, as they are in their own intrinsic nature operating in the world, are left out of account.  A striking example of this is found in the late Professor Huxley’s Romanes Lecture—­Evolution and Ethics.  In this remarkable lecture it is shown that the cosmic order does not answer all our questions, and is indifferent [p.22] and even antagonistic to our ethical needs and ideals.  Huxley’s conclusion may be justly designated as a failure of science to interpret the greatest things of life.  Before culture, civilisation, and morality become possible, a new point of departure has to take place within human consciousness, and the attempt to move in an ethical direction is as much hindered as helped by the natural course of the physical universe.  This lecture of Huxley’s runs parallel in many ways with Eucken’s differentiation of Nature and Spirit, and Huxley’s “ethical life” has practically the same meaning as Eucken’s “spiritual life” on its lower levels.

Numerous instances are to be found in the present-day philosophy of Germany of the need of a Metaphysic of Life, and of the impossibility of constructing such from the standpoint of the results of the natural sciences either singly or combined.

Professor Rickert’s investigations are having important effects in this respect.  In his works he has made abundantly clear the difference between the methods and results of the sciences of Nature and the sciences of Mind.  And even amongst the mental sciences themselves, all-important aspects of different subject-matters present themselves, and render themselves as of different values.

Professor Muensterberg has worked on a similar path, and has insisted once more on the nature of reality as this expresses itself in [p.23] a meaning which is over-individual.  Professor Windelband’s writings (cf.  Praeludien, Die Philosophie im XX.  Jahrhundert, etc.) have emphasised very clearly the need of the presence and acknowledgment of norms in life, and of the meaning of life realising itself in the fulfilment of these norms.[2]

When we turn to the great neo-Kantian movement, we find alongside of discussions concerning psychological questions important ethical aspects presenting themselves.  The works of the late Professor Otto Liebmann of Jena (cf the last part of his Analysis der Wirklichkeit) and of the late Professor Dilthey and Dr. G. Simmel point in the same direction.  Professors Husserl, Lipps, and Vaihinger, as their most recent important books show, work on lines which insist on bringing life as it is and as it ought to be into their systems.  The same may be said of Professor Wundt’s works in so far as they present a constructive system.