toward itself; in Greek philosophy the spirit confronts its object, the
world, on a footing of equality; in modern philosophy the speculative
subject feels himself higher than the object, superior to nature. In
the conception of the Middle Ages, truth and mystery are identical; to
antiquity they appear reconcilable; modern thought holds them as mutually
exclusively as light and darkness. The unknown is the enemy of knowledge,
which must be chased out of its last hiding-place. It is, therefore, easy
to understand that the modern period stands in far sharper antithesis to
the mediaeval era than to the ancient, for the latter has furnished it many
principles which can be used as weapons against the former. Grandparents
and grandchildren make good friends.

[Footnote 1: On the separation and union of the three worlds, _natura,
gratia, gloria_, in Thomas Aquinas, cf. Rudolph Eucken, _Die Philosophie
des Thomas von Aquino und die Kultur der Neuzeit_, Halle. 1886.]

When a new movement is in preparation, but there is a lack of creative
force to give it form, a period of tumultuous disaffection with existing
principles ensues. What is wanted is not clearly perceived, but there is a
lively sense of that which is not wanted. Dissatisfaction prepares a place
for that which is to come by undermining the existent and making it
ripe for its fall. The old, the outgrown, the doctrine which had become
inadequate, was in this case Scholasticism; modern philosophy shows
throughout--and most clearly at the start--an anti-Scholastic character. If
up to this time Church dogma had ruled unchallenged in spiritual affairs,
and the Aristotelian philosophy in things temporal, war is now declared
against authority of every sort and freedom of thought is inscribed on
the banner.[1] "Modern philosophy is Protestantism in the sphere of the
thinking spirit" (Erdmann). Not that which has been considered true for
centuries, not that which another says, though he be Aristotle or Thomas