ABSTRACT
There are certain periods in history in which a number of advanced thinkers, usually working independently one of another, have proposed views on human conduct so different from those commonly accepted at the time-and yet so manifestly interrelated-that together they seem to constitute an intellectual revolution. Nearly all students of the last years of the nineteenth century have sensed in some form or other a profound psychological change. Yet they have differed markedly in the way in which they have expressed their understanding of it. Somewhere between an æsthetic and a more intellectual interpretation; people might be tempted to characterize the new attitude as neo-romanticism or neo-mysticism. As a preliminary characterization, to speak of the innovations of the 1890's as a revolt against positivism comes closest to what the writers in question actually thought that they were about. Yet even this last formula has its pitfalls.
