 Though he was very aggressive in his attack on the philosophers, Fechner insisted that he had nothing against philosophy per se; his target was only contemporary philosophy, specifically the metaphysics of Schelling, Hegel, and Herbart (Atom: xiii). The second part of his book was indeed devoted to his own philosophy, his own metaphysics of matter. It would give up the empirical limits on physical atomism, and then attempt to provide a philosophical atomism, which would give “the ultimate construction of matter itself” (Atom: viii). Fechner reassured his readers that he was not sacrificing their demands for a worldview and that he would sketch one of his own. He expressed his complete agreement with the philosophers about the need to investigate “the most universal, the highest and the ultimate”; he said that he differed from them only in how he wanted to conduct such an investigation. While Schelling, Hegel and Herbart had followed an a priori methodology, which preceded natural science, Fechner insisted on an a posteriori methodology which would be based upon the natural sciences. His metaphysics would come after, not prior to or before, physics (Atom: 126). The foundation for his metaphysics would be nothing less than the whole of natural science (Atom: 127). 