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OCT It 1918
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DD66

PUBLICATIONS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER

HISTORICAL SERIES, No. XXV.

Germany in the Nineteenth Century

Published by the University of Manchester at
The University Press (H. M. McKechnie, Secretary)
12 Lime Grove, Oxford Road, Manchester

Longmans, Green & Co.

London : 39 Paternoster Row
New York : 443-449 Fourth Avenue, and Thirtieth Street

Bombay : 8 Hornby Road
Calcutta : 303 Bowbazar Street
Madras : 1 67 Mount Road

[ALE RIGHTS RESERVED].

Germany

Nineteenth

A S cries of Lectures

EDITED BY

C. H. HERFORD

MANCHESTER

At the University Press

Longmans, Green & Co.
London, New York, Bombay, &c.
19L5

University of Manchester Publications

No. XCVI.

Pages 1 to 127 constituting the First Seines of these Lectures may be
had separately at the price of 2 /6 net ; pages 128 to end (the Second
Series ) at the price of 3/6 net.

Sherratt & Hughes, Printers, Manchester and London.

NOTE TO THE THIRD EDITION.

This book, first published in 1912, was based upon a
course of lectures delivered in 19 n in the University,
largely through the initiative of Professor Herford. The
relations between England and Germany had long left
much to be desired, and it was believed that appreciations
by British scholars of the part played by Germany in
the development of modern civilisation might serve to
promote more friendly feelings between the two nations.
The welcome given to the volume by the press of both
countries, the exhaustion of two large editions within
less than two years, and the issue of a German translation
by Professor Breul, of Cambridge, suggested that this
expectation was not wholly a vain one.

The studies embraced in the earlier editions were
designedly drawn upon broad lines, and omitted much.
Accordingly, when, in the early part of 1914, it was clear
that a third edition would soon be wanted, three other
scholars were invited to contribute additional studies
from fresh points of view. The University was fortunate
in securing the co-operation of experts, such as Dr.
Bernard Bosanquet, who has written on philosophy, of
Professor Peake, who has contributed a study on
theology, and of Mr. Ferruccio Bonavia, who has treated
of music. The lectures on these subjects were delivered
in the University during the course of last spring, and
by the summer of this year, all three studies were in
type. The sudden outbreak of the present calamitous
war frustrated the hopes of those who had steadily
believed that the best method to promote international

VI

Note to the Third Edition

goodwill was to dispel the cloud of suspicion by the
spread of sound knowledge. It seemed as if the book
had failed in its objects, and might quietly be put aside
as no longer possessing any practical value. On the
other hand, the demand for copies has continued on both
sides of the Atlantic, and a refusal to reissue the work
might well give rise to misconception. The writers can
no longer take the optimistic line which they so recently
felt justified in assuming, yet they do not regret that, in
their anxiety to take a favourable view of Germany’s
attitude, they under-estimated the sinister influences
which for the present have proved triumphant. For
this reason they offer to the public this edition. If no
longer a friendly eirenicon, the book remains as an
historical document, which retains whatever validity it
ever possessed, notwithstanding the frustration of the
hopes with which it was originally put forth. It may
still have its value as suggesting what a group of British
scholars, trained in various schools of learning and
different branches of knowledge, thought, and in
essentials still think, was a just tribute to pay to the
activities of the German nation. The Germany of
militant aggression, of violated faith, of cynical self-
seeking and disregard of the honourable traditions of
civilised warfare is new to them, as, in its extremest
manifestations it is to the world at large. So far as it
may have been latent, it lay outside their purpose.

The studies are, with the consent of the writers,
reprinted in the form in which they originally appeared.
No doubt there are passages in more than one of the
chapters, which the authors, were they writing now,
would have phrased differently. Substantially, however,
the writers are content to have written what they have

Note to the Third Edition

Vll

written, and they prefer that some touches of optimism
should remain, rather than that misconceptions should
be aroused by any attempt to “ bring up to date ” the
original essays. No alterations whatever have been
admitted to the text, and the only addition is a brief
note at the beginning of the paper of Dr. Holland Rose.

We have also to look forward to the time when an
honourable settlement becomes possible without relin¬
quishing the objects for which we have reluctantly drawn
the sword. It can at least be hoped that a book aiming
at the appreciation of the saner and salutary aspects of
the German nation and the German state may not
stand in the way of the terribly difficult task of building
up once more mutual good-will and respect between
nations which, in the future, as in the past, will have
somehow to live and work together.

T. F. TOUT.

io th November , 1914.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

The present volume is based upon a short course of public
lectures delivered during the Lent Term of 19 n in the
University of Manchester. The course was one of a series
upon salient topics of modern history and literature, arranged
by the University, at the instance of the representatives of
journalism in South-east Lancashire, for the benefit,
primarily, of the younger journalists of the district. Al¬
though actually attended by a much larger and more
general audience, the lectures had thus no merely academic
aim. In choosing the subject of the course the promoters
felt that the diffusion of a better understanding of the
history of the German people during the last century may
almost be called a matter of practical urgency. They were
impressed by the fact that, while the last forty years of that
history are comparatively familiar to Englishmen, the two
generations which lie between the opening of the century
and the foundation of the empire are involved, to a quite
exceptional degree, in the obscurity and neglect which
commonly attach to the period immediately preceding our
own. The consequence has been two-fold. For want of the
historic background indispensable to true proportion and
perspective, even that relatively familiar recent period has
been, and must be, in many ways misconceived and mis¬
judged. The work of Bismarck wears a very different aspect
according as we have, or have not, read the entire chapter
of which he wrote the decisive closing page. And, further,
the place of Germany in the civilisation of to-day, great
and conspicuous as it unquestionably is, must still be im¬
perfectly measured unless we realise at how many points

X

Preface

that civilisation itself bears the impress of her intellectual
fecundity and of her elaborating mind. It is the aim of the
present lectures to make more generally accessible some of
the materials for a juster estimate of contemporary Germany
from both these points of view. Of completeness there
could naturally be no question. The four or five aspects of
German history which have been singled out might easily
have been multiplied ; but circumstances compelled selection,
and it may be claimed for the aspects chosen that they are
both particularly liable to misunderstanding, and particularly
fruitful when understood.

The lectures have been revised for publication by their
authors, who have also supplied notes with, in several cases,
considerable additions to the text. No uniformity of plan
has been attempted, and the four lecturers are severally and
solely responsible for what appears under their names. We
are indebted for the Index to Miss M. Woodcock, B.A., of
the John Rylands Library.

It is hoped in future years to arrange similar courses
upon the more recent history of other European peoples.

‘ University Extension ’ work of this sort has long ceased to
need defence ; but one may venture to suggest that those
branches of it which seek to enlarge and deepen the sense
of citizenship are nowhere more in place than in a great
civic university, for which the townsman in the next street
and the scholar in the antipodes are equally neighbours,
and where the local tie is vital in proportion as it furthers
the catholicity of knowledge.

2 otk February , 1912.

C. H. H.

CONTENTS

PAGE

Note to the Third Edition. By Professor T. F. Tout v
Preface to the First Edition ----- ix
Short Summary ------ xiii-xxiii

I. The Political History. By J. HOLLAND
ROSE, Litt.D. Author of “ The Life of
Napoleon I,” “The Life of Pitt,” “The
Development of the European Nations,”

&C. ------- i — 22

II. & III. The Intellectual and Literary History.

By C. PI. IlERFORD, Litt.D., Professor of
English Literature in the University of
Manchester ------ 23 — 77

IV. The Economic History. By E. C. K.

Conner, M.A., Professor of Economics

in the University of Liverpool - - 79 — 99

V. The History of Education. By M. E. Sadler,

M.A., LL.D., C.B., Vice-Chancellor of the
University of Leeds ; late Professor of
the History of Education in the Univer¬
sity of Manchester - - - - 101-127

VI. The History of Theology. By A. S. Peake,

D.D., Professor of Biblical Exegesis in

the University of Manchester - -131-184

VII. The History of Philosophy. By Bernard

Bosanquet, LL.D., P'.B.A. - - - 185-215

VIII. The History of Music. By F. BONAVIA -217-242

Index . 243-266

GERMANY IN THE 19th CENTURY.

SHORT SUMMARY.

I. THE POLITICAL HISTORY.

By Dr. J. Holland Rose.

Political unity achieved in different ways by different peoples,
and with different degrees of facility and speed. In Germany
the process was peculiarly difficult and slow. Various grounds
for this : the Individualism of German Character ; Feudal
Customs ; the Reformation. The division of the people between
Catholic and Protestant faiths in nearly equal proportions,
culminated in the rivalry of Austria and Prussia. Assailed by
revolutionary France, — a compact, historic, and democratic state,
— Germany made a half-hearted resistance ; her people largely
in sympathy with the Revolution, and her rulers compromising
for a share in the spoils. Futile attempts at unity. Francis II.
as “ Emperor of Austria.” Napoleon as a “new Charlemagne.”
Impossibility in the 18th century of a permanent world state
composed of different nationalities. His financial policy parti¬
cularly fatal. The hopes of German unity gradually centred
upon Prussia. Her collapse at Jena the beginning of her re¬
generation. The reforms of Stein and Scharnhorst. Their effect
seen in the national rising of 1813. The settlement after the
fall of Napoleon. Germany now consisted of 39 states instead
of 200 ; but the process of further unification not facilitated by
the change. The German Confederation of 1815 — 66 perpetu¬
ated some of the worst defects of the old Holy Roman Empire.
National disappointment, uprisings and demonstrations. Two
events prepare the ground for the future union : the Zoll-
verein, bringing the smaller German states into commercial
unity with Prussia ; and the separation of Hanover from Eng¬
land. The national movement of 1848 — 9- Its temporary fail¬
ure, and threatening results for Prussia. But the failure only
temporary. The success of Austria increases the number of her
enemies. Cavour ; Napoleon III ; Bismarck. The Prussian
triumph of 1866 conditioned by the events of 1859 and 1864.

XIV

Summary of Contents

The war with Denmark misunderstood in England. Bismarck’s
policy in 1866. Napoleon’s clumsy effort at intervention merely
attached South Germany to Prussia. The crisis of 1870 — 1.
Important bearing upon it of the secret mission of the French
General Lebrun to Vienna, in June, 1870, to arrange an attack
upon Prussia in the following spring. This probably became
known to Bismarck and decided his action. True interpretation
of his policy of “ blood and iron”; not the best, but the best
possible under the circumstances. Grounds for the annexation
of Elsass-Lothringen. Foundation of the German Empire, a
reversion to the union vainly sought in 1814 — 5. Its constitu¬
tion. The functions of the Kaiser ; and of the Reichstag. The
latter without Executive power. Increasing friction, due to this
disability, in internal affairs. But the foreign policy of the
empire has consistently made for peace. The Triple Alliance,
of 1882. The Dual Alliance (France and Russia) of 1894.
Germany’s colonial movement, a necessity of her rapid growth in
population and limited territory. Expansion of her foreign
trade ; involving a great navy. Beginnings of friction with
England in the colonies, terminated by mutual concessions.
Policy and justice of these concessions on the part of England.
The agreement of 1890, received with anger in both countries,
and therefore presumably in the main equitable. The subse¬
quent situation between England and Germany. Geographical
weakness of Germany, compared with France. Caution inevi¬
tably the policy of Germany so long as the Dual Alliance holds.
Great advantages to England and to Europe of the unity of
Germany . p. 1

II. &III. THE INTELLECTUAL AND LITERARY HISTORY.

By Professor C. H. Herford.

Enormous extent and intricacy of the subject. The lecture
attempts merely to distinguish and illustrate the main currents
of the history.

I. The close oj the eighteenth century in Germany , France, and
England. Contrast of the political impotence of Germany at
this date with her intellectual greatness. Outstripped for at
least 200 years by France and England, and deriving her culture
and ideas mainly from one or the other, she began, about 1760,
to add astonishing new developments of her own to their cul¬
tural acquisitions and results. Hume, Rousseau — Kant ; Burke,
Turgot, Gibbon — the German historical school ; and other

Summary of Contents

xv

examples. These new developments due to (l) a more wide¬
spread and systematic Wissensdrang ; (2) a peculiar aptitude for
knowledge in three domains, ignored or incompletely investi¬
gated by the French and English precursors ; in the primitive or
elemental , the organic or evolutionary , and the psychical, modes of
existence. Important bearing of all three, both upon poetry,
upon philosophy, and upon the historical and natural sciences.
Hence, while in England and France at this time the "literary”
and the specifically less " intellectual history ran mainly in
widely distinct channels, in Germany they constantly touched,
frequently mingled, and were sometimes completely fused.

II. Goethe. All these tendencies summed up in Goethe,
whose work at once completes the German eighteenth century,
and provides the key to the Germany of the nineteenth. His
poetry and science ; Erlebnis and experiment ; his elemental
lyric ; his evolutionary thinking : Metamorphose der Pflanzen ; his
studies of soul history : Wilhelm Meister ; Faust .

III. After Goethe. (i) The Scientific Movement. German
Griindlichkeit. Historic science. Critical handling of sources
and authorities: L. v. Ranke (1795 — 1886). The Natural
Sciences. Combined mastery of facts and fertility in ideas.

IV. (ii) The movement towards the elemental , primitive, naive, in
historic research and in literature. The "simplicity” of German
character. Exploration of German antiquities : J. Grimm (1785
— 1863). Comparative mythology and philology. Folk-tales
and folk-song. The place of song in modern German life ; its
folk-song basis. Heine (1797 — 1851). Tales of peasant-life:
B. Auerbach (1812 — 1882), F. Reuter (1810 — 1874), G. Keller
(1819 — 1890). His Fin Romeo und Julia des Dorfes.

V. (iii.) The application of evolutionary ideas in philosophy and
history. Sketch of the rise of these ideas. Fruitful union of
the biological conception of organism with the political and
social doctrine of progress. Strong and weak points of organic
analogies applied to society. G. F. Hegel (1770 — 1831) and
the philosophy of history. F. Schleiermacher and the philoso¬
phy of religion. Evolutionary ideas applied to history : Savigny
(1779 — 1 86 1 ). Niebuhr (1776 — 1831). G. Freytag. Influence
on the methods of later historians : T. Mommsen (1817 — 1907) ;
Town-biology: F. Gregorovius (1 821 — 1891). History of ideas :
J. Burckhardt (1818 — 1897).

VI. (iv.) The prestige of mind. Effects, for better or worse,
upon German civilisation of the high value set upon thought as
thought, upon ideas as ideas. Worship of Bildung. Literary
criticism. The idealist systems. Deep self-consciousness of the
German race, repeatedly emerging at the great moments of its
history, and in its greatest men, culminates in the colossal ideal-

XVI

Summary of Contents

isms of the early nineteenth century. Hegel, Fichte, Schopen¬
hauer. — Wagner, Nietzsche. Strongly marked individuality of
their thought ; yet national or universal in its ultimate scope. —
The decline of idealism necessarily lowered the “ prestige of
mind,” which is partly restored by the steady advance of psycho¬
logy. W. Wundt. But thought, or reason, now subordinated
to will. The worship of will in the Bismarckian age and state.
H. v. Treitschke (1834 — 1896). Yet, with all the defects of
that state, it is will illuminated with high intelligence and
powerful, if incomplete, social sense. English and German
ideals of freedom. The peculiar achievement of Germany to
have proximately reconciled the stubborn individuality of the
race with civilisation, profound inner life with a highly organised
state --- - ------ p. 23

IV. THE ECONOMIC HISTORY.

By Professor E. C. K. Gonner.

I. During the nineteenth century Germany passes from one
industrial system to another. A century of transition. The
chief change occurs late and is due largely to forces retarded by
certain causes and finally operating with great effect. Three
features of the last part of the century : (1) Conscious and auto¬
cratic state action ; (2) Use made of the experience of other
nations as to similar changes ; (3) Position occupied by other
nations when Germany enters into competition.

In addition, the agrarian interests of Germany must be borne
in mind.

These various points best illustrated by a sketch of the
history which divides itself into three Periods : Period of Pre¬
paration, Period of Tentative Growth, Period of Conscious
Development.

II. First Period lasting to the Forties — little active develop¬
ment, but considerable preparation for change.

(a) Economic condition of Germany at the beginning as com¬
pared with that of England. Germany largely under the
influence of bygone times, mainly feudal, both as to country and
town organisation, and little affected by new economic forces.

( b ) Causes accounting for this and delaying development ;
Political difficulties ; Want of union between the States, espe¬
cially on the economic side, e.g., tariffs, etc. ; Lack of mobility
of labour owing to systems of land ownership and cultivation
and restrictive trade regulations ; Lack of capital.

Summary of Contents xvii

(c) On the other hand, opportunity for future development
achieved by (1) Stein-Hardenberg land reforms, 1807 — 1850;
(2) early Zollverein, 1834 — 1845.

(d) Position of country at close of period evident from many
tests, e.g., comparatively uniform distribution of population —
handwork — backward state of mineral development.

Factory system in infancy, but introduced and not without
results.

III. Second Period to 1870 — 1. Change coming over the
country. Trade and industry affected by (l) Political conditions
after constitutional settlement, (2) Rise in prices owing to the
gold discoveries, (3) Removal of restrictions on industrial action.

(a) Change seen in rapid growth of Banks and Companies
about 1850; railway development and entry of Germany as an
industrial competitor in the world’s markets.

( b ) On other hand, its position weak as against foreign rivalry,
especially against England. Activity of the fifties not continued
in succeeding decade.

IV Third Period after 1871. The great growth of industrial
Germany. Certain immediate effects of the war. Strength of
German unity and influence of the state. The use of the French
indemnity in new coinage, relief of debt ; it provides a fund of
ready capital.

(«) Difficulties, however, grave: (1) Transition in industry
and suffering, (2) strong foreign competitors, (3) Agrarian debt.

( b ) Sources of strength — the lessons of adversity — education
and science — sense of discipline.

(c) The new policy : (1) Its aims, development of rich mineral
wealth, freedom from foreign industrial dependence and mitiga¬
tion of social difficulties ; (2) its means firstly, State assistance to
industry. Protectionist Policy from 1879 (duties on imports of
manufactures accompanied by duties on imports of food stuffs).
State ownership of railways. State subsidies ; secondly , social
reform and State socialism.

(d) The magnitude of recent German development. Its
particular characteristics.

V. The nature of the economic change in Germany during
the nineteenth century. Its resemblance to that experienced
by other countries. Its special features. This illustrated by
comparison and contrast with England. Differences between
the two nations in (1) condition before and at the time of
change, (2) method in which it is treated, (3) results - p. 79

XV111

Summary of Contents

V. THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
By Professor M. E. Sadler.

The three periods in the educational history of Germany in
the Nineteenth Century ; and in that of England. The two
series nearly coincident in date, but widely different in character.

I. Germany. — Prussia, since the outset of the century, has
been the dominant force in German education ; but the smaller
German states have contributed both to enrich and to sustain
the common educational ideal. The rapid advance of German
education during the century due chiefly to three circumstances :

(a) The tradition, in several states, of compulsory education ;

(b) The still more widespread tradition of intellectual freedom ;
unrestricted teaching during the Eighteenth Century at the
universities of Halle and Gottingen. Kant ; Romanticism ; (c)
The disasters of 1806. The policy of regeneration through
education: Stein; W. v. Humboldt. First Period (1800 —
1840). Universities founded or reorganised. The Greek ideal
of life ; foundation of the Gymnasien. Technical education.
Elementary education. Second Period (1840 — 1870). Check to
liberal education ; advance of science and of scientific education.
Third Period (1870 — ). Immense progress at all points. The
present position. Local diversities. German education a federal
unity. Demand for further educational facilities for the workers,
and for women. Revolt against over-intellectualism.

II. England. — German education based on system, English,
on compromise. The Civil War bequeathed to us a division,
never since healed, in our social ideals. All attempts at a
national system of education, before 1870, foiled by the resist¬
ance of a powerful minority. Importance of the influence of
Scotland, Ireland and Wales. The example of Scotland gradu¬
ally overcame English hostility to government intervention.
Ireland the field in which government control and assistance
were first energetically carried out. Intermediate education in
Wales. Distinctive marks of the three periods in England.

III. Contrasts between German and English education. — Defects
and advantages of each type.

Summary of Contents

xix

IV. German influence on English education — The channels ol
influence : Coleridge, Carlyle, Prince Albert. Impression made
by the War of 1866. Matthew Arnold. All branches of English
education have been affected. Froebel and the Kindergarten.
Herbart. Modern language teaching: Vietor. Continuation
schools: Kerschensteiner. Effect of German theory and practice
in enlarging the English recognition of the scope and power
of the State in education.

V. Summary. — The educational policy of a nation the focus of

its ideals. English and German education have pursued opposite
courses, yet are rooted in closely related ideas of life and duty.
The influence of English education in Germany. Efforts to
cultivate character, self-government, and sense of responsibility.
School-games. Country boarding schools. Training in Art.
The fundamental forces in German education : (1) belief in the
power of training and imparted ideas to develop mind and
character ; (2) demand for inner freedom won through discipline.
Intercourse between representatives of the two types of educa¬
tion of great value. But both systems are deeply rooted in
history, and much that is finest in each cannot be superadded to
the other - - - - - - - - - p. 101

VI.— THE HISTORY OF THEOLOGY.
By Professor A. S. Peake.

Limitations of the discussion. Schleiermaclier the most
influential theologian of the century. His personality and train¬
ing. His Speeches on Religion. Orthodox and rationalist identified
religion with a series of doctrines. Schleiermaclier found its
essence in feeling, the realisation that we are one with the
Infinite. His religion had a pantheistic basis. While intensely
individualist he emphasised the social quality of religion.
“ Natural Religion ” repudiated. His system of theology.
Religion as feeling of dependence. The Christian consciousness
as the source of theology. Theology Christo-centric. His treat¬
ment of Theology as an organic whole. General estimate of
Schleiermaclier. The breach with rationalism involved in his
emphasis on history and estimate of Jesus, and with orthodoxy

XX

Summary of Contents

involved in his free attitude to Scripture, raised the problem by
what right Schleiermacher accorded Christ a central place in his
system. Strauss forced this into prominence by his Life of fesus.
He regarded the Christian religion as independent of its Founder.
The eternal ideas gain by being disengaged from dubious history.
The historical Jesus becomes the Christ of the Gospels by
mythical accretion due to Messianic dogma. F. C. Baur com¬
pared with Strauss. Baur said The Life of Jesus gave a criticism
of the Gospel history without a criticism of the Gospels. The
growth of the Tubingen criticism. Sketch of the theory. The
objections by which it has been discredited. Why, nevertheless,
Baur has an epoch-making significance. Other New Testament
scholars of the century. The course of Pentateuch criticism and
the chief contributions to the generally accepted theory. The
criticism of other parts of the Old Testament. Other leading
Old Testament scholars. Strauss in his Christian Doctrine seeks
to prove the bankruptcy of Christianity. The successors of
Schleiermacher. The Liberal, Confessional, and Mediating
theologians. Ritschl and his theological development. Ritsch-
lianism designed to meet the widespread lapse from faith.
Judgments of value. Ritschl’s greatness as a system-builder.
Emphasises uniqueness of Christianity, and impossibility of
understanding it except from the inside. Only members of
the Christian community qualified to estimate the religion.
The community, which is to be distinguished from the empirical
church, is the object of justification. The Gospel the guarantee
of the Christian consciousness. The Gospel to be found in the
New Testament, since its writers understood the religion of the
Old Testament and were free from the influence of Greek
thought and Jewish Rabbinism. The apostolic testimony is
necessary as well as the utterances of the Founder. Yet the
Gospel is distilled from the New Testament not identified with
it. It thus becomes possible to use it as a test of traditional
theology, of which much is swept aside. Ritschl’s definition of
Christianity, Redemption and the Kingdom of God. Hatred
of Mysticism, Pietism, Emotionalism. Pietism regarded as an
attenuated form of Catholicism masquerading as Protestantism.
Ritschlianism and metaphysics. Ritschl’ s attitude to the New
Testament controlled by presuppositions now largely abandoned
by his own followers - - - - - - p. 129

Summary of Contents

xxi

VII.— THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY.
By Dr. Bernard Bosanquet.

Although it is hopeless in a single lecture to give an idea of
the detail, it may be possible to convey some impression of the
main rhythm and direction, of the philosophical growth in
question.

One might suggest the common triple rhythm, Creation, Dis¬
integration, Recovery, or, including the direction. Metaphysic,
Positivism, and Metaphysic again ; or to put a point on it :
Hegelian, neo-Kantian ( = anti Hegelian), neo-Hegelian. This
would be repudiated in Germany to-day ; but we might try
" Post-Kantian ; neo-Kantian; post-neo-Kantian.”

This would divide roughly thus : —

1. Post-Kantian, Beginnings of Fichte to recognition of

Schopenhauer (say) 1794-1844;

2. Neo-Kantian, Liebmann’s " Back to Kant,” to (say)

Avenarius’ "Critique of Pure Experience,” 1865-1888 ;

3. The final stage of neo-Kantianism, and parallel movements,

1888 to the present day.

Many great men, just because above their time, hardly fit into
this scheme, e.g., Fechner, Lotze, Wundt. Of course. Experi¬
mental Psychology and Voluntarism came largely from them.

In speaking of Phase 1.

Begin with a letter of Hegel in 1795, showing his initial
anticipations in relation to the formative influences of the day :
Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Schiller and Goethe. Estimate his
method and Fichte’s, which has been much misapprehended.
The essence of this philosophy is the forward, adventurous and
realising interpretation of Kant. How "critical.” It affirms
reality of perfection, identity of real and ideal, in sense of
Religion.

Phase 2.

The new situation — dates — a reaction to defensive interpreta¬
tion of Kant ; Metaphysic is replaced by Epistemology, which

xxii Summary of Contents

has vogue till almost to day — i.e. reality is cut down to what is
given in consciousness, and what can be got out of that.
“ Limits of Knowledge” the problem. Real and Ideal separated.
Lange. Kant’s ‘ought,’ in contrast to fis,’ reinstated. Open future,
with infinite progress in universe, maintained ; new ideas which
come to aid of this. Point of view of morality made absolute against
that of religion. Illustrated by Vaihinger’s “ As if” — doctrine
of fictions and ideal. “ Critical ” Philosophies in sense of anti¬
metaphysical. “ Positivism,” &c.

Phase S.

Experience treated more systematically. Avenarius’ C( full
experience.” More talk of at least preparing for a metaphysic.
Distinction between in consciousness and for consciousness.
Idealism and realism both more solid. Natorp, Cassirer, Husserl,
Kiilpe, Driesch, Nelson. A reasonable aphorism. Hopes for
metaphysic - - - - - - - - p. 185

VIII.— THE HISTORY OF MUSIC.
By F. Bonavia.

(a) The Symphony. German music at the close of the eigh¬
teenth century. Conventionality in the theme of opera.
Neglect of polyphony. Bad influence of court patronage. Vienna
the centre of European music. The lines of musical advance.
Beethoven and Wagner the two most important figures of the
century. Beethoven’s predecessors not essentially national.
German and Austrian. Mozart and the end of patronage. Beet¬
hoven in Vienna. The main qualities of Beethoven’s symphonies.
First hints of the new style. The Eroica Symphony. Dissonance
and rhythm used as means to dramatic effect. The C Minor
Symphony, first musical composition indissolubly connected with
spirit of the time. Pastoral symphonies and the beginning of the
feeling for Nature. The result of the nine symphonies in Germany,
France and Italy. Schubert. Growth of romantic feeling with
Mendelssohn and Schumann. Foundations of musical criticism.
“ Neue Zeitschrift fiir Musik.” Brahms the last of great com¬
posers of symphonies.

Summary of Contents xxiii

(p) The Opera. Rivalry between Italian and German schools is
also the rivalry between an essentially melodic and a polyphonic
style. Vocalists, their influence on composers. Weber’s victory over
Spontini. Fidelio. Oberon and Euryanthe. Wagner’s themes.
Simplicity of the story essential to Wagnerian opera. The use of
the leit-motif. Relation of words to music. The poetic genius
of Wagner. Ideal of self-sacrifice and ideal of the Ueber-
mensch ! ” Parsifal as the typical Wagnerian hero. Novalis
and Overbeck — like Wagner, drew inspiration from religious
themes. More comprehensive feeling for Nature. Critical
writings. Liszt and the symphonic poem. Certain limitations
of Liszt’s music. Historians and teachers in Germany. Their
influence abroad. Excellence of German organisation. Close of
the century and the future outlook - - - - p. 217

I.— THE POLITICAL HISTORY

BY

J. HOLLAND ROSE, Litt.D.

Note added to the Third Edition.

Dr. Rose wishes to make it clear that the views stated
in this lecture have necessarily been profoundly modified
by later events, which render it impossible to take the
same favourable view of German policy, that seemed fully
tenable early in the year 1911. The later evidence is set
forth in Dr. Rose’s lecture delivered at Cambridge in the
Michaelmas Term, 1914, about to be published under the
title “ The Origins of the Present War.”

THE POLITICAL HISTORY.

Some peoples easily win their way to political unity;
others attain it only by long and desperate efforts ; while
in some cases that boon is forced upon cognate tribes by
pressure from without. In very few cases has the
unifying process been rapid and easy. Perhaps the
consolidation of the Italian tribes by ancient Rome is
an example of comparatively speedy union ; that of the
people inhabiting the British Isles took a longer time
and came about more doubtfully. But Ancient Italy and
Great Britain forged ahead more quickly than the Teutons
of Central Europe.

The reasons are not far to seek. The strong indivi¬
dualism of the Teutonic nature ever made for division ;
and the centrifugal tendency was strengthened by the
struggles between Pope and Emperor in the Middle Ages.
Further, this disastrous dualism was to be reduplicated
in the spheres of law and religion : in lawq by the feudal
custom which enjoined the division of fiefs equally among
the sons of a baron : in religion, by the Reformation,
which sundered Germans more profoundly and more
equally than any other people. Then, in the Eighteenth
Century, began the long feud between the Houses of
Hapsburg and Hohenzollern, that is, in the main between
the Southern and Catholic domains against the smaller
but more compact and better organized Protestant States
of the North. For ages these divulsive forces worked
havoc with Germany, sundering the allegiance of her
people, sifting her States into feudal dust ; making her
one vast cockpit for the bloodiest of the Religious Wars;
and finally arraying against each other the greatest of
her component monarchies. What wonder that such a

4 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

land, lacking all natural frontiers, and beset by jarring
interests, was the prey of smaller but better organized
peoples on lier frontiers? Union seemed a mere dream.
And when in 1792 Austria and Prussia joined hands to
overthrow Revolutionary France, their efforts, palsied by
distrust, served merely to goad France to those astonishing
efforts which made her the arbitress of the continent.

The French then had everything which the Germans
lacked : a compact territory, a single national organiza¬
tion, an inspiring tradition, and the thrilling summons
of democracy calling them to overthrow the despotism
around them. Germans heard that summons, sympathized
with it, and made but a half-hearted resistance to the
liberators. Had France and Napoleon realized that the
strength of the French lay in their mission to renovate
Central Europe, their supremacy might have been lasting.
At first they had the support of Prussia; and in that
important hut shabby transaction of the year 180T, the
secularization of the ecclesiastical states, the House of
Hohenzollern gained the lion’s share ; or, in that case
it would be more correct to say the jackal’s share; for in
reality it was Napoleon who did the slaying while Prussia
gorged on the bishoprics and abbacies which he threw' to
her.

Thus the Nineteenth Century opened with scenes which
even now bring a blush to the cheek of every patriotic
Teuton. The two chief German states were engaged in a
game of grab at the expense of the Church domains, which
were allotted mainly by the secret influence of Bonaparte
and Talleyrand. Russia for the time was quiescent.
The sole regulating impulse was that which came forth
from the West. And when, a year later, Napoleon took
the title “Emperor of the French,” Francis II of Austria
was fain to copy him and to proclaim himself “ Hereditary
Emperor of Austria.” The words were a singular perver¬
sion of the simple and august title “ the Emperor,” i.e.,
elective head of the Holy Roman Empire; and Professor

The Political History 5

Freeman often upbraided Francis for forgetting who he
was.* Nevertheless, pace Professor Freeman, something
may be said for the act of Francis. By that time the
Holy Homan Empire fully deserved the gibe of Yoltaire,
that it was neither Holy, nor Itoman, nor an Empire.
One thousand and four years had passed since the crown¬
ing of the first Emperor, Charlemagne, by Leo III at
Home; and the link with the Eternal City had long been
broken. Further, Francis II, now sated with the plunder
of the Church, had no special claim to holiness. And
could that be called an Empire which everyone, including
its chief, plundered, and no one obeyed? Surely it was
well for Francis to exchange that moth-eaten robe of
purple for a suit of armour; and such a panoply he
believed he had found in the hereditary States of his
House which he intended now to solidify and enrich.
Had he been an able and determined ruler, he could have
taken the lead in reorganizing Germany on a new basis.

Germans wanted a leader and looked about in vain to
find one. For a time Napoleon played the part of the
new Charlemagne and seemed about to call that people to
a life of political activity. Goethe, as we know, hoped
for a time that the French Emperor would give that lead,
and would merge all the States of Central and Western
Europe in a beneficent unity. Possibly the contrast
between the first and second parts of Faust may have
derived added emphasis from his hopes in the ruler who
seemed destined to lead that long distracted and mesmer¬
ized people to the beneficent conquests of Knowledge and
Science. But it was not to be. Napoleon did much for
the states of the Confederation of the Hhine which he
founded on the ruins of the Holy Homan Empire in the
year 1806 ; and for a time the middle and South Germans
looked to Paris rather than Vienna or Berlin as their
capital. But that interesting experiment of gallicizing,

* E.g., “General Historical Sketch,” p. 333; and p. xiv of Preface to
Leger’s “Hist, of Austro- Hungary ” (Eng. transl.).

6

Germany in the Nineteenth Century

or denationalizing, those peoples failed when his policy
became more and more warlike, especially when the
burdens entailed by his Continental System ruined
German commerce and emptied every larder.* It is
questionable whether any great people could have been
denationalized in the Nineteenth Century, when the
instinct of race every year became more potent. Certainly
it was in vain for Napoleon to found a great international
State, extending from the Elbe to the Ebro, rivalling
the Empire of Charlemagne both in extent and in the
diversity of its peoples, unless he could still that instinct
by the magic of peace, prosperity and good government.
Good laws he gave them; but peace and prosperity con¬
sorted not with him.t In his train there stalked war and
want. Nearly 150,000 Germans were haled away from
their homes to fight for him in Russia in 1812 for a cause
which they could not understand; and as for the idealists,
who in their studies blessed his enlightened sway, their
panegyrics grew cold when coffee and tobacco were merely
fumes of fond recollection. In such a case, even Teufels-
drockh is wont to cease his musings on the Everlasting
No and become a domestic economist; and when he traces
the absence of the berries of Mocha to the economic
methods of the new Charlemagne, ill will it betide that
ruler. Cosmopolitanism is a grand ideal; but it must be
brought about by means other than those used by
Napoleon in the years 1807 — 1812. Napoleon the fiscal
experimenter ruined Napoleon the new Charlemagne.

The German people therefore turned its gaze away from
Paris and more and more towards Vienna or Berlin. In
1809 the House of Hapsburg made a bold bid for
supremacy in Germany but failed; and Francis thence¬
forth went back to the reactionary policy and trimming
devices natural to his narrow and timid character. He

* See my chapter “ The Continental System,” in “ Camb. Mod.
History,” vol. ix.

t See H. A. L. Fisher, “ Napoleonic Statesmanship : Germany,”
ch. 13, 17.

The Political History

7

shelved the reformer Stadion, took Metternich into favour,
and sacrificed his daughter, Marie Louise, on the marriage
altar to Napoleon. Thenceforth the future of Germany
was bound up with the fortunes of the House of Hohen-
zollern. As we saw, the policy of that House had been
spiritless in the extreme; but, seeing the error of its ways,
it tried a fall with Napoleon in the campaign of Jena with
results that are well known. The symbol of the Hohen-
zollerns should be the phoenix; for in the death agonies
that followed, they found new life. Frederick William
III of Prussia was the most uninspiring of monarchs, but
he had a beautiful and spirited consort (Queen Louisa),
whose bearing in the dark years 1807 — 10, when she sank
to rest, left an ineffaceable impression on her people.
Then, too, the grand traditions of the days of Frederick
the Great had brought the Prussian service the ablest
of German administrators; the Fhinelander, Stein, the
Hanoverian, Scharnhorst, and several others who were not
Prussians by birth, now came to reconstruct that State on
broader and more truly national foundations. It was due
especially to the initiative and hardihood of Stein that
reforms of far-reaching importance now took effect.
Serfdom was abolished in Prussia, municipal self-govern¬
ment was established ; restrictions on the sale and the
tenure of land on a curious class-basis — all were swept
away : a national military system took the place of the
lack of system of the older period; and education received
a great impulse both in the University and the elementary
schools .*

This is a lifeless enumeration of changes which altered
the whole life of the Prussian people. Consider what
they implied. In the years 1807-13 the serf's of Prussia
became freeholders on the land and self-governing
citizens. They gained a new outlook on life. What had
before been a narrow and almost hopeless existence now
became an exhilarating struggle, almost a career. The

* See Lecture V on this subject.

8 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

results were seen at the end of the year 1812. When the
ghastly relics of Napoleon’s Grand Army re-crossed the
Niemen and Vistula, the Prussian people called aloud to
he led against Napoleon ; and despite the freezing caution
of their King, they had their way. Professors and
students added dignity and ardour to the national move¬
ment; and a people which numbered 4^ millions rushed
to arms against an Empire which numbered some 60
millions. Probably the efforts of Russia and Prussia
would not have sufficed to liberate Central Europe from
Napoleon’s sway; but Austria, after long balancing, threw*
in her lot with the national cause; and at Leipzig the
new Charlemagne was decisively overthrown. The cam¬
paign of 1814 in Eastern France completed his ruin ; and
Prussian patriots hoped that what the peoples of the
Continent had achieved would redound to their political
emancipation.

They were grievously disappointed. As I just now
hinted, the siding of Austria with Russia and Prussia was
the decisive event of the campaign of 1813; and the
Court of Vienna contrived to secure a rich harvest in the
field of diplomacy. In the closing months of 1813 it
made treaties with Bavaria and other States with a view
to the restoration of the old order of things, or at least,
of its equivalent. Of course it was impossible to restore
the old Holy Roman Empire, or the petty States, lay or
ecclesiastical, which perished at the Secularizations. The
grinding process which Napoleon and the German sove¬
reigns found so profitable, had made a new Germany of
moderate sized States. The result may be realized from
the statement that whereas old Germany comprised more
than 200 States, now, after the reconstruction of the
years 1814-15, there were but 39. All the Ecclesiastical
States had gone : the Imperial Knights had vanished. Of
the Free Cities only four survived, Hamburg, Bremen,
Liibeck and Frankfurt. But though the historical student
welcomes the work of clearance and simplification, it

The Political History

9

did not altogether simplify the political problem, the
unification of Germany. It is easier to swallow at your
leisure a bishop, an abbess, a Free City and three or four
petty Knights, than to gulp down a State which has
already made a meal of them. The problem resembles
that of the raptores, who make short work of moths and
small birds, but find it no easy matter to dispose of a
carrion crow. Thus, the missing of the opportunity in
1814-15 was the greatest possible misfortune for the cause
of German unity.

Moreover, the constitution of the new German Con¬
federation (1815—1866) had many of the defects of the
old Holy Homan Empire and far more than its strength
and vitality. The worst defect, that of the dualism of
German interests, was perpetuated in a worse form than
ever. Austria was the predominant Power in the new
Confederation; and yet her gains of Italian territory made
her less of a Germanic State than formerly. Prussia had
to take a secondary place ; yet she had gained largely,
not only in Posen, but also in Westphalia and the Rhine
Province: so that now her territories stretched (albeit
with annoying gaps at Hesse-Cassel and Brunswick) from
the Russian kingdom of Poland to the frontier of France.
She became the natural champion of Central Europe
against France and Russia. But, all the same, she
occupied a second place in the Diet and the Committees
of the German Confederation ; while polyglot Austria
sought to keep the first place which the skilful diplomacy
of Metternich had won for her. Thus the peace of 1814—15
was, for Germany, no peace. She was saddled with a
Constitution which curbed the aspirations of her people
for liberty and unity ; and she was still a prey to the old
feud between Ilapsburg and Hohenzollern, South and
North. Had not Frederick William III and the statesmen
of Berlin been incurable pedants, they would have over¬
thrown this unfair settlement. As it was, they accepted
it grudgingly, and even made common cause with

10 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

Metternioli in crushing the popular risings of 1821 and
1830. It is not surprising that the University students,
who on the Continent were always in the vanguard of
the Reform Movement, burnt in their demonstrations
Prussian military pigtails and Prussian military stays as
symbols of the soulless despotism which then cramped the
life of Germany.

We need not dwell on that dreary time of reaction,
1815 — 1848, save to remark two noteworthy changes. In
the thirties was formed the famous Zollverein, or Customs’
Union. Originating in two separate Unions (Prussia and
Hesse Darmstadt, and Bavaria and Wiirtemberg), it
attained almost national importance by the merging of
these two systems in the year 1833. Not long afterwards
most of the other German States joined this Customs'
Union; and in 1851, when Hanover gave in its adhesion,
the German fiscal system was almost complete. Why the
Austrian Empire did not oppose this commercial union of
the smaller German States with Prussia is hard to say.
Certainly it was one of the many blunders that have
marked Austrian policy ; for even then it became probable
that political union would follow the trend of fiscal union.

The other event concerns England and Germany alike.
In 1837 the accession of Queen Victoria necessitated the
severance of Hanover from the British connexion; for
there the Salic law held sway : thanks to that relic of a
barbarous past the link that bound England and Hanover
in a most cramped three-legged race was severed. How
much British policy had suffered from the drag of
Hanover is known to all students of our history; and
people who knew no history were devoutly thankful when
these islands gained Queen Victoria and the Duke of
Cumberland went to Hanover. The gravitation of that
petty Kingdom towards the Prussian or German Zoll¬
verein marked out the course of political events, which
came about in 1866.

It is impossible here to attempt to unravel the appalling

The Political History-

11

tangles of the democratic and national movements in
Germany in the years 1848, 1849. Suffice it to say that
all the efforts of German democrats to gain liberty and
unity utterly collapsed. Certain sons of Belial declare
that the failure was due entirely to the fact that the
Vorparlament at Frankfurt was led by professors and
barristers ; hut that is an argument which I do not wish
to discuss in this place. Others, let us hope more reason¬
ably, point to the fact that the ruler to whom the deputies
offered the crown of the German Empire of their dreams,
was Frederick William IV of Prussia, in the main a
dreamer and rhetorician, who for once showed some sense
of prudence by declining the bauble. What is certain is
that the German democrats themselves, and Prussia as
well, were far too weak to brave the wrath of Austria. For
a time she was helpless with her troublesome Yiennese,
Bohemian, Hungarian, and Italian subjects; but, thanks
to the help of Pussia, she restored order in her own house,
and then resolved to set things to rights in her Germanic
preserves. Finally, Prussia and the democrats had to
bow the knee to her and accept her ruling on all the
questions in dispute. Well was it for Prussia that she
did so in the Convention of Olmtitz (Nov. 29, 1850).
Otherwise Austria and Pussia would have pushed her to
the wall and indefinitely postponed national union.*

Thus, after all the futile strivings of 1848 — 9, Austria
rounds off the Germans to their several folds and resumes
the role of guardian for order. So far off was German
unity that the German federal fleet was sold by auction,!
as if those warships were so many London County Council
steamboats. Patriots gnashed their teeth when they saw
Austria favouring the cause of the Danes in the Elbe
Duchies and handing over the Germans of that border¬
land to what was (in Schleswig at least) a state almost
of servitude to the Danes.

* “ Camb. Mod. Hist.,” xi, 231, 393; “Mems. of Count Beust,” ch. 9.

t C. Lowe, “Bismarck,” i, 186.

12 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

But the great lesson of the Nineteenth Century is that
all such reactions and humiliations, are temporary, and
finally redound to the harm of those who inflict them.
Sooner or later the aggrieved race produces a leader, who,
if the omens are favourable, helps it to burst its bonds and
retaliate on the would-be warder. Such was the role of
Bismarck in Germany and Cavour in Italy. Their careers
run a curiously parallel course : at certain points their
methods are similar. They eschew revolutionary plans
and make use of old dynasties and well drilled armies ;
they seek to unite their peoples to the old monarchies;
they make unscrupulous use of diplomacy; and both of
them seek the friendship of Napoleon III in order to
compass the overthrow of the national foe, Austria.
Strange to say, they succeed; for Napoleon III, unlike
his uncle, is at times a dreamer, obsessed by Quixotic
visions ; and he foresees good to mankind and glory and
gain to himself from the liberation of oppressed peoples,
among them being the Italians and the North Germans.
Thus, Austria is the foe against whom this Imperial
knight-errant longs to tilt. With a little guile on the
part of Cavour and Bismarck the quest is started; for
Austria has latterly been too successful, and all Europe
longs to see her horn depressed. The result is her over¬
throw, first in Italy in 1859, and in Germany in the
Bohemian campaign of 1866. This last alone concerns us
here ; but we must remember that even the diplomacy of
Bismarck, the splendid organization of the Prussian army
by Boon, and the masterly strategy of Moltke would
assuredly have failed, had not Denmark and Austria
successively put themselves in the wrong in their treat¬
ment of Germany and Prussia at that time.

The English public thought differently ; but the English
public was misinformed by its newspapers, and in a fit of
sentiment believed that because little Denmark had a
quarrel with two great German States, she must be in the
right and they in the wrong; — an assumption quite as

The Political History

13

disputable as that in a street quarrel the little boy must
be the champion of justice and the big boy be merely
a bully. The fact is that little States, like little boys,
sometimes rely on their littleness to move some ill-
informed and sentimental bystander to side with them.
In this particular instance Denmark did not gain the
support from England which she expected ; but it is fairly
certain that that help would have been forthcoming had
not Queen Victoria objected to the pro-Danish proposals
of Palmerston.* So that miserable dispute ran its
deplorable course, the result being ruin for Denmark,
discredit to Great Britain, temporary gain both to Austria
and Prussia, and a good cause of dispute for Prussia
against Austria in the near future.

Two years later, in 1866, the dispute respecting the
ownership of Schleswig and Holstein came to a head ;
but in reality the question at issue was — which of the
rival Powers should be supreme in Germany. Again the
omens favoured Prussia. Or rather, we ought to say that
Bismarck had carefully prepared his ground. He had the
friendship of Russia (which still resented Austria’s ingra¬
titude after 1849) ; and he believed that he had the
friendship of Napoleon III, on behalf of Italy, now allied
to Prussia. In point of fact the French Emperor had
“ hedged ” so as to come off well in the event of an
Austrian triumph.

But Austria did not triumph. The Prussian armies,
superbly handled in the Bohemian campaign, won not
only the battle of Koniggratx but the campaign by the
staggering blow dealt to their rival on July 3, 1866. Now
it was too late for Napoleon III, or rather his ministers,
to interfere in a way ostensibly friendly to Prussia’s ally,
Italy, but in reality highly threatening to Prussia. The
threat of intervention was nevertheless made by France in
the clumsiest manner conceivable. Its only result was to

* Sir Spencer Walpole, “Life of Lord J. Russell,” ii, 406; “ Camb.
Mod. Hist.,” xi, 338; Sybel, “Deutsche Reich,” iii, 87 — 165.

14 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

bind to the cause of Prussia the South and Central
German States with which she had been at war. At the
prospect of French aggressions on Bavaria and Hesse
Darmstadt the Court of Munich came to a secret under¬
standing with the Court of Berlin. The fratricidal strifes
of Germans were in fact not only ended by the French
menace, but there was laid the basis of that compact of
North and South Germans which helped on the wider
union of the year 1871.

That union, as we know, came about through the threat¬
ening attitude of the French Emperor, and still more of
his Empress and his Ministers, during the diplomatic
quarrel of July, 1870. The general details of that dispute
are well known. What is far less known is a factor vital
to the wdiole discussion, namely, that by order of the French
Emperor, a French general, Lebrun, had in the month of
June, 1870, gone to Vienna to discuss plans for a Franco-
Austrian alliance with a view to a joint attack upon the
North German Confederation in the spring of the next
year. It is probable (though decisive proofs on the
question are wanting) that Prussian statesmen became
aware of some such plan.* The secret may have been
divulged by some Hungarian or Slav in the Austrian war
office. Or again the proposals of Napoleon to Victor
Emmanuel to bring Italy into line with Austria and
France may have alarmed some friend of Prussia at the
Italian capital, Florence ; and the secret may have leaked
out thence to Berlin. t In any case Bismarck determined
to precipitate a conflict with France which was certain to
come. The Napoleonic dynasty was in too precarious a
condition to adopt a cool and dignified attitude; and its
champions, both lay and clerical, military and journal¬
istic, thought well to play a game of bluff as a means of
strengthening the dynasty. The “Mamelukes” at the

*J. H. Rose, “Development of the European Nations,” pp. 33-5.

t Dr. Roloff and M. Albert Thomas, in “ Camb. Mod. Hist.,” xi,
462, 493, do not give any details.

The Political History

15

French Court, encouraged by the Empress Eugenie, the
IJltramontanes in the (Ecumenical Council then being
held at Rome, and Chauvinists of all creeds and stations,
clamoured for a spirited policy, and thus played into the
hands of the cool silent man at Berlin who saw that war,
immediate war, alone could save Prussia and the North
German Confederation from an attack in the near future
by France and Austria, perhaps from Italy as well.

Prussia, under any other sovereign than William I,
under any other Chancellor than Bismarck, would have
hesitated and have met the doom of those who hesitate.
But now the dictates of diplomacy and the instincts of
the whole people bade her strike while she had the national
sense strong on her side, while Russia was distinctly
friendly, and while Austria and Italy hesitated, or, at
least, were not ready to take up arms for France. It was
the unique opportunity in the recent history of Modern
Germany. If it had been lost, France would have seized
the Rhine Frontier, Austria would have dissolved the
North German Confederation, and, besides annexing part
or the whole of Silesia, would have imposed on Central
Europe the old deadening order of things. Prussia, the
one possible organizer of German life, would have sunk
into comparative insignificance; and the general result
must have been the weakening of the central part of
Europe, the weakness of which in former ages wras a
perpetual cause of unrest and war. Whatever we may
think of the diplomatic finesse of Bismarck in helping to
bring about the war of 1870 (and on diplomatic grounds
much more can be said for him than is generally known)
we ought to accept with satisfaction the results of that
war, so far as concerns Germany. We may desire — we
must desire — that the union of that long divided people
had come about by less forceful means : that the ballot-
box, not the sword, had been the agent of unification ; but
that was not to be. The experiment was tried in 1848-9
and failed, mainly because the enemies of Germany were

16 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

too strong. There was truth in those terrible words of
Bismarck: “ It is not by speechifying and majorities that
the great questions of the time will have to be decided —
that was the mistake in 1848 and 1849 — but by blood and
iron.” The words are generally quoted without the
parenthesis which gives significance to them : and Bis¬
marck is termed “ the man of blood and iron.” Well ! he
was so; but only because, after the sad experiences of
1848-9, there was no other alternative, at least none that
a practical statesman could wait for. In view of a
probable attack by three States in 1871, lie determined
to deal the blow at the most aggressive of them in 1870;
and on the lower plane of expediency, on which statesmen
must act, his act is thoroughly defensible. We who live
behind the rampart of the sea know little (save in times
of panic) of the fear that besets a State which has no
natural frontiers and which then had to reckon with three
great military empires on its borders.

We must therefore not be too hard on the statesmen of
the German Empire which was proclaimed at Versailles
on January 18, 1871, for seeking to guard their western
territory by annexing the old German lands, Elsass-
Lothringen, the latter comprising only about a quarter
of the province of Lorraine. True, this annexation out¬
raged the sentiment of the inhabitants of those districts,
who had become thoroughly French at heart at the time of
the great Revolution and have remained so despite all the
masterful but far from attractive energy of their new
masters. But those masters, after all, were bent on build¬
ing a barrier against French aggressions ; and one must
admit that the experience of the past, especially of the
time of Napoleon the Great, bade them beware of France
above all nations. Look at the course of historv since the
time of Louis XIII, and you will find that the efforts
of British, Austrian, Spanish, and Dutch statesmen were
directed mainly to building up Barrier-Systems against
French aggressions. In the main their efforts were

The Political History-

17

directed to Flanders and Brabant; and we were quite
ready, even down to the year 1794, to arrange plans for
annexing French Flanders in order to keep within bounds
that “ most wicked and unprincipled nation,” as George
III styled the French. If we f'or a century and a half
were intent on weakening our “ natural enemy,” is it
surprising that the Germans, after their infinitely harder
experiences, decided that it was time to end the French
menace by retaining Strassburg and Metz ? Probably, if
we had been in their place, we should have done the same.

Still less surprising is it that the Germans determined
to form the effective union out of which they had been
cheated in the years 1814, 1815. In 1871 there was a good
basis on which to work. The North German Confedera¬
tion, formed in 1866 on the basis of Prussian supremacy
and the hereditary headship of the House of Hohenzollern,
had worked so effectively and triumphantly that the South
Germans now decided to join it, thereby forming the
German Empire. The lesser States required certain safe¬
guards and reservations which the Unionists somewhat
grudgingly conceded ; and the resulting constitution is in
several respects of a distinctly federal character. While
all national and international affairs are subjected to
central control, the component States have wide local
powers and can in several ways make their influence felt
at the Imperial capital, Berlin. On the whole, the con¬
stitution is well suited to the needs of that great Con¬
federation.* The Reichstag, or Parliament, is elected
by universal suffrage; but the executive power is kept
entirely within the hands of the Kaiser and his Ministers ;
they are responsible to him alone ; he and they, as well as
the Bundesrath or Reichstag can initiate laws; and this
lack of control of the Ministers by the people’s House
occasions a good deal of friction. The Imperial machine
works with increasing difficulty; but it is questionable

*For its chief articles see C. Lowe, “Life of Bismarck,” vol. ii,
ad jin.

B

18 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

whether the Kaiser will give way on the point of the
responsibility of his Ministers. For he and they and the
influential classes in Germany feel acutely the risks bf
their position. Their Empire is not a single State : it is
a Confederation and has some of the weaknesses of a
Confederation. Only by keeping a firm grip on the
Executive can the needed firmness be maintained in
diplomatic, military, and naval affairs . Of late years the
growth of Socialism has furnished another cause why the
authorities cling, as for dear life, to the control of every
wheel of the administrative machine. They believe that
control by Parliament would impair the efficiency and
the fidelity of the services. It would be impertinent for a
foreigner to dogmatise as to the wisdom or unwisdom of
this procedure. Time alone can show whether it is con¬
sonant with the wishes of the German people and whether
it corresponds to the needs imposed on them by their
situation in Europe.

One thing is tolerably certain, that the aims of the
German rulers and of their Chancellors have been on the
whole peaceful. This lay in the nature of things so far
as concerns Europe. By 1871 Germany had gained all
that she could hope to gain unless some great convulsion
came to shatter the Austrian Empire, or endanger the
existence of Holland and Belgium. The break-up of the
Austrian Empire is a thing which has constantly been
prophesied; but it never happens; and therefore I beg
to be excused from discussing it here. Equally unlikely
in my judgment is the absorption of Holland or Belgium,
or both, by the German Empire. Every other Great Power
has a reason to oppose any such act of aggrandisement ;
and it must be remembered that the Balance of Power on
the Continent is so delicately poised that no one State is
likely to begin a reckless game of grab. The great fact of
the decades of the eighties and nineties was the formation
of the Triple and Dual Alliances, on which I must say a
few words.

The Political History 19

In 1878 during the Congress of Berlin Bismarck
supported the British and Austrian claims as against those
of Russia on the Eastern Question ; — a fact generally
forgotten, hut which proves that German policy was far
from being as anti-British as was often believed. His
bias in favour of Austria and England greatly offended
Russia, the result being that Germany and Austria soon
came to an understanding which ripened into alliance,
and that alliance was in 1882 solidified by the accession
of Italy. For various reasons France and Russia were
much slower in coming to terms : in fact not until after
the accession of the Czar Nicholas II in 1894 did the
Dual Alliance of France and Russia come to pass. The
interval therefore was the time when German policy, if it
had been warlike, would have shown itself so. True in
1882-5 Germany put forth great activity in colonial
questions; and it is worth noting that this activity began
as soon as Germany enjoyed the alliance of Austria
and Italy, while France was completely isolated. Very
naturally, then, Germany threw herself into the colonising
efforts to which her high birth-rate and restricted territory
compel her to resort. In this connection it is worth
noting that in the last forty years the population of that
Empire has increased from 41,000,000 to 65,000,000;*
and in this fact alone there is ample justification for the
adoption of a forward colonial policy, or what is termed
Welt-PolitiJc. A people which increases fifty per cent, in a
generation must be a colonising people, must have a great
overseas commerce, must therefore have a great navy.

The colonial impulse, I repeat, became marked in the
year 1882 when Germany felt secured by her new
alliances. Accordingly, the next three or four years
saw a vigorous expansion in the new lands, viz., the
Cameroons, S.W. Africa, the hinterland of Zanzibar,
New Guinea, and Samoa, attempts being also made to get
a foothold at St. Lucia Bay in Zululand and other points
* Prof . Oncken, in “ Camb. Mod. Hist.,” xi, 168.

20 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

not far distant. There seem to be good grounds for
believing that the colonial party at Berlin made great
efforts to push German claims both through Zululand and
Damaraland so as to cut off Britain’s northward progress.
The whole truth about this is not known : what we know
is that- Sir Charles Warren’s expedition to Bechuanaland
led to the ejection of the raiding Boers and the annexa¬
tion of that most valuable territory to the British Empire
(1885). At several other points the friction between us
and the Germans was for a time acute; but it is desirable
to remember that that friction did not end in flame. The
German colonial party accepted defeat in South Africa;
but it had its way at other points; and loud was the
wailing of nervous Britons as to the decadence of our race

and the approaching end of the British Empire. The
disputes with Germany were terminated by mutual con¬
cessions ; and our concessions, though certainly extensive,
did but register the fact that our Government recognized
the naturalness and the justice of the claims of Germans
to have some share in the last courses of that world-
banquet on which in earlier and less strenuous ages we
had so plentifully and profitably dined. After all, it was
only the leavings which were in dispute in the eighties ;
and it was both dignified and just not to haggle about
them too obstinately.

As is well known, these disputes were finally disposed of
by the Anglo-German agreement of 1890 which aroused
equally angry comment on both sides of the North Sea,
and may therefore be considered fairly just. The hopes
entertained by Germans as to the productiveness of their
colonies have been in the main disappointed; and S.W.
Africa involved them in a long and annoying strife with
the natives, the consequences being decidedly chastening
to the ardent hopes of the colonial party.

In the main it is unquestionable that the formation of
the German Empire has conduced to the peace of the
world. The statement will appear strange to those who
know nothing but the events of the present; for whom

The Political History

21

history is an ever shifting dazzling cinematograph.
History ought to be something more. It ought to throw
the light of the past cn the turmoil of the present ; and
in that serener light, things which seem irritating will
appear natural. For if we look at the past, we find that
our forefathers dreaded France far more than the wildest
alarmists now fear Germany. And their dread was with
reason. The position of France gave her great advantages
for an attack on England and English commerce. She
has ports in the North Sea, the English Channel, the
Hay of Biscay, and the Mediterranean ; and the observation
of her many harbours and extensive littoral was a task
far harder than that which would await the British navy
in case of a war between us and Germany. When France
and Spain were leagued together against us, as was often
the case, the blockade of their combined fleets was well
nigh impossible. That of the German naval ports is a far
simpler task.

Further, the geographical position of Germany is far
weaker than that of France. She has no natural frontiers
on the East, and poor harriers on the South and West.
Her policy is therefore almost necessarily defensive. And
ever since the formation of the Franco-Bussian Alliance
in 1895 her attitude has been cautious. Her ruler might
make warlike speeches and send fiery telegrams : but those
speeches and telegrams led to no hostile action. The man
to he feared is, not he who makes speeches and sends
telegrams, but rather he who methodically prepares a
blow and deals it swiftly, without warning. We can
merely speculate as to the motive which prompted the
Kaiser’s words in 1895 ; hut they were followed by no
aggressive acts in 1899. Either, then, his attitude to this
country was less unfriendly than it seemed, or he did not
feel prepared to take action. Again, it is open to question
which of these possible causes operated in favour of peace ;
but it is worth remembering that that was the time when the
Franco-Bussian Alliance altered the whole situation ; and

22 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

it is highly probable that the new Balance of Power was so
even, so threatening to Germany, as to impose caution.

Caution, not to say apprehension, is the prevalent atti¬
tude on the part of responsible men in that land. In
fact, Germany cannot well be an aggressive Power so
long as the Franco-Russian alliance endures. For the
hostility of France to Germany is lasting; and therefore
the Franco-Russian compact must be more or less directed
against the House of Hohenzollern. Germany accom¬
plished a wonderful work in unifying her people (or rather
Bismarck and his compeers did it for her) ; but even so
she has not escaped from the disadvantages of her situa¬
tion ; by land she is easily assailable on three sides ; by
sea she is less vulnerable; but there she labours under a
great disadvantage, viz., that her oceanic commerce has
to pass through the Straits of Dover and down the English
Channel, within easy striking distance of the French and
British fleets at Brest, Plymouth, Cherbourg, Portsmouth,
and Dover. This is what makes her nervous about her
mercantile marine. This is what makes her build a great
fleet ; and again, I say, were we in her situation we should
do the same.

To sum up, then, it is demonstrable that the formation
of the German Empire has been a gain to Europe and
therefore to Great Britain. For the events of the years
1866 — 1871 put an end, once for all, to the possibility of
waging predatory wars against the hitherto unguarded
centre of the Continent, thereby removing a temptation to
war which had so often lured France into false courses in
the previous centuries ; they enabled the German people to
develop its hitherto stunted political capacities; and they
helped to build up on a sure basis a new European System
which has maintained the peace for 40 years. That boon
has resulted from the fact that German unification
effected at one stroke what Great Britain, with all her
expenditure of blood and treasure, had never been able to
effect, namely, to assure the Balance of Power in so decisive
a way as to make a great war the most risky of ventures.

II.— THE INTELLECTUAL AND
LITERARY HISTORY

BY

C. H. HERFORD, Litt.D.

THE INTELLECTUAL AND LITERARY HISTORY.

Any attempt to give, witliin tlie present limits, even
the most meagre connected narrative of the intellectual
and literary history of Germany in the Nineteenth
Century must necessarily fail, even if it did not
demand a competence, in virtually every department of
knowledge, which is now beyond the reach of any
individual. The present essay seeks merely to distinguish
some of the main currents in this vast stream of thought,
and to define a few of the more decisive points of their
course. All detail is purely illustrative; there is nowhere
an attempt at even proximate completeness. And vast
tracts both of the “ intellectual,” and more especially of
the ‘‘literary,” history are ignored altogether; some
because they contributed little of lasting value to the
total output; others because they were either too deriva¬
tive, or too original, too European or too provincial, to
illustrate those “ main currents ” of German achievement
with which we are here concerned; yet others merely
because the writer found illustrations, with which he was
less incompetent to deal, elsewhere.

I.

It is one of the commonplaces of philosophic history
that the ages of great intellectual expansion in a people’s
development have followed great expansions of its
political power. Athens under Pericles, Rome under
Augustus, England under Elizabeth — such examples might
tempt us to think that poetry is invariably, as Hobbes
said of laughter, a “sudden glory,” called forth by an
exulting sense of our own superiority. Nothing in

26 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

modern times more effectually belies such a belief than a
comparison of tbe intellectual with the political situation
of Germany at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century.
I need but refer to the vivid picture, drawn in the previous
lecture, of the Germany of those years; — a series of dis¬
cordant states, ruthlessly trampled on and dismembered,
now the writhing victim, now the helpless spectator of the
world-conflict waged between the two great compact historic
polities, England and France. Yet these years of outward
impotence and humiliation mark, it is not too much to
say, one of the two or three culminating moments in the
entire intellectual history of Europe, and one of the three
or four culminating moments of its literature. And while
elsewhere political greatness was one of the sources of the
inner expansion, in Germany, on the contrary, the intel¬
lectual energies of those years created the fruitful soil
out of which political greatness was finally, by the hand
of a mighty tiller, to be won.1 Like the brooding East,
in Arnold’s poem, she

“ bowed low before the blast
In patient, deep disdain;

She let the legions thunder past,

And plunged in thought again ;”

but her thought, too, was pregnant with the forces which
mould faiths and transform peoples.

Naturally, from this standpoint of inner development,
the relation of Germany to the rest of civilised Europe
assumes quite another aspect. The poor, ragged Cinderella
of Jena and Eylau reappeared as the radiant queen of
the ball, outshining both the proud elder sisters, though
they were too proud, and she, as yet, too humble to

1. Cf. W. Windelband, Die Philosophie im deutschen Geistesleben des
19ten J ahrkunderte , p. 6. These five lectures afford an admirably lucid
survey of the intellectual history of Germany during the century. The
present essay, though quite different in aim and plan, owes much to
their guidance and suggestion.

The Intellectual and Literary History 27

be aware of it. The matter may be summarily stated
thus. The great movement of critical and constructive
intelligence which is the chief distinction of the eighteenth
century, had been pre-eminently the work of France and
England. France under Louis XI Y had succeeded to the
intellectual hegemony of Europe, held till towards 1600
by Italy, as well as to the political hegemony, exercised
by Spain; until, about 1700, this position, doubly chal¬
lenged by the England of Newton and Locke, and by the
England of Marlborough, passed into a divided leader¬
ship, of the two nations, in both kinds. During the
greater part of the century their relation is one at once
of comradeship and of rivalry; the deadly struggle of two
great military powers being carried on without the least
prejudice to the concurrent and immensely fruitful
exchange of ideas between two great and original civilisa¬
tions.1 Germany, on the other hand, slowly recovering
from the frightful ravages of the Thirty Years’ War, was
still, in 1700, far in the rear, and continued, till about
1760, to play a quite secondary part, fed largely on what
she gathered from their rich tables. But from Lessing
onward she begins to unfold original qualities in astonish¬
ing abundance, and with all the freshness of unspoilt
youth. And at the same time, both in England and
France, many lines of intellectual exploration hitherto
pursued, appear to lose their zest, and are given up as
barren or left to inferior workers. The most striking case
is famous. The English study of the mind was carried
to a kind of deadlock by the acutest of British thinkers,

1. The facts are generally familiar; it will suffice to refer to one
important example of what may be called cross-fertilisation, — an English
literary development originating in a French movement itself due to an
English stimulus. Thus Hume, as a historian, is a child of Voltaire,
whose own attempts to rationalise historical writing were inspired by
the scientific enthusiasm he had caught in the country of Newton.
J. Texte’s J. J. Rousseau et le cosmopolitisme litter aire is still the best
book on the subject. Buckle thought “the union of the English and
French mind ” the most important fact of the eighteenth century.

28 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

David Hume. The political thinking of France reached
both a climax and a terminus, in one direction with
Rousseau, the most original and fertile French philoso¬
pher, in another with Turgot, the most sagacious and
beneficent.1 Burke, the first Englishman to think organi¬
cally upon politics, had no direct English successors.2
Gibbon’s great work, which made an epoch both in the
comprehension of history and in the writing of it, roused
in England, for the time, little but barren admiration
relieved by the shrill anger of bishops.3 Rousseau’s
great creation, the romance of passion and scenery, after
putting forth one frail, exquisite shoot, the idyll of
Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, remained barren till Chateau¬
briand and Mme. de Stael. Lowth and Wood virtually
initiated the literary appreciation of the Old Testament,
and of Homer; Burke 4 nearly at the same time inau-

1. Rousseau’s Contrat Social was in a great measure translated into
practice in the Revolution, but had otherwise, in France, no sequel.
The complete collapse of Turgot’s scheme of reform was a national
disaster of the first magnitude.

2. Burke’s political ideas, nowhere systematically expressed, and liable
to be discounted by his change of front, had no apparent effect upon
any English thinker of the next generation. The whole weight of
Bentham and his school naturally told against them. Malthus supported
similar practical conclusions but by radically different- arguments.
Burke’s only direct disciples were the German reactionaries after the
war, particularly Gentz. Coleridge, the first Englishman whose
political thinking recalls Burke’s, drew directly from his German
masters.

3. The Nouvelle Heloise was published in 1761, Paul et Virginie in
1787. Its influence upon novel- writing in England also went little
beyond Bage’s Barham Downs (1788) and the landscape backgrounds of
Mrs. Radcliffe. Emile (1762), on the other hand, and the Contrat Social
produced a flood of educational and political novels, beginning with
Henry Brooke’s The Fool of Quality (1766-70).

4. Burke in his Inquiry into the origin of our Ideas of the Sublime
and the Beautiful (1756) referred these ‘ideas’ to particular forms of
pain or pleasure, in other words to psychological states, the particular
quality and conditions of which he acutely analysed. Burke’s psycho¬
logical treatment of aesthetics probably had some share in determining

The Intellectual and Literary History 29

gurated psychological aesthetics; but none of the aesthetic
studies produced in England during the remainder of the
century, marked any appreciable further advance.

Now in every one of these cases, and in others, the
unfinished fabric of English or French speculation served
as basis and starting-point for new and vast architectural
developments by the builders of Germany. Kant — a
king of builders as Schiller called 1 him — learned from
Rousseau to recognise the dignity of man, and from Hume
to admit the limits of his intelligence : but to those
thoughts he gave the amazing transformation which he
justly compared to that effected by Copernicus in our
conception of the universe. The ideals of the historian
and the historical thinker, pursued in their different fields
by Montesquieu and Turgot, by Burke and Gibbon, had
their true sequel and fulfilment in the great historical
school of Germany, in the Wolfs and Niebuhrs, the Eich-
horns and Savignys.2 Burke’s essay in aesthetics, received
with delight by Lessing and Moses Mendelssohn, preluded
the vast development carried out in one direction by Kant
and his followers, in another, long after, by Fechner.
Rousseau’s educational ideas were developed by Pestalozzi ;

1. Cf. Schiller’s epigram on the commentators of Kant : Wenn die
Konige bau’n, haben die Karrner zu thun.

2. Gibbon’s luminous survey of the Roman law {D. and F., ch. 44)
was translated into German in 1789, with a preface by Prof. Hugo of
Gottingen, laying down the historical principles afterwards developed
by Savigny. Paul, Gesch. d. german. Phil., p. 65, in his Grundriss.

the essentially psychological method of the Laolcoon (1766) where the
distinction between painting and poetry is based upon the simultaneous
and successive presentation of images. Kant and his successors accen¬
tuated the ideal and transcendental aspects of beauty, and both Schiller
and Hegel made permanent contributions of vast importance to the
theory of art and poetry. But they neglected the senses ; and the
psychological point of view of Burke was more precisely resumed after
the decline of idealism, by G. T. Fechner in his Vorschule der Aesthetik
(1876), with the aid of experimental methods of which Burke naturally
never dreamed.

30 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

his speculative exaltation of primitive man reappeared,
transformed by insight and first-hand knowledge, in the
ideal U rsprunglichkeit of Herder. Percy, with the Reliques
of Ancient English Poetry f provoked in England much
elegant verse, but little indeed, before Scott and Coleridge,
that reaches the poignant simplicity to which it possibly
helped Burger in Lenore ; and neither Percy nor Lowth 1
nor any other Englishmen of the century equalled Herder 2
in comprehension of the genius of primitive poetry and
primitive speech. And the national significance of his
vrork was — until the Reliques stirred the genius of Scott —
far greater. Percv extended the limits of English taste;
Herder provideTanew organ for the German spirit. An
analogous transformation took place, finally, in Hellenic
studies. England, from Bentley to Porson, had here held
indisputably the first place. But at the very moment when
Porson flung off his scornful epigram about the Germans in
Greek being sadly to seek, German scholarship was about to
assume the still more indisputable lead which it has never
lost. Wood’s 3 essay heralded the yet more epoch-making
Homeric work of Wolf; and the Greek ideals of art and
life became with Goethe and Schiller at Weimar, as the
ideals of primeval song had done with Herder, instru-

1. Lowth’s lectures on Hebrew poetry ( De sacra poesi Hebrceorum,
1753) were the starting point both for the rationalist criticism of the
Old Testament, led by Michaelis, and for Herder’s literary study of
Hebrew song. R. Wood’s Essay on the Original genius and writings of
Homer (1769) applied the results of a close study of Greek localities to
the illustration of the Homeric poems.

2. Herder’s V olhslieder appeared 1778-9.

3. Wood’s Essay appeared in German translation in 1773, and deeply
impressed the young Goethe. The enthusiastic review of it in the
Frankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigen, commonly ascribed to him (Wke. ed.
Hempel, xxix, 86 f.), is a valuable document for the English cultural
influences of those critical years. Long afterwards ( Dichtung und
Wahrheit, Bk. xii) his mature judgment expressed the debt of Homeric
studies to Wood with undiminished emphasis. “We no longer saw in
these poems an exaggerated and bombastic heroism, but the reflected
reality of a primeval present, and we did our utmost to assimilate it.”

The Intellectual and Literary History 31

ments upon wliicli the German spirit found its way to a
new music which was yet fundamentally its own.

What was the secret of these German builders P Put in
the fewest words merely this : a peculiarly widespread,
strenuous and whole-hearted pursuit of truth, combined
with a peculiar sensibility to certain forms of it. To the
favoured elite among the countrymen of Descartes and of
Newton the temper of science was assuredly known; but
the passion for knowledge was taught to modern Europe,
if at all, mainly by thousands of German scholars working
fifteen hours a day, often in homely attics and garrets.
But while their range of theoretic interest was unlimited
it was drawn with especially fruitful effect towards three
beacons, — three illuminating and controlling conceptions
— which I may denote by the watchwords : elemental ,
organic , psychical. It was by his immeasurably finer
insight into the ways of elemental humanity — of primitive
or naive peoples, that Herder went beyond Percy; it was

ion of organic or evolutionary conceptions
to enormously increased knowledge, that the German
historic school went beyond Hume and Voltaire, and in
some respects even beyond Gibbon ; it was by his vastly
more adequate appreciation of mind, in its heights and
depths, in its reason and its unreason, its clear discourse
and its unfathomable intuitions, that Kant went beyond
Hume.

Moreover, each of these three developments of intel¬
lectual outlook was a result of the pressure of just those
less rational elements of mind upon the springs of faith.
Imagination, feeling, will, asserted their right to be heard,
by the side of or above the reason; and the universe
became vaster, deeper, and more wonderful under their
transforming touch. The irrational was recognised as a
source of illumination; wisdom was gathered from the
child and from the flower ; science, philosophy and poetry
drew together. With us in England, this recovery of
imagination created a noble poetry, but left the sciences

by the applicat

32 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

and philosophy almost untouched. One of the keys to
the comprehension of the entire period is the fact that
whereas in England and France the poetic, philosophic
and scientific movements ran largely in different channels,
in Germany they mingled or fused. Wordsworth chanted
and Bentham calculated; but Hegel caught the genius
of poetry in the meshes of logic; and the thought which
discovers and interprets and the imagination which creates
wrought together in fruitful harmony in the genius of
Goethe.

II.

In Goethe indeed, pre-eminently, all the main aspects
of the complex transformation I have spoken of were
present together. In his long career, stretching from the
Seven Years’ War to our first Reform Bill, the German
eighteenth century is completed and summed up; while
the German nineteenth century is in almost every signifi¬
cant point reflected or foretold. What M. Legouis has
said of Wordsworth is even truer of Goethe: “ To learn
how, in his case, manhood was developed out of early
youth, is to learn how the nineteenth century was born
from the eighteenth, so different, yet with so manifest a
family likeness.” 1 The intellectual energy which seeks
to discover continuity in the teeming multiplicity of
Nature, was united in him with a noble and profound
naivete in which Nature herself was imaged with pellucid
fidelity, like the pebbles seen in the water of a clear brook.2
His poetry was the expression of a wonderfully intense
and luminous eye for facts; it grew directly out of some¬
thing that he had himself gone through; the experience
gathering in his mind, thought and imagery and language,

1. Legouis, The Youth of Wordsworth, p. 253.

2. Cf. Xenien, No. 72 (doubtless by Schiller) : ‘Reiner Bach du
entstellst nicht den Kiesel, du bringst ihn dem. Auge Naher; so seh’ ich
die Welt, . . . wenn du sie beschreibst.’

The Intellectual and Literary History 33

clarifying itself of disturbing accidents, but retaining its
essential truth.1 And somewhat in the same way his
mind itself underwent a perpetual unfolding through the
eighty years of his life, gathering new elements without
losing the old. “Das grosse Kind” he called himself;
and indeed the child in him never sank to sleep; the
wonderful eyes of his portrait as an old man look out at
you under the Olympian brow with a rapt serenity like
that of the two seraphic children at the feet of the Sistine
Madonna; and long after his sixtieth year the thrill of
beauty, of passion, of meeting and separation, evoked
from him lyric utterance (as in the Marienbader Elegie)
as ravishing in its simple intensity as the songs of his
magnificent youth themselves.

But with this elemental simplicity, as of a child, there
went a deep comprehension of the complexity of life.
Never has the continuity of organism, the implication of
all the parts in the whole, and of the whole in the parts,
been more pregnantly expressed than in his “ Natur hat
weder Kern noch Scliale, Alles ist sie mit einem Male.” 2

1. Cf. his pregnant little essay : Bedeutende Fordernis durch ein
einziges geistreiches Wort {Wke. Bd. 27, 351), on the remark of his
friend Heinroth that his thought was “ gegenstandlich,” objective; ‘that
is,’ he explains, ‘ that my thought does not detach itself from objects,
that the elements of objects, the presentations, enter into my thought
and are intimately penetrated by it; that my intuition (A ns chaining) is
itself a thinking, and my thinking an intuition.’ And he goes on to
tell how certain great motives and legends like that of the Braut von
Korinth, remained, alive and active, in his mind for forty or fifty
years, altering only towards greater clarity and definiteness, without
changing their character. His nearest English analogue in this is
without doubt Wordsworth.

2. In his Allerdings (Morphologie, 1820). The saying was a retort
upon the doctrine that the inner reality of Nature was wholly withdrawn
from knowledge, expressed by Haller in the quatrain : “ Ins Innre der
Natur dringt kein erschaffner Geist; Gliickselig wem sie nur die aussre
Schale weist !” Goethe’s conviction that the sensuous intuition revealed
the depth as well as the surface of Nature, was the source both of his
strength and of his weakness in science. It helped him to his divining

34 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

Tliis profound persuasion led to at least two notable
discoveries. In a beautiful and famous poem be set forth
the then novel doctrine that the flower is a metamorphosed
leaf; and the finding of a sheep’s neckbone at Venice led
him to the analogous divination that the brain is an
expanded vertebra.1 The human form itself was the
culminating point of a vast organic process ; the key to
the entire structure of Nature, as well as the source of the
most perfect Art;2 he saw the statue with the eye of a
morphologist, and the skeleton with the eye of the

1. At the same time, the strictly historic sense, like the sense of
nationality which it so powerfully stimulates, was but faintly developed
in Goethe. Even his Hellenism was enthusiasm not for a people but for
an artistic ideal which they had achieved. The Italienische Reise,
when published in 1817, offended Niebuhr not merely by its paganism
but by its purely aesthetic valuations. But the two men deeply revered
each other, and Goethe gives us an accurate measure of the relative
strength of his interest in the character of men and of politics, when he
writes, after reading Niebuhr’s Roman History-. ‘It was, strictly,
Niebuhr and not the history of Rome, which occupied me. . . . The
whole body of agrarian laws concerns me not at all ; but the way he
explains them, and makes these complicated relations clear to me, this
is what helps me, and lays the obligation on me to proceed with equal
scruple in the affairs I myself undertake.’ Quoted by Julian Schmidt,
Gesch. der deutschen Litt. seit Lessing’s Tod. iii, 81.

2. Both these discoveries belong to the period of Goethe’s most intense
and fruitful occupation with the scientific interpretation of the world,
and especially of organic life, — the years following his first Italian
journey. The Metamorphose cler Pfianzen was written in 1790; in the
same year, when visiting the Jewish cemetery at Venice, his servant
brought him the broken sheep-skull, which led him to the solution of
the osteological problem. Twenty years later, as is well known, it was
solved independently by Oken. The scientific work of Goethe has been
critically discussed by Virchow and by Helmholtz. Excellent apprecia¬
tions of it are given by Kalischer in Werke, ed. Hempel, Bd. 33, and
by R. M. Meyer in his Goethe , ch. 33 and 34.

glimpses into the coherence of organic nature; it also made him the
fierce assailant of Newton for declaring sunlight not to be primitive
and elemental.

The Intellectual and Literary History 35

sculptor. To the yet more complex continuities and
evolutions of mental life lie brought an insight in which
understanding was quickened by experience, and enriched
by sympathy ; the soul for him was always growing, as
his own soul had always grown; life was an education,
and his ripest wisdom and loftiest poetry spring from this
infinitely rich and fertile thought. Wilhelm Meister
serves his apprenticeship in the school of life, slowly
moulded by error and illusion towards an end he could
not foresee, as Saul went out to seek his father’s asses and
found a kingdom. And the steps in his education
are marked by the women whom he successively loves : —
the lowborn actress; the elegant but frivolous countess;
then Therese, with her radiant intelligence and her large
heart, and Natalie with her finer and subtler gifts of soul.
It is Natalie wTho finally becomes Wilhelm’s wife, and
some sentences near the close point the direction in which,
for Goethe, the advance towards higher things in educa¬
tion lies. Where Therese has insight, we are told,
Natalie has faith; where Therese has persistence, Natalie
has love; where Therese has confidence, Natalie has hope.
And it is Natalie who carries out the ideal expressed in
the profound words, which Therese can only admire but
not put into practice : “If we treat men as being what
they are, we make them worse; but if we treat them as if
they were what they ought to be, we bring them as far
as they are capable of being brought.” 1 Such sayings
attest Goethe’s sense of something deeper than reason in
the growing soul as in all other kinds of growth. The
enlightened intellects of the 18th century saw everything
clear and reduced everything to system : Goethe’s eye
reaches forth across that which can be put into words to
that which evades them ; across that which can be taught,
to that which must be discovered. “ Whoever half knows
an art, is always astray and always talking : whoever
possesses it entire seeks only to act it out, and talks seldom

1. Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, viii, 4.

36 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

or late. The others have po mysteries, and no power;
their teaching is like baked bread, succulent and satisfying
for a single day; but the meal cannot be sown, and the
seed-grain must not be ground.” 1 The mysterious, silent,
forces of Nature have to co-operate, and hers is the vital
part.

In the growth of Faust, other phases of Goethe’s thought
come into more distinct expression. From the Dionysiac
tumult of the senses he is borne to the Apolline clarity of
art, and thence finally, to the sober energy of social
service. Gretchen is forgotten in the stately presence of
Helen of Troy, the embodiment of all that Goethe revered
in the art of Greece.

But art, though an element in all the highest human
development, could not for Goethe suffice. Matthew
Arnold never said anything more gravely misleading than
when he summed up Goethe’s message in the words : “Art
still has truth , find refuge there A 2 Art was not for
Goethe the resource of the pessimist, as it was for Schopen¬
hauer; it was an energy which, like the giant Antaeus in
ancient fable, needed incessant contact with earth, with
experience, with reality; and the greatest of all the arts
was the art of living. And so the crown of Faust’s career,
the final phase by which he wins exemption from his
compact with Mephistopheles, is strenuous, unrelaxing
service to men, where epicurean self-indulgence is lost,
and joy is only the foretaste of the diffused happiness his
efforts have helped to bring about. “ One who strives
without ceasing we can deliver,” cry the angels, as they
pluck him away from the expectant arms of Mephisto¬
pheles. And Faust himself sums up the last conclusion
of Goethe’s wisdom, that he only wins freedom, as lie only
wins life, who has daily to conquer it for himself. In
this final Faust we have prefigured the latter-day Ger-
manv of strenuous will and action, and we can the better

1. Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, vii, 9.

2. Arnold, Memorial Verses, 1850.

The Intellectual and Literary History 37

understand how the great cosmopolitan, for whom state
and nationality were secondary and sometimes mischievous
ideals, yet holds his unassailable place as the supreme
poet of the German empire, beside Bismarck its creator.

Such was in substance, the work of Goethe. In that vast
complex we find, as I have hinted, the German Nineteenth
Century foretold. Here are already present, though not
in equal degree, all the traits which make that century
significant. Here we have the passion for truth, the
clear-eyed fidelity to fact ; here the apprehension of naive
and simple things, side by side with the most consummate
art ; here the fundamentally organic thinking, the instinct
for continuity and development; here the profound self-
consciousness, the eager psychical and cultural interests,
the daemonic personality; here, the demand for action,
for service, for duty; here, finally, a brilliant and memor¬
able literary vesture for all these various moods of mind.
Let me now attempt summarily to follow up these clues in
turn .

III.

First, then, the fidelity to fact. In the developed form
which it has received in the Nineteenth Century this may
be defined as an instinct which makes, in knowledge, for
what is spontaneous and erlebt; in administration, for what
answers with minute accuracy to a given set of needs; in
conduct, for what is frank and true. No German words
are fuller of the sap of national ethics than those which
denote these things : wahr , grundlich , trcu. They stand
for instincts which master indolence and get the better of
politeness, or take its place. When a French reviewer
points out a misstatement he says : <k That is inexact ” ;
a German, no worse disposed to his author, says : “ That
is false.” The heroes of the German nation have been
men of colossal directness, like Luther, with his “ ich kann
nicht anders,” like Bismarck “the honest broker,” like
Lessing whose life was a ceaseless battle for truth ; and
sincerity became the very essence of heroism in the

38 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

thought of the great Scottish apostle of German idealism,
Carlyle. The reverse side of this quality must, however,
also be recognised. German literature is confessedly poor
in the kinds of creative work which originate in an ironical
or humorous detachment from life. It has no Rabelais
or Moliere, no Cervantes, no Swift, no Fielding, no
Ariosto. Irony, theoretically exalted by the Romantics
to the very summit of all literary excellences, nay, pro¬
claimed as the very essence of good literature, failed in
practice to inspire anything of more permanent value
than the arabesque romances of J ean Paul ; while the two
or three brilliant masters of irony, a Heine, a Nietzsche,
owe very little of their acceptance in Germany, so far as
they are accepted, to this quality. The “ sardonic smile ”
at “ the absurdities of men, their vaunts, their feats,”
which wandered over the lips of the World-spirit in the
thirties and forties may have been Heine, as Arnold says,
but it was certainly not Germany. Her wTay with absurdi¬
ties which do more than froth the surface of life is rather
the impatience of the intellectual realist ; of the same
intellectual realist whose demand for knowledge first¬
hand, precise and complete, more than any commanding
originality has made German science, in al] its vast
ramifications, what it is.

The results of this scientific realism have often been
revolutionary; to English conservatism they have some¬
times seemed anarchic ; the application of more rigorous
standards of research naturally, as a rule, disturbing the
results obtained by laxer ones. They have often amounted
to the creation of a new study. Winckelmann wrote the
first history of antique sculpture because he was the first
to study its monuments at first-hand.1 A generation

1. Winckelmann, Gescliichte der Kunst des Alterthums , 1764. His
discussion of the Laokoon gave the original provocation, as is well
known, to Lessing’s famous book. Goethe took exception to his con¬
ception of beauty in sculpture (cf. Italienische Reise passim) ; but
recognised in him the Columbus of his subject, who anticipated what
he did not discover. ‘ Man lemt nichts wenn man ihn lieset, aber man
wird etwas.’ (Eckermann, Gespr., Feb. 16, 1827.)

The Intellectual and Literary History 39

later, Boeckh built up the economic history of Athens
upon a no less original use of monuments literary and
other.1 It was keener criticism of the sources, not the
prompting of a fertile inner consciousness, which led
Niebuhr to rebuild the time-honoured fabric of early
Eoman history.2 And it was a closer and more penetrat¬
ing scrutiny of the linguistic and literary facts of the
Homeric poems, not a passion for literary disruption,
which led Wolf to his no less memorable theory of their
composite origin;3 a theory, let us remember, which
convinced against his will the great master of organic
unity, Goethe.4 Yet again a generation, and Leopold v.
Ranke revolutionised the writing of the history of modern
Europe.5 But his bombshell was merely the proposition
that history, being intended to describe what happened,
must be founded on the reports of those immediately con¬
cerned, as agents or as witnesses. He was the first to go
systematically to the archives, to construct his narrative
upon MS. sources, on the reports of ambassadors, accounts
of expenditure, legal documents. He was a great realist
among historians; he had the realist’s joy in the fact, in
the sheer happening of a thing as such ; and a famous
saying of his incisively crystallises the temper of historical
realism : “ I do not aspire to know how things were bound
to happen : I am contented to know how they did happen.”

1. Aug. Boeckh, Staatshmishaltung der Athener, 1817.

2. Niebuhr, Romische Geschichte, 1814.

3. F. A. Wolf, Prolegomena ad Homerum, 1795.

4. Goethe's attitude towards Wolf’s work was not consistently main¬
tained. He hailed the discoverer with the utmost emphasis in the
Elegie Hermann und Dorothea (Dec. 1796). In 1821, however, he
returned to the traditional theory (the poem Homer wieder Homer).
His final view is expressed repeatedly in the conversations with
Eckennann, e.g., on Feb. 1st, 1827 : In der Poesie ist die vernich-
tende Kritik nicht so schadlich [as in the Old Testament]. Wolf hat
den Homer zerstort, doch dem Gedichte hat er nichts anhaben konnen.

5. L. von Ranke, (1795-1886). His Zur KritiJc neuerer Geschiehts-
srhreiber appeared in 1824; in the following year he became Professor
at Berlin.

40 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

That might seem to he the formula of a matter-of-fact
chronicler, who had no ambition but to report notable
occurrences in exact detail as they would appear to an
observant onlooker. But Ranke’s formula meant, for him,
and he made it mean for others, vastly more than this.
His demand to know how things happened was the demand
of one who wras at bottom chiefly concerned with the
things which the most observant onlooker overlooks or
cannot possibly discover; of one who grasped the com¬
plexity of the forces of which event is the visible sign,
and had an almost un approached skill in unravelling
their intricate web. He was not specially the historian
of civilisation, of letters, of political or other ideas; they
did not, as such, interest him, and he dismissed rather
impatiently the methods of historical writing which these
literary or ideal interests sometimes inspire ; as when he
disposed of the superb style of Michelet as one “ in which
the truth cannot be told.” But there was no fact of
national life, however ideal, however picturesque, which
he would not call in when he needed it to throw light on
the play of forces which determined the movement of
parties, the development of policies, the evolution of states.
Partisans abused him for his coldness; his detached
analysis of the Reformation age angered Catholics and
Protestants alike ; but his rigorous critical methods, his
scientific grasp and his scientific vision secured for
historic studies a definite place among the sciences of
mind, and even gave these sciences for a time the leading
place in the entire scientific movement of Germany.

Ranke stood, in fact, in temper and method, nearer than
any other great master of humane studies to the men who
built up the vast and many-sided edifice of the sciences
of Nature. The Romantic philosophers had invested
humanity and Nature alike with the glamour of idealism.
Ranke’s sober eye saw history in the light of common day ;
and the rapid strides of the sciences of Nature, in the
forties and fifties, marked not only the scornful rejection

The Intellectual and Literary History 41

of the Romantic “ Natur philo sophie,” — long a byword of
intellectual ignominy, — but the temporary submergence
of idealism itself. The middle years of the century dis¬
pelled many illusions, and frustrated many hopes, poli¬
tical, intellectual, ethical, religious; the brilliant promise
of a new era was shattered in ’48 ; those for whom philo¬
sophy was still an intellectual need closed their Hegel,
where Reason was the moving principle of the world, and
opened their Schopenhauer, where daemonic Will, blind
and insatiable, compelled all things to share in its own
futile unrest. Rut the reverse side of this sobered outlook
was the immense force and diffusion of the desire to
interpret the phenomena of the natural world, by physics,
chemistry and biology.

In no one of these sciences whether of Nature or of
Man has Germany since 1830 stood below the front rank
of the nations ; in mass of production she has far surpassed
all others. One of the cardinal scientific discoveries of
the century is due to her, — Mayer’s law of the Conserva¬
tion of Energy.1 In some sciences, such as organic and
technical chemistry, she has taken an enormously prepon¬
derating part. Some, like Economics, which had already
been carried to a high degree of cultivation elsewhere, she
brilliantly developed; or even like the critical study of
the Bible, completely transformed. Others, like com¬
parative philology and comparative mythology, are
virtually her own creation. English and French scholars
have done more for the discovery and original decipher¬
ment of new languages; of Sanskrit and Assyrian; of
Egyptian and Chinese. But the science of language, the
conversion of a study in which, Voltaire said, the vowels
mattered nothing, and the consonants very little, into one
in which every change in a word’s form is explained by

1. Robert Mayer set forth his discovery in his Die orgahische
Bewegung in ihrem Zusammenhange mit dem Stoffwechsel (1845).
Mayer’s place in the intellectual history of the century is lucidly set
forth by Hoffding, Hist, of Mod. Philosophy , Bk. x, ch. 1.

42 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

recognised phonetic laws, now of bewildering intricacy, —
this is essentially a German achievement.1 If the develop¬
ment of our own language is now, especially in its earliest
stages, of an almost weird lucidity, if the trained Anglist
will tell you how the ancestors of King Alfred spoke
centuries before the earliest scrap of extant writing, — this
is essentially a German work.

In all this vast scientific achievement of Germany, what
I have called fidelity to fact, a strenuous and impassioned
realism, was the standing, the decisive condition. But
this passion owed much both of its direction and of its
driving force to the specific sensibilities of which I spoke.
The feeling for the primeval stimulated the scientific
study of origins, and powerfully nourished the assumption
that in the origin of a people, or an institution, lies the clue
to its nature. The sense of organism kept the passion for
fact charged with the sense of the richness of reality, the
complexity, and the interrelatedness, of the knowable
wTorld. And the psychical bias of Germany, if it has, in
the mechanical and physical regions of facts, at times
directly Unvaried the scientific impulse, and substituted
romantic dream for scrutiny and experiment, lias in all
the human or partially human studies enormously
stimulated and guided discovery. It is not in German
economics that “ things " could ever have been said to
“ ride mankind.” It remains to illustrate the operation
of these specific sensibilities in more detail, and in the
literature of “ power ” as well as of “ knowledge.’’

1. The school of the so-called ‘ Junggrammatiker ’ emerged in the
later seventies. It attacked the problems of the history of language
through the direct observation of the living tongues, and especially by
the scientific cultivation of phonetics. It greatly promoted the rigorous
treatment of sound-change by the doctrine (first laid down by Leskien
in 1876) that exceptions to the laws of sound-change were inadmissible.
Cf. Paul, Grundriss der german. Philologie, i, 121.

The Intellectual and Literary History 43

IV.

If tlie call of the primitive and elemental, fertilised
scientific curiosity, it touched German life more directly
at a hundred other points. A vein of instinctive
Rousseauism lurks somewhere in almost every German
breast. There is an old Adam in them all, as Morike
sang; an innocent Adam, whom any hint of the unspoilt
freshness of the world, — the breath of the woodland, the
Waldgeruch, or the blitheness of a May morning — trans¬
ports back into Paradise and touches anew with the joy
of creation.1 Englishmen may have contributed more to
the literature of travel and discoverv, and more to the
loftier poetry of Nature; but the simple poetry of Wan¬
derlust, of joyous roving, is almost as characteristically
German as the bewitching music which Schubert and
others have found for it.

“ W em Gott will rechte Gunst erweisen
Den schickt er in die weite Welt,”

that is the text of a whole cycle of German song.2 Ger¬
man life itself is still in many points simpler than that of
France or England, notwithstanding the enormous growth
of wealth and luxury there during the last forty years.
At the beginning of the Nineteenth Century the contrast
was far greater; and many a modern German looks back
with humiliation, as a distinguished thinker has recently
confessed,3 at the unpretending homeliness of that old-
world Germany, which achieved such vast things in the
kingdom of mind. Goethe himself, the minister of a
grand-duke, lived in a house, the stateliest indeed in
Weimar, but simple enough to modern ideas; and he loved
to escape from it to his wooden gardenhouse by the quiet

1. Morike, Gedichte : ‘ Fussreise.’

2. Eichendorff : Aus clem Leben eines Tmigeniehts.

3. Windelband, Die Philosophie im deutschen Geistesleben des 19ten
J ahrhunderbs , p. 5.

44 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

Ilm ; or to that lonely hilt among the mountains, where
he wrote the wonderful traveller’s song: “ZJeber alien
Gipfeln ist Ruh.”

And some of those vast achievements in the kingdom
of the mind were in keeping with this homely society.
The ingathering of folktales and folksongs from the lips
of the peasant, the eager study of primitive German
institutions and folklore, and of the primitive institutions
of other peoples, — all this was, and could not but be,
the work of men in whom the instinct for the primitive
ran far deeper than the intellect. Think of the wonderful
clear-eyed tenderness with which Jacob Grimm explores
the soul of Old German custom and of Old German speech
and myth, in those masterpieces of science informed wTith
the very spirit of poetry, which in the first generation of
the 19th century laid the foundations of German philology.1
Aou feel in Grimm, with all his wealth of exact know¬
ledge, something of the simplicity of the child. His
German speech is a song, flowing from the heart of the
primeval Germany which he interprets because he possesses
it and it possesses him. How rich is the very word
urs'ptunglich in German, compared with our original.
Poetry and science, literary and philosophic impulses,
cross and blend strangely throughout the movement. The
“ LTrmensch ” and the “ Urzustand ” still wore for Herder
the glamour from which Rousseau’s mature thinking had
gradually and partially emancipated him, but which, in
virtue of a few glowing phrases of his youth, we still call
Rousseauesque. But already in Herder this passion for
the primitive was illuminated and controlled by a historic
sense and a feeling for the varying genius of race and

1. The great Deutsche GrammatiJc of Jacob Grimm, which served as
model for several other famous grammars, especially Diez’s of the
Romance, and Miklosich’s of the Slavonic languages, appeared, in four
parts, from 1819 to 1837; his Deutsche Mythologie, 1835; his Deutsche
Bechtsaltertiimer , 1828. Cf. Paul, Geschiclite der germ. Phil., p. 81f,
Grundriss.

\

The Intellectual and Literary History 45

nationality. The essay on the “ Origin of Language/’
which virtually opened his career, was at once a hymn to
the glory of the dawn of humanity when speech and poetry
were one, and a treatise, full of pregnant ideas, in justifica¬
tion of this conception as historic fact. Among the
Romantics of the next generation we watch the actual
burgeoning of poetic idealists into philologists and
scholars. To the eyes of Friedrich Schlegel the land of
the newly discovered Yedas presented itself as the cradle
of the Aryan races, an Eden of indefeasible reality; and he
threw himself upon Sanskrit and became the first German
master of Indian lore. Again a generation, and the
scholars are in the ascendant. The Friedrich Schlegels
are succeeded by the Franz Bopps. It is the day of the
Grimms, and of the Lachmanns. Romantic idealism
pointed the way, hut they guided their own steps by the
torch of historic conscience and historic sense.

After all deductions have been made, the German Mytho¬
logy of Grimm and his German Rechtsaltertiimer remain
unsurpassed examples of consummate erudition penetrated
with historic imagination. And if Grimm’s exquisite
instinct for the ways of the folk-soul in his poetical
moods led him to disparage or ignore in his primitive
world what was not poetry or was not of the folk, the
defects of his synthetic imagination were supplemented by
the incisive analytic criticism of his great contemporary
Earl Lachmann. Trained in classic philology, the author
of epoch-making editions of Propertius and Lucretius,
Lachmann did more than anyone else to make the editing
and study of the Old and Middle High German poets,
also, a scholarly discipline. For half a century his ideas
and methods inspired and dominated scientific philology ;
and the achievements of his school culminated in the vast
torso of a history of German antiquities, Deutsche Alter -
tumskunde (1870-87), left incomplete by his greatest
disciple Karl Mullenhotf.

To pass from the sciences which interpret primitive

46 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

society to the literature which is itself touched with
primitive or elemental quality, or which seeks directly to
render these aspects of life, is no difficult transition; the
scientific and the literary impulse here lay specially near
together. Not every investigator of early song and story
wrote German like Jacob Grimm’s. But the instinct for
song and for folksong is almost universal in the German
people, and counts for not a little in their manifold
achievement. Rare indeed is the German professor,
however formidable his apparatus of erudition, who has
not a tender place in his heart for the folksong. It was
blood and iron and song which shattered the power of
imperial France in 1870, and planted the new empire on
its ruins. And Luther was not a whit more himself nor
a whit more German when he was evolving the doctrinal
intricacies which still torment the German catechist, than
when he broke into that joyous stave which declares that
not to love woman, wine and song, is to be a fool for life.
German music would not be the supreme thing it is if the
lyric strain, the temper which answers and thrills to song,
were not an almost universal heritage of the German
people; nor is there any more humiliating experience for
an Englishman in Germany than to meet a throng of
peasants and soldiers, singing in chorus as they go home,
and to reflect what the same class would be singing, if
they sang at all, in our folksongless land.1

It is partly because the instinct for song is so elemental
in the German nature, that the German lyric, even in the
hands of the most accomplished and literary persons, or
even especially in their hands, is so deeply imbued with
the folksong ideal, and precisely in its greatest moments
reaches that profound impassioned simplicity towards
which the finest folksong points. The great example of
Goethe here unmistakably pointed the way. In spite of

1. Observers of the London crowd during the long vigil incident to a
recent occasion were struck by the ‘ pathos ’ of people who wanted to
sing and had no coronation song.

The Intellectual and Literary History 47

the greater popularity of Schiller, in spite of the attrac¬
tion, precisely for his countrymen, of writing alive
with explicit culture and explicit ideas, it was not the
noble intellectualised eloquence of poems like Schiller’s
“ Die Ideale " which counted for the future of1 German
lyric, but the pregnant simplicity of lines like Mignon’s
song : “ Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt, Weiss was ich
leide.”

Neither in French nor English lyric is there anything
quite parallel. French lyric poetry has in the Nineteenth
Century done marvellous things : but its instruments have
been either a prodigious virtuosity of imaginative appeal,
as in Hugo, of plastic expression, as in the Parnassiens,
or of symbolic suggestion, as in the Symbolistes. In
England, the great poet who most resolutely strove for a
simple and natural lyric speech, attained simplicity and
nature, in a sense, but at the cost of failing altogether to
be lyric. The “ Lyrical Ballads ” cannot be sung. The
might of lyric was indeed in Wordsworth, but what
evoked it was the majestic stanza and the sublime philo¬
sophic inspiration of an Immortality Ode. Tennyson,
almost alone, w^as a master of the simple song.

But in the German Nineteenth Century, the folk¬
song note is the very point de repere of lyric poetry; no
matter what its reach of thought and range of fancy, that
is where it comes home, that is where it fetches its
strength. Heine was an immeasurably more complex,
brilliant, and versatile being than our homely Words¬
worth ; his prose is a scintillating woof of incessant wit-
play; but his finest songs, — and lyric poetry has nothing
finer, — are of an enthralling simplicity of phrase and
thought. “ In the wondrous month of May, when all the
birds were singing, then I told her my longing and
desire.” Or the Lorelei ; or the passionate hero-worship
of The Two Grenadiers ; or the quiet stoical intensity of
the Asra, — the slave who, pining away with secret passion
for the princess, answers her inquiry with these words

48 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

only : “ My name is Mohamed, I come from Yemen,

“ IJnd mein Stamm sind jene Asra
Welche sterben, wenn sie lieben.”

Story, as also, despite some magnificent exceptions,
drama, is a less congenial product of the German soil
than song. Nowhere is the theatre, as an institution,
more alive. But how little of the work of the Nine¬
teenth Century masters of German drama, — even of
a Hebbel or a Grillparzer- — is intimately German, like
the First Part of Faust , or as Moliere is French?
In secure mastery of narrative Germany cannot match
the long and brilliant series of English and French
masters. But if she has had no Fielding and no Scott,
no Merimee and no Flaubert, she has achieved many
considerable, and a few consummate things, in kinds
pre-eminently her own. And one source of her special
strength here has been that profound grasp of elementary
natures, of the primitive grounds of character, which we
have seen as one of' the springs of German lyric. But
even more rarely than in the lyric does this instinct for
the primitive appear without alloy in the story. Song of
elemental quality may burst forth from the midst of a com¬
plex and artificial society, as water from a mountain lake
breaks from the fountains of a great city, as Shelley’s song
burst forth in the England of Beau Brummell and Lord
Castlereagh. But the prose tale detaches itself less lightly
from society, and its character is in part controlled by the
character of the society it represents. And German
society was that of an old historic land, whose primitive
traits had been much overlaid by the slow accumulations
of the ages, much defaced by the scars of war, and not a
little transformed by its own creative energy. Yet with
all this, it retained more traces of primitive structure
by far than the society of either England or France. No
great metropolis imposed its mundane complexities and
corruptions, as a standard to be lived up to, upon the
nation at large. The small town, the village, remained,

The Intellectual and Literary History 49

even in the first half of the Nineteenth Century, quaintly
old-fashioned, old-world ; clothed with their heritage of
custom and song and legend, as old walls with ivy : so that
as late as the twenties and thirties the brothers Grimm
could gather their immortal household tales. The novel
of metropolitan society, so native to Paris or London, is
still, in spite of a Fontane, a Heyse, a Bohlau, and others,
something of an exotic in Germany. The novel of the
province, on the other hand, of the village, of the types of
character and of sentiment which linger longest in these
regions, is there peculiarly at home. Kleist’s Michael
Kohlhaas, one of the finest of all German tales, is the story
of a man whose inborn sense of justice is so powerful and so
simple that he cannot believe the state will not help him to
recover his wrongly detained horses, and when it fails
him, without hesitation goes to war with it. The tragedy
of great simple natures — of a Prince von Homburg, a
Thusnelda, a Kathchen von Heilbronn — is also the
central theme of his plays, which include some of the
greatest dramatic work of the century. The naive marvel
of the Mdrchen , again, was interwoven by the Romantics
with threads of quite another origin — fantastic, cultural,
realistic — into the changeful taffeta of their tales. In
Fouque it makes the staple of the pattern, and even in the
phantasmagoria of Hoffmann it is not completely over¬
powered by the lurid blue and red glare of decadent
horror and crime and whimsicality.1 With the passing of
Romanticism the attraction of marvel subsided, making
room for a more quietly observant presentation of peasant
and village life. Norway and Russia are richer in
primitive peasant types. But Bjornson hardly equalled,
and even Tolstoy, that Titan with the child’s soul, and
Turgenjev, hardly surpassed, the finest German work of
this kind, far less familiar though this be to the world.

Precisely the greatest, indeed, are with us the least

1. Hoffmann has from the first, characteristically, been extremely
popular in France. He is full of European elements.

D

50 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

known. Bertliold Auerbach, a man of universal charm,
who brought literature to the peasants, and culture to the
courts, is probably the next name that the educated
Englishman will think of among German men of letters
after the inevitable Heine. But Fritz Reuter, and Klaus
Groth, and Hebei, and Gottfreid Keller, are almost wholly
unknown. The prestige of Auerbach's Dorfgeschichten is
indeed somewhat faded ; the insurgent realism of the last
twenty-five years has accustomed our eyes to strident
colouring beside which their delicate hues seem lifeless.
The talk of his Schwarzwald peasants, with its subtle
tincture of Spinoza, is far indeed from the crass dialect of
Hauptmann’s Silesian weavers. But realism is not the
only way to truth ; and Auerbach, by literary processes
which seemed to promise merely idealising glamour,
succeeded in conveying an extraordinarily life-like picture
of the village folk he loved. And as Auerbach interprets
these peasants of the hills and forests in language rather
more subtle and exquisite than their own, so Klaus Groth
renders in his simple poignant verse the dwellers on the
level Dithmarschen, beside the melancholy dunes of the
North Sea.

But the first place among these painters of the peasant,
the first place even among all German masters of story
since Goethe, belongs to the old Stadtschreiber of Zurich,
Gottfried Keller. Like Meredith with us, he is the poet
of a distinguished rather than a wide audience. Like
Auerbach he offers little to the harsher type of realist,
and absolutely nothing to the fin de siecle decadent.
Rottenness and degeneration he paints with fearless brush,
but his own temper is a large, radiant, and sound-hearted
humour. “ Freedom, and light, and harmony, — to these
three his heart beat time,” he sang of another; “what
he did, he did with all his might, and struck the iron
when it was hot.” He had the German passion for
thoroughness, the exacting conscience of the true crafts¬
man, who will endure no slovenliness, no make-believe.

The Intellectual and Literary History 51

The peasant, doing his daily work at the plough, silently,
unhasting, unresting, becomes under his hands, without a
single false or adorning touch, as impressive as the sowers
and reapers of Millet. But there was a vein of poetry in
him which went deeper than this. He could look with
genial irony upon that world of sober and honest workers
which he so deeply respected ; and he could describe, with
penetrating insight, the demeanour of original characters
and daemonic passions in this prosaic world. Such is the
motive of his masterpiece, the collection of tales called
the “ Leute von Seldwyla ” : a Cervantean picture, drawn
with a blend of naivete and consummate art. In the
greatest of these tales, “ A Village Borneo and Juliet,”
one yet greater than Cervantes is expressly recalled.
Among the literary adaptations of Shaksperean motives,
Turgenjev’s “ A King Lear of the Steppe ” can alone be
matched with this tragic tale. What Shakspere does by
enthralling lyrical music and imagery, Keller effects by
the quiet continuous illumination of his transparent prose,
where the story unfolds itself visibly before us. The
exaltation of a love which annihilates all other emotions,
memories and desires, stands out no less intensely from
the background of commonplace when we watch this
peasant boy and girl dance, oblivious of all around them,
among the scoffing or envious couples in the village
festival than when we pass from the chamber of Juliet to
the clatter of the Capulet’s feast. And the horror-fraught
death scene in the ghostly vault is not more steeped in
poetry than the quiet consummation of the village
tragedy, — the boat, on which they have found their last
refuge, floating down the great river all night between
its woods and sleeping villages. “ And in the chill of the
autumn morning, two pale forms, in close embrace, glided
from the dark hull into the cold waters.”

Of the lyric exaltation of the death of Romeo and J uliet
there is nothing here; these peasant children have no
splendour of phrase. But this quiet catastrophe, the

52 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

deliberately sought, foreseen, and inevitable solution of
their story, has also a harmonious beauty and coherence
which the tragedy in the Capulet vault, the result of mere
accident and misunderstanding, less completely possesses.

III. THE INTELLECTUAL AND
LITERARY HISTORY.

( Continued).

THE INTELLECTUAL AND LITERARY HISTORY.

( Continued .)

Y.

Keller’s tale may help us, without too violent a transi¬
tion, to take a further step in our course. The love of
Shakspere’s Romeo and Juliet blazes out, a sudden
intense flame, at the moment of their first meeting; three
days later they lie dead in each other’s arms. Why does
Keller choose to bring his Romeo and Juliet before us
first as little boy and girl, playing together in the meadow
between their fathers’ farms P Why does he show us the
shy first beginnings of passion, its fluctuating hopes and
fears, its persistence through outward estrangement, and
then the ecstatic heights of that last consummate day?
Because he had what no Elizabethan had or could have,
what few moderns had before the middle of the Eighteenth
Century, a feeling for growth, for the simple unfolding of
a passion, or of a soul.

It is easy to trace the fortunes of your hero from the
cradle to the grave — -or at least to the altar, like the old
romancers, or like Fielding in Tom Jones , without giving
in any striking degree that feeling of continuity through
change which Wordsworth so profoundly expressed in his
saying : “ The child is father of the man.” The temper
which seeks to penetrate and study these transformations
is characteristically German ; and the word Entwicldung ,
“ unfolding,” is accordingly, like the word ursprunglich,
saturated with German mentality. Long before Darwin

56 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

the conception had taken root in the German intellect, and
exercised its powerful stimulus in every field of thought.
Darwin’s book itself, though by no means German in its
methods, was hailed in Germany with an acclamation
singularly in contrast with the hubbub of angry protests
which qualified the scientific welcome at home. In
Germany Darwin confirmed deeply-rooted persuasions ; in
England he seemed to cut at their roots.

To understand the ferment wrought by the idea of
evolution in the German intellect, we must recall that in
it met two lines of thought, which had been separately
evolved and pursued by the advanced intellects of the
Eighteenth Century, and both of extraordinary synthetic
value.1 The one centred in the conception of progress,
the other in the conception of organism. The conviction
that there is in human society a movement towards an
ideal goal, took the place, as the dogmatic theologies faded
into the background, of the supernatural belief in a millen¬
nium. In Leibniz it appears as an optimist’s solution of
the problem of evil ; the worse state is the necessary condi¬
tion of the better. In Lessing it appears in the guise of a
divine “ education ” of the human race by a more and more
complete disclosure of truth. In the French encyclo¬
paedists, especially in Turgot and in Condorcet, it grew out
of the more positive study of political and social conditions
prevalent in the mother country of sociology. Progress
is here due wholly to man himself, the result of the steady
labour of human intelligence, accumulated through suc¬
cessive generations.

But at the same time and sometimes by the same

1. Of the difficult subject attempted in the following paragraphs no
connected account seems to exist. But much light is thrown on it by
Mr. Bosanquet’s Philosophical Theory of the State, by Mr. Gooch’s
chapter on historical methods at the close of the Cambridge Modern
History, and by Lord Acton’s Lectures on the French Revolution ; from
all of which this section, though independently worked out, has derived
valuable hints.

The Intellectual and Literary History 57

thinkers another line of thought was being elaborated.
To the new scientific age the State was a phenomenon
needing explanation, reducible to scientific law. Montes¬
quieu, in the Esprit des Lois (1748), showed that its insti¬
tutions, its legislation, are the expression of its needs,
and sought to account for the greatness and for the decline
of Rome by an analysis of her outer and inner conditions.
The idea of a social organism is already foreshadowed in
the terms of an alien philosophy. A little later it
struggles for expression through the obstruction not only
of inadequate terms hut of radically inconsistent ideas,
in the Contrat Social of Rousseau. More clearly, and not
less eloquently than in either, it emerges in the great
disciple of the one and the hitter enemy of the other,
Edmund Burke. But nowhere was the organic concep¬
tion of the State more completely, more fatally, detached
from the doctrine and the faith in progress than in this
great mouthpiece of philosophic conservatism.

In the second half of the Eighteenth Century these
ideas through several different channels began to permeate
the German mind, setting up in it intellectual currents of
amazing energy and fertility. For they here found, it is
difficult not to recognise, not merely receptive intelligence,
hut an ingrained way of apprehending reality to which
organic conceptions were extraordinarily congenial. It
was not for nothing that while in mathematical and mech¬
anical studies Germany still, at the end of the century,
stood decidedly in the rear of France and England, she
had anticipated both of them in absorbing and making her
own the idealist and organic thought of Greece. The more
mechanical conceptions of progress impressed her little ;
the reactionary suggestions of organism appealed only to
her reactionary minds; but on progress conceived as
organic growth, and organism conceived as perpetual
advance, all the idealistic passion of the race fastened as
the congenial expression of its temper and its needs; and
“ Entwicldung development, the term which denoted

58 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

that organic progress, became that key-word and that
watchword which, under whatever change of interpreta¬
tion, it has ever since remained.

Even in the study of Nature, it was the more organic
classes of phenomena which most powerfully allured the
German intellect. Here, confessedly, philosophy, a
cloudy pillar, led infant science into a wilderness of illu¬
sion. Nevertheless, its guidance was not wholly mischie¬
vous; its too spiritual interpretations of the mystery of
growth stood in the way of too material ones, and however
abortive as solutions of the problem, at least kept its real
complexity in full view. Johannes Muller, “ the father
of physiology,” was a Moses whom the cloudy pillar led to
the verge of the Promised Land ; he furnished the premises
from which the modern school of physiologists, in the
words of one of its chiefs, merely drew the conclusions.
It is no accident that while, as regards mathematics and
physics, Germany merely took a brilliant, if tardy, share
in the scientific activities of France and England, biology
is, in Huxley’s words, “ a German science.” 1

Applied to the immeasurably more complex phenomena
of Man, evolutionary conceptions had yet greater possi¬
bilities both of discovery and of illusion. The author of
the most magnificent of these applications, Hegel,
operated with a theory of evolution so uncompromisingly
spiritual as gravely to prejudice the mass of pregnant
thought and observation which his powerful and many-
sided intellect threw out by the way. To resolve the entire
growth of humanity into the unfolding, by inevitable
steps, under infinite forms, of a timeless spirit, was to
invest it with a totality both more impressive to the
imagination and nearer to the rich concrete detail of
history than had ever been approached before. The Ency-

1. Du Bois Reymond, quoted by Merz, Hist, of Thought in Nineteenth
Century, i, 195. The decisive step in biology was made by Schleiden’s
discovery of the cell-structure of plants in 1838.

The Intellectual and Literary History 59

clopsedist and Humanist cosmopolitanisms of the previous
ago were too deeply imbued with somewhat abstract ideals
of perfection to bo just to all the phases of the past; but in
the plastic and Protean transformations of the Hegelian
idea the clashing antagonisms of age and nation found a
common shelter and a common significance, like that
which belongs to the jarring thoughts of the same mind.
The same Protean Idea brought into organic inter-relation
apparently unconnected sides of civilisation, disclosing
itself, variously disguised, in art, in religion, in science,
in custom and institution, in the State. The logical
mechanism of Hegel’s synthesis has long ago broken down ;
the framework of his “ shelter” is sapped; but over large
portions of his vast field his logic merely provided a clue
to brilliant intuitions and solid discoveries, which
remained when the clue was withdrawn. His sesthetics
and his politics, in particular, are still to be reckoned with;
and no one can mistake the part which they have played,
respectively, in shaping two of the most striking English
books of our generation : Mr. Bradley’s Shahsperean
Tragedy and Mr. Bosanquet’s Philosophical Theory of the
State. And of the pregnant ideas which emerged from
his method itself, and the value of which is not neutral¬
ised by the ease with which this may be abused, these two
may be specified : First, that relative worth and truth
belong to every serious cause ; to opposed positions in poli¬
tics, to conflicting creeds in religion. And secondly, the
profound conception that true growth involves a kind of
death, the abnegation of a lower self that the higher may
arise. The seed must perish as seed in order to survive
as w'heat ; the child must lose its naive innocence before it
can reach the genuine goodness which rests upon know¬
ledge and mastery of evil. But all that is valuable in the
seed survives in the wheat, and all that is valuable in the
innocence survives in the goodness ; and whatever tenacity
has been shown in the Nineteenth Century, in regions far
beyond the control of dogmatic theology, by the faith in

60 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

the permanence of spiritual values is due not a little to
what a philosophic historian of quite another school has
called the most magnificent attempt ever made to extend
the law of the conservation of force and of worth to the
spiritual sphere. 1 And this same historian, Hoffding,
has since, in a remarkable book, declared the conservation
of spiritual values to he the central problem of religion. 2

But more direct and on the whole more signal service
was done to the idealism which finds expression in religion,
by Hegel’s great contemporary Friedrich Schleiermacher.
In the memorable kt Addresses on religion to the cultured
among those who disdain it," delivered in 1799, he sought
to reconcile the culture of his time with religion. But it
was with a religion so transformed by philosophic think¬
ing, so enriched with cultural elements, and so boldly
disengaged from the obstructions of dogma, that his claim
was no longer difficult, from the side of culture, to admit,
when he declared religion to be the central power which
can alone give organic unity and harmony to all the
complex activities of civilised man. To feel in all life
the indwelling infinity, to consecrate every moment with
the light of eternity, this was for him the secret which
gives totality to life. It at least dissolved, for his genera¬
tion, the barren antagonism of reason and the super¬
natural. And by laying the essence of religion in feeling,
and finding the worth of doctrinal conceptions simply in
their capacity to symbolise emotion, a capacity they retain
even when their claims to logical value have been shat¬
tered by criticism, he laid the foundation of a deeper than
doctrinal unity in religion and in the Church. And every
variety of religious thought in Germany, from the
extremest Lutheran orthodoxy to the advanced criticism
of a Strauss, has owed to the synthetic genius of Schleier¬
macher added intellectual substance and psychological
truth .

1. Hoffding, Hist, of Modern Philosophy, ii, 181.

2. Ib., The Philosophy of Religion.

The Intellectual and Literary History 61

With the decay of the vast speculative systems of the
early century, the organic conceptions which had played
so large a part in them inevitably suffered some discredit.
Had they been merely theoretic doctrines, entertained
by the intellect, they would have been dismissed with other
theories. But they attached themselves, as has been said,
to something more inveterate than intellectual conviction ;
and the way of apprehending fact for which they had pro¬
vided an alluring if not finally adequate formula,
remained, subtly contributing to mould both the methods
and the aims of the sciences which dealt with human
society and human history. It contributed to keep before
the eyes of the scholar and the investigator in these studies
a scientific ideal, then, and perhaps still, far more habi¬
tually approached in Germany than elsewhere ; an ideal
equally removed from matter-of-fact empiricism and from
shallow generalisation. The empiricism which prides
itself on sticking to facts and disdaining theory and which
for better, or worse, makes many English books a jumble of
unorganised observation, rests upon a no less elliptical
view of reality than that of the doctrinaire, more common
in France, who thinks in large formulas and brilliant
apergus. The one treats the individual object of his
scrutiny as an aggregate of loosely connected units, each of
which can be completely studied in isolation. The other
treats them as points in a rigid and symmetrical pattern,
each completely determined when the whole is known. No
one now imagines either of these implicit conceptions to be
adequate to the rich complexity, the vital inter-related-
ness, of human society, or of social growth. The concep¬
tion of society as an organism was doubtless, in its turn,
too simple and too summary. None the less, the way of
apprehending social and historic fact which grew up under
the fertilising influence of organic ideas in Germany was
at that time wholly salutary, and had immense and endur¬
ing results. The individual object was subjected to a

62 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

more intimate scrutiny than liad satisfied the empiricist,
because it was seen not in isolation but in vital touch with
the rest, reciprocally determining and determined. And
this vital grasp of detail itself prepared the way for a pre¬
sentment of the character and coherence of a whole polity
or period as clear as any achieved by the masters of
generalisation : only it was the clearness not of the formula
or a phrase, but of an expressive portrait, elicited by an
infinitv of detailed strokes.

t j

It was more especially as applied to history that organic
analogies thus bore fruit. They were not altogether true,
but they drew into prominence the neglected part of the
truth. History contains a good deal of mere accident,
something even of sheer chaos ; but these aspects of it had
been abundantly represented in the historical writing of
the past : it was not amiss that it should be restudied in
the light of a conviction that apparent chaos was cosmos
in disguise; that every apparent new beginning was the
climax of a long preparation, every revolution the simple
disclosure of slowly accumulated forces ; and every
feature, every activity, of a given social community vitally

interrelated with everv other. It was not amiss that “ the

«/

Renaissance,” for instance, should be pushed further and
further back, till some modern scholars deny its very exist¬
ence, and others declare that it was there all the time. It
was not amiss that the frontiers, the “ hard and fast lines ”
as we say, that delimitate those old-established provinces
— Ancient Times, Modern Times, the Middle Ages, the
Dark Ages — should dissolve under the stress of imperious
continuities. What is certain is, that these assumptions,
if not wholly true, were enormously fruitful in discovery.
They impelled to a scrutiny of precisely those obscure rudi¬
ments of facts which being neither bits of an interesting
story, nor details in a telling picture, escaped the atten¬
tions both of the chronicler and of the picturesque histo¬
rian, until at length the Grimm or the Savigny or the
Niebuhr showed what they meant. The famous contro-

The Intellectual and Literary History 63

versy between Savigny and Thibaut 1 upon the nature and
origin of law, like that between Geotfroy de Saint-Hilaire
and Cuvier 2 about the classification of animals, was thus
a conflict not merely between one doctrine and another,
but between the spirit of history and the spirit of abstract
theory; and the victory, enduring as well as immediate,
went in both cases to the champion of evolution. Savigny’s
demonstration that the Roman law was the prolonged
growth of centuries, bearing everywhere the impress of
Roman institutions and traditions, and not a mere applica¬
tion of the theory of Natural Right to practice, made an
epoch in the intellectual history of Europe. The evolu¬
tionary conception of national life was one of the springs
of the fuller consciousness and more intimate instinct
of nationality which has in the Nineteenth Century pro¬
duced so many historical romances and so many changes
in the map. Napoleon, trampling on nationality; Sir
Waiter Scott, investing it with imaginative charm; Wil¬
helm von Humboldt interpreting national character
through the national speech; Fichte, summoning the
German nation to fulfil the destiny to which its history
and spiritual heritage pointed ; — all these concurred : but
it was in minds permeated with the evolutionary concep¬
tions of national growth brilliantly applied by Wolf and
Eichhorn, by Savigny, by Grimm, by Boeckh, that the
temper of German nationality took shape.

But a gulf, rarely passed, and still of formidable dimen-

1. The controversy was provoked by Thibaut’s demand for a civic
code, constructed on the principles of Natural Law. Baron Carl v.
Savigny replied with his pamphlet Vom Beruf unserer Zeit fwr
Gesetzgebung und Rechtswissenschaft (1814), restating the doctrine of
Montesquieu that laws grow organically out of social conditions ; that
the legislator’s task can then only be to sift and order the legislation
already in existence. Cf. Paul, Gesch. d. germcinischen Phil., p. 65 (in
his Grundriss ).

2. July, 1830, in the Paris academy. The fall of the Bourbons, which
happened at the same moment, was for Goethe, as is well known, of
quite secondary interest in comparison.

64 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

sions to-day, has always divided the great specialists of
scholarship from the mass of the nation ; and the permeat¬
ing process was immensely furthered by a brilliant but
learned literary mediator. No one probably did more to
quicken the national consciousness of the generation which
was about to create the empire than Gustav Freytag. The
title of his most famous hook, “ Pictures from the German
Past/’ does slight justice to its quality. It is, in fact, a
biography of the German people, as reflected in the
development of its customs and institutions, its beliefs and
its ideals, its master spirits and its representative types.
In the closing pages Freytag set forth with enthusiastic
emphasis this idee mere of his hook. “ Like the indivi¬
dual man, the people evolves its intellectual content in the
course of time, furthered or impeded, with character and
originality, hut on a vaster and sublimer scale. A people
consists of millions of individuals, and its life flows on
through millions of souls; hut the co-operation, conscious
and unconscious, of millions creates an intellectual content
in which the individual’s share is often for us impercep¬
tible. . . . Religion, language, custom, law, polity, are
for us no longer results of individual effort, but organic
creations of a higher life, which always manifests itself
through individuals, and always comprehends the intellec¬
tual contents of individuals in one mighty whole. . . .
And while the individual calculates and chooses, the inner
force of the people works continually with the obscure com¬
pulsion of an elemental power, and its intellectual pro¬
ducts often strikingly resemble the silently creative pro¬
cesses of Nature, which evolve the stalk, leaves, and
blossoms of a plant from its seed.” 1 This conception is
familiar enough to us to-day; but rarely has it been
applied to the life of any nation with so vivid a sense of
concrete facts. We watch the people in its daily course,

1. Freytag, Bilder aus der d. Vergangenhett. 2nd ed., 1860, p. 406f.
In later editions this imagery was greatly qualified.

The Intellectual and Literary History 65

buying and selling, eating and drinking, fighting, and
making love ; the journal of a Court lady, or of a sea cap¬
tain, makes us breathe the very air of the boudoir, or of the
Baltic ; while ever and anon an incisive comment throws
all this brilliant detail into its place in the total picture.
Not even Carlyle understood more profoundly the supreme
exaltations and agonies of nations. Untouched by Pro¬
testant fanaticism, he saw in Luther’s Reformation a
colossal and impassive effort of the national soul to trans¬
form all life by a deep apprehension of the Eternal; an
effort which calling out its utmost powers to the point of
utter exhaustion, delayed for centuries its political concen¬
tration. Untouched by political absolutism, he saw in
the militant and organised Prussia of the great Frederick
the striving of a great people, torn by discord, towards the
political unity which it finally received from Bismarck.
Yet the figures of these heroes themselves, far from being
overpowered by the background of national storm and
stress, are drawn with the realistic precision of a Velas¬
quez; as has been said, you are inclined to brush away
the snuff on Frederick’s waistcoat. As for Luther, you
hear the very tones of his mighty voice, passionate, jesting,
denouncing, heartening, and witness the inmost pulsing of
his infantine-Titanie soul.

Few perhaps of the historians of a severer school who
were Freytag’s contemporaries would have invoked that
comparison of national life to a plant. Romanticism,
which saw everywhere in history mysterious and instinc¬
tive process, had faded into the background ; and its repu¬
diation was hastened by the very advance in the national
self-consciousness which it had done so much to further.
The revolution, only outwardly suppressed, of forty-eight,
began a new epoch. A people roused to its own import¬
ance, concerned to control, or to influence the control of,
its own fortunes, loud with discussion of statesmen and of
policies, and no longer inclined, with two of the greatest
Germans of 1806, Goethe and Hegel, to turn away from a

E

66 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

supreme national crisis to metaphysics or to poetry, — for
this Germany of the fifties and sixties, the instinctive and
gradual processes of organic growth were no longer an
obvious analogy. And the brilliant group of historians
who emerge during these years, — a Droysen, a Mommsen,
a von Sybel, a Treitschke, — exhibit this changed spirit in
the energy of their political interests, in their acute, even
passionate, participation in the problems of historic state¬
craft, not merely as involved in the scientific study of the
past, but as of vital interest and relevance for the citizens
of to-day. They sought, as one of them, v. Sybel, said in
his famous lecture on the “ position of modern German
historic writing ” (1856), they sought “ to judge the states¬
man according to the actual conditions of his art, and to
measure this art always by the standard of human and
eternal right.” 1 Yet with all this the influence of evolu¬
tionary conceptions persisted. The inner continuity and
the inner coherence of the life of a nation were tacitly
postulated. The Roman History of Mommsen (1854-6),
the most brilliant single achievement of German historical
writing, is a grandiose portrait of the Roman people,
elicited with consummate skill from an infinity of details.
Law and ritual, coinage and field-measuring, legends and
superstitions, proverbs and personal anecdotes, become
expressive signs of the immensely potent national life
which ramified through these several organs, resisting with
tenacity the intrusion of alien influence. Read, for
instance, the luminous chapter in which he allows us to
watch, as eye-witnesses, the lofty speculative philosophies
of the Stoic and the Epicurean converting themselves help¬
lessly into vulgar superstition and vulgar luxury in the
grip of a race which “speculated only in stocks.” Rome
is not Mommsen’s hero; her portrait is Rembrandtesque,

1. Quoted by R. M. Meyer, Die deutsche Literatur dcs neunzehnten
Jahrhunderts, p. 385. The present essay owes much incidental sugges¬
tion to this brilliant, if somewhat disproportioned, book.

The Intellectual and Literary History 67

with the shadows even fiercely underlined. His hero is
the mighty statesman and soldier at whose fall he laid
down his pen, as if “ there was nothing more significant
beneath the wandering moon,” — “ the first, the only,
imperator, Caesar.” But Caesar, the supreme Homan, was
made possible by Rome.

When, three years after Mommsen’s great book, Fer¬
dinand Gregorovius issued the first volume of his History
of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages (1859), he was in
some sense merely continuing Mommsen within a limited
sphere. But he was in reality initiating a new kind of
life-history, the history of the Town. That a Town has a
biology of its own has been, since Freeman and Green, a
familiar idea to us. But it was not in England, with its
old-established central governments, that the idea was
likely to arise ; and we know what the local history of our
old antiquaries was like. Germany, on the other hand,
with its crowd of quasi-independent cities, each in the
main conditioned by its own habitat, thriving by its own
stamina, ruined by its own decay, was the natural birth¬
place of Town-biology. Like so much else in the German
Nineteenth Century, it is foreshadowed in Goethe.1 When
he travelled among the old towns of the Rhineland or
Suabia he would climb to some point of vantage from
which he could look down on street and market place ; or
wander round the walls, noting the quality of the masonry
and the temper of the mortar, like Browning’s poet of
Yalladolid. Out of such keen and loving interpretation
grew the luminous and beautiful rendering of a little town
in Hermann und Dorothea , — in its secluded side-valley
near the Rhine, with its pleasant vineyards and fruit
trees ; surely the first town in poetry whose economy we
perfectly understand. That little town, where trading and
farming go hand in hand, is the true starting-point not

1. Cf. his Reise in die Schweiz , 1797; the notes on Frankfurt,
Heidelberg, Heilbronn, Stuttgart.

68 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

only of books like Gregorovius’s, whose eye for localities
was as fine as Goethe’s own, but of such massive studies of
the growth and structure of town governments, as the great
Verfassungsgeschichte of Georg Waitz, the oldest and
most distinguished pupil of Ranke.

But the field in which evolutionary conceptions were
most fruitful was the history of ideas ; and of periods, like
the Renaissance or the passage from the Eighteenth to the
Nineteenth Century, in which vast and complex trans¬
formations of thought and feeling impressed themselves
deeply on civilised society. Here, once more, it is the
union of consummate mastery of the facts with brilliant
power of co-ordinating them, which made the finest
German work of this kind unapproached until, after 1870,
France, and more slowly England, began to learn the
lesson. Such work was Zeller’s monumental history of
Greek philosophy; such Kuno Fischer’s History of Euro¬
pean philosophy at large; such, the colossal study of cor¬
poration ( Genossenschaft ), in which Otto Gierke throws
into luminous order the perplexed wilderness of the poli¬
tical ideas of mediaeval society.1 Such work, covering not
a special province only but the whole compass of the intel¬
lectual and social culture of an age, was the finished
masterpiece of Jakob Burckliardt : The Civilisation of the
Renaissance in Italy (1860). The last named, one of the
most beautiful of the masterpieces of German erudition,
was exactly contemporaneous with Buckle’s History of
Civilisation (1859-62), a book of grandiose conception,
characteristically English in its strength and in its weak¬
ness. Burckhardt makes no pretence to Buckle’s
vast generalisations ; but he comprehends civilisation
better because he comprehends man better; and while
Buckle’s powerful analysis tends to reduce human history

1. A section of this great work was translated by Professor Maitland,
under the title : Political Ideas of the Middle Ages, with a valuable
introduction. The latter gives an illuminating account of the history
of the study of law and of legal theory in modern Germany.

The Intellectual and Literary History 69

to a function of economics, Burckhardt reproduces the
great age he handles, in all the teeming complexity of its
ideals, its dreams, its business, its love, its hate, its
glorious art, its crafty politics ; an age which had “ dis¬
covered the world ” and had “ discovered man,” and was
intoxicated with the discovery ; for the doomed descendant
of Adam was now seen to be a creature of infinite possi¬
bilities, in action like an angel, in apprehension like a god.
If Buckle was excessively pre-occupied with man as he
eats and drinks, Burckhardt, far more just to all the con¬
stituents of civilisation, yet made it turn essentially upon
what he thinks and feels. No one better exemplifies, in
its most salutary effects, the operation of that third con¬
trolling bias of the German Nineteenth Century, which I
have ventured to call the 'prestige of Mind.

YI.

We here enter the inner sanctuary, it is hardly hazar¬
dous to affirm, of the German spirit ; the scene of its most
glorious dreams, of its most imperishable extravagances,
of its most unassailable achievements. By the prestige of
mind I mean that the value attached to thought as thought,
to ideas as ideas, the estimate of their scope and potency,
as elements of experience, is extraordinarily high ; and that
the part which they in consequence have played in modern
German civilisation is extraordinarily large. We speak,
half ironically, of the people of thinkers, of the land of
Bildung, and when we find their learning oppressive we
like to remember that they evolve their camels from their
inner consciousness. And this great and noble confidence
in mind has inevitably had some drawbacks.

In art and literature the authority and the fascination of
ideas and ideals have sometimes exercised a dangerous
spell, impairing the willingness, and perhaps also the
power, to see and to render with naked veracity the unideal

70 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

sides of life. Nature has not often, under such condi¬
tions, taken the pen from the hand of the German artist
and written for him “ with her own sheer bare impene¬
trable power.” The great realism of Tolstoy, of Flaubert,
of Dostoievsky, made little headway in Germany till the
last quarter of the century. The gross, material humour
of the Porter in Macbeth was long replaced on the German
stage by Schiller’s lofty morning hymn.1 The healthy
muscular animation of Fielding’s books, which provoked
Tain© to the protest that if there are boxers and fighters
there are also poets and artists, would have been a strange
phenomenon in Germany.

Hardly any German had seen harsh and grinding misery
as Hauptmann saw it in Die Weber, fewer still had dared
to paint it ; even Hauptmann’s miserable homes are apt
to have openings into a world of marvel and eternal beauty,
where you hear the song of mountain elves or Hannele’s
angel chorus. And as Hauptmann escapes from realism
into folklore, so Auerbach half a century before tempered
its harshness with the glamour of Spinozan wisdom which
invests his little barefoot maid.

On the other hand, this kind of sensibility, this shrink¬
ing from the rawness of an atmosphere denuded of the
perfume of culture and the zest of ideas, becomes a
singular virtue when culture and ideas are the business in
hand . And these are in fact a frequent pre-occupation of
the German novel. Goethe in Wilhelm Meister had
created the romance of culture; in the Wahlverivandt-
schaften , the problem-romance. Keller, in whom the eye
for the primitive and the elemental was associated with the
finest artistic sense, produced in his Griine Heinrich an
original and beautiful “ culture ” romance for his own
generation. And Paul Heyse, inheriting Goethe’s fasti¬
dious aestheticism with more than his novelistic art, pro-

1. This morning hymn was provided by Schiller, in his adaptation of
Macbeth for the German stage. Schiller has been the principal strong¬
hold of this somewhat shallow aestheticism in Germany.

The Intellectual and Literary History 71

duced a vast gallery of story, hardly matched for mastery
of all the sources of noble and beautiful effect.

In the critical interpretation, again, of art and litera¬
ture the fascination of ideas has had a like twofold effect.
It is hardly to be denied that a large body of German criti¬
cism has suffered from the fault of being too intellectual ;
of fastening with absorbed interest upon whate , cr offers a
problem, and neglecting, often with disdain, the critic’s
primary task of defining an impression. “ JEsthetic
criticism ” was for long a damning phrase on German lips.
The Nemesis whereof is the comparative rarity of the
highest quality of such criticism among the countrymen
of Lessing and Goethe.

The work achieved, nevertheless, within its chosen
sphere by the critical intellect of Germany, has been enor¬
mous, and much of it is of enduring value. The discovery
and analysis of “ sources ” and of “ motives ” is virtually a
German science. That vast proportion of the work of
every artist which is made up of tradition, manner,
imitative adaptation, this at least has been, in countless
examples, explored and defined with inexhaustible
patience and admirable precision. And if we miss the
subtle phrase which seizes the last nuance of a particular
aesthetic impression, the analysis of the aesthetic conscious¬
ness itself, has been pursued during the Nineteenth Cen¬
tury with enormous wealth of intellectual power.
“ ^Esthetics,” too, is essentially, for better or worse, a
German study.1

But these and other similarly implicit naive confessions
of the faith in mind belong merely to the vestibule of the
sublime temple of that faith, the Idealism of the successors
of Kant. Germany is the home of philosophic idealism

1. In the recent literature of ^Esthetic theory a foremost place belongs
to the work of Volkelt, System der sEsthetik and Msthetfrk des
Tragischen. Among books of a more limited scope may be mentioned
Viktor Hehn’s Gedanken iiber Goethe and W. Dilthey’s Bausteine einer
/Esthetik, both of the highest distinction.

72 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

in the modern world, and for the reason that her people
has for centuries been more persistently than any other
haunted by the call of spirit. A brooding self-conscious¬
ness emerges early in their history; it glimmers in the
stubborn individuality of the primitive tribesmen; in the
passion for freedom, so finely blent in them with the joy of
faithful service; in the mysticism which so early infused
an intense personal note into the large abstractions of
Catholic dogma. At the supreme moments of their history
this self-consciousness reveals itself with astonishing effect ;
it is an element of the greatness of their finest and choicest
souls. In Wolfram von Eschenbach it appears as the
child-like absorption in the goings-on of the soul which
makes his Parsifal the first psychological romance; in
Luther, as the passionate assertion of the power of the
simplest soul to receive the divine grace ; in Leibniz, as the
sense of something unique and irreducible in personality,
which compelled him, against all the bias of his scientific
genius, to except it from the reign of mechanical law, as a
fragment of the infinite mind of God. A hundred years
after Leibniz, the conflict with the mechanical theory of
the universe which so long perplexed him was, for Ger¬
many, completely and triumphantly settled; in the words
of a great German historian, Karl Lamprecht : “ The
rationalistic conception of the soul as a blank surface
receiving impressions from without was now replaced by
that of an unfathomable ocean containing within itself
hidden treasures and countless wonders; . . . the bars
erected between man and the rest of creation were torn
down; the universe was a living organism, and man’s part
in it that of a free spiritual agency mysteriously connected
with the sources of all life, and drawing from its inmost
self the assurance of an ideal world underlying all
reality.”

It was while struggling, with the help of Goethe and
Eichte, towards such a faith, that Carlyle in Leith Walk
defied the menacing summons of the Eternal No; it was

The Intellectual and Literary History 73

his final achievement of it that he affirmed in the Ever¬
lasting Yea.1

But for Carlyle the No, however successfully defied, was
eternal; some irreducible reluctant stub remained in the
universe, which spirit could only defeat, and not destroy.
“ Do you believe in the devil now ? ” he asked Emerson as
they paced the Strand at midnight. The magnificent faith
of the German idealists was not content with these half¬
measures. The principle of their universe, whatever it
was, had to annihilate, or else to penetrate and transform,
everything not itself. Hegel, after all deductions one of
the mightiest thinkers of all time, expelled unreason from
existence in the name of absolute thought; Eichte, one of
the noblest and most heroic, drove from the sphere of
reality whatever did not bear the talisman of moral will.
And in the doleful universe of Schopenhauer nothing is
ultimately real but the striving of insatiable impulse,
veiled by the glamour of illusive beauty. Again and again
a like sublime assurance of mind and will asserts itself, if
in less metaphysical accents. With the Romantics, to
imagine and portray beauty was alone to truly live, and
the world where men acted and toiled became a dim
unhallowed vestibule of the studio, where they dreamed
and painted. The genius of Wagner drew all the life of
his time into the compass of his art, but only to proclaim
that music was the explicit truth which life unconsciously
embodied. And in Wagner’s most brilliant disciple and
fiercest assailant, Friedrich Nietzsche, the prepossession of
mind and will expanded into a passion for personality ; and
state and church, law and order, crumbled under the tread
of the godlike Uebermensch.

It is easy for the dispassionate onlooker to ridicule the
fervour of these intellectual athletes who in their different
ways make such havoc of our comfortable conventions
about the world we live in. The practical-minded

1. Sartor Resartus, ii, chap. 7 and 9.

74 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

Englishman, half-convinced that after all the Germans do
some things better, reflects with satisfaction that his rules
of thumb, whatever their defects, at least never persuaded
him that Being and not-Being are the same. And it is
true, that up to a certain point, cool commonsense will
always have the better of the impassioned and high-strung
brain. The critic is more versatile than the artist, and
listens with a smile to the battles of opposite schools, con¬
scious that he sees the good, and understands the error, of
both. Yet who does not feel that impassioned concentra¬
tion gets, in the last resort, to the deeper truth about the
whole matter? That, if it is profound and sincere, it
even gets the better of its own initial limitations? And
so, these seeming negations of the ordinary world con¬
tained, in reality, the promise of far-reaching transforma¬
tions of it. Every one of these soaring idealisms, which
seem so like wanton indulgences of personal idiosyncrasies,
proves to be charged with national and social thinking.
Fichte was chaffingly styled the great Ego by the Weimar
poets ; but after Jena it was the ideas of the great Ego, and
not theirs, which became to the ruined nation the trumpet
of a prophecy.

Fichte’s “ Addresses to the German Nation ” (1807),
given in Berlin, almost under the eyes of the French gar¬
rison, resemble in their occasion those great outbursts of
Milton’s Satan in the first stunning moment of the fall
from Paradise: “What tho’ the field be lost? All is not
lost.” But the resource in which Satan finds help, “the
unconquerable will, and study of revenge, immortal hate,
and courage never to submit or yield,” — that sublime yet
blank and negative idealism, was not Fichte’s. What he
turned to was the spiritual heritage of the German people.
The sense of nationality, elsewhere so largely grounded
upon stubborn egoisms and ancestral feud, was thus in
Germany, as I said at the outset, to an amazing degree the
creation of inspirations at once historic and ethical, the
consciousness of fellowship among those who inherited the

The Intellectual and Literary History 75

German tongue, the consciousness of an ideal task which
had to be achieved in and through the conditions of
German life in the German land.

And so even Schopenhauer's egoism provided a sanc¬
tuary for weary humanity in the serenity of Art; even
Nietzsche’s despotism of the “ Overman was but the
necessary preliminary to the ideal Over-humanity, which
he foresaw. The decay of the grandiose structures of
idealism brought with it, no doubt, a decided decline in
the prestige of mind. The vast development of the
Natural Sciences after 1840 was both cause and conse¬
quence of a revival of mechanical conceptions. Materialism
became in the ’50’s the ruling doctrine of the educated
world. But nowhere was its sway so brief as in Germany.
The study of mind was resumed on a lower plane, with
more stringent methods ; psychology took the place of meta¬
physics, and psychology struck at the roots of materialism
with yet more deadly effect. The famous book in which
Friedrich Lange, in 1865, wrote its history reduced it
henceforth, as a philosophical creed, to a merely historical
significance. And the most striking feature in the
development of the mental sciences during the remainder
of the century is the steady growth in the scope of psycho¬
logy ; in other words, the expansion of the part allowed to
mind as a factor in experience. The career of the great
master of living psychologists, Wilhelm Wundt, which
covers those forty years, has been the gradual development
of a more psychical out of a more physiological point of
view ; the senses count for less, the transforming and crea¬
tive energies of mind for more. No doubt this partial
recovery of the prestige of mind was not in the same degree
a recovery of the prestige of thought. On the contrary,
the accent is now laid upon that element of mind which the
whole temper of the age of Bismarck exultantly empha¬
sized, — upon will. Ideas had failed to fashion the
German state in .1848, blood and iron and masterful will
succeeded in 1871 ; and masterful will was for that genera-

76 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

tion the saving formula, the guiding clue, in politics, in
history, in science. It spoke in the strident diatribes of
the champion of Germanism Treitsclike; it spoke in the
pregnant and impassioned poetry of Nietzsche; it spoke in
the severe accents of the psychological laboratory, in the
“ voluntarism ” of Wundt, which interpreted all the varied
play of our perception as the result of subtle operations of
desire. Yet this masterful will has never, in modern
Germany, ventured to emancipate itself from thought.
The autocratic Bismarckian state has some crying defects ;
and its rigid frame is much better fitted to resist, than to
assimilate, movements like social democracy which embody
unfulfilled national needs. But that this autocratic will
is inspired, even in the anomalies of its electoral law, even
in the extravagances of its militarism, and directed by a
powerful if incomplete social sense, and precise, if incom¬
plete, social ideas, is as little to be questioned as is the
intellectual competence with which, proverbially, it is
carried out. The administration of law, of education, the
government of towns, the provision for poverty, disease,
unemployment, may strike us as dictatorial or intrusive ;
but can its worst intrusions compare with those still often
perpetrated in our workhouses, sometimes even in our
hospitals, by the triple alliance of ignorance, stupidity,
and red-tape?

Let us beware of believing that Germany is less free
than we in proportion as she is more controlled. Freedom,
as ordinarily understood by us, is chiefly a negative idea,
adequately conveyed in the assurance that we never will
be slaves : German freedom is a positive and complex
ideal, achieved by the individual in and through the
organised state in which he plays his due part, and only
fully enjoyed, as Goethe so finely said, when it is daily
won. The indomitable personality of the primitive
Teuton has lost nothing of its vigour or of its originality
in the Germany of Fichte and of Bismarck. It has been
the task, and in a great degree the achievement, of modern

The Intellectual and Literary History 77

Germany to reconcile the demand for the free development
of individuality which was rooted in the deepest instincts
of the race, with the needs of a many-sided and highly-
organised civilisation. If Germany is to-day the greatest
example of a scientifically administered state, it is also the
country which has most deeply felt and fathomed and most
highly prized, the life of the soul. If the nineteenth cen¬
tury is strewn with the wreckage of her sublime philo¬
sophies, if the race for wealth and luxury and power seems
to absorb her more and more, it is still to Germany that we
turn for an assurance that the thought which wanders
through eternity and wrestles, however vainly, with the
enigmas of the universe, is a permanent factor of civilisa¬
tion; aud through all the roar of her forges, and the
clangour of her dockyards, the answer rings back clear.

IV.— THE ECONOMIC HISTORY

BY

E. C. K. GONNER, M.A.

THE ECONOMIC HISTORY.*

The Nineteenth. Century is remarkable for the great
change experienced by many nations in their economic
system. They pass from one system of organisation to
another. New forces and methods tending to the more
rapid development of new wants and to the more complete
adaptation of means to satisfy wants take the place of old
forces and methods which pursued their course under the
restraining influence of slowly changing customs and of
institutions which endured in substance even when modi¬
fied in form. The economic history of Germany, like the
economic history of other European nations, records this
common change, but in the case of Germany the change
occurs under particular conditions which lend it distinc¬
tive features and introduce elements of difference into the
development of that country as compared with other
countries .

In the first place the change in economic conditions from
the beginning to the close of the century is very marked,
not so much perhaps by reason of the stage reached at the
end as because at the beginning the country as compared
with others was more completely under the sway of the
past. Both in agriculture and in industry, methods neces¬
sitated by the needs and circumstances of the middle ages
were still dominant.

In the second place, the critical period in the transition
occurs late, a fact of great importance not only because it
invests the recent growth with an appearance of startling

* Several of the points mentioned in this lecture are dealt with in
great detail in “Die Deutsche Volkswirtschaft,” by Werner Sombart.
Another modern book well worth consulting is “Deutsche Politik,” by
Ernst Hasse.

82 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

rapidity and magnitude but because the change, long
deferred as it was, takes place when it does take place
under particular and very potent influences. In reality,
however, the causes of change had been long in progress.
On different sides the new forces had been growing in
strength, though their interaction and their consequent
result had been retarded by circumstances in large
measure political rather than economic. When these
obstacles were removed the causes tending to a new growth
came together, interacted and operated with great effect
and suddenness.

In the third place, influences prominent at the time of
transition call for notice, since to them must be ascribed
many of the most characteristic features. The economic
growth in Germany was singularly conscious. This was
owing to twTo things. On the one hand it was late, thus
following after similar alterations in other countries ; on
the other hand it occurred at a time when the position and
power of the state had attained unusual dimensions. Not
only did the nation realise its needs, not only was it con¬
scious of the methods employed by other nations, but owing
to the autocratic organisation of the country, and at that
time, at any rate, an autocracy enthusiastically supported
by the large body of opinion, it could act consciously and
with some system. Further than that the state in its
action had the experience of other nations to guide it.
Their methods, when good, could be imitated; the mistakes
involved in the working out of their methods could be
avoided. There is one thing more. As the manufac¬
turing development of Germany was comparatively late,
she came to the world’s market to find powerful competitors
already present if not in possession. Foreign manufac¬
tures, indeed, were well established in the home markets,
and against them the nascent industries struggled hard.

An account, even in brief outline, of the particular con¬
ditions affecting Germany at this period in her history
would be incomplete without some allusion to the position

83

The Economic History

of agriculture in the ecenomic life. Owing to physical
conditions, rural pursuits throughout the whole century
were a dominant interest in very large regions. Their
importance at the beginning is even less significant than
at the end, when a third of the population were directly
dependent on agriculture. To some extent Germany still
is an Agrarian State. Its position in this respect is
emphasized by the large number of people interested in
landed property : with several million holdings agriculture
means far more to the people of Germany than it can mean
to the people of this country.

The various features to which allusion has been made
will be the better realised both in their importance and
their proportion if we turn for a short time to consider
more in detail the course taken by the economic history of
the century. Speaking broadly, that history may be
divided into three periods; that of Preparation, that of
Tentative Growth, and that of Conscious Development.

The first period comprises some forty years or more,
stretching from the close of the eighteenth century into the
forties .

Judged by a modern standard, the condition of the
country was extremely backward. As yet the wave of
change generated in other countries had produced little if
any effect upon the economic life and occupations of the
people. These latter in the main followed traditional
lines associated with earlier ages. In agriculture, which
formed the employment of the very great majority of the
people, systems of common cultivation and of partial
villeinage ruled. The agricultural community was the
basis of cultivation and the manor in large measure the
unit of administration. Though in Prussia the personal
burdens borne by the peasants, whether free or in villein¬
age, had been relieved of much of their harshness during
the reign of Frederick the Great, the system as a system
had been defined and unified by his action, the needs of
fhe kingdom and his desire for administrative regu-

84 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

larity leading liim to reorganize the semi-feudal
system according to which the land was held. While
in other German states conditions differed, in most the
important features indicated above prevailed in some
degree. Such systems, however they may be judged from
other points of view, are essentially unprogressive. As
was but natural, a system devised to meet the needs of a
time when stability was the one essential, and when
change, if it presented itself as a possibility, was fraught
with peril, was eminently unfit for a time when change was
essential and when the possibilities of more progressive
farming were opening up. Again, under it labour was
necessarily tied both to place and in grade. It could not
move and it could not rise. So far, indeed, as Prussia
was concerned, the obstacles to progress did not end there.
The old division of land into demesne and that belonging
to the tenants still remained, though in a somewhat altered
form. Land was divided into three classes, noble land,
peasant land, and burgher land, and in the hands of
holders of tlieir respective classes the specific land was
bound to remain. Land was not more free than labour.
Such a system was not even justified by the comfort of the
peasant and cultivating class. Travellers in England
contrast the lot and intelligence of the peasantry in that
country wfith those prevailing in their own North
Germany, to the great advantage of England.

In industry, in like manner, customs and restrictions
derived from mediaeval times controlled and confined
life. Trade, other than that involved in local home life,
was chiefly in the towns where guild regulations continued
in force.

Moreover, the country was poor. So far as general agri¬
culture is concerned, it must be remembered that through¬
out a very large portion of Germany the soil is anything
but rich. On the other hand, during the eighteenth century
Germany, unlike England, had not reaped the advantages
of a large and profitable trade. Its stock of capital was

85

The Economic History

not great, and what there had been, had suffered much
from the devastating effects of the Napoleonic wars.

The causes operating to the detriment of the country,
both at the time and during the first period, may be briefly
summarised. Though improvement appears in certain
directions, the growth of Germany is retarded both by poli¬
tical and economic circumstances.

In the first place, political difficulties hampered and
embarrassed the country. It is true that during the first
half of the century actual external danger by wTar was less,
but on the other hand the disturbances due to political com¬
plications and to the revolutionary spirit in Europe created
internal difficulties in the administration of the various
states. At each important epoch these or the more im¬
portant of these shared in and suffered from the general
unrest. Constitutional difficulties were recurrent and
did much to unsettle administration.

In the second place, any great development, and espe¬
cially any great industrial development, could hardly be
expected while the various states remained so wholly
separated and thus lacking in unity for any important
purpose. Even travelling was rendered difficult by the
differences which existed between the various parts. This
was still more the case with trade, which was hopelessly
obstructed not only by the tariff barriers which hedged in
each state, whether great or small, but also by differences
in measures and money, and in customs and laws.

In the third place, owing to causes already dealt with
above, the two great conditions of modern economic growth
were lacking. On the one hand, there was no free supply
of labour. The choice of occupation was restricted even
where industries were plied in the town, while the large
mass of the people were tied not only to agriculture but to
particular places, at one time by law and when the law
was relaxed by the habits engendered under the law and
continuing even after its alteration. On the other hand,

86 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

capital was lacking*, and the new industrial movement
above everything required capital.

Still change was in preparation. Of this, three illus¬
trations may be chosen.

Few measures of reform have been more influential for
good and more obviously effective than those which are
grouped together under the name of the Stein-Hardenberg
reforms. These reforms embodied in the legislation of three
dates, namely, 1807, 1811, and 1850, were concerned directly
with alterations in the system of land holding and agrarian
cultivation in Prussia. Their results, however, extended
far beyond the sphere of landed property and agriculture,
affecting, as they did, the body of labour throughout the
kingdom. By them free exchange in land was established,
such villeinage as existed was abolished, many rights com¬
muted, and common fields allotted. No doubt the rural
population still remained subject to disabilities, many of
which were defined and even emphasized by the law of
1854; but despite these, essential progress was achieved.
Land could be employed with comparative freedom, while
labour, if not completely freed while on the land, was free
to move from the land and into new occupations where its
freedom would be more complete. The record of the
measures effecting this change is one of extraordinary
interest, and deserves a more detailed account than can be
given here. The results are what concern our purpose.
Of these two stand out in bold relief. On the one hand,
the way w^as opened to a reasonable and progressive system
of cultivation. Individual rights supplied a motive for
energy, while the relaxation of restrictions enabled the
energetic cultivator to pursue his aim unhindered by the
ignorance or indolence of those surrounding him. On the
other hand, labour could escape from its fetters. Thus a
new supply was created of the labour necessary to the
development of the new industries.

Secondly, in 1834-5, the first Zollverein is formed by the
union of Prussia, Bavaria, Wiirtemburg, Saxony, Baden,

The Economic History 87

Hess© Nassau, Thuringia, and Frankfurt, to b© strength¬
ened in a few years by th© accession of Brunswick and
Hanover, and later still by that of the Mecklenburgs.
While some degree of isolation still remained, the import¬
ance of the union cannot be over-estimated. Not only does
it mark the first great step towards a politically united
Germany — but in the economic sense it is a stride onwards
in the progress which makes Germany one country. From
that time German industry and German trade bear a new
and a real meaning.

Thirdly, the foundations of the educational system were
being laid with consequences to the economic position long
delayed in their fulfilment, but to be realised when the
time of active growth occurs and when Germany forces its
way into the forefront of the manufacturing nations of the
world.

At the moment, however, the effect of these changes was
little apparent. Though not without immediate results,
these results were but an imperfect measure of the change
in progress. Tested by various standards Germany
remained far behind the other countries in Western
Europe, and in particular behind England. Though popu¬
lation had increased, the country was still sparsely
peopled ; not only so, but the more or less uniform distribu¬
tion of the population in the various States exhibits a
marked contrast to the condition at the end of the century
and to the condition even then evident in England. Again,
handwork was still a controlling factor in many branches
of industry. In 1846, though there were nearly as many
cotton looms in the factory as in the home, by far the
greater number of the former were handlooms, while in the
case of wool, home looms were more than double those in
factories. In spinning the comparison was naturally even
more striking, little wool and far less linen yarn being
spun outside the home. Of those engaged in the textile
weaving trade over 12 per cent, of those employed in wool

88 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

and over 80 per cent, of those employed in linen were
partly engaged in agriculture.

The rich stores of minerals remained almost undis¬
turbed, a source of wealth and power for the future, hut of
little practical use for the present. Even in 1860 the coal
raised amounted to 12 million tons, while pig-iron only
reached half a million.

Towns had, it is true, increased, hut they were small,
and many if not most of them agricultural rather than
industrial. In many cases barns and farm buildings
stood in numbers among the houses. Two sets of figures
will illustrate the position. Of the whole population, in
1850, under 30 per cent, lived in towns of all kinds whether
rural or urban (2,000 inhabitants), whereas in 1900 over
54 per cent, were so resident; while in large towns, that is
in towns with 50,000 inhabitants, in 1850, only 3'5 per
cent, of the population were resident, a percentage which
in 1900 was close on 22 per cent. (2T9). Taking occupa¬
tions, it has been estimated that in 1843, of all persons
earning a livelihood, some 60 per cent, were employed in
actual rural pursuits, a figure which has now fallen to 35
per cent.

While it is true, as has been pointed out already, that
some start had been made in the direction of factory
organisation, progress there had been slight. When it
occurred, distress among the poorly paid home workers had
been accentuated, with the result that the time was one of
severe suffering; but this form of employment, soon to
dominate in the future, was in its early infancy. Its
development was abnormal to the general condition of the
country, and was in part, at any rate, under instigations
received from outside, the actual direction in many cases
falling into the hands of enterprising Englishmen.

In general, Germany was a rural country and its indus¬
tries home industries. Its foreign trade was that of a
country (about 1840) only just emerging from the grade in
which exports were mainly raw products or partially

89

The Economic History

manufactured products of home growth, and imports
wholly or nearly wholly of manufactured goods, with the
addition of Eastern products as sugar, colfee, and silk. It
produced from the laud more than it required; it was
dependent on foreign nations for its supplies of such things
as iron goods and cotton yarns. It was a poor country
with very low wages and small incomes.

About the middle of the century a change passes over the
scene. With the constitutional settlement after the stormy
year of 1848, a new~ opportunity for peaceful industrial
growth presents itself. Equally important was the sudden
stimulus applied to trade and industry by the rising prices,
which ensued in the gold discoveries. While this influ¬
ence was common to Europe, it was felt with peculiar force
in Germany, which had just reached the stage when such
an impetus was the one thing necessary to bring into action
the various forces which had been gathering strength. Not
only was the capital required but capital in a ready form.
Equally necessary was capitalistic organisation and direc¬
tion. The speculative activity which ensued in the
decade from 1850 to 1860 is important, not so much
because of the magnitude of the progress achieved as
because during its course, and owing to its direction, the
factors of purely modern organisation and of modern
German organisation are developed. As to the industrial
progress, the figures relating to formation of Joint Stock
Companies are instructive ; thus in Bavaria during the
years 1837-48 six companies were founded with a total
capital of about £200,000, whereas from 1849-58 there
were 44 companies with a total capital of £7,000,000.
Taking the whole of Germany, it has been estimated that
during the years 1853-7 the share capital of newly founded
banks reached £30,000,000, and that paid up on new rail¬
ways exceeded £20,000,000. Without any further multi¬
plication of figures it may be said that the foundations of
Germany as an Industrial State were firmly laid and
secured during this decade. It is equally important to notice

90 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

that in the sphere of finance the activity of the period is as
great, if not greater, than in general trade and manufac¬
ture. Banks and Insurance Companies are conspicuous
in the record of advance, and even at this time signs are
present of the particular relationship between banks and
industrial enterprise, which still exists, though under
serious restrictions, and offers, whatever its disadvantages,
a ready channel for the flow of capital into novel under¬
takings.

This influence was of great importance in the succeeding
decade, 1860-70. During these years the somewhat
feverish activity gives place to a more settled though a
more gradual development. While industrial advance
continues, its rate of progress is obviously retarded and its
difficulties increased by the established rivalry of more
developed industry in other countries, and particularly in
England . In no branches is this more marked than in iron
and steel and other mineral industries. Against this, in
foreign markets Germany could do little, while even in the
home market the pressure was severe. In addition the
strain of foreign wars, despite their success and their
important political consequences, was grave.

The war of 1870, with its great successes, marks some¬
what generally the transition to another stage in the deve¬
lopment of the country. The Eranco-Prussian war came
at the close of a decade during which other wars had
occurred, and imposed a very considerable burden upon the
country. The existence, indeed, of any progress at all
during these years would be surprising were it not that the
gravest burden of a war is felt rather in the later years, or
even in the succeeding years of peace, than during the
early years of its course. In many respects the immediate
effects of a war not waged on home territory is to stimulate
into abnormal activity certain large branches of industry.
War years are not necessarily years of depression. That
is frequently felt far more keenly afterwards, when debt
has to be paid off and the disajopearance of the abnormal

91

The Economic History-

inflation causes disturbance before industry again takes to
its usual channels. During the war, of course, there is
some disturbance of trade, but it is under the influence of
temporary and special activities in some directions,
whereas after the war is over, whether it be successful or
unsuccessful, the disturbance is unrelieved by any such
compensating factors. The depression in the ’seventies
was undoubtedly accentuated by circumstances of this
kind.

In this particular instance, however, the effect of the
war was affected by a very particular circumstance, namely
the payments of the large indemnity from France. Its
consequences were various. The method of payment,
affecting as it did the import trade of the country, brought
about some dislocation in the industries. The actual pay¬
ment was important in itself, as wiping out, as it were, one
large part of the after-effects of a war. Not only did it
cover the cost of the war, both that involved in its prosecu¬
tion and that required to make good direct losses and to
provide pensions; but owing partly to its magnitude and
partly to the fact that a large part of the cost itself had
been defrayed out of revenue, a very considerable surplus
was left. The existence of this and the use made of it
may be placed against the general disturbance liable to
ensue at the conclusion of a war. In the first place, a
certain powerful industrial stimulus was brought into play
by the provision of a new fund of capital. In the second
place, the actual employment of the indemnity by the
Government calls for a word. A much-needed new gold
coinage was provided on the one hand, while on the other
hand certain state debts were extinguished. A precise
determination of the economic advantages and disadvan¬
tages of the particular war cannot be attempted ; but under
the circumstances of the case, there was gain to be placed
against the loss.

A far more potent cause of advantage, however, lay in
the enthusiasm due to victory and the new and larger

92 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

realisation of material unity. Important a,s this was in
itself, it was rendered the more effective because embodied
in the State, bureaucratic in organisation and autocratic in
its authority. Of the many influences which conduced to
this result it is impossible to speak — but so far as the nine¬
teenth century is concerned two things must be remem¬
bered. Owing to the genius of Stein the bureaucratic
government of Prussia could urge its own excellence in
justification of its disregard of democratic protest; later
events play their part by associating autocracy with suc¬
cess. Thus after the war the autocratic State held a well-
nigh impregnable position. Its guidance fell into the
hands of one singularly fitted for his task. One feature in
Bismarck’s character may be recalled, a freedom from
doctrinaire predispositions so complete as to accentuate the
charge often made against him of lack of principle.

The problem before him was one of great complexity.
The manufactures of the country ready to develop were
confronted by difficulties both internal and from abroad.
Again, as has already been pointed out, some industrial
depression had followed on the cessation of the war. More¬
over, a very critical phase in the transition from home
work to the factory was in progress. In many parts of
the country there was acute suffering, bringing with it the
natural clamour for redress and finding vent in agitation
partly democratic and partly socialistic. On the other
hand, despite steady advance, the pressure of foreign com¬
petition not only in distant markets but at home was un¬
deniably very severe. This was so to some extent in the
textile trade. It was greatest in the mining and iron
industries. Lastly, agriculture was in a serious plight by
the middle of the ’seventies. During the earlier industrial
growth, agriculture had benefited by the increase in the
home demand, and with that benefit there had been a rise
— often an undue rise — both in rents and in the price of
land. To some extent it would seem true that the advance
in these latter respects had outrun the rise in the prices of

The Economic History

93

agricultural produce. The fall in prices, both in prices in
general and especially in prices of agricultural produce,
owing to imports from distant lands, menaced the landed
proprietor with difficulties. His resort to mortgages con¬
verted difficulties into disaster. Properties, particularly
the large properties, were burdened with a gradual increase
of debt. This tendency, while not by any means novel,
was accentuated in the ’seventies.

While these were the economic difficulties which con¬
fronted the new Empire, the sources of strength require a
word. Some of these have been touched on already and
need not be dealt with again. But alongside of them are
certain characteristics resulting from past history. Thus
adversity had taught severe lessons and inculcated the
need of hard work and of adaptation to the requirements of
others. Again, long years of subordination had resulted
in habits of discipline and prompt obedience.

From this brief survey we can turn to a consideration of
the actual economic policy in this, the great, period, of
German development.

In the first place, as to its aims. The great economic
need which confronted the statesmen of the Empire was
the development of the rich mineral resources of the
country. To that was conjoined emancipation from a
dependence on foreign countries for certain very im¬
portant commodities. While these two objects differ, in
a sense they were in the then condition of the country com¬
plementary to each other. The enormous mineral wealth
of the country made the reliance on England the more
aggravating. The material for a large and extended
industry was at hand, and yet its establishment threatened
to be long deferred. It is impossible to say what might
have been the result of inaction, but this much is certain,
the dimensions of the industry were small and the rate of
increase slow.

But another aspect of difficulty presented itself. The
events already described had resulted in serious agrarian

94 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

distress in the latter years of this decade. Agriculture,
still the main interest of the nation, was crying for assist¬
ance.

Lastly, the industrial transition as it was beginning to
exhibit itself in Germany, especially when taken with the
experience of the change in England, showed the need of
special measures in relief. Other nations had encountered
the difficulties, but the passage had been a stormy one and
had left behind it troubles of a permanent character. What
these were was becoming clear. To remedy them or
rather to anticipate them meant state intervention and
action.

To this course Germany was prone. The organisation
of the state there differed in particular from the
organisation in such a country as England. It was
far more bureaucratic and far better designed for adminis¬
tration. German feeling, moreover, was in favour of a
positive policy in industrial matters, and it should be
added not wholly because of usage. The benefits it derives
from state activity are greater than elsewdiere, and the dis¬
advantages, at any rate the immediate disadvantages, con¬
siderably less. And as results are one test of a system of
government, state action may be justified as being good.
The state acts in a favourable environment and under
favourable conditions.

Bearing these points in mind the course pursued by
Prince Bismarck was natural. It arose from the past and
it corresponded with the immediate circumstances as he
and the larger part of the nation interpreted them.

Firstly, the State develops the historic policy (historic,
even if subject to intermissions) of taking an active part in
the development of industries, either in general or in parti¬
cular. This bears three aspects.

State ownership in industries had been a common
feature in Germany. This was increased either by the
different States or by the Imperial Government. Public
participation in commercial enterprises for the purpose of

The Economic History-

95

public revenue has been developed in different respects,
notably by tbe taking over of tlie railways by the Imperial
Government both from tbe states or from private bodies.

Again use bas been made, though rather in the later
than the earlier decades, of the state ownership of the
railways to assist and subsidise industries, a feature which
has attracted the more attention by the deliberate effort to
concentrate the assistance on the exporting branches. In
no country probably has this policy been so carefully
elaborated, extending as it does in some cases to the com¬
bined service by the railway and shipping. Subsidies,
however, have not been confined to these means. In
giving them and determining on them the autocratic
nature of the government must be remembered.

Lastly, wn come to the change in tariff policy in 18T9.
Here again it is necessary to emphasize the different mean¬
ing which state action and state control bear in Germany
from that which attaches to them, for instance, in Eng¬
land. The State is expected to intervene and to act in
economic as in other matters. The only questions are as
to the form and sphere of its action . The situation, however,
was one of peculiar difficulties. Protection when adopted
implied, and inevitably implied, protection of home agri¬
culture as well as home industries, and this has been a
source not only of economic but of political complexity.
It emphasizes the division between industrial and agrarian
interests .

In the second place, the social action of the German
Government offers one of the most interesting illustrations
of state as distinct from democratic socialism. Socialism
as known in Germany is of two kinds. There is the
socialism of democracy and of agitation, which as yet has
come to little. There is the autocratic state socialism
which has effected much, though it might have effected
more had it been possible to develop it more in accordance
with and less in antagonism to popularly expressed feel¬
ings. Its nature and extent prove the entire inaccuracy

96 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

of the popular assumption that socialism is a necessary out¬
come or form of democracy. So far is this from being the
case that it may be said that its achievement is easier and
its initial success greater under an autocratic than under a
democratic system. Furthermore, it is interesting to
observe the way in which the socialistic activities of the
government were at least concurrent if not more intimately
connected with its protective policy : just as in Australia
protective developments issued in the pure socialism of the
Industries Act.

Of the detail of this social policy no description can be
given here. Though in certain respects partial and inter¬
mittent, it is as a whole wide and comprehensive, includ¬
ing as it does, pension systems, insurance systems for
sickness, invalidity and want of work, labour registers, and
labour colonies.

But passing from this meagre outline of policy, what
can be said of the development of modern Germany ? That
it has been extraordinarily great none can gainsay ; but its
progress is liable to exaggeration. As has been pointed
out, it has been due to causes, developing in isolation,
retarded in action by certain obstacles, and then brought
into sudden contact under particular conditions. It is a
mistake, however, to take the foreign trade of the country
as a sure index of its industrial advance. Such tests,
however useful they may be for rhetorical purposes, are of
no value to the student who knows that the relation
between external trade and internal development varies
greatly not only from time to time but from nation to
nation.

Among the many achievements of the closing years three
stand out, the iron and chemical trades with their allied
branches, railway and canal development, the growth of
shipping. While each of these has been affected by the
general causes or by some of the general causes previously
discussed, each has a particular feature and is a particular
illustration of some special factor in Germany’s economic

The Economic History

97

life. The iron and steel trades and chemical industries,
due no doubt to the rich mineral wealth, reflect the advan¬
tage bestowed on the country by a long period of high
scientific training. Internal communication under state
control illustrates the particular aptitude of the country
in respect of bureaucratic management, which of course is
always at its best when exercised in a field where routine,
regularity and systematic organisation are most essential.
That the shipping trade has expanded as it has is due
largely to special state action and favour.

As against instances such as these must be placed other
things, such as, the failure to cope with the agricultural
difficulties; and the political complications which have
ensued on the attempt to maintain a balance between
agrarian Germany and industrial Germany.

The change has been great and its causes many. Some
attempt has been made to disentangle these and to trace
their interaction. It remains to add a few words as to
the nature of the transition. In common with other
nations in Western Europe, Germany comes under the
influence of a great change. A national life based on
custom and with its customary needs supplied by custo¬
mary methods passes under the sway of keen industrial
forces. As in other countries the altered conditions
manifest themselves in an irregular density of population,
the more rural districts and particularly those where large
proprietorship ruled exhibiting little increase, and in some
instances decrease. There is the same tendency, even if
not so great, for population to flow from the country to the
town, though affected in part by particular causes espe¬
cially in such districts as those mentioned. In Germany,
too, as in England, imports come to exceed exports, while
the place of food in the former grows in importance. On
the social side, though here political causes confuse and
complicate, a deepening separation appears between the
economic classes. In other words, a modern industrial
society has been constituted in a country not one hundred

98 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

years before fixed as it seemed in agricultural life and
its attendant occupations.

There are, however, particular features which serve to
distinguish the change from that which took place else¬
where. In the first place, the change took place late. In
the second place, its direction was influenced by the State
and by a State autocratic in its character. In the third
place, the development owed much to the previous educa¬
tional growth which accelerated advance in particular
directions.

A contrast naturally presents itself between the course
taken by the great and general economic transition in
Germany with that which it pursued in this country.
Germany came to the change late and was long retarded
by its want of trade capital; while in England the long
period of rich trading which preceded the beginning of
the Industrial Revolution furnished capital and also made
trading needs a guide to its direction. The industries of
England are more intimately bound up with external
trade than in Germany, while again the long prosperity
enjoyed by merchants made them less anxious to suit
tbeir habits to those of their customers. The change in
England extended over a much longer time and is marked
by strong individualistic conditions. That in Germany
occurs under the aegis of the government, and owes much
to its support.

In England there are signs, at any rate, that the State
will in the future play a more active role. Again the
sentiment of the time in the one country is democratic ;
in the other autocratic. Thus while social legislation of
a more advanced character appeared sooner in Germany,
that nation is left to meet the problems involved in the
growing force of democracy. Again in England the
differences as between country and town have been
resolved in favour of the latter, in Germany the decision
owing to state intervention swings in the balance.

Whatever the difficulties before England in its attempt

The Economic History-

99

to introduce a new central adjustment of its individual¬
istic forces, tlie difficulties in the path of Germany are at
least as great. There a system of economic and social
organisation highly centralised and in the control of a
strong and enlightened bureaucracy has to be reconciled
with popular forces. The part which these latter will
play is very uncertain, but in any case their introduction
cannot but affect and modify the organisation which from
an administrative point of view has worked with remark¬
able effect.

There are two particular aspects of modern German
development which merit a word or two. The great
tendency to specialization, obvious in many directions,
has been ingeniously claimed by one writer, as an
important factor in the economic sphere since there it
corresponds with and enforces Division of Labour. This
of course it quite true from one point of view, namely the
administrative point of view, but it obscures something
that is equally true. After all, the human factor in
industry is a human being as well as a part of the
economic machinery of the country. Again the security
of individual liberty has been subordinated to the needs
of autocratic and centralised direction. But does this mean
that such individualism is of little or no importance in
economic progress?

The answer to this and other like questions lies in the
future. German development at a particular and critical
stage was forced into a certain form. Whether this was
inevitable or not does not matter. But if important
forces have been ignored, some time or other they will
demand their place. Their recognition may be deferred,
but that solves nothing. The problem is not their post¬
ponement but their adaptation to the existing structure.

V— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION.

BY

M. E. SADLER, M.A., LL.D.

THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION.

The history of education in Germany during the nine¬
teenth century falls into three periods, fairly well-defined
in point of date and distinguished from one another by
those changes in social and political outlook which affect
all educational developments. The first period, which
extended from the beginning of the century to about 1840,
was, especially in its earlier years, an era of reconstruction
inspired by patriotic enthusiasm and by a passionate belief
in the political value of intellectual achievement. The
second period, which extended from 1840 to the foundation
of the German Empire in 1871, was an era of consolidation,
marked by some reaction from the high-pitched hopes of
the earlier period, and also by the growth of realism in
educational policy. The third period, which has extended
from the foundation of the German Empire to the present
day, has been an era of renewed advance, brilliant in its
administrative achievement and in its systematic readjust¬
ment of educational arrangements to modern needs.

During the nineteenth century the educational history
of Great Britain, and to some extent that of Ireland, fell
likewise into three periods, almost coincident in point of
time with those named above, but otherwise presenting a
sharp contrast to what was desired and achieved in
Germany. The first period, which extended from the
discussions on Mr. Whitbread’s Education Bill in 1807 to
the establishment of the Committee of Council on Educa¬
tion in 1839, was an era of philanthropic and religious
effort in popular education, helped by State subsidy in
Ireland from 1814 and in Great Britain from 1833. The
second period, which extended from 1839 to Mr. Forster’s
Education Act in 1870 (followed by the Scottish Education

104 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

Act, 1872), was an era of Parliamentary investigation, of
increasing public subsidy and of internal reform in higher
and secondary education. The third period, which has
extended from 1870 to the present time, has seen a rapid
extension of educational opportunity throughout the
kingdom and a marked growth in the administrative
authority of the State in educational affairs. The chief
characteristic of the first period was associated philan¬
thropy; that of the second, educational self-government
under the supervision of the State ; that of the third, the
slow construction in each part of the United Kingdom of
an educational system more closely articulated in all its
parts and more systematically aided out of public funds.

In the following pages an attempt is made to trace in
outline the chief features of the educational history of
Germany and of the United Kingdom during the nine¬
teenth century ; to compare and to contrast the development
of their systems of education; to trace the influence of
German educational ideas upon British and the reciprocal
influence of British educational ideas upon German; and,
finally, to consider the likelihood of a closer assimilation
between the educational systems of the German Empire
and of the United Kingdom.

I.

Fichte, in the lectures which he delivered in Berlin in
1806 on the Characteristics of the Present Age, laid it
down as a fundamental principle that “ a State, which
constantly seeks to increase its internal strength, is forced
to desire the gradual abolition of all privileges and the
establishment of equal rights for all men, in order that it,
the State itself, may enter upon its true right, viz., to
apply the whole surplus power of all its citizens, without
exception, to the furtherance of its own purposes.” In
these words, spoken at a time of supreme crisis in the
national life, a great patriot gave utterance to the con¬
viction of his enlightened fellow-countrymen. The removal

The History of Education

105

of arbitrary and obsolete privilege, tbe development of
individual character, and tbe subordination of private
interest to tbe collective welfare were deemed by Fichte,
and by those of bis fellow-countrymen to whose convictions
be gave expression, essential to national preparation for
tbe task of furthering tbe permanent interests of mankind.
Tbe personal sacrifice and tbe class sacrifices which
obedience to these principles involved were held by Ficbte
to be indispensable at tbe juncture which Western, and
especially German, civilisation bad reached. “ Tbe
gradual interpenetration of tbe citizen by tbe State is,” be
wrote, “ tbe political characteristic of our age . . . We do
indeed desire freedom, and we ought to desire it; but true
freedom can be obtained only by means of tbe highest
obedience to law.” In this atmosphere of political thought
and of moral self-abnegation, tbe educational ideals of
modern Germany were formed.

Moral leadership in tbe new educational movement thus
fell to Prussia. She bore tbe brunt of tbe national peril.
In her was found tbe group of statesmen capable of build¬
ing up a system of government and administration which
aimed at giving effect to the philosophic idea of an organ¬
ised State, strong through the personal convictions of its
citizens and through their readiness to subject themselvevs
to the duties and discipline of national life. But it was
not in Prussia alone that the new spirit in German educa¬
tion found utterance and realisation. The States of central
and southern Germany brought their contributions to the
movement which stirred German education with a new life
and purpose. Great as its services have been, Prussia is far
from being the sole representative of German culture or of
its administrative achievement. Any account of German
education which underrates or ignores the service of
southern Germany and of the smaller States which now
form part of the German Empire, suffers from distorted
perspective and conceals some of the main factors in the
problem .

106 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

In its modern form German education is a federal unity,
comprising great differences of tone and temper in various
parts of the Empire. But the whole is skilfully bound
together by arrangements which secure a sufficient unity
of administration without imposing a mechanical uni¬
formity upon different traditions of culture and of social
life. Just as in the United Kingdom the educational
tradition of England differs from that of Scotland and
Wales, and in a still greater degree from that of Ireland,
so in Germany the educational tradition of Prussia is very
different from those of Bavaria, or Baden, or Wurtemberg.
These differences, and not less the contributions made by
the smaller States to educational progress, have been a
source of strength to the intellectual life of the German
Empire and have protected its educational system from
the dangers of a too uniform administration.

Fichte himself, though a prophet of nationalism, was a
nationalist in no narrow sense. His mind was always fixed
on the political system of Europe and of those countries
which had reached a corresponding stage in culture. Only
as conducing to the permanent welfare of the whole group
of nations related to one another by the ties of a common
civilisation, did he insist upon closer organisation in the
national life of each unit composing this varied group.
The educational development of the component parts of
what is now the German Empire has moved along the
lines of Fichte’s wider ideal. And the interchange of
influence between the educational system of Germany and
those of other Western nations points towards the gradual
attainment of Fichte’s larger purpose. Just as the
problem of national unity involves a balance between the
claims of individual freedom and collective control, so
does the realisation of intellectual fellowship among
nations depend upon a balance between the claims of
national identity and of international co-operation. The
great significance of the history of German education
during the nineteenth century lies in the double fact of its

The History of Education

107

effective national organisation and its far-reaching inter¬
national relationships.

Three things lie behind the growth of German education
during the last century and explain its course.

The first of these was the educational policy of several
of the German States during the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. The School Regulations of Weimar
in 1619 established the principle of compulsory attendance
at elementary schools as a civic duty. The Schul-Methodus
laid down by Ernest the Pious of Gotha in 1642 gave more
systematic effect to the same principle of State authority
in education. The Rescripts of 1716 and 1717 made
school attendance compulsory in Prussia by Royal Order.
And this policy was consummated by the Allgemeine
Land-recht of 1794, which formally declared schools and
Universities in Prussia to be State institutions, and their
establishment permissible only with the State’s previous
knowledge and approval. The same ordinance required
all public schools and educational establishments in
Prussia to be under the supervision of the State and to be
subject at all times to its examination and inspection. It
also declared that the teachers in all higher schools in

Prussia were to be regarded as officials of the State. The
current of administrative change in different parts of
Germany had thus opened a channel for the quick passage
of Fichte’s ideas into the policy of Prussia. Fichte himself,
convinced by the experience of Pestalozzi, had laid stress
upon the need for universal education. “ In one word,”
he said, “ the people ought to receive instruction, and
indeed fundamental, solid and convincing instruction, not
in religion only but also regarding the State, its purposes
and its laws.” The realisation of these hopes was made
possible by the prevailing trend in German administrative
policy. A great part of the German nation was already
familiar with the idea that it was a right and duty of the
State to enforce and extend public education.

The second of the facts which explain the rapidity of

108 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

educational reconstruction in Germany during the earlier
years of the nineteenth century was the existence of a
strong and widely-diffused intellectual tradition. The
growth and power of this intellectual tradition may be
traced in great measure to the foundation of the University
of Halle in 1694. Halle was the first University to be
based on the principle of freedom of thought and teaching,
and therefore the first to assimilate modern philosophy
and science. In University policy Hanover followed the
example of Prussia and founded, in 1737, the University
of Gottingen. The predominance which the study of
theology had enjoyed at Halle fell in Gottingen to the
study of law and of political science. The influence of
these two Universities transformed academic life in
Germany. The educated public and the Governments
concerned accepted freedom of research and freedom of
teaching as fundamental principles in University work.
The spirit of science and of modern philosophy impreg¬
nated the teaching of all faculties and raised the faculty of
philosophy to the chief place in University organisation.
The new academic spirit penetrated the Homan Catholic
Universities of Germany and raised the intellectual level
of their instruction. In consequence, by the end of the
eighteenth century, there had been established throughout
Germany a strong intellectual tradition which was pre¬
disposed to welcome a great development of public educa¬
tion under the supervision of the State. The influence of
Kant in Protestant Germany and the religious revival
(partly due to Homanticism) in southern Germany pre¬
pared the way for the acceptance of new plans of educa¬
tional organisation imposed by the State.

The third fact which led to the re-shaping of the educa¬
tional systems of Germany during the nineteenth century
was the military disaster which befell Prussia in 1806.
The supreme effort of Prussian statesmanship which, in the
hour of national humiliation, regenerated the State, gave
to Prussia the leadership in the new movement. The

The History of Education

109

group of statesmen who, under the leadership of Stein, set
themselves to re-create the fortunes of their country made
universal compulsory military service and the reform of
public education the two cardinal features of the internal
policy of the State. “ Most is to be looked for,” wrote one
of this group of statesmen in 1808, “ from the education
and instruction of youth. Could we, by a method grounded
on the internal nature of man, develop from within every
spiritual gift, rouse and nourish every noble principle of
life, carefully avoiding one-sided culture; could we dili¬
gently nurse those instincts on which rest the force and
dignity of man — love to God, to king and to fatherland — -
then might we hope to see a generation grow up vigorous
both in body and soul and a better prospect for the future
unfold itself.” There sprang from this belief a boldly-
planned policy in public education. What the Prussian
elementary schools owed to the ideas of Pestalozzi and to
the inspiration of Fichte, Prussian secondary schools
found in the guidance of Wilhelm von Humboldt, Stiver n,
Wolf and Schleiermacher. The rebellious passion of
Pousseau, his new ideal of education, the power of his
influence in turning men’s thoughts from the conventional
value of things to a desire for realities and for new
beginnings ; the revival of Greek ideals in German thought
and literature, through the influence of neo-humanism ;
the austere influence of Kant insisting upon the supreme
value of the good will ; the fire of Pestalozzi’s love for the
poor and his faith in the power of education, worked
together in the minds of the statesmen who built up the
new fabric of Prussian education after the bitter experi¬
ence of national defeat.

Within the first forty years of the nineteenth century
were thus laid, upon the basis of what had gone before,
the intellectual foundations of modern Germany. Four
Universities (Berlin, 1810; Breslau, 1811; Bonn, 1818;
and Munich, 1826) were founded or re-organised during
this period. Specialised instruction and advanced classes

110 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

for original work impressed upon the nation the view that
scientific research is the main purpose of University
institutions. The new gymnasien were established under
the impulse of a passion for the Greek ideal of life and
with the aim of imparting general culture and an all¬
round education to the intellectual elite of German boy¬
hood. The beginnings of higher technical education,
based upon general culture, were successfully made, in all
cases by the reorganisation of technical institutions
previously existing on a more modest scale. Elementary
education was not only reorganised but quickened with a
new aim — the uplifting of each human being to a higher
plane of moral and intellectual freedom. For this purpose
nearly forty training colleges were established in Prussia
alone, many of them inspired by Pestalozzi’s ideas. In
Prussia again the examen yro facultate docendi, instituted
in 1810, made the calling of secondary instruction in
Prussia an independent profession. The reform of the
leaving examination in 1812 unified the group of higher
secondary schools which prepared their pupils for the
Universities, and distinguished them from the lower
secondary schools with their humbler intellectual aims.
In a broad sense, this movement towards systematic re¬
organisation was German and not Prussian only. But
Prussia took the lead and influenced the course of
educational policy throughout all German-speaking lands.

The second period (1840 — 1870) was an era of recon¬
sideration chilled and darkened by reaction. The progress
of the Universities slackened. Speculative philosophy
and neo-humanistic philology had lost their earlier fire.
In the secondary schools, Hellenic humanism became dis¬
trusted as anti-christian in tendency. Latin was encour¬
aged at the expense of Greek. Administrators were
harking back to the ideals of the Reformation. In the
elementary schools progress was checked by a fear of the
political consequences of over-education. In 1849, at a
conference of teachers in Prussian training colleges, King

The History of Education

111

Frederick William the Fourth exclaimed : “ You, and you
alone, are to blame for all the misery which the last year
has brought upon Prussia. The pseudo-education of the
masses is to be blamed for it. You have been spreading it
under the name of true wisdom. This sham education,
strutting about like a peacock, has always been hateful to
me. I hated it from the bottom of my soul before I came
to the throne, and since I became King I have done all I
could to suppress it.” Attempts were made to restore
elementary education to an antique simplicity of reading,
writing, elementary arithmetic and strictly dogmatic reli¬
gious instruction. The training colleges for elementary
school teachers were bidden to give up their ambitions for
liberal education. But the era 1840 — 1870, though in
some respects a period of reaction, was also a period of
advance. At the Universities and in the higher technical
schools scientific studies established their position. The
secondary schools, under the influence of Wiese, began
to be diversified in their plans of study, in order to meet
the growing needs of the commercial and industrial com¬
munity; and in elementary education the ‘cutting back/
as gardeners would say, of some of the new shoots
strengthened the plant, though at the time it seemed to
maim it.

The third period, 1870 to the present time, has been one
of marvellous advance, of administrative consolidation
and of bold educational engineering. In no part of the
national life has the rise of the Empire been so vividly
reflected as in its educational achievement. The con¬
struction of the modern school system of Germany will
stand out in history as a classic example of the power of
organised knowledge in furthering the material prosperity
of a nation. The great achievements in German education
since 1870 have been the strengthening of the Universities
by the prudent munificence of the State ; the diversification
of secondary schools ; the quickening of a new spirit among
the teachers and pupils in elementary education; the

112 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

furtherance of technical education in all grades, but
always upon a basis of liberal preparatory training ; the
extension of the period of compulsory education in many
parts of Germany so as to cover the critical years of
adolescence; and (especially since 1908) the reform of
higher education for girls.

To speak of the educational system of Germany is, in
the strictest sense of the word, inaccurate. There is no
single code for the regulation of elementary schools
throughout the Empire. Attendance at continuation
schools is subject to laws which are considerably different
in various States. The provision of intermediate or higher
elementary schools is diverse according to State law. The
courses of study in higher schools show considerable
variety in different parts of Germany. There is no
uniformity in any grade of German education. No central
Education Department in Berlin controls the whole system
of German schools. German education is a federal unity.
In this lies its strength, its capacity for readjustment to
social needs. But, while able to adapt itself to local
conditions, it maintains an impressive uniformity of
intellectual standards, partly through University influ¬
ences and partly through the operation of the system of
leaving examinations, and the statutory conditions for
partial exemption from military service. It is so organised
as to secure the reciprocal recognition of educational quali¬
fications between different parts of the German Empire.
Underlying the whole of it are great intellectual pre¬
suppositions which characterise it among the educational
systems of the world. It exerts a united influence upon
the thought of other nations. The provincial varieties
which enrich and strengthen it do not weaken or obscure
the fundamental unity of the whole system.

It is especially difficult, however, to interpret the signifi¬
cance of the great changes which have taken place in the
educational system of Germany during the nineteenth
century, because we still do not know to what social order

The History of Education

113

those changes are leading. We cannot judge with
certainty the political tendencies of which they are one
expression. In Germany and elsewhere we can trace the
same movements at work: — The growth of demands for
the better and more prolonged education of the children of
the working classes; the strengthening of secular control
in educational policy ; the preparation of efficient servants
for the public administration ; developments in the educa¬
tion of girls and women which imply an almost revolu¬
tionary change in the idea of the work of women in the
activities of the modern State; a revolt against the older
forms of educational discipline; a reaction against the
over-intellectualism of the older educational tradition in
the higher secondary schools; a desire to prolong the period
of education for the whole people so as to include
the years of adolescence ; and the growing power of
the central authority in educational organisation. German
literature on school questions is as full of criticism of
the existing order as is the corresponding literature in
other countries. There are many signs of impending
change even in the great established traditions of German
education . But the grip of the existing organisation upon
the social forces of German life is indisputable. The
great fabric of its administration remains intact. Its
prestige is unshaken. And those chiefly responsible for
educational administration in Germany are distinguished
in a remarkable degree by their openness of mind, by the
well thought out precision of their reforms, and by their
skill in contriving readjustments of the old tradition to
modern needs.

II.

The crucial difference between the history of German
education and that of England during the nineteenth
century lay in the different use which the two countries
made of the powder of the State. In Germany that power
■was exercised unflinchingly, with great forethought and

H

114 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

clearness of purpose and without any serious resistance
from public opinion. In England it was used reluctantly,
with deliberate rejection of any comprehensive plan of
national reorganisation and in the teeth of opposition
which had to he conciliated at every turn. Germany
adopted without serious misgiving the principle that national
education is a function of the State; England hesitated
between two opposing theories, the theory of private (or of
group) initiative and the theory of State control. Ger¬
many worked on system; England, on compromise. Eng¬
land attempted an accommodation between two conflicting
principles; Germany committed herself to a consistent
theory of State control and acted in accordance with it.
As a result, Germany has constructed an educational
system which works with fairly simple machinery; Eng¬
land has a complicated machinery, but no well-defined
system of national education.

The causes of this difference in the development of
national education in the two countries lie in the history
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries rather than in
that of the nineteenth. The Thiry Years War in Germany
increased in each State the authority of the Government in
its control of social institutions, and therefore of educa¬
tional policy. The English Civil War, on the other hand,
left behind it an unhealed division in social ideals which
made centralisation unpopular and Governmental direc¬
tion of national education impracticable. In each German
State the foundations of a unified system of public educa¬
tion were laid during the eighteenth century. In England,
there were attempts at such unification, but each attempt
was foiled by the resistance of a large and resolute
minority. Before the close of the eighteenth century the
right of the State to determine the main lines of action in
every grade of education had become an accepted principle
of government in Germany; but in England the closing
years of the eighteenth century found the nation still
unprepared to entrust to the central government the super-

The History of Education

115

vision of tlie principles upon which the rising generation
should be trained.

It was through Scottish influence that English opinion
was gradually prepared to accept the modern form of State
intervention in educational affairs. Had it not been for
the clearly recognised merits of the public elementary
schools in Scotland, and for the influence of writers like
Adam. Smith, the reluctance of England to approve State
action in educational matters might have continued over a
much longer time. But as England and Scotland were
brought into ever closer relationship in politics and trade,
Scottish thought and experience gained greater influence
in England, and finally proved sufficient to turn the scale
in favour of State intervention. When such intervention
was at last decided upon, the English Government was
careful to avoid any appearance of State monopoly, even
in elementary education, and to work in alliance with
various organisations which represented opposing elements
in English life. The result was that the great educational
development of the nineteenth century, aided in Germany
by an uncompromising acceptance of the supreme authority
of the State, did not proceed in England, as might other¬
wise have been the case, upon the opposite principle of
free initiative combined with charitable enterprise, but
upon a mixed principle which recognised the value of
individual freedom, of philanthropic association and of
State interference, without assigning to each its own
province of effort or attempting scientifically to define it.

It was in Ireland that for political reasons the British
Government first took an active part in guiding and
subsidising educational effort. The influence of Ireland
therefore upon English educational policy has been
stronger than the great administrative and other differ¬
ences between the Irish and English systems of education
would at first lead the student to expect. The writings of
Bichard Lovell Edgeworth and his daughter; the strenuous
and far-seeing labours of Sir Thomas Wyse; the precedents

116 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

set by Government subsidy to various grades of education
in Ireland ; and (especially during the last twenty years)
the sympathy of the Irish Nationalist Party in the British
Parliament with denominational influences in English
education, have all left their mark upon English educa¬
tional policy. Much light is thrown, therefore, upon
English educational history during the nineteenth century
by a study of the educational development of Scotland and
Ireland during the same period, and also by a study of the
new movement in Welsh education, especially since the
Report of the Committee on Intermediate Education in
Wales, published in 1881.

The distinctive marks of the period 1800 — 1840 in the
history of English education were the deepening of the
spiritual life of Oxford and Cambridge ; the beginnings
of Parliamentary investigation into the expenditure of
educational endowments ; the growth of a new spirit in
the great Public Schools ; and attempts to develop elemen¬
tary education through the efforts of great societies
subsidised, from 1833 onwards, from State funds. The
chief marks of the second period, 1840 — 1870, were the
effort to modernise and develop University studies and to
improve methods of academic administration, especially
by the removal of ecclesiastical restrictions ; Parliamentary
investigation into the work of the secondary schools both
of the higher and lower grade, with resulting reforms in
their administration and curricula ; the encouragement of
technical education, especially for the artisans; the
establishment of a department of State for the supervision
of State-aided elementary schools and training colleges ;
and extending efforts for the diffusion of elementary
education throughout the country. The distinctive marks
of the third period, 1870 to the present time, have been
the recognition of elected local authorities as responsible-
agents in the administration of elementary, secondary and
technical education within their areas, and the entrusting
to them of large powers of levying rates for educational

The History of Education

117

purposes ; the establishment of the principle of compulsory
education; the further development of technological
instruction, both in its higher and more elementary forms ;
the liberal encouragement and rapid growth of educational
opportunities for girls and women ; the foundation of new
Universities and great developments in the activities of
the older Universities; signal improvements in the profes¬
sional training of teachers, the strengthening of profes¬
sional feeling and a raising of professional standards
among teachers in every grade of school; a remarkable
growth in the care for the physical condition of school
children and in the importance attached to medical
inspection and treatment as a factor in educational policy ;
and finally a steady growth in the power of the State in
the supervision and control of public education.

Thus the first period was one of educational awakening ;
the second period, one of confused growth in educational
activities, retarded through conflict between opposing
ideas of administration ; while the third period has seen the
gradual recognition of the public value of an educational
system which is systematically developed and progressive
in all its grades. The idea of the place of the State in the
organisation of public education has become more complex
during the century. At first it appeared simple; in the
second period, dangerous on account of its indefinite possi¬
bilities of expansion; in the third, it has been recognised
as inevitable, but as requiring great counterchecks in
organised public opinion, in the statutory powers of local
authorities and in the due recognition of parental prefer¬
ences with regard to the education of children.

In the first period, compulsory education, though
discussed, was definitely rejected as a method of public
policy. In the second period, experience became conclusive
that without some measure of compulsion educational
destitution could not be grappled with. In the third
period, compulsory education was adopted as an axiom of
State policy in the whole of Great Britain, and its enforce-

118 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

inent has become a commonplace of our social life. During
the nineteenth century the idea of the education which
should be given to the poorer classes of the community
has been revolutionised. The value of technical instruction,
combined with secondary and University education, as a
factor in the economic power of the State, has been slowly
but decisively admitted. The claims of religious authori¬
ties to control public education have been profoundly
modified, and have given way before a steady increase in
the authority of the central government and local elected
bodies.

III.

The salient contrasts between the history of education
in Germany and in England during the nineteenth century
show how deeply the growth of the school-system in the two
countries has been affected by differences in political and
social environment.

The great task of German statesmen during the earlier
part of the century was to build up national unity upon a
framework of intellectual organisation. In England
national unity, already in great measure secured, seemed
(in the judgment of the majority of the governing classes)
likely to be endangered rather than enhanced by any
attempt at great changes in public education.

In England the early success of industry and commerce
strengthened the prestige of individualism and discounted
proposals for increasing the administrative authority of
the State. In Germany, at a somewhat later date, the
need for an extension of German industry and commerce
into markets already occupied by competitors favoured the
idea of State action, especially in the sphere of intellectual
preparation for the scientific handling of economic
problems.

In Germany the Crown, by means of a highly organised
but inexpensive system of secondary and higher education,
drew betimes the elite of the sons of the middle class into

The History of Education

119

the ranks of the higher civil service. In England the
forces of democracy, though disorganised and ill-defined,
became politically effective earlier than in Germany and
were sufficiently strong (in combination with the distrust
of State action which was traditional in our middle class)
to prerent early steps being taken for any comprehensive
reconstruction of the system of secondary schools under
State supervision, as being of special advantage to those
whose parents were able to give them a prolonged educa¬
tion in early life.

V

The conditions of life in different parts of England were
so various that nothing but a provincial or local organisa¬
tion would have been advisable in the reform of our
education. But the absence of any complete system of
local government till 1888 left us without the necessary
basis for educational reorganisation. In Germany, however,
the structure of local government was already complete
when educational reorganisation became necessary.

The old aristocratic order in English life was suspicious
of any wide diffusion of intellectual opportunity and
distrustful of any popular education not under its own
social control. But it was not strong enough to organise
national education without the aid of the middle class or
intellectually far-seeing enough to realise the importance
of securing its co-operation in such a policy. In Germany,
in the early years of the nineteenth century, political
necessity compelled the governing classes to avail them¬
selves of the intellectual vigour of the middle class in the
work of public administration by means of a carefully
articulated and easily accessible system of secondary
schools.

There was a stronger and more widely diffused intellec¬
tual tradition in Germany than in England, a greater sense
of the national importance of the things of the mind. In
Germany there was a strong educational tradition; in
England, a variety of strong social traditions, though these
were traditions of social groups rather than that of a

120 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

unified national life. Yet there was a sharper feeling of
class distinction in Germany than in England, and these
class distinctions produced in secondary education a tacit
alliance between the upper and the middle classes which
resulted in a more effective administrative distinction
between higher and elementary education than was
consistent with the milder habit of class feeling in Eng¬
land.

Once established, the State control of education grows
by its own weight and is protected from reversal by the
vested interests which it produces and by the complexity
of its influence. Modern forms of State control are at
least three generations older in German than in English
education. They are now firmly rooted (though still im¬
perfectly developed) in English education, but it is still
too soon to measure their effects.

The present controversies as to methods of character-
training and of educational method are remarkably alike
in Germany and in England. But Germany starts with
a firm framework of administrative regulation affecting
the whole educational system from top to bottom; we in
England have no such tested fabric of administrative
tradition in educational affairs but are still divided into
more or less uncorrelated groups.

“ The German man of science,” writes Dr. Merz, “ was
a teacher. He had to communicate his ideas to younger
minds, to make the principles and methods of research
clear ... to draw out original talent in others, to
encourage co-operation in research, to portion out the
common work to the talents which surrounded him.”
These characteristics rose in great measure from the
educational conditions under which German science sprang
up. The educational system of the country affected the
methods of scientific research ; scientific research in its
turn quickly affected the educational system. There was
nothing exactly comparable to this in England. The
reorganisation of German education began from the top

The History of Education

121

with the reform of the Universities. This was followed
by the development of the higher secondary schools. The
intellectual relations of the secondary schools to the
Universities were fixed by the State. When the need for
higher technological training became manifest, and the
Universities resisted the inclusion of such training in
their courses of study, the Technical High Schools were
recognised as an alternative to the older form of Univer¬
sity organisation, but admission to the Technical High
Schools, as in the case of the Universities, was limited to
those who had passed through a prescribed course of
secondary education. This led in turn to a recognition
of the equal claims of the different types of secondary
schools. This movement prepared the way for the elabora¬
tion of special curricula for girls’ schools. In the mean¬
time the development of elementary education, and of the
training colleges for elementary school teachers, was
separate and independent, and, from the point of view of
the national life as a whole, was balanced by the careful
development of secondary and higher education. Finally,
as a development of elementary education, steps were
taken to organise an elaborate system of continuation
classes, attendance at which is in many districts compul¬
sory for those who do not attend secondary schools.

In England, however, the order of events has been very
different. The State left the Universities in control of
the conditions on which matriculation to them should be
allowed. It hardly interfered at all with the autonomy
of the higher secondary schools. It did not begin by
organising education from the top or as a whole. Till
late in the nineteenth century it gave no grants in aid
of secondary education. The differentiation of the
secondary schools went forward in a haphazard way. The
new Universities and University Colleges were a com¬
bination of Universities of the Scottish type and of
technical high schools. Apart from this, technical educa¬
tion was developed in the form of evening classes which

122 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

were hut rarely associated with classes for day work of a
more advanced type. The result was that secondary educa¬
tion was much less widely diffused in England than in
Germany among the classes which were chiefly concerned
with industry and commerce, and the scientific side of
general education was less systematically provided for.
This irregular growth of English education in modern
times resulted in the scientific hahit of mind being less
general in our industry and commerce than in the German.

But English conditions have favoured the autonomy of
the secondary schools and have produced in the best cases a
fine type of corporate life. They allowed an early and
rapid extension of public schools and colleges for girls
in response to the demand for wider intellectual oppor¬
tunity for women. They have encouraged self -training
and have rewarded diligence in evening study. They
have been the outcome of a policy which has imposed little
restraint upon individual freedom whether in political
action or in the expression of opinion. They have pro¬
moted individual initiative and the initiative of groups.
And they have fostered independence of judgment and
variety of intellectual outlook among the more vigorous
minds of the community.

IV.

From the time of the Reformation English educational
ideas and policy have at intervals been strongly influenced
by German thought and by the results of action taken by
various German governments for the improvement and
regulation of schools and universities. To Luther and
Melancthon, to the Pietists and the Moravians, to Fichte
and Wilhelm von Humboldt we can trace in succession a
considerable number of the movements which, during the
last three centuries and a half, have produced great
changes in English education. In the earlier part of the
nineteenth century a great wave of German influence came
into English educational thought through S. T. Coleridge,

The History of Education

123

who, in 1830, in his essay On the Constitution of Church
and State according to the Idea of Each, echoed the teach¬
ing1 of Fichte and maintained that the aim of statesmen
should be ‘ to form and train up the people of the country
to obedient, free, useful and organisable subjects, citizens
and patriots, living to the benefit of the State and prepared
to die in its defence.’ Thomas Carlyle did even more than
Coleridge to familiarise the English public with German
ideas of State-organised education, especially in Past and
Present (1843) and in Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850). At
an earlier time, throughout the great speeches on educa¬
tion made in Parliament by Brougham, Roebuck and others
during the years 1833-35, German precedent for compul¬
sory education was quoted as a proof of the practicability
of making elementary instruction obligatory by law. But
it was through the Prince Consort that enlightened German
ideas as to the action of the State in public education were
most widely extended in political and official circles in
England. During the twenty-one years of his residence in
England, Prince Albert succeeded, with the help of Lyon
Playfair and others, in developing the State Department
of Art and Science and in promoting wise extensions of
State activity in elementary and technical education.

The success of the Prussian army in the war with
Austria in 1866 drew attenton to the military value of the
intelligence and discipline which had been diffused
throughout the German people by the elaborate organisa¬
tion of State-aided schools. The impression thus produced
upon the public mind was one factor which led to the
carrying of the Elementary Education Act in 1870 and
to the subsequent adoption in 1876 of the principle of
compulsory education.

Of all recent English writers, Matthew Arnold was the
most successful in drawing the attention of responsible
English administrators to the importance of German
methods of educational organisation. He popularised the
idea of State-aided secondarv education. He showed that

124 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

a study of German achievements in the sphere of educa¬
tional policy was indispensable to British statesmen. His
reports are classical. And they were the forerunners of
a long series by other hands. It would be just to say
that he slurred over the great political difficulties which
would at once confront any statesman who attempted to
set up in England the administrative machinery of
German education . He said with very little qualification
what may be said in praise of the German system, and
with as little qualification what may be said in dispraise
of the English. But he impressed upon his fellow-country¬
men a higher ideal of what the State may aim at in the
diffusion of culture, and, directly or indirectly, the more
recent trend of English policy in higher and secondary
education is due in considerable measure to the influence
of what he wrote.

Of all foreign influences upon English educational
thought during the last forty years the German has been,
with the exception of the American, the most formative
and penetrating. It has touched every grade of our
education from the Kindergarten to the University. To
Froebel and his followers has been mainly due the more
gentle and spontaneous training of little children. The
official definition of the purpose of the public elementary
school, now printed in the code of the English Board of
Education, bears the impress of the ideas of Fichte and
of Herbart. School hygiene and the medical inspection
of school children owe much to German precedent and
research. Many of the improvements in the methods of
teaching modern languages may be traced to the work of
Professor Vietor of Marburg and his associates. The new
conception of the continuation school, at once technical and
humane, organised in direct relation to industry but with
a broad civic purpose, has been mainly derived from
German sources, and especially from the work of Dr.
Kerschensteiner of Munich. Kor will any historian of
English education during the nineteenth century fail to

The History of Education

125

record the far-reacliing influence of many of our citizens
(men and women) of German birth and stock, who furthered
the progress of new educational ideas and institutions in
their own districts or in the nation at large. Every educa¬
tional student in England owes a debt to what he lias learnt
from German writings and from German example. Berlin,
Jena, Marburg, Erankfort-on-Main and Munich have
each, in a remarkable degree, influenced the recent educa¬
tional thought of this country.

In three respects German influence has been especially
strong in English education during the last seventy years.
It has supported the idea that the State should bear an
effective part in the regulation of all grades of national
education. It has stimulated in the highest degree the
scientific study of the philosophy of education and of
methods of teaching. And it has helped in securing a
more general acceptance of the view that the State can
increase the economic welfare of the nation by the system¬
atic encouragement of liberal and technical education and
of systematic scientific research.

Y.

In the educational policy of a nation are focussed its
spiritual aspirations, its philosophic ideals, its economic
ambitions, its military purpose, its social conflicts. For a
German or for an Englishman to speak of his own country’s
educational aims is to speak of its inner life, of its inti¬
mate ideals, of its hopes and fears, of its weakness as well
as of its strength. To attempt even this is no easy task,
but to speak of another country's educational system from
the standpoint of a foreign observer is to hazard more and
to risk misunderstanding, whether by lack of sympathy
and insight in criticism or by want of discrimination in
praise.

The educational systems of Great Britain and Germany
spring from and are governed by closely related ideas of
life and duty. They are far more closely akin to one

126 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

another than is either of them to the present educational
system of France, for certain distinctive characteristics of
which each has a strong admiration. But during a great
part of the last century the British and the German
systems have traced almost opposite curves in the
history of their growth. They have been like two
pendulums, swinging from the same centre and with a
common beat but moving always in opposite directions,
meeting at intervals in momentary unison, but only to
separate again in the rhythm of their course.

Just as German educational ideas have influenced
English, so (though less conspicuously) have English
educational ideas influenced German. And, wdien allow¬
ance is made for deep-seated differences in administrative
control, many of the present problems in German education
are singularly like those which confront us in England.
Each country is under the influence of those movements of
thought and feeling which pass with increasing rapidity
from one nation to another and affect simultaneously the
whole of Western Europe. In Germany, as in England,
social unrest has given a new turn to educational thought.
There, as here, the development of the physical powers
of children occupies an ever larger share of the educational
administrator’s thoughts. And it is partly due to the study
of English education that in Germany more is heard than
heretofore of the importance of strengthening the corporate
life of the schools, not least through the responsibilities of
self-government among the pupils and through the
discipline of school games and of other practical activities.
Closer attention is being paid to the problem of the
formation of character as the fundamental purpose of
education. The value of boarding schools in healthy
country places (especially for boys and girls of nervous
temperament and of delicate physique) is becoming more
generally admitted. And the educational value of artistic
influences is receiving wider, though not always discreet,
recognition.

The History of Education

127

The primary forces in German education are an intense
belief in the power of training and of imparted ideas to
develop, enlighten and humanise both mind and character;
and a belief, not less intense, in the supreme merit of
inner freedom of mind, to be attained only by painful
discipline but compatible with narrow means and even
with physical restraints and disability. The secondary
causes which have had their part in giving German
education its administrative development and its prevail¬
ing habit of thought (not always, it may be conjectured,
to the permanent benefit of the community) are the
political need for a highly developed State organisation,
military in some essential parts of its structure and
authoritative in its control over social and industrial
developments; and the fact that Germany has had no
self-governing colonies whose political influence has
reacted on the methods of government at home, and no
widely extended foreign dependencies which have attracted
the adventurous or intractable, while permitting them to
retain their civic connection with the mother country.

Within recent years the personal relationships between
many British and German teachers, and between many
British and German administrators, have become much
more intimate than was formerly the case. The value of
this intimacy is very great. It leads to a fuller under¬
standing, on both sides, of educational conditions which,
judged from an external standpoint only, are inevitably
misunderstood. It permits the constant interchange of
experience. It gives insight to criticism, and discrimina¬
tion to praise. German and British education have much
to gain from a closer understanding. But both are deeply
rooted in history, and some of the finest qualities of the one
cannot be superadded to the finest qualities of the other.

VI. — THE HISTORY OF THEOLOGY

BY

A. S. PEAKE, D.D.

i

THE HISTORY OF THEOLOGY.1

The task of attempting to cover in so brief a space the
whole field of German theology during the nineteenth
century, would be so impracticable, that I have limited
myself to Systematic Theology and Biblical Criticism.
Even with this restriction, the field is so wide that I am
glad to be able to refer for the the background to Prof.
Herford’s lecture, and also to be exonerated from the duty
of touching on the development of philosophy, which its
intimate connexion with theology would otherwise have
necessitated. It has been inevitable that many names,
which would have deserved attention in a record with any
pretence to completeness, should here be passed over in
silence or simply accorded the barest mention. It has
seemed to me desirable to restrict mvself for the
most part to the outstanding names, and deal with these
with a fulness which I trust will not seem dispropor¬
tionate.2 Ho apology will be needed for the omission of

1. I have to thank my colleague, Dr. Robert Mackintosh, for his
kindness in reading the text of the lecture and making several sugges¬
tions to me. He is not to be held responsible for any of the opinions
expressed, and is probably not always in agreement with them. But I
have been glad to benefit by his expert knowledge, especially in the
section on Ritschl.

2. Good bibliographies on the outstanding figures are to be found in
Herzog-Hauck’s Realencyclopcedie fur Protestantische Theologie und
Kirche; the two supplementary volumes (1913) should not be overlooked.
The New S chaff -Herzog Encyclopaedia may be recommended for this
purpose to those who have not access to Herzog-Hauck. I add here a
brief bibliography of works that cover the whole or a large part of the
field, reserving the literature on individual theologians or movements
till I come to speak of them in the course of the lecture. Where
English translations are available I have referred to these in preference
to the originals. I have not thought it necessary to insert lengthy lists
of the writings of the theologians or critics with whom I deal, nor do I
repeat with reference to them the books which treat of the subject as

132 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

German theologians of the Homan communion, nor do I
need to explain that this is due to no depreciation of their
great contributions to theological scholarship, but to the
fact that their theology does not possess a nationalist
character.

When Sclileiermacher 2a died in 1834, Neander said to
his students, “ We have lost a man from whom will be
dated henceforth a new era in the history of theology.”
Time has justified this verdict from the lips of a scholar
who, alike as Schleiermachers pupil and colleague and as a
master of Church History, was exceptionally well-qualified
to pronounce it. Among all the theologians of the
nineteenth century he was, it can hardly be questioned, the
most influential, the one to whom the epithet epoch-making
can most fitly be assigned. The publication of his famous
“ Speeches on Religion to the Cultured among those who

a whole. Lichtenberger, History of German Theology in the Nineteenth
Century (1889) ; Pfleiderer, The Development of Theology in Germany
since Kant, and its Progress in Britain since 1825 (1890) ; Dorner,
History of Protestant Theology, vol. ii (1871) ; Frank, Geschichte und
Kritih der neueren Theologie (1898) ; W. Adams Brown, The Essence of
Christianity (1903) ; Oman, The Problem of Faith and Freedom in the
Last Two Centuries (1906) , E. C. Moore, An Outline of the History of
Christian Thought since Kant (1912) ; Kattenbusch, Von Schleiermacher
zu Ritschl (1892). The relevant articles in the Encyclopaedia Britannica,
in Herzog-Hauck, and in the New Schaff -Herzog Encyclopaedia may be
consulted. The last gives a summary of the German articles in Herzog -
Hauck. On the earlier period, A. M. Fairbairn, The Place of Christ
in Modern Theology (1893) ; Matheson, Aids to the Study of German
Theology (1874) : V. F. Storr, The Development of English Theology
in the Nineteenth Century, 1800 — 1860 (1913) ; Baur, Kirchengeschichte
des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (1877) ; Baur, V orlesungen uber die
christliche Dogmengeschichte, vol. iii, (1867); Schweitzer, Von Reimarus
zu Wrede (1906), Eng. trans. The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1910) ;
Geschichte der paulin. F orschung (1911) ; Eng. trans. Paul and his
Interpreters (1912).

2a. For Schleiermacher, see Dilthey, Schleiermacher' s Leben (1870)
(the first volume only was published, which is very unfortunate in view
of its excellence) ; Aus Schleiermacher’ s Leben in B'nefen (1850), Eng.

The History of Theology 133

Disdain it,” 3 fell just outside our limits, since it was
given to the world in 1799. But it would probably be no
exaggeration to say that, beyond any book since published,
it has moulded and stimulated men’s thoughts on religion.
It is with this book that our story must begin. Many
influences had gone to its making. Its author was the son
of an orthodox and pious military chaplain belonging to
the Reformed Church. He was educated by the
Moravians, within the rather narrow limits permitted in
their community. Here he gained an insight he never
lost into the essential quality of religion, though as he
advanced in independence of judgment, he foimd its
coveted experiences artificial and its intellectual limita¬
tions intolerable.4 He came under the influence of Plato,
and his interpretation of Plato’s philosophy and translation
of his works greatly contributed to the deeper and truer
appreciation of Platonism in Germany. Among modern

trans. by Frederica Rowan. The Life of Schleiermacher as Unfolded in
his Autobiography and Letters (1860). The literature on Schleiermacher
in German is very extensive ; in English there is comparatively little,
special mention may be made of Schleiermacher : a Critical and
Historical Study , by W. B. Selbie (1913), and Schleiermacher , Personal
and Speculative , by R. Munro (1903). Of the German works the
following may be named : Strauss, Charakteristiken und Kritiken (1839) ;
Schaller, V orlesungen iiber Schleiermacher (1844) ; Fischer, Schleier-
maclier (1899). For literature on the “Reden iiber die Religion” see
the next note, and for “ Die christliche Glaube,” see below, p. 138.

3. Reden iiber die Religion an die Gebildeten unter ihren V erachtern ;
Eng. trans. by J. Oman, On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers
(1893). See A. Ritschl, Schleiermacher' s Reden iiber die Religion , und
Hire N achwirkungen auf die evangelische Kirche Deutschlands (1874) ;
O. Ritschl, Schleiermacher' s Stellung zum Christentum in seinen Reden
iiber die Religion (1888). On Lipsius’ article and Piinjer’s critical
edition, see below, p. 137.

4. For Schleiermacher’s relations with his father and the Moravians
and his religious struggles, see especially the letters which passed
between Schleiermacher and his father, The Life of Schleiermacher as
unfolded in his Autobiography and Letters , vol. i, pp. 46 — 69, and the
fragment of autobiography prefixed to the letters, pp. 5 — 12.

134 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

philosophers he was specially impressed by Spinoza and
Kant and to some extent by Schelling. He was one of
the most widely cultured men of his time, and his close
relations with the Romantic Movement and its leaders
gave him an insight into the type of mind to which the
Speeches are specially addressed. Yet while he drew from
many sources he was not mastered by them. His own
personality remained dominant and fused the material
they offered him into a new and independent system. He
was many-sided beyond most of his contemporaries, a
philosopher of great depth and originality, but still more
significant in the realm of theology, an accomplished
humanist, a magnetic orator, who stood in the line of
Germany’s greatest preachers, an ecclesiastical statesman
of lofty principles and rare courage. Much of his
influence was due to the fact that in his widely cultured
and sympathetic personality the best tendencies and
characteristics of his age found their completest incarna¬
tion.

The “ Speeches on Religion ” were not actually
delivered. They were specially designed for those who
from the standpoint of culture looked down on religion
as a superannuated absurdity. There was indeed some
excuse for this supercilious attitude. Religion was
represented mainly by tw'o types ; an arid orthodoxy was
confronted by an equally arid rationalism. In their
conception of religion there was nothing in principle to
choose between them. Both sides found the essence of
religion in a series of intellectual propositions. The
dogmas held were entirely different in the two cases. The
orthodox laid special stress on the doctrines which were
peculiar to Christianity. These the rationalists tended to
set aside, emphasizing in their stead the principles of
Natural Religion as they understood it, such doctrines as
they imagined the unsophisticated intellect left to itself
would spontaneously generate. The Pietists had a deeper
and truer sense of what religion was, yet they had not

135

The History of Theology

broken away from tlie idea that the current orthodoxy
must be accepted. Dogma was for them also an integral
element in religion.

The distinction between theology and religion had of
course been drawn by earlier thinkers; but Schleiermacher
has the distinction of having carried it out much more
systematically and thoroughly. With his Moravian
experience behind him he found the essence of religion in
feeling. In his great work “ The Christian Faith," he
described it more specifically as a feeling of absolute
dependence, a description which drew from Hegel the
sneer, barbed by personal dislike as well as intellectual
disagreement, that on this showing the dog should be the
most religious of beings since it exhibited the feeling of
absolute dependence in the fullest degree.5 It need
hardly be said that Schleiermacher was not really open
to the charge of defining religion so crudely as to justify
such a taunt. When we are dealing with a great
religious genius like Schleiermacher, perhaps the greatest
figure in this realm since the Reformation, and one whose
impact upon the development of theology has in all that
period been unsurpassed, we may regard it as incredible
that he should have intended anything which could have
been adequately characterised in so cheap a gibe. He
meant something much higher than some pure gush of
emotion without any intellectual element or influence

5. Schleiermacher and Hegel were colleagues in the University of
Berlin for thirteen years. The former was Professor there from the
foundation of the University in 1810 to his death in 1834, Hegel from
1818 to 1831. Their relations were not cordial, and there was an element
of wilfulness in the estimate formed of each other’s position. Compari¬
sons between the two systems may be seen in Baur’s Die christliche
Gnosis (1835), pp. 668 — 671 (this, it should be remembered, follows an
exposition of Schleiermacher’s dogmatics, and introduces that of Hegel’s
philosophy of religion), Kirchengeschichte, 2nd ed., pp. 368 — 376;
Dogmengeschichte , iii, 349 — 353; Fairbairn, Christ in Modern Theology,
pp. 226 — 229; Kattenbusch, Yon Schleiermacher zu Ritschl , 1st ed.,
pp. 27 — 35 ; Oman, The Problem of Faith and Freedom , pp. 242 — 255.

136 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

upon tlie will or the conduct. Finite and isolated selves
as we are, an experience is possible to us in which we
transcend these limitations and know ourselves to be one
with the universe. For the individual is at root one with
the universal life, the cosmic energy finds its point of
manifestation in the individual consciousness, the life
which throbs in the All pulsates also in the One. And
when there comes to any finite spirit this sense of the All
in the One and the One in the All, in that ecstatic moment,
that flash of illumination, religion is born. The core of
the religious experience is thus emotional, but it is
emotion at its highest, created by this intuition of unity
and emancipating the individual from the finite by
making it one with the Infinite life.

Although Schleiermacher would not admit that the
charge of pantheism urged against him was correct, and
the point has been a good deal debated, the conception of
the universe involved in this representation of religion is
probably pantheistic. He seems to have lost and never to
have regained a clear, strong hold upon the personality of
God. His oft-quoted panegyric on Spinoza 6 is eloquent
of his affinities, though, as Strauss pointed out, it describes
a Spinoza with a likeness to Schleiermacher which the real
Spinoza did not exhibit.7 It is a question, however, which
deserves some attention whether he moved towards a more
definitely Christian position than that held by him when
he wrote the Speeches. Some have charged him with

6. “ Offer with me reverently a tribute to the manes of the holy,
rejected Spinoza. The high World-Spirit pervaded him; the Infinite
was his being and his end ; the Universe was his only and his everlasting
love. In holy innocence and in deep humility he beheld himself mirrored
in the eternal world, and perceived how he also was its most worthy
mirror. He was full of religion, full of the Holy Spirit. Wherefore
he stands there alone and unequalled ; master in his art, yet without
disciples and without citizenship, sublime above the profane tribe ”
(Eng. trans., p. 40).

7. Strauss, Charakteristiken und Kritihen , p. 25, a judgment endorsed
by Baur, Kirchengeschichte , p. 99.

The History of Theology

137

growing narrower and more timid with the lapse of time,
of abandoning his early pantheism for a more definitely
Christian view. It is no doubt the case that there is a
marked difference between the first edition of the Speeches
and his great dogmatic treatise. Changes were made in
the successive editions of the Speeches, and Schleiermacher
appended a series of explanations to them, designed to
bring out the substantial agreement in content, with full
acknowledgment of the difference in form, between his
earlier and his later views.8 We must not forget that the
Speeches were intended for a special class of readers, and
that Schleiermacher had to plead the cause of religion
with those who held it in scorn, and therefore was limited
by the very conditions of his enterprise to such arguments
as would impress them, and was unable to utter his full
mind. We may accept with some confidence the conclu¬
sion that the movement of thought was not so great as
some have asserted.

The religious intuition, which Schleiermacher depicts
in language of youthful and at times almost dithyrambic
eloquence, was of course an individual experience, the
fulness of which no words could adequately describe. It

8. See what he says on this in the Explanations to the Second Speech :
“ For understanding my whole view I could desire nothing better than
that my readers should compare these Speeches with my Christliche
Glaubenslehre. In form they are very different and their points of
departure lie far apai’t, yet in matter they are quite parallel. But to
provide the Speeches for this purpose with a complete Commentary was
impossible, and I must content myself with single references to such
passages as seem to me capable of appearing contrary or at least of lacking
agreement ” (Eng. trans., p. 105). In an important article ( J ahrbiicher
fur protestantische Theolocjie , 1875) Lipsius instituted a careful com¬
parison between the different editions. Piinjer published a critical
edition in 1879, which gave the first edition in the text and the variations
of the later editions in the Apparatus. The Explanations were inserted,
it should be added, in the third edition, which was published in 1821. A
convenient discussion of the question raised is given by W. Adams
Brown, The Essence of Christianity, pp. 158 — 160 ; a fuller examination
may be found in the Introduction to the English translation.

138 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

was immediate and personal, not drawn from any external
institution nor imposed by any external authority. Yet
it is one of Schleiermacher’s conspicuous merits that this
individualist conception of religion did not lead him to
undervalue its social side. The experience constitutes
a bond of union, and those of the same time tend inevit¬
ably to combine in societies. The different types of
religion find expression in Founders who gather about
them those who respond to their message, whose experience
is answered in their own, and thus religions are born.
The Natural Religion, of which the rationalists talked,
was a mere artificial abstraction, which had never found
any true realisation, inasmuch as genuine religion has
never existed outside these communities. If we are to
understand the real significance of religion we must
renounce the hope that any flight of speculation will
reach it. It will yield its secret only to those who are
prepared for a patient historical investigation into the
forms which it has created. Of these there are many,
none without worth, but Christianity is supreme. It is
not to be reduced to a mere republication of Natural
Religion. . The elimination of its specific characteristics
in the interest of giving it a more universal quality would
rob it of what was most precious.

His system of theology was expounded in his great work
“ The Christian Faith/’ 9 In spite of Hitachi* s deprecia-

9. Der christliche Glaube nach der Grundsatzen der evangelischen
Kirche im Zusarnmenhang dargestellt. The first edition was published
in 1821. The second (1830-31) was considerably altered. The later
editions published since Schleiermacher’s death are reprints of the
second. My edition is the fourth (1842-43), and occupies the third and
fourth volumes of the Collected Works. It is not very creditable that
no English translation exists ; but the lack of it has been largely supplied
by the admirable analysis published by G. Cross under the title The
Theology of Schleiermacher (1911). Special studies are devoted to it
by Rosenkranz, Kritik der Schleiernvacherschen Glaubenslehre (1836),
and Clemen, Schleiermacher’s Glaubenslehre (1906). On Baur’s Die
christliche Gnosis , see p. 135

The History of Theology

139

tory estimate 10 we may rightly accord it an epoch-making
character in the history of theology. It may be, and
probably is, quite true that the system it expounds existed
as a unity and in its entirety in no other mind than that of
its author. But its influence, direct or indirect, on the
whole subsequent development of German theology, not to
speak of all that it has meant to the study of the subject in
other lands, can scarcely be overrated. In the strict sense
of the term we ought not to speak of a school of
Schleiermacher. But the three main types of theology
which lay between him and Bits chi all bore the marks of
his influence ; and Bitschl himself, in spite of his cool and
critical attitude, owed much to him. Into the details of
his system it is obviously impossible for me to go, but
some of the more significant features must be briefly
indicated. I place first its conception of religion. This
is defined not simply as feeling, but as feeling of absolute
dependence. As in the “ Speeches,” the standpoint is
pantheistic, though less noticeably so ; and this comes
to expression in the definition of religion which has no
reference to fellowship, kernel of the religious experience
though it surely is. Yet the emphasis on feeling is one of
Schleiermacher s imperishable claims on our gratitude.
In another respect his work marked a great advance. The
source of theology he found in the Christian consciousness.
Its material could not be derived from any external
authority, accepted without question and untested by
appeal to experience. With the protest of the rationalists
against such uncritical acquiescence he was in full
sympathy. But he entirely repudiated the indifference
to history which was blind to the differentia of Christianity,
and counted any religion valuable only in so far as it
propounded dogmas common to all rational religions alike.
Schleiermacher’ s historical sense was too keen to allow

10. In the first volume of his Justification and Reconciliation,
chap, ix, and of course elsewhere.

140 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

such an attitude. Christianity was precious in virtue of
what was peculiar to it. When it was compared with
other religions, the important fact at once emerged that it
accorded a unique place and significance to its Founder.
He did not simply communicate a doctrine which could
then he propagated in independence of him. He was
Himself an integral element in the religion. The witness
of the Christian consciousness accorded to Christ a central
place. In thus making theology Christo-centric he proved
once more a pioneer, whom many followed in the path he
had opened up. It is a striking fact that Schleiermacher
was the first theologian to give a definition of Christianity
in which explicit mention was made of its Founder. His
definition is as follows : “ Christianity is a monotheistic
form of faith which belongs to the teleological type of
piety, and is essentially distinguished from others of its
class by this, that everything in it is referred to the
redemption accomplished by Jesus of Nazareth.” He
drew his conception of Jesus especially from the Fourth
Gospel, which seemed to him to present a more authentic
and adequate portrait than that given by the Synoptists.
This predilection for John, which was not surprising in
a theologian so sympathetic with Platonism, was charac¬
teristic of the theologians who stood specially under his
influence. On the physical miracles he was disposed to
lay but little stress, but he emphasises the moral miracle
all the more, affirming not merely the actual sinlessness,
but the impeccability of Christ. He lived within the
limits of human life, yet He was the archetypal man, in
whom the ideal of humanity was realised. What He is we
learn from what He does. He makes us sure of God, since
He knows no shadow of misgiving. He frees us from the
thraldom of sin, and therefore can never have been
defeated by it. Himself unstained by sin, He participates
through His fellowship with our sinful race in those evils
which justly affect us, but from which He might have
claimed to be immune, and He mediates the blessings He

The History of Theology

141

bestows through the society He has founded, of which He
is the head. It may be regarded as somewhat surprising
that Schleiermacher’s theology should have been so
Christian as it was. Another point that deserves to be
made prominent is the emphasis which he laid upon the
religious community. This is all the more noteworthy
that his idea of religion was in some respects so subjective.
It is so personal an experience to him that one might have
expected him to be the prophet of an atomistic
individualism. His attitude here was one of the features
in his theology that Bitschl found most congenial. It was
in the Christian consciousness I have said that he found
the source of theology, but this consciousness was collective
rather than merely individual. Only within the society
could the individual attain his true development.

In another respect he introduced a new era, that is, in
his presentation of theology as an organic whole. It had
been customary under the influence of Melanchthon’s
“ Loci,” to treat theology as a series of strung-together
doctrines without inner connexion or dominating principle.
With Schleiermacher theology became a system indeed,
a close-knit organic unity radiating from a single centre.
His great treatise witnessed to its author’s exceptional
architectonic gift; but this had already been exhibited in
the sketch he had given of theological study.11 Its quality
is such as to draw from Eitschl a more whole-hearted
praise than he will give to his dogmatic masterpiece. He
refuses to accept the view that Schleiermacher marked an
epoch as a pattern of theology which was fruitful in its
results, but epoch-making he was as a theological legis¬
lator. No doubt Hits chi’s estimates of Schleiermacher
require to be received with caution. But without assent¬
ing to his depreciatory judgment of features in the system

11. Kurze Darstellung des theologischen Stadiums (1811) ; Eng. trans.
by W. Farrer under the title Brief Outline of the St-udy of Theology
(1850) ; this contains Liicke’s Reminiscences of Schleiermacher.

142 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

itself, which he had a congenital incapacity to appreciate,
we must grant that he is a very competent judge whether
what gives itself out to he a system is a system or not.

If then, before we part with Schleiermacher, we try in a
few words to sum up our impression of the contribution
he made, the following points perhaps most deserve
recognition. He made an end of the prevalent confusion
between religion and dogma, and the less pernicious it
may be, but no less mistaken identification of religion
with morality. Not indeed that to the author of the first
scientific sketch of theological study doctrine could have
been a matter of indifference, nor yet morality to one so
preoccupied as he was with ethics. But he was concerned,
as one wdio understood religion, to vindicate its independ¬
ence and paint it in all its entrancing loveliness. As one
who had drunk deep of its ecstasy and found in it life's
most perfect bliss, he could not have reduced it to conduct,
whether touched or untouched by emotion, nor imagined
it to be exhausted in a creed. The magic by which it
transfigures our common life he expresses in a noble
metaphor. ‘‘A man's special calling,” he says, “is the
melody of his life, and it remains a simple, meagre series
of notes unless religion, with its endlessly rich variety,
accompany it with all notes, and raise the simple song to a
full-voiced glorious harmony.” He planned the lines on
■which the wdiole domain of theology should be laid out and
made of it a thoroughly organised science, mapped out in
bold, clear outline. In the field of Systematic Theology
his great treatise constitutes a classic, apart from which
the later movement of theology cannot be understood. He
banished the disregard of history which had characterised
the rationalist conception of religion and its undue stress
on ideas, and made the Person of the Redeemer and His
work central in theology. On the other hand, his relation
to Scripture and traditional dogmatics was much
more free than that of the orthodox. Yet his ambiguous

143

The History of Theology

attitude towards the personality of God 12 and personal
immortality,13 due alike to his pantheistic tendency,
gravely limit his claim to he considered as an exponent
of Christianity in the full sense of the term. And for all
his sense of the value to be attached to history he lost not
a little through his failure rightly to appreciate the
significance of the Old Testament for the New, or to see
how indispensable to Christianity was the religion out
of which it grew.

Schleiermacher had insisted, I have said, on the
connexion of religion with history. He had set a

t/

historical figure in the centre of his theology. But in
doing so he had inevitably raised the question, What can

12. On this, -see the Second Speech, pp. 92—99, with the Explanations
pp. 1 1.5 f. Zeller published an article on “ Schleiermacher’s Doctrine of
the Personality of God ’ ( Theol . Jahrb., 1842), which Baur judged to be
so exhaustive that he thought it unnecessary in his Kir cheng eschichte to
do more than summarise his main results. He adds his own judgment,
however, to the effect that Schleiermacher cannot be acquitted of
sophistry and diplomacy, and indeed that one cannot suppress the
thought of an intentional deception. Zeller himself edited the volume,
and added an interesting note explaining that he felt unable to alter the
passage, since it was significant for Baur’s own standpoint. He could
not imagine it to be possible that a thinker so acute as Schleiermacher
should have concealed from himself the patent contradiction between
his own and the ecclesiastical dogma (pp. 213 — 216).

13. See the Second Speech, pp. 99 — 101 with the Explanations,
pp. 117f. Where the emphasis for Schleiermacher lay may be seen from
the closing sentences of the Second Speech : “ It is not the immortality
that is outside of time, behind it, or rather after it, and which still is in
time. It is the immortality which we can now have in this temporal life ;
it is the problem in the solution of which we are for ever to be engaged.
In the midst of finitude to be one with the Infinite and in every moment
to be eternal, is the immortality of religion.” See also the letters that
passed between him and Henrietta von Willich after the death of her
husband in 1807 ( Life of Schleiermacher as Unfolded in his Auto¬
biography and Letters , vol. ii, pp. 77 — 82). Martineau discusses
Schleiermacher’s doctrine of immortality, with special reference to these
letters in A Study of Religion, vol. ii, 355 — 360 (1st ed.). Schleiermacher
subsequently married Henrietta von Willich.

144 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

we know of this personality and will our knowledge justify
us in granting Him a significance so momentous ? Where
history is admitted, criticism will not be denied. The
deist and the rationalist saw in Christianity, so far as it
was true, a republication of the truths of Natural Religion,
independent, for their validity or acceptance, of the
opinion entertained concerning the Founder. For the
orthodox the question did not arise, it was settled by
Scripture and the authoritative Symbols of the Church.
But if Natural Religion was a fiction and Christianity was
a Christo-centric religion, then the question, What think
ye of Christ ? could not be evaded ; while if Scripture and
the Confessions were no longer binding what justification
could be given for claims so exceptional made for Jesus of
Nazareth? Schleiermacher found what he needed in the
Fourth Gospel; but Bretschneider’s “ Probabilia ” 14 had
been published in 1820, a year before Schleiermacher’ s
theological masterpiece, the forerunner of a criticism
which has made his position increasingly difficult to hold.
His preference for the Fourth Gospel as containing the
most authentic portrait of Jesus was determined by
dogmatic considerations and not securely based in objective
criticism. The year which followed his death was to see
the publication of a work in which criticism of the most
drastic order was applied to the Gospel history. More¬
over, from another side an influence of great importance
was profoundly affecting theology; I mean the influence
of philosophy, and in particular of Hegelianism. It need
of course hardly be said that, all along, the development
of theology had been deeply influenced by the parallel
movement in philosophy. Schleiermacher himself was
scarcely less eminent in one than in the other, and Plato,
Spinoza, and contemporary philosophers, from Kant
onwards, had found in him a diligent if discriminating
student. Strauss, in fact, says, “ None of the leading

14. Probabilia de evangelii et epistolarum Joannis apostoli indole et
origine.

The History of Theology

145

propositions of the first part of Schleiermacher’s
‘ Glaubenslehre ’ can be fully understood save as they are
re-translated into the formulae of Spinoza, from which they
were originally taken.” 15 For the philosophy of Hegel,
however, which was destined to have the most momentous
influence on theology, he had little sympathy, and Hegel
repaid him in kind. Mutual antipathy accentuated the
differences in point of view and prevented them from
realising such affinity as there was between them. I
cannot of course trespass in this lecture on the adjoining
field, but this reminder at least is necessary before I begin
to speak of Strauss and the Tubingen School. When
Strauss published his “Life of Jesus” it was commonly
considered to be an application of Hegelianism to the
Gospel history and the figure of Jesus.16 But F. C. Baur
points out that we must recognise over and above this a
critical tendency which was not necessarily, and indeed
had not been, associated with that philosophy.17

Strauss 18 had been a pupil of Baur at Blaubeuren in
his youth, and he had listened to lectures by Schleier-

15. Charakteristiken und Kritihen, p. 166.

16. Strauss expressed his own views on Hegel’s relation, first to
theological criticism, then to the Gospel history, in his Streitschriften »
Drittes Heft, pp. 17 — 94 ; the section dealing with the Gospel history
contains a catena of important quotations from Hegel, with comments by
the author. In the earlier part Strauss gives a noteworthy statement
as to the way in which he came to write the Life of Jesus.

17. Kir cheng cschichte, p. 380; Dogmengeschichte, p. 356. Cf. what
Strauss himself says as to Hegel’s own attitude to historical criticism
(“ Hegel was personally no friend of historical criticism ”) and the
relation of the system to it, Streitschriften, pp. 61 f.

18. On Strauss, see Zeller, D. Fr. Strauss in seinem Lehen und
seinen Schriften (1874) ; Hausrath, D. F. Strauss und die Theologie
seiner Zeit (1876-78); Ziegler, David Friedrich Strauss (198). On the
Leben Jesu of 1835 Schweitzer gives a list of sixty works issued
during the next few years in Anhang I of his Von Reimarus zu Wrecle.
It is not reproduced in the English translation, but ample information
is given in chap. ix. Schweitzer’s own discussions are of particular
interest.

146 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

maclier at Berlin. But Hegel, to hear whom he had
journeyed to Berlin, had been removed by sudden death
in 1831. The philosopher’s teaching, however, had deeply
influenced the young student, and thus he was brought
to the problem of Christology. Too candid to leave the
crucial issues in the ambiguous twilight in which it might
be felt that Schleiermacher had left them, too courageous
to shrink from any conclusions because they might prove
unwelcome to himself or others, he took up the examina¬
tion of the Gospels, with results such as might have been
anticipated from his presuppositions. Convinced that
Christianity was the religion, which embodied in symbolic
form the permanently precious truth of philosophy, he felt
that he could dispense with history, and detach the
religion from the personality of its Founder. The idea of
incarnation was profoundly true, but it was the incarna¬
tion of the idea in the race rather than in the individual.
For the idea does not realise itself in so limited a fashion.
“ It is not wont,” he says, “ to lavish all its fulness on one
exemplar and be niggardly towards all others — to express
itself perfectly in that one individual, and imperfectly in
all the rest ; it rather loves to distribute its riches among a
multiplicity of exemplars which reciprocally complete
each other — in the alternate appearance and suppression
of a series of individuals. And is this no true realisation
of the idea ? Is not the idea of the unity of the divine and
human natures a real one in a far higher sense, when I
regard the whole race of mankind as its realisation, than
when I single out one man as such a realisation? Is not
an incarnation of God from eternity a truer one than an
incarnation limited to a particular point of time.” 19
Approaching the Gospels in this attitude, he felt that
criticism need be troubled by no scruples as to the bearing
of its results on faith. Indeed the religion stood to gain.

19. Life of Jesus , p. 779. (I quote from the second edition published
with an Introduction by Pfleiderer in 1892.)

The History of Theology 147

The eternal ideas would thus be disengaged from their

setting, and when the history was dissolved into myth,

would appear in their unalloyed splendour. When thus

re-interpreted the documents would he rehabilitated in a

higher sense. Taken as literal history, their discrepancies,

and in particular the miracles in which they abound, were

an offence to the culture of the day. Press home the

*/

conclusion that documents so mutually contradictory can
be used only with extreme caution and after the applica¬
tion of the most rigid critical tests; expose the intrinsic
incredibility of the miracles, but also devise a theory
which shall account for the rise of such miraculous stories ;
and religion will be all the stronger if, driven from the
letter, it rises to the spirit.

The explanation that Strauss gave as to the origin of the
narratives which had thus to be eliminated from history is
known as the mythical theory. By this, of course, it is
not meant that Strauss denied that Jesus was a historical
personage or that we have some well guaranteed informa¬
tion about Him ; though it must be confessed that Strauss
was so concerned with negative criticism and so little with
positive reconstruction that the extent of this information
was very far from clear. A theory much in vogue when
Strauss published his ‘‘Life of Jesus” in 1835 was the
naturalistic theory. Its chief exponent was Paulus. The
historicity of the narratives was asserted, but their
miraculous character was denied, by expedients sometimes
not without plausibility, but in other instances frankly
grotesque. Strauss effectively disposed of this theory
which, in spite of occasional recourse to it in detail, is
never likely to be rehabilitated as a whole. His own
criticism cut much deeper. While he denied that the
miraculous features of the story were misunderstandings
of actual events, he did not regard the stories themselves
as conscious fabrications. Since Jesus was regarded as
Messiah, it was not unnatural that the beliefs entertained
about His career by His followers should be more and more

148 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

deeply coloured by Jewish Messianic ideas. These ideas
in their turn had their roots in the Old Testament. The
origin of the miraculous stories in the Gospels was to he
sought not in misunderstanding and misdescription of
actual events, hut was due to the conviction that the
Christian Messiah could not have come short of the ancient
Hebrew worthies, nor could He have failed to fulfil the
Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament or satisfy the
contemporary Messianic expectations. There was no
cunning invention in this transformation of the actual
events ; gradually, without premeditation or concerted
action, through transmission in oral tradition, the com¬
munity refashioned the life of the Founder. Had the
First and Fourth Gospels been the work of Apostles, this
position would have been more difficult to maintain; but
Strauss affirmed that the tradition of apostolic authorship
was not sufficiently attested to override the conviction,
based on examination of the documents themselves, that
the narratives were largely unhistorical. The discrepan¬
cies between the Gospels, the difficulties inherent in the
stories they relate, were exhibited by Strauss with a
complete absence of reserve. The theory was not new, but
the thoroughness and consistency with which it was
applied caused a profound shock. The Christ of the
Gospels became in the critic’s hands a mythical figure with
a very indefinite historical nucleus. All that genius and
rare endowment could do for the task was done. He
brought to the work a familiarity with the literature of
the subject astonishing in a young man twenty-seven years
old ; great critical acuteness ; a quickness to see and skill
to pierce the weak spots in an opponent’s argument. The
book owed much to the brilliance of its style. Masterly
in its handling of the dialectical weapons, with rich
resources of irony and mockery, illuminated by happy
metaphors, it rose on occasion to a stately and noble
eloquence. Yet it was so preoccupied with destructive
criticism that no clear, positive result emerged. Those

The History of Theology 149

who took up the hook, bearing the title “Life of -Jesus
Critically Investigated,” with the not unnatural expecta¬
tion of finding a biography, however retrenched, were
doomed to disappointment. The author was so busily
engaged in the critical investigation that he did not write
the Life. In the preface to the third edition he said :
“ In the darkness which criticism produces, by putting out
all the lights hitherto thought to be historical, the eye had
first to learn by gradual habit to again distinguish a few
single objects.” But the explanation of the narratives put
forward by Strauss raised a question which he failed to
answer. The Life of Jesus, which, in the critic’s judg¬
ment, had been lived wholly within the limits of the
natural, was transfigured under the influence of Messianic
theology. But how did the community come to regard
Jesus as the Messiah and still to believe in Him in spite
of His accursed death on the Cross ? To what extent does
this fact throw light on the personality of the Founder?
How far can we argue back from the movement to the
creative personality ?

It lies beyond my scope to follow the turbid stream of
controversy which had its source in the publication of this
book.20 It was discreditably violent on both sides. But
notable criticisms were urged. Strauss himself made
important concessions, but these were again retracted,
after the invitation to a professorship at Zurich had been
cancelled in deference to the opposition it excited. I
must, however, pass over the refutations of the book and
the author’s own vacillations, that I may speak of a scholar

20. Strauss replied to his critics in his Streitschriften zur Verteidigung
meiner Schrift iiber das Leben Jesu und zur CharaJcteristik dev gegen-
umrtigen Theologie, a brilliantly written, hard-hitting work. The first
part appeared in 1837, the three parts in one volume in 1841. The
second of his Zwei friedliche Blatter, which bears the title Vergangliches
und Bleibendes im Christentum, is very conciliatory in tone, serene in
spirit, and exquisite in style. In it he claims that Jesus is to be ranked
as the supreme genius in the highest sphere, that of religion.

150 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

and a critic of much higher calibre . I need hardly explain
that I mean Ferdinand Christian Baur, Professor at
Tubingen. I do not mean to suggest that the work of
Baur and the Tubingen School was more epoch-making
than Strauss’ “ Life of Jesus.” Perhaps it was not. It
would in any case be difficult to pronounce a judgment,
and I hardly feel qualified to offer an opinion. But as to
the qualities of the two men there is less need for hesita¬
tion. Baur had not the dash, the velocity, the brilliance,
the literary gift of Strauss. But he was more massive,
more thorough, riper in judgment, with a learning more
deeply based and wider in its range, incomparably greater
and more original as a master of method, fertilising and
influential in the advancement of the subject as Strauss
had it not in him to become. He was probably the greatest
figure in the New Testament criticism that the century
has to show. He moulded the subject for us as no one has
done before or since; his theories are largely abandoned,
but the problems which he set abide. To him we owe it
that the atomistic way of treating New Testament problems
has been left behind, and that not only is the literature
treated as a connected unity but the literature and the
history and the theology are realised to be an organio
whole. He had been Strauss’ teacher, and before the
“ Life of Jesus ” appeared he had not only published books
of great weight and learning, but he had already laid the
foundations of the criticism with which his name will for
ever be associated. In the noteworthy account of his critical
development which he gives in his “ Church History of the
Nineteenth Century,” 21 he tells us that he remained a quiet
spectator of the sensations which the “Life of Jesus”
produced. The book contained nothing new to him, for it
had been written in his immmediate neighbourhood and
he had often talked it over with the writer while it was in
progress. But he kept silence, because he felt that he was
not as yet qualified to pronounce an opinion for or against
21. Kirchengeschichte, pp. 417 — 420; cf. Dogmengeschichte, 356 — 358.

The History of Theology 151

it. He had been preoccupied with the Pauline Epistles
and the Acts of the Apostles, and he had not yet made
those deeper investigations into the Gospels which would
alone have justified him before the bar of his exacting
critical conscience in pronouncing a judgment. This he
was first qualified to give when he had reached a conclusion
as to the character of the Gospel of John. He pays a
most generous tribute to the qualities which Strauss had
exhibited in his book, and considers that in some respects
he has done his work so effectively that it will not need to
be done over again. But it seemed to him vitiated by a
fundamental defect in method. This was, as he says in
his work on the Gospels, that it gave a criticism of the
Gospel history without a criticism of the Gospels. He did
not blame Strauss for this, in fact he considered that it
w’as inevitable at the time. Only after the character of
the documents had been thoroughly explored was it
possible to use them in the construction of the history ; and
until Baur himself undertook the task this preliminary
work had not been done. He had not specially in mind
the literarv criticism. It was rather the intrinsic
character of each document, the standpoint from which
it was written, the tendency that came to expression in it,
the end which it sought to serve, that must in the first
place be determined. The author must be set in his own
time, and his work understood in relation to its con¬
temporary conditions. Then when this had been done it
would be possible to determine its value as a historical
source. The view which Baur reached with reference to
the Fourth Gospel simply eliminated it as a historical
source for the “ Life of Jesus.” But this made Strauss
tactics no longer possible. His method had been to play
off the Fourth Gospel against the Synoptists, and the
Synoptists against the Fourth Gospel. But if the Fourth
Gospel was not, and never was designed to be, a historical
record, then it could not be used to discredit the Synoptic
narrative. This consideration did not of course prove

152 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

tlie historical character of the Synoptic narratives, but it

removed one ground for suspicion. Yet it suggested the

possibility that one or more of these Gospels had been

written with a similar tendency. And Baur in fact went a

good way in this direction, lie found that the Gospel of

Matthew contained practically his most trustworthy source,

so that the task of criticism for the sake of disengaging

the historical material was practically concentrated on that

Gospel. Further, he held that Strauss’ mythical theory

was applied by him on a scale altogether too extensive.

Once it had been recognised that several of the Gospels

were tendency writings, then the action on the tradition of

their particular tendency had to be recognised, both in

modification of the old and in the free creation of fiction.

In his new “Life of Jesus for the German People” (1864), 22

which was much influenced by Baur, especially in the view

taken of the Fourth Gospel,23 Strauss, whilst speaking in

the warmest terms of his teacher, will not admit that Baur

had correctly described his tactics, and retorts that, if

Baur was right in accusing him of giving a criticism of the

Gospel history without a criticism of the Gospels, he could

with the same justice or injustice reply that Baur had

given a criticism of the Gospels without a criticism of the

Gospel history.24 Here Strauss put his finger on a very

serious defect in Baur’s work. He was so preoccupied

with the documents as sources for the history of the time

in which they were composed and the light they threw on

the relations of the parties within the Church to each

other, and their movement towards unity, that the

reconstruction of the historv itself claimed all too little of

% /

his attention.

In what I have just said I have touched on the main

22. Leben Jesu fiir das deutsche Volk bearbeitet Eng. trails. The
Life of Jesus for the People. T quote from the second edition.

23. Eng. trans., pp. 141 — 147.

24. Eng. trans., pp. 125 — 127.

The History of Theology 153

position of the Tubingen School.25 Baur had been led by
his study of the Epistles to the Corinthians to the view
that instead of the harmony that was supposed to exist
between Paul and the earlier Apostles, there had been a
controversy in which his authority was brought into
question. This impression was deepened by a study of the
Clementine Homilies. The controversy had left its mark
on the Acts of the Apostles. His studies in Gnosticism
led on to an investigation of the Pastoral Epistles, whose
authenticity, he concluded, was impossible, inasmuch as
their origin was to be explained from those party tenden¬
cies which were the driving force in the nascent Church
of the second century. Deeper research led him to the
conviction that the four chief Epistles of Paul, Homans,
Corinthians, and Galatians, were to be separated from
the smaller ones, these being for the most part, if not
entirely, non-authentic. The theory as fully worked out
by Baur and his leading followers, notably, Schwegler 26

25. Baur’s essay, “ Die Christuspartei in der korinthischen Gemeinde,
der Gegensatz des paulinischen und petrinischen Christentums, der
Apostel Petrus in Rom” ( Tubingen Zeitschrift fur Theologie, 1831), was
the starting point for the Tubingen criticism. It was followed in 1835
by Die sogenannten Pastoralbriefe des Apostels Paulus aufs neue Jcritisch
untersucht. It was in this year that his Die christliche Gnosis appeared.
During the next ten years he was mainly occupied with his massive
works on the History of the doctrines of the Atonement, the Trinity,
and the Incarnation. In 1845 he published his very important book,
Paulus, der Apostel J esu Cliristi, which was followed in 1847 by his equally
important volume, especially for the criticism of the Fourth Gospel,
Kritische TJ ntersu chung en iiber die Jcanonischen Evangelien. His labours
in this field were crowned by his Das Christentum und die christliche
Kirche der drei ersten J ahrliunderte (1853). This and the Paulus have
been translated into English. He defended his positions in a number of
polemical tracts, and also wrote sketches of his own development and
work. The very elaborate bibliography prefixed to the article on him
in Herzoj-Hauclc may be specially recommended.

26. His chief work, Das nachapostolische Zeitalter in den Haupt-
momenten seiner Entwicklung was published in 1846. It carried out the
history in detail and over the whole early Christian literature and
history as Baur himself had not yet done.

154 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

and Zeller,27 was as follows. In the Apostolic Church
there was a sharp division between the earlier apostles and
Paul, the former being the champions of a narrowly
Jndaising Christianity, the latter vindicating the univer-
salism of the Gospel and the abolition of the Law. The
struggle between these tendencies was the prime factor
in the development of the Church, the two parties
gradually drawing together till, with the exception of
extremists on both sides, they coalesced in the Catholic
Church of the second century. Five New Testament

t/

books alone were allowed to be of apostolic origin, the four
Epistles of Paul already mentioned, and the Revelation of
John, which was believed to contain a bitter attack on the
Apostle of the Gentiles. The other books were ranged in
chronological order by the degree in which the antagonistic
or conciliatory tendencies were present. Mark was the
latest of the Synoptists because in this respect it was the
most natural. John was the latest of all the Gospels, for
it reflected the final harmony. The Acts of the Apostles
was also written from the Catholic standpoint to obliterate
the inconvenient recollection of bitter hostilitv and
substitute the more edifying picture of apostolic harmony.

I need hardly say that Baur’s theory, widely accepted
and confidently maintained as it was, was not destined to
permanence. Its failure was due to no lack of talent or
learning in himself or his pupils. If it could have been
established they would have established it. It probably
does him no injustice to say that had he not been a
Hegelian we should never have had a Tubingen School.
For the Hegelian scheme of thesis, antithesis and
synthesis was that into which he fitted the development

27. His chief work, Die Apostelgeschichte nacli ihrem Inhalt und
Ursprung hritisch untcrsucht was published in 1854. He was Baur’s
son-in-law, and from 1842 edited the journal of the School, Baur joining
him in the editorship from 1847 till 1857 when it was discontinued (see
Baur, Kir cheng eschichte, pp. 449f.). Subsequently, like Schwegler, he
abandoned theology for the history of philosophy.

The History of Theology 155

of Primitive Christianity. Of course he found facts in

his documents to support it. He did not reconstruct the

history by sheer intuition ; one would indeed gather from

his own account 28 that the theory was first suggested to

him by his study of the Epistles to the Corinthians. But

probably Hegelian influence even at that period of his

career was sharpening his scent for antitheses, and leading

him to interpret in this sense features in his documents

which were susceptible of another explanation. As he

pushed on with his researches he fell more and more fully

under the Hegelian spell. The formula became a master-

key with which he believed that all the locks could be
«/

opened. And thus, with abnormal sensitiveness to one
factor in the development, the theory slowly became
complete. The dominance of Hegelianism at the time
provided the favourable psychological climate for it, and,
although some of the most eminent Hew Testament
scholars, and those by no means blindly conservative, never
accepted it, it enjoyed a period of astonishing success.
But the philosophy rapidly lost its hold in Germany, and
this inevitably told on the acceptance of the criticism.
The objections to it came to be more clearly realised the
more closely it was investigated, and praise is specially due
to Ritschl for recalling New Testament scholars to sounder
positions. The chronological order in which the documents
were arranged ; the dates to which they were assigned ; the
stigma of pseudonvmity affixed to many of them; had all
been determined by the question, Where do they fit best
in the scheme of development? In other words, the theory
was brought to the phenomena rather than elicited from
them. A more objective study has definitely disproved
many of Baur’s fundamental positions. The great
majority of the Epistles which claim to come from Paul
are now attributed to him by pretty general consent. A
measure of doubt, it is true, hangs over Colossians, and

28. Kir cheng escliichte , p. 417.

156 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

still more over II Thessalonians and Ephesians ; but the
only point on which there is a consensus of rejection among
advanced critics touches the Pastoral Epistles, and even
here there is a tendency to admit the presence of some
authentic fragments. On the other hand, the point in
which Baur agreed with tradition, in referring the
Apocalypse to a Jewish Christian Apostle has been almost
universally abandoned. Similarly the criticism of the
Gospels has moved far away from Barn's results. An
investigation into the literary relations of the Synoptists
has convinced nearly all scholars that the Gospel of Mark
was the first to be written, not, as Baur imagined, the last;
wrhile the Fourth Gospel has been brought back by a large
number of critics from the middle of the second century to
a date not far removed from the end of the first. The
conciliatory tendency discovered in the Acts of the Apostles
has also been greatly reduced in importance. The
Clementine Homilies, to which Baur attached so much
weight, are now relegated to a very subordinate position.
And while it is not of course denied that there was a
Judaistic conflict in the early Church, it has been dethroned
from the sovereign position accorded it by Baur. Many
other factors co-operated to create the Catholic Church.
Moreover, Judaism itself was too narrowly conceived. It
was more complex and held within itself more streams of
tendency than Baur recognised. Nor did the controversy
rage so long as he imagined, the triumph of universalism
reached back well into the first century itself. The non-
Pauline character of much second century Christianity
did not spring, as he had argued, from any hostility to
Paul, but from the inability of Gentile Christians to under¬
stand documents written by one who had been trained in
Jewish scholasticism and who interpreted his new’ religion
by categories taken over from the old. Finally, vTe must
remind ourselves of Strauss’ criticism that Baur had given
a criticism of the Gospels without a criticism of the Gospel
history, qualifying it, however, by the further remark that

The History of Theology

157

liis criticism of the Gospels has been largely proved to
he wrong. The failure to deal adequately with the Person
of the Pounder and His career was a grave defect in the
theory which set out to realise the programme that Baur
had laid down.

The question may naturally arise why, in view of the
collapse of Baur’s theory, not in detail only but in its
central positions, an epoch-making significance should still
be claimed for him. It is, in the first place, because he
realised the existence of a problem. The origin of second
century Catholicism had to be explained, it did not explain
itself. How did it come about that the movement, rising
out of Judaism, had in little more than a hundred years,
created a well-organised and closely-knit community on
Gentile soil, predominantly Gentile in composition, yet
with a type of faith and piety largely different from that
of the great Apostle. Baur’s answer to this may not have
been, and indeed was not satisfactory. It remains his
lasting merit that he put the question. In the next place
he redeemed the treatment of the subject from atomism.
His method was of the highest value because he insisted
that the literature could not be understood apart from the
history, and that single documents could not be treated in
isolation from each other. Pie made it clear that a
historical document was a valuable source for knowledge
of the time when it was produced as well as for the time of
which it told. And of course he added much in detail of
permanent value. Since his time much work has been
done on the New Testament in the departments of criticism
and history, of exegesis and theology. In a sketch like
the present the development cannot be followed in any
detail. Even the bare enumeration of names that
deserve to be mentioned would have to be far from com¬
plete. Yet I could not well entirely pass over scholars
so eminent as Hilgenfeld and Holsten, Weizsacker and
Pfleiderer, Iloltzmann and Schurer, Lipsius and von
Soden, or to turn to those of a more conservative tendency

158 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

Lticke and Bleek, Meyer and Bernhard Weiss, Zahn and
Erich Haupt. Nor can we forget younger scholars such as
Jiilicher and Schmiedel, Bousset, Deissmann, and J.
Weiss, Wernle and Weinel, who had gained distinction
ere the century closed and are happily still with us.

From the New Testament I turn to the Old Testament.
Here the contribution of Germany has been very great,
yet some of the most important pioneering work has come
from other lands. The clue to the analysis of the Penta¬
teuch given by the use of the Divine names Yahweh and
Elohim was first put forward by Astruc,29 a French Roman
Catholic physician in 1753, though he applied it only to
Genesis and the opening chapters of Exodus, and attributed
the Pentateuch to Moses. Thirty years later J. G.
Eichhorn,30 in Germany, reached independently similar
results. Geddes,31 a Scotch Roman Catholic, rejected this
clue, but advanced beyond Astruc and Eichhorn in that
he recognised that the Pentateuch could not be the work
of Moses and that it was compiled from documentary
sources which included the Journals of Moses. In 1802 to
1805 J. S. Yater published a Commentary on the Penta¬
teuch,32 incorporating Geddes’ results and splitting up the
Pentateuch into a number of disconnected fragments.
Shortly before this, in 1798, Ilgen, in a work unhappily
never completed,33 analysed Genesis into seventeen distinct

29. Conjectures sur les memoires originaux clout il paroit que Moyse
s'est servi pour composer le livre de la Genese , 1753.

30. Einleitung in clas Alte Testament , 1780 — 1783.

31. The Holy Bible, or the Books accounted sacred by Jews and
Christians , faithfully translated from corrected texts of the originals,
with various readings, explanatory notes, and critical remarks, vol. i,
1792, vol. ii, 1797 ; Critical Remarks on the Hebrew Scriptures corre¬
sponding with a new translation of the Bible, 1800.

32. Commentar iiber den Pentateuch , 1802 — 1805.

33. Die Urkundendes J erusalemischcn Tempelarchivs in Hirer Urgestalt,
als Beytrag zur Berichtigung der Geschichte cler Religion und Politik
aus dem Hebraischen mit kritischen und erklarenden Anmerkungen , auch
mancherley dazu gehorigen Abhandlungen, Erster Theil, 1798.

The History of Theology

159

documents, but lie recognised that no more than three
writers need be postulated to account for them, and thus
advanced beyond the fragment-hypothesis of Geddes and
Yater. In another important respect he adopted a sounder
position; he accepted the validity of Astruc’s clue. But
he made an advance here by the recognition that two
writers used Elohim, an observation wThich fell into neglect
till Hupfeld rediscovered it in 1853. In 1806-7 De Wette,
then six-and-twenty, published his “ Contributions to Old
Testament Introduction , ”34 a work of remarkable brilliance
which secured a permanent reputation for the author, and
for many years to come determined the attitude of most
Old Testament scholars in Germany. He compared the
history of religious institutions in the historical books with
the laws in the Pentateuch, and he identified the Law
book, found in the reign of Josiah with Deuteronomy.
His comparison of Chronicles with the earlier historical
sources led him to the conclusion that the Chronicler had
revised the work of his predecessors in order to give the
Law what he held to have been its actual place in the
history though the earlier historians had ignored it. In
other words, it was the late source which represented the
Law as having been in force all along. The next
important step perhaps was the publication by Yatke in
1835 of the first part of a work intended to cover the whole
field of Biblical Theology.35 No more than the first
volume of the Old Testament section appeared, for the
work was destined to win recognition only at a later period.
Yatke was a Hegelian, and the fact that he anticipated in
the most important point of all the now generally accepted
critical view, has often been held to justify the opinion
that the Grafian criticism, like that of Tubingen, was
rooted in Hegelianism and will perish in like manner.
That this is really not the case it is quite easy to prove.
Beuss, the eminent Strassburg scholar, had a year or two

34. Beitrage zur Einleitung in das Alte T estament , 1806-1807.

35. Die biblische Theologie wissenschaftlich dargestellt , Band i, 1835.

160 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

earlier hit upon the same conclusion, though he did not
venture to proclaim it outside his class-room, and he at
least was so free from sympathy with Hegelianism that the
terminology of the school in Vatke’s table of contents
deterred him from persevering with the book. The great
advance made by these scholars lay in this, that they
recognised the late date of the Priestly Legislation. It
was not till thirty years later that this opinion was
revived by Graf. In the meantime Hupfeld36 completed,
in 1853, the work begun by Astruc a hundred years earlier,
by his demonstration of two Elohistic writers, in which he
had to some extent been anticipated by Ilgen. Thus the
recognition of four main documents — the Yahwistic, two
Elohistic, and the Deuteronomic — was now securely estab¬
lished. In 1865, Graf,37 who had been a pupil of Peuss,
revived the theory that the Priestly Legislation was late.
His original statement was open to serious criticism, and
received it. But before his death he revised it in defer¬
ence to Kuenen’s criticism, so that the problem was now
stated in its true form, Was the Priestly Document the
latest of the four and posterior to Ezekiel ? Graf answered
in the affirmative. But though Kuenen brilliantly
vindicated this position,38 it was not till the publication of
Duhm’s “ Theology of the Prophets ” 39 in 1875 that a
German scholar came forward in its defence. It was in
this year that Heinrich Ewald died. Although I have not
mentioned his name in this sketch he had for long been the
dominant personality in the ranks of German Old Testa¬
ment scholars. In the dedication of his famous com¬
mentary on Isaiah, Hitzig had greeted his teacher as “the

36. Die Quellen der Genesis und die Art Hirer Zusammensetzung , 1853.

37. Die geschichtlichen Bucher cles Alten Testaments. Zwei historisch -
kritische ZJntersuchungen, 1865.

38. De Godsdienst van Israel, 1869-1870, and in articles in the
Theologisch Tijdscrift.

39. Die Theologie der Propheten als Grundlage fur die inner e
Entwicklungsgeschichte der israelitischen Religion dargestellt, 1875.

The History of Theology

161

new founder of a science of Hebrew language and
thereby of the exegesis of the Old Testament.” E wald’s
work on the Prophets opened a new era in the interpreta¬
tion of their writings. His massive “ History of the
People of Israel ” has had no successor on the grand scale.
But his work on the Pentateuch, while of coursenot unim¬
portant was less significant, and his influence was thrown
heavily against the attempt to make the Priestly Legislation
late. His attitude was shared by his pupils, who numbered
among them some of the most distinguished names in
Semitic and Old Testament scholarship. In particular
Schrader, the eminent Assyriologist ; Noldeke, foremost in
Semitic learning and specially famous for his masterly
treatment of the Priestly Code ;40 and Dillmann, renowned
alike for Ethiopic and Old Testament exegesis ; all
pronounced emphatically against the Grafian view. It
was, however, a younger pupil of Ewald, inferior to none
in genius or in learning, who, after most important discus¬
sions of the literary analysis, revolutionised the critical
opinion of Germany in favour of the Grafian theory.41 It
is not without its touch of pathos that WellhauseiTs
“ History of Israel,” vol. i, known in the later editions
under the more familiar title “ Prolegomena to the History
of Israel,” should bear the dedication “ To my unforgotten
teacher Heinrich Ewald, in Gratitude and Reverence. ”41a
Since 1878 the theory has held its ground, nor in spite of
frequent statements to the contrary, am I able to discern
any indication that it is likely in its main lines to be

40. Untersuchungen zur Kritilc des Alten Testaments, 1869.

41. Die Composition des Hextateuchs, 1876-1877 ; Geschichte Israels,
Band i, 1878. From the second edition onwards, Prolegomena zur
Geschichte Israels. The English translation of the third edition was pub¬
lished under the title Prolegomena to the History of Israel, and con¬
tained in addition a reprint of his classical article “ Israel ’ in the 9th
edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

41a. Meinem unvergessenen Lehrer Heinrich Ewald zu Danlc und

Bhren.

162 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

abandoned. It must of course be remembered that the
dating of the Priestly Code in the post-exilic period does
not imply that all the institutions originated at that time.
Far from it. The Code incorporates much ancient
ceremonial, in many instances pre-Mosaic in origin,
probably by many thousands of years. Certain features
within it, however, for example the distinction between
Priests and Levit'es, are later than the destruction of
Jerusalem and dependent on Josiali’s Reformation in
621 n.c.

On the development of criticism in other sections of the
Old Testament I cannot linger. It may be said in a few
words what the general results have been. The analysis
of documents which has achieved such remarkable results
in the Pentateuch has not left the historical books un¬
touched. The documentarv sources and the extent to

«/

which they have been used have been carefully investi¬
gated. The prophetic literature has been analysed with a
similar care and some of the books shown to be highly
composite. The very complex structure of Isaiah, the
extensive editing to which most of the earlier books have
been subjected, especially by the insertion of predictions
of restoration or happy endings are among the leading
features of more recent criticism. Here the names of
Wellhausen 42 and Dukm43 deserve special recognition.
Even if in the case of the latter it may be felt that the
criticism is unduly subjective and governed by dubious
presuppositions, and that he exhibits too great a partiality
for dates improbably late, it ought to be as ungrudgingly
acknowledged that his work in this field has been stimulat¬
ing and suggestive in a quite exceptional way. But, as
in the case of the New Testament, the number of eminent
scholars is too large to permit of any adequate mention.
To those who have been named I might add some of the

42. Die Kleinen Propheten iibersetzt und erkldrt, 1892.

43. Commentaries on Isaiah (1892) in Nowack’s H andlcommentar zvm
Alten Testament , and on Job (1897), Psalms (1899), Jeremiah (1901), in
Marti’s Kurzer Hand-commentar zum Alten Testament.

The History of Theology

163

more noteworthy. For sheer erudition and truly gigantic
labours we should probably give the first place to Lagarde.
An Orientalist not simply of the highest quality but of an
astonishing range, he independently reached a theory of
the Pentateuch closely allied to that of Graf. He toiled
in many fields, but deserves our special recognition for his
researches on Biblical and patristic texts, especially the
Septuagint. Hitzig, too, was an Orientalist of great
distinction, with a quite exceptional mastery of the Hebrew
language, equipped for the difficult and somewhat thankless
task of the commentator with tact and penetration and a
subtlety which now and then became his snare. Defects
more serious still were his dogmatism in matters where the
data were too scanty to justify a conclusion, too much self-
confidence, too wayward a judgment. A commentator
better known to English students was Franz Delitzsch.
While Hitzig was from first to last a rationalist, Delitzsch
was an orthodox Lutheran in theology, and started from
a very conservative position in criticism, though without
the bitterness and inflexibility which characterised
Hengstenberg. He was in fact associated with Keil in
the production of an Old Testament Commentary, which
was characterised bv the firmest adhesion to tradition.
But he came in the latter part of his life to realise
the strength of the critical position and make concessions
which were honourable to his candour if they did quite
inadequate justice to the requirements of the case. He
was a man of wide learning, especially in the post-Biblical
Jewish literature. His commentaries had at one time a
great vogue, but they answer very imperfectly to the more
exacting demands of a time trained to expect a keener
textual criticism and an exegesis more penetrating and
detached. Of scholars who belonged to the more critical
wing I must at least mention Stade, the editor of the
“ Zeitschrift fiir Attestamentliche Wissenschaft,” who is
best known for his u History of Israel,” but who did much
for Hebrew grammar and lexicography, for Higher and

164 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

Lower Criticism and for Old Testament Theology; Budde,
whose work has been marked by exceptional suggestiveness
and insight, and who has opened up new lines of research
especially in criticism; Cornill, who, while doing much
for criticism in both its main branches, has earned our
special gratitude by his sympathetic exposition of the
prophets, notably of Jeremiah; Ivautzsch, the editor of
Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar in several successive editions,
the editor also of an important critical translation of the
Old Testament, but who deserves special remembrance in
an English lecture for giving us the best sketch of the
History of Israel's Religion that we possess in our
language; Gunkel, perhaps among all these scholars the
most suggestive and original. I must content myself with
the bare mention of other scholars on each of whom it
would be possible to say much were there space : Nowack
and Marti, Baudissin and Baethgen, Giesebrecht and
Sellin, Baentsch and Bertholet, Holzinger and Steuernagel,
Iviostermann and Konig; indeed one does not know where
to stop, and the list is far from complete. I must,
however mention one phase of speculation which has
recently attracted great attention. This is specially
connected with the name of Winckler, the eminent
Assyriologist, whom we have recently lost by death.
Deeply impressed writh the evidence for the early and wide
diffusion of Babylonian culture, he has reduced Israel to
little more than an intellectual province of Babylonia. He
has constructed what he takes to be the Babylonian theory
of the universe, and this astral mythology which, it must
be remembered, has been reached by the piecing together of
bits of evidence and which cannot be proved ever to have
existed in antiquity, he believes to have exercised much
influence on the religion of Israel and through it on the
Old Testament. The theory is too complicated to be
expounded here, but the kind of evidence by which it is
supported is such as to inspire little confidence that it is
likely to maintain its ground. Yet, in view of the

The History of Theology

165

prominence which it has received in recent discussion, I
could not pass over it in silence, especially as it is of
course undeniable that Babylonian influence did extend
over a very large area and persisted for a considerable
length of time.

I may now take up once more the thread of the
theological development in the narrower sense of the term.
Five years after the publication of his “Life of Jesus,”
Strauss issued the first volume of a work designed to
complete the task which the former book had begun . This
bore the title “ The Christian Doctrine Exhibited in its
Historical Development and in Conflict with Modern
Science.’'* 44 The second volume, which brought the work
to a close, appeared in the following year. As he had
formerly attacked the credubility of the Gospel story, he
now sought to undermine the whole fabric of Christian
dogma. In the pungent paragraphs with which the
introduction opens Strauss takes us back ten years earlier
to the opening of the fourth decade of the century. Then
it seemed as if the long quarrel between philosophy and
religion had been brought to a close by intermarriage
between the two families, from which alliance the Hegelian
system had sprung. “ The wisdom of the world, that
haughty pagan, humbly submitted to Baptism and made a
Christian confession of faith, while Faith, on the other
hand, made no objection to grant her a certificate of full
Christian character, and urgently recommend her to the
loving welcome of the Community.” But this naive
confidence was soon shattered. One could indeed see not a
few lambs lying down with the wolves, and some ostensible
lions making remarkable progress in eating straw. But
others showed their claws and teeth and hungered for a
better diet. Under the influence of Hegelianism Church
doctrines were transformed and the Biblical history largely
turned into myth ; the ecclesiastical authorities and

44. Die christliche Glaubenslehre in Hirer geschichtlichen EntwicMung
und im Kam'pfe mit der modernen Wissenschaft dargestellt.

166 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

theologians took alarm; and the Hegelian School itself
split into a right and a left wing, of which the latter moved
rapidly forward to a definitely non-Christian position,
notably, in Feuerbach.45 Thus while the principle that
religion and philosophy were materially identical, though
formally different, led to a conservative attitude towards
ecclesiastical dogma in the earlier Hegelian school and the
borrowing of Christian formulae in which to express its
own truths, as time went on and logic fulfilled its work, the
real incompatibility of the two became clearer and clearer
however loudly the orthodox Hegelians might protest that
their philosophy was in no wise compromised by these
irrevsponsible extremists. Strauss’ treatise on theology
cleared the air. The book was written with all the frank¬
ness and lucidity that the author had taught the world to
expect. Like its predecessor, it rested on a remarkable
width of reading not only of the negative critics of dogma
but of its most representative exponents. The method of
the book was deliberately chosen. It was largely an
exhibition of the course which the history of the various
dogmas had taken, for in that way he believed that the
bankruptcy of theology could most effectively be shown.
He expresses this in one of his striking metaphors, “ The
subjective criticism of the individual is a water-pipe which
any lad can keep stopped for a time ; criticism as it com¬
pletes itself objectively in the course of centuries plunges
forward like a raging flood, against which all locks and
dams are of no avail.” 46 His own work he compares to a
balance sheet : it may make the firm no richer but it is
quite as important for it to know just where it stands.
This all the more that many theologians live in a fool’s

%J o

paradise and imagine theology to be in a perfectly solvent
condition.47 Strauss leaves them under no illusions as to
the results of his audit. Eight through, the Christian

45. l.c., pp. 1-4.

46. l.c. , p. x.

47. l.c., pp. x. xi.

The History of Theology 167

doctrines are found wanting. And that not merely in
their orthodox form, but as they had been transformed by
more liberal thinkers. For his own part he turns them
into philosophical abstractions, which could not be called
Christian in any proper sense of the term. Rejecting the
God of theology he accepted a spiritual principle; the
Infinite seeks its realisation in the finite and attains self-
consciousness in the human race. In his work “ The
Essence of Christianity," 48 published in 1841, Feuerbach
rejected this transcendental Absolute and turned theology
into anthropology by asserting the Divinity of man. In
philosophy he was a materialist. To this position it may
be added that Strauss advanced in the work of his old age
“ The Old Faith and the New,” 49 which, it may be
remembered, provoked Nietzsche to savage criticism. Yet,
strange as it may have seemed to Strauss and Feuerbach,
the Christian religion went on living and its doctrines
continued to be expounded by men of high learning and
distinction. It is customary to classify the types of
theology under three heads. We have the Liberals, the
Confessionalists, and the Mediating Theologians. Each of
these schools possessed eminent representatives to whom I
should be glad to devote a full exposition. But within
my limits I must content myself with the most general
reference, and this is the less to be regretted that, in
spite of their well-deserved reputation and the value of
their work, they did not mark a new stage in the develop¬
ment in the same way as Ritschl, not to speak of Schleier-
maoher. All three types had been greatly influenced by
Schleiermacher. It is true that there was not in the strict
sense of the term a School of Schleiermacher. Those who
are commonly recognised as such, for example, Nitzsch,

48. Das Wesen des Christentums. It was translated into English from
the Second German edition by Marian Evans (i.e. George Eliot) in 1854
under the title The Essence of Christianity.

49. Der altc und der neue Glaube (1872) ; Eng. trails, by Mathilde
Blind, The Old Faith and the New from the Sixth Edition.

168 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

Twesten, Neander, and Ullmann, stood a good deal nearer
to traditional Christianity than their master. A more
genuine representative was Alexander Schweizer, who was
eminent for his contributions to the history of doctrine,
and even more so for his exposition of Systematic Theology.
He laboured, however, in Zurich more than half a century.
He had here as his colleague for many years Biedermarm,
who, though not a Hegelian in the full sense, was yet of
the more distinguished theologians of the Left the one who
was most deeply influenced by Hegel. Pfieiderer for part
of his career at least stood in a similar position, though
further removed from Hegelianism and less inclined to
Pantheism. Lipsius was definitely theistic and further
removed from Hegel than either. Both he and Pfieiderer
did work of the highest value on the New Testament and
the early history of doctrine. Of the Confessional
theologians I might mention Hofmann, famous alike in
exegesis and systematic as one of the most penetrating and
original scholars, but far less convincing than original ;
Thomasius, notable as an exponent of the History of
Doctrine, but popularly best known as the first to put
forward a Kenotic Christology; Frank, the author of the
“ System of the Christian Certainty ” ; and Ilengstenberg,
known for his violent ecclesiastical journalism and his
strenuous opposition to a Biblical criticism which departed
from tradition. Among the mediating theologians I may
name Julius Muller, the author of “ The Christian
Doctrine of Sin,” who was driven to explain the fact of
sin by the theory of a non-temporal fall of souls; Pothe,
one of the most striking figures in the theology of the
century, but on whom I must not linger, though a treatise
would be needed to do him justice; and Dorner, perhaps
the most typical representative of this tendency, best
known for his “ History of the Doctrine of the Person of
Christ,” his “History of Protestant Theology” and his
“ System of Christian Doctrine.” Kattenbusch puts
together all these schools under the heading “ Romantic

The History of Theology

169

Theology,” by which he desires to emphasise their
connexion with Schleiermacher and to differentiate them
from Ritschl.50 In other words, however widely these
schools differed, and the difference could hardly be over-
stated, they agreed in finding the starting point of theology
in immediate self-consciousness. With this we come to
Bitschl.51

It is far from easy to give any clear and at the same
time just impression of BitschTs theology. The three
types of theology, of which I have spoken, suspended
hostilities to unite against the new-comer, but while
Ritsehlianism evoked fierce antagonism, which it was not
slow to meet in a like temper, it enlisted the enthusiastic
adhesion of many among the younger theologians, includ¬
ing Herrmann,52 Kaftan,53 Kattenbusch, Harnack,54 and
Wendt. Several of Ritschl’s most distinguished followers

50. Von Schleiermacher zu Bitschl (1st ed., 1892), pp. 23 — 26.

51. Ritschl’s life has been written by his son, Otto Ritschl, Albrecht
Bitschl’ s Leben ; he also writes the article on his father in Herzog-Hauclc.
The literature on his theology is large and increasing. In addition to
the general works already mentioned, the following will be found of
service to the English reader : Orr, The Bitschlian Theology ;
BitschUanism : Expository and Critical Essays , together with the refer¬
ences in his Christian View of God and the World; Garvie, The
Bitschlian Theology: Critical and Constructive ", A. T. Swing, The
Theology of Albrecht Bitschl (this includes a translation of Ritschl’s
TJnterricht) ; J. K. Mozley, BitschUanism ; Edghill, Faith and Fact.
German discussions are very numerous ; it may suffice to mention Ecke,
Die theologische Schide A. Bitschls und die evangelische Kir die der
Gegenwart (on this see Harnack, Beden und Aufsatze , 1st ed., pp. 347 —
368); Lipsius, Die Bitschl’sche Theologie', Frank, Zur Theologie A.
Bitschls ; Pfleiderer, Die Bitschl’ sche Theologie hritisch beleuchtet.
Ritschl’s chief works are mentioned below, pp. 171 f. The following may be
added : TJnterricht in der christlichen Beligiow, Theologie und Meta-
physik. A number of his minor writings have been collected in
Gesammelte Aufsdtze.

52. His most notable work is Der Verkehr des Christen mit Gott.
The English translation, entitled The Communion of the Christian with

170 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

had not been his pupils. They had been trained by
mediating theologians, and, while not unmindful of Iheir
debt, found in Iiitschl a satisfaction which their earlier
teachers had not been able to give them. There is no
Ritschlian school in the sense that its members agree in
their general theological views ; the school found its
principle of union rather in a common method and point
of view. There is in fact a wide divergence within the
school itself on matters of the greatest importance. Ritschl
was the son of a Lutheran bishop, and had been brought
up in the staid, unemotional type of piety which one would
expect in such a household. From this he broke away and
fell under the spell of Hegelianism. For a time he was a
member of the Tubingen School, and in 1846 wrote a book
to prove that our Gospel of Luke was based on the Gospel

God from the fourth German edition in the Crown Theological Library,
supersedes the earlier volume in the Theological Translation Library.

53. His chief works are: Das Wesen der christlichen Religion; Die
Wahrheit der christlichen Religion (Eng. trails., The Truth of the
Christian Religion) ; Dogmatik.

54. Harnack’s output has been colossal. His contributions to Church
History, especially the early period, or to New Testament criticism
scarcely concern us here, but the following works should be mentioned,
Lehtrbuch der Dogmengeschichte (the 4th edition has been recently
revised and is now presumably in its final form ; the English translation.
History of Dogma , is from the 3rd edition) ; Das Wesen des
Christentums (Eng. trails., What is Christianity?), also several of the
addresses and essays collected in Reden und Aufsatze. Of these two are
accessible in English translations: Christianity and History; Thoughts
on the Present Position of Protestantism ; and uniform with these is
The Apostle's Creed, a translation of the article in Herzog-Hauck. An
article dealing with the Apostle’s Creed is printed in Reden und
Aufsatze. The commotion which it excited in Germany may be gauged
from the fact that the article was published on Aug. 18th, 1892, in
Die Christliche Welt, reprinted as a pamphlet in a few weeks, and was
in its twenty-sixth edition before the close of the year. A very bitter
controversy ensued. Numerous pamphlets appeared; Harnack replied
to Cremer’s Zurn Kampf um das Apostolikum , and his reply is also
reprinted in Reden und Aufsatze from Die Christliche Welt.

171

The History of Theology

of Marcion.55 In 1850 lie published the first edition of
his treatise on “ The Origin of the Old Catholic Church, ” 56
in which, though with no little independence, he still
accepted the Tubingen standpoint. The second edition,
published in 1857, made it plain that he had definitely
abandoned it. This book was one of the most important
discussions on primitive Christianity published in the
nineteenth century, and exerted a decisive influence on the
later pursuit of the subject. Among other teachers he had
been influenced by Hofmann and Rotlie; and he owed
much to Sclileiermacher, in spite of the unfriendly
language in which he speaks of his theological system.
His affinities, however, were closer with Kant and Lotze.
He had made profound studies in the History of Doctrine,
the fruits of which are to be seen in his great dogmatic
treatise 57 and in his “ History of Pietism.” 58

V

55. Das E vangelium Marcions und das Jcanonische E vangelium des
Lucas. He soon abandoned the theory, and withdrew it in 1851. Baur
maintained it for a time, but surrendered it later, though still affirming
that Marcion’s Gospel contained readings more original than those in
Luke as well as deliberate alterations of Luke's text. The dependence
of Marcion on Luke was demonstrated by Volkmar and Hilgenfeld ;
when, in spite of this, the author of Supernatural Religion revived the
contrary theory, he was refuted so conclusively by W. Sanday that he
abandoned it.

56. Die Entstehung der altkatholiehen Kirche. It is little to our
credit that no English translation of the second edition has appeared.

57. Die christUche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und V ersohnung .
It was published in 1870, 1874 in three volumes. The first (Eng. trans.
from the first edition by «T. Sutherland Black, A Critical History of the
Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation , 1872) contained
the history of the doctrine, the second volume (untranslated) the Biblical
doctrine, the third the constructive part of the work (Eng. trans. from
the third edition, edited by H. R. Mackintosh and A. B. Macaulay :
The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation ; The Positive
Development of the Doctrine, 1900). It should be remembered that the
first three editions vary considerably. It may also be worth mentioning
that it was Ritschl’s original intention to combine the Biblical and
constructive sections in one volume (see preface to vol. i). The third
volume is not of course a complete treatise on Systematic Theology, but

172 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

One of the points which deserve to be placed in the
forefront is that Ritschlianism was destined to meet a very
difficult situation, the lapse from the Churches especially
among people of culture, and in particular those who stood
under the influence of the scientific view of the world.
Bitschl believed the fault to lie largely in the way in
which Christianity had been expounded and defended.
Whatever differences may keep the members of the school
apart they are united in the emphasis which they place on
the fact that religion has to do with judgments of value.
BitschTs meaning has been hotly debated, and if he has
been the victim of much misunderstanding the blame is
scarcely all on one side. The question is much too intricate
to be examined here.59 Ritschl distinguishes religious
from scientific knowledge or philosophy. Not that the
objects of religious are less real than those of scientific

large portions of what would form part of such a treatise are included
as “ The Presuppositions.” He says in the preface to the first edition of
the third volume : “ In order to make what is the central doctrine of
Christianity intelligible as such, I have been compelled to give an almost
complete outline of Systematic Theology, the remaining part of which
could be easily supplied” (Eng. trans., p. vii). He comes nearest to a
sketch of Systematic Theology in his Unterriclit , intended by Ritschl for
use in schools, a truly amazing book for such a purpose, but valuable
for students of Ritschlianism. Frank sharply criticises the failure of
the School to produce any comprehensive and complete work on
Systematic Theology. He goes on to complain of corresponding failure
in tone, Ritschl’s tone often being profane and un-Christian, and in
practical Christian service : “ It appears that the sterility in the dogmatic
sphere has its counterpart also in the practical. Ritschl’s avowed
antipathy to all Pietism and Mysticism, which is completely shared
by his adherents, is hence intelligible ” (Geschichte und Kritik der
neueren Theologie , 3rd ed., pp. 290 — 293). Kaftan and Wendt have since
done something to remove the reproach of “ sterility in the dogmatic,
sphere.”

58. Geschichte des Pietismus (3 vols., 1880)

59. It is of course discussed in the works on Ritschlianism, but special
attention may be called to Otto Ritschl’s TJeber IF erthurteile (1895) ;
Reischle, W erthurteile und Glaubenswrteile (1900) ; and Garvie, The
Christian Certainty amid the Modern Perplexity , pp. 239 — 278.

The History of Theology

173

knowledge, but we reach our certainty of them along other
lines. The distinction comes out in a passage in the
discussion of the Divinity of Christ, in which Bitschl
contrasts the honour he pays to Christ as God by trusting

for His salvation to the efficacy of His work, with the

«/ '

formula of Chalcedon. The former he describes as “ a
value-judgment of a direct kind," the latter as “ a judg¬
ment which belongs to the sphere of disinterested scientific
knowledge.’’ The formula “Jesus has for the Christian
consciousness the religious value of God,” though not, I
believe, actually used by Bitschl, sums up his position very
well. It is not his intention to deny the real Divinity of
Christ, though of course it still remains to be considered
whether his conception of what the confession of Christ’s
Divinity involves is adequate. But he is concerned to
affirm the practical worth of Jesus, as history and experi¬
ence disclose it. Our belief in God is similarly a judgment
of worth, not to be demonstrated by scholastic proofs, such
as the time-honoured theistic arguments, which do not
succeed in yielding us the kind of God adequate for our
religious needs. An apologetic on old-fashioned lines is
doomed to failure, and must be superseded by a defence
more suited to the subject-matter itself.

On another prominent feature of Bitschl’s work I have
touched already. He was a great system-builder. He
complained of previous theologians that in their exposition
they traversed three separate points of view, whereas no
system could be truly such unless the theologian occupied
a single point of view throughout. What did not prove
amenable to this treatment was in danger of being left
aside. As a source for Christian theology he rejects every¬
thing that is external to it. He repudiates all help from
so-called Natural Beligion,60 nor will he admit that we can

60. “ But if anyone builds Christian theology on a substructure of
pretended Natural Theology, the rationalistic arguments of Augustine
about original sin, and those of Anselm about the nature of redemption,
he thereby takes his stand outside the sphere of regeneration, which is
coterminous with the community of believers ( Justification and Recon¬
ciliation, p. 8).

174 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

derive anything of value from Comparative Religion,
except a clearer understanding of the differentia of
Christianity. Schleiermacher and Hegel had recognised
the affinity of Christianity with other religions, though
they had regarded it as their crown. But for Ritsclil
Christianity was not, as for them, the finest bloom on a
plant with many flowers, it did not grow from the same
root or even from the same soil. Indeed it did not spring
from the earth at all but came down from above. Nor
could any expert knowledge, derived from the study of
religion, enable one to place Christianity or to understand
it. It was wholly unique and could not be judged
objectively by the impartial spectator who boasted of the
freedom from presuppositions.61 Such impartiality really
did not exist, and what passed for it constituted the
critic’s complete disqualification. The religion could be
rightly understood only from the inside. He says : “We
are able to know and understand God, sin, conversion,
eternal life, in the Christian sense, only so far as we
consciously and intentionally reckon ourselves members
of the community which Christ has founded.” 62 And
again, “ If we can rightly know God only if we knowT Him
through Christ, then we can know Him only if we belong
to the community of believers.” 63 The nature of the
Redeemer and the work He has done can be appraised
aright only by one who has taken his stand in the
community he has founded, and “ as a member of it
subordinates himself to His Person.” We know Him to
be God because we have found Him to possess this value
for us. To quote once more, “ We should pay no special
attention to this purpose of Jesus, nor should we seek to
discover its value and its meaning, did we not reckon

61. “The opposite view is one of the characteristics which mark that
great untruth which exerts a deceptive and confusing influence under
the name of an historical ‘ absence of presuppositions’ ” ( l.c pp. 2, 3).

62. Z.c., p. 4.

63. l.c., p. 7.

175

The History of Theology

ourselves part of the religious community which first
attested, through the writers of the New Testament, its
possession of the forgiveness of sins as effected by Jesus."64

But having attained this qualification, from what source
are we to draw our theology? Not from the individual
consciousness of the believer, a method fraught with all
the perils of subjectivity. It is one of the most charac¬
teristic of Ritsclil’s positions that he insists on the priority
of the community to the individuals who compose it. It is
the community rather than the individual which is for him
the object of justification and the benefits which Christ
has procured are mediated through the community to its
members. This community is not to be identified with
the empirical Church. But, while it would be truer to
speak of the communal consciousness as the source of
theological knowledge, this might easily create a false
impression. For Ilitschl desires something more objec¬
tive, fixed and not fluctuating, and this he finds in the
Gospel.65 It is the Gospel which alone creates the
Christian consciousness, it is in it that this consciousness
finds its guarantee. How then may we rightly determine
what the Gospel is ? For in history it has assumed many
forms, all of them claiming to be the authentic reality.
Bitschl’s answer is that we must find our norm in the New

64. l.c., p. 2

65. I follow Kattenbusch here, who thinks that Ritschl himself was
not clearly conscious that this constituted the distinguishing feature of
his theology as opposed to the “ Romantic ” theologies, and that he
himself was the first to emphasise it (Von Schleiermacher zu Ritschl t
1st ed., pp. 73 — 81). The emphasis on “the Gospel” as a watchword
and standard is characteristic of Harnack. In the preface to the third
volume of his Dogrnengeschichte (3rd ed., Eng. trans., vol. 5) he meets
the criticism “ that in this account the development of Dogma is judged
by the Gospel, but that we do not clearly learn what the Gospel is” by a
brief epitome of what he takes the Gospel to be. His most recent
statement is in the 4th edition vol. i, pp. 65—85.

176 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

Testament.66 Not, however, that he based this, as had
often been done, on a theory of inspiration. He reached
his conclusion in quite another way. As early as the
second century the pure Gospel had been contaminated by
Greek Philosophy, and the History of Dogma had been
warped from that time onwards. The pure Gospel had
not been recaptured till the Deformation, the idea of
Reformers before the Deformation he repudiates. Of
course Catholic elements lingered on into Protestant
theology, and these foreign elements are to be eliminated.
Nevertheless the Reformers did recover the genuine Gospel
and place the emphasis where the New Testament had
placed it. But why should this unique authority be
attributed to the New Testament, and in what sense is it an
authority? Had Ditschl occupied the standpoint of pure
Biblicism the question would not of course arise ; but then
his theology would have been very different from what it
was. The traditional doctrine of inspiration he could not
accept, for there was much in Scripture that did not
command his assent. Accordingly he found the guarantee
of the value he assigned to the New Testament in the fact
that the Apostles understood the Old Testament and
interpreted Christianity from that standpoint. Their
view was not corrupted, as that of their successors, by

66. “ It stands as the foundation-principle of the Evangelical Church
that Christian doctrine is to be obtained from the Bible alone. This
principle has direct reference to the original documents of the Hebrew
religion gathered together in the New Testament, for the understanding
of which the original documents of the Hebrew religion gathered
together in the Old Testament serve as an indispensable aid. These
books are the foundation of a right understanding of the Christian
religion from the point of view of the community, for the reason that
the Gospels set forth in the work of its Founder the immediate cause
and final end of the common religion, and the Epistles make known the
original state of the common faith in the community, and moreover in a
form not affected by the influences which as early as the second century
had stamped Christianity as Catholic” ( Unterricht , p. 2). I quote the
translation in Swing, The Theology of Albrecht Bitschl , pp. 172, 173.

The History of Theology 177

Greek Philosophy, nor yet by Jewish Babbinism. But
why, it may be asked, did not Pitschl content himself
with finding the true Christian religion in the utterances
of the Founder? Because we need more than they give us
if we are to understand them. “ Their significance becomes
completely intelligible only when we see how they are
reflected in the consciousness of those who believe in Him,
and how the members of the Christian community trace
back their consciousness of pardon to the Person and the
action and passion of Jesus.”67 The New Testament is our
only source for the knowledge that we are in need of, and
Bitschl affirms that “ it would be a mistaken purism were
anyone, in this respect, to prefer the less developed
statements of Jesus to the forms of apostolic thought.” 68
Yet, as I have already hinted, he does not take the New
Testament as it stands to be the norm of the Gospel. It is,
as one might expect from the proof he gives of its value,
the New Testament as it stands in continuity with the Old
Testament and carries on the development which it
initiated. Moreover, he lays stress on its practical as
opposed to its theoretical contents. Lipsius expresses the
following opinion : “ In general, one might say that the
normative character of Holy Scripture as a record of
Divine revelation is not conceived by Ritschl essentially
otherwise than in the whole of the modern theology which
had its starting point in Schleiermacher.” 69

When we have thus distilled the Gospel from the New
Testament, we can employ it as a test of what passes for
Christian theology. Thus we are enabled to disentangle
authentic Christianity from foreign elements that may have
intruded into it out of the New Testament itself or Greek
philosophy or mediaeval scholasticism or misdirected move¬
ments within the Protestant Churches or modern specula¬
tive philosophy. A return to the Gospel is imperative;

67. Justification and Reconciliation , Eng. trans., p. 1.

68. l.c., p. 3.

69. Die Ritschl'sche Theologie, p. 4.

178 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

dogma must he the natural expression of saving faith, all
else is lumber. With this touchstone Bitschl was enabled
to pronounce much that had passed for gold to be but
spurious metal. He resolutely refuses to go behind the
Gospel as it meets our needs and enter the realm of the
transcendental. Thus the conception of God as the
Absolute; the Christology which defines Christ as consist¬
ing of two Natures in one Person; the pre-existence of
Christ, are swept aside by him. Whether true or not, they
are matters with which we are not concerned and on which
the Gospel has nothing to declare. The very order in
which he handles the doctrine of justification and recon¬
ciliation is significant for his standpoint. The generally
adopted order would be strictly chronological; to begin
with the Biblical material, then to pass on to the post-
Biblical development of the doctrine and on the foundation
thus laid reconstruct the doctrine itself. This is not
Bitschl’s method. He begins with the history of the
doctrine, and only in the second volume takes up the
investigation of the Biblical teaching, and connects
immediately with it the positive development of the
doctrine as he himself reconstructed it. In this way he
gave expression to his reverence for Scripture and sense of
its unique value. I may add explicitly, what has been
already suggested, that Bitschl differed from Schleiermacher
in that he gave the Old Testament alongside of the New a
permanent place in the Christian religion. The two stand
in organic connexion, the Old is intended to lead up to the
New, the New to consummate what is initiated in the Old.
Among the world’s religions the religion of Israel alone
constituted a preparation for Christianity. Apart from it
the Gospel cannot be rightly understood.

So far then I have been speaking of the sources from
which our knowledge of the Gospel is derived and the
criteria by which the authentic Gospel is distinguished
from the false and liberated from the irrelevant. What
then in Bitschl’s judgment is Christianity? He gives a

The History of Theology 179

definition of it which it is instructive to compare with
Schleiermacher’s. “Christianity, then, is the monotheistic,
completely spiritual, and ethical religion, which, based on
the life of its Author as Redeemer and as Founder of
the Kingdom of God, consists in the freedom of the
children of God, involves the impulse to conduct from the
motive of love, aims at the moral organisation of mankind,
and grounds blessedness on the relation of sonship to
God, as well as on the Kingdom of God.” 70 It is
noteworthy, in the first place, that the ethical is set so
firmly by the side of the religious. This corresponded to
Ritschl’s own temperament which was in fact ethical rather
than religious. He insists on freedom, which is with him,
however, a religious as well as an ethical idea, a conduct
inspired by love, and the moral organisation of society as
the goal of the religion. In particular it is characteristic
that the Kingdom of God receives such prominence in the
definition. The first volume of his work opens with the
words, “The Christian doctrine of Justification and
Reconciliation which I purpose to unfold in a scientific
manner, constitutes the real centre of the theological
system.” But in the third volume he complains that
theology has made “ everything which concerns the
redemptive character of Christianity an object of the
most solicitous reflection. Accordingly it finds the central
point of all Christian knowledge and practice in redemption
through Christ, while injustice is done to the ethical inter¬
pretation of Christianity through the idea of the Kingdom
of God. But Christianity, so to speak, resembles not a
circle described from a single centre, but an ellipse which
is determined by two foci” 71 The true reconciliation of
the ethical and the religious elements seems to him the
supreme problem in theology. For in religion we are
conscious of our absolute dependence on God, whereas we

70. Justification and Reconciliation , p. 13.

71. l.c., p. 10.

180 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

are at the same time aware of our Christian freedom. The
Kingdom of God is defined as “ the uninterrupted recipro¬
cation of action springing from the motive of love — a
Kingdom in which all are known together in union with
every one who can show the marks of a neighbour; further,
it is that union of men in which all goods are appropriated
in their proper subordination to the highest good.” 72 In
the light of this idea of the Kingdom he determines the
character of sin. He sets aside the ecclesiastical doctrine
of original sin, but puts in its place the idea of a kingdom
of evil. The subject of sin is humanity as the sum of all
individuals. Its real character can be understood only by
comparison with the good, that is, the Kingdom of God.
All grades of sin are recognised, but, apart from a possible
final obduracy, which, as a matter lying within God’s
cognisance, does not concern us, they may be reduced to
sins of ignorance. No propitiation of God is necessary
since He forgives of free love. The work which Christ
achieved by steadfast adhesion to His vocation in obedience
to the will of God was that He founded the Kingdom. He
thus exhibited the love of God in such a way as to remove
from men’s hearts the mistrust which they feel towards
God. We must remember, however, that with Ritschl
terms do not always bear their face-value. They may have
a distorted or reduced significance. He emphasises love,
but it bears in his terminology an unusual sense. He gives
the following definition : “ Love is the constant purpose to
further another rational being of like nature with oneself
in the attainment of his peculiar end, and in such a
way that the one who loves follows in so doing his
own proper object.” 73 What is specially striking
is the absence of any recognition of the' emotional
element in love. That is in fact very characteristic
of Ritschl. The idea of fellowship with God is
not recognised in the sense which the term generally

72. Z.c., pp. 334f.

73. Unterrichb, 1st ed., p. 10. I quote from Eng. trans., p. 185.

The History of Theology 181

bears. Herrmann’s famous and often uplifting book “ The
Communion of the- Christian with God ” restricts it to the
experience which we gain through contact with the
historical Jesus. “We cannot speak of a communion with
the exalted Christ.” 74 Everything in the nature of
Mysticism is abhorrent to Ritschl. Pietism is the object
of his bitter and contemptuous hostility. That sober,
moderate, unadventurous spirit would never have earned
for itself the judgment of Eestus on Paul. He may have
done well to dislike sentimentalism, only people are too
apt to dismiss as sentiment the most precious things life
has to offer us. He sneers at the penitence of the Pietists
or “ their tempestuous prayers for assurance ” as morbid
exaggeration, nor will he allow any mystical union with
the exalted Christ. No doubt there was much in Pietism
that was unhealthy, as one can readily convince oneself by
inspection of religious diaries in which the fluctuations of
the pulse and the readings of the clinical thermometer are
minutely registered. To such aberrations as these it was
well enough for the healthy-minded theologian to say,
Look away from yourself and your feelings to Christ as
the channel of God’s grace. Only some pity may perhaps
be felt for one who wades where he might swim or is
content with tramping when he might be soaring towards
the sky. He says explicitly, “ Love to God has no sphere
of activity outside of love to one’s brother.”

His uncompromising opposition to Pietism was of course
largely explained by the strength of his Protestantism.'5
He saw in Catholicism a rival and lower form of religion
which had simply to be fought; schemes of reunion or
compromise were vain dreams. His objection to Pietism
was that it was an attenuated form of Catholicism
masquerading as Protestantism. If Pietism prevailed in
the evangelical Churches they could not permanently

74. The Communion of the Christian with God (Crown Theological
Library), p. 291.

75. On this see Harnack, Reden und Aufsatze , vol. ii, pp. 353 — 355.

182 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

maintain themselves against Catholicism. In judging his
verdict we may usefully remember what he says of those
who judge Christianity from the outside.76

I have no space in which to trace Bitschl’s own theology
in further detail or to follow the progress of the School, to
mark the wide variations that have disclosed themselves
within it, or the cleavage into a right and left wing, the
former approximating more closely to the general beliefs
of the Church, the latter diverging more and more from
them. But some words may be added which will also serve
the purpose of touching on more recent developments. In
the first place, Bitschl would probably have consulted his
own reputation if he had left philosophy alone. He had
far more competence for theology in which he was an
expert of the first rank. One may discount Pfleiderer’s
judgment to some extent on the score of prejudice, but it
was the verdict of a very competent judge.77 And two
further criticisms have been made. One may be expressed
in this way, that, having turned philosophy out at the
front door, he smuggles her in at the back ; the other, that
under the label of metaphysics he gets rid of truths vital to
Christianity. In the next place, Bitschl lays his founda¬
tion in the New Testament, but just here he has failed to

76. Frank, with full recognition of the weaker sides of Pietism,
protests against Ritschl’s unjust depreciation ( Geschichte und Kritik der
neueren Theologie, pp. 34 — 39).

77. “ On a closer inspection, however, this, his famous theory of
cognition, is seen to be only a dilettante confusion of the irreconcilable
views of subjective idealism, which resolves things into phenomena of
consciousness, and common-sense realism, which looks upon the phenomena
of consciousness as things themselves, admitting no distinction between
phenomena as perceived by us and the being of things in themselves.

. In spite of its intrinsic worthlessness, it is well calculated to

furnish this theology, in its wavering between the subjective dissolution
of the objects of theology and the affirmation of their objective reality,
with an appearance of scientific justification having a certain attraction
at least for amateurs in these questions ” (Development of Theology,
p. 183).

The History of Theology 183

test the quality of his materials. From the first his
interpretation of Scripture aroused adverse criticism. It
has been widely felt to be far too much controlled by
dogmatic bias. Moreover, while in criticism he was a
great deal nearer the truth than Baur, yet there are
important points in which he would not win general assent.
And when we pass from criticism to theology, matters
become more serious still. The New Testament, Hitachi
held, was differentiated from the post-Biblical literature
by its immunity from Gentile influence. The Apostles
understood the Old Testament, and therefore interpreted
the Gospel aright. Moreover, they were not infected with
Rabbinism on the one side or Greek Philosophy on the
other. But here a large and growing school would protest.
The Fourth Gospel, the Epistle to the Hebrews, even the
Pauline Epistles are declared to have been not a little
touched by Gentile influences, by Greek Philosophy,
notably Stoicism, and by the Greek Mysteries. This may
or may not be true. Personally, I may express the opinion
that at least with reference to Paul the influence has been
much exaggerated. But I do not doubt its presence in the
Fourth Gospel and the Epistle to the Hebrews, and even in
this restricted form the results of research make Ritschl’s
position here difficult. Again, the Kingdom of God
receives in his theology a dominant position. But the
question was bound to arise, Did Jesus mean by the term
what Ritschl believed that He meant? If not, then,
however intrinsically admirable Ritschl’s exposition of the
idea might be, it ceases to express the idea of the Founder.
And it is in the Ritschlian School itself that the sharpest
expression has been given to the conviction that here
Ritschl read his own ideas into the teaching of Jesus. His
own son-in-law, Johannes Weiss, published in 1892 the
first edition of his work “ Jesus’ Proclamation of the
Kingdom of God,”78 which expressed what has come to
78. Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes (1892). The second edition,
under the same title, was published in 1900, it was more than three
times as long.

184 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

be known as “ consistent ” or “ radical eschatology ” in its
sharpest form. In the much enlarged and less extreme
second edition he explains the origin of the first. He says
that in the school of Kitsch! he had become convinced of
the exceptional significance of this conception which
formed the organic centre of KitschTs theology, and is still
of the opinion that his system, and in particular this
central thought presents that form of doctrine which is
best fitted to commend the Christian religion to our
generation, and rightly understood and expressed to
awaken and to foster a healthy and strong religious life as
we need it to-day. But he was early disturbed by the clear
perception that Kitschl’s view of the Kingdom of God, and
the idea which bore the same name in the teaching of Jesus
■were two very different things. Further researches con¬
vinced him that the real roots of Kitschl’s idea were to be
found in Kant and the Illumination Theology.79 In
another respect Kitschl’s position is attacked by those who
have been formed in the school, I mean the attitude
adopted by him towards other religions.

Here then, with a keen consciousness of the imperfect
way in which I have accomplished my task and with a
sense that even the best possible fulfilment of it under the
conditions would have been wholly inadequate to exhibit
the depth and richness of the development, I bring this
lecture to a close. It is wdiolesome for us to remind
ourselves how fully German the development has been and
how little has been contributed to it from foreign sources.
Our own theology, where it has not been too deeply limited
by insularity to learn from Germany, has in the past
greatly profited by its teaching. It might profit very much
more. The more we borrow, the sooner we shall be able to
begin repaying our debts.

79. P. v. He devotes to Ritschl’s doctrine of the Kingdom the closing
section of his lecture, Die Idee des Reiches Gottes in der Theologit
(1901).

VII. — THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

BY

BERNARD BOSANQUET, LL.D., F.B.A.

THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY.

German philosophy at the beginning of the nineteenth
century lived in a world of mingled hope and despair, a
world of daring genius, of spiritual adventure and
romance. To-day it is environed by a structure of
immense substantial achievement, where the conquest of
nature through science and the opening of fresh horizons
through mathematics seem correlative to the transforma¬
tion of society by material and political progress. Its
energy indeed is undiminished ; but how far in its highly
complex creations, bearing traces of the pessimism and
positivism of the mid-century, either the old greatness
survives, or a new greatness has come to birth, is what in
these few pages we must attempt to estimate.

The task which I have incautiously undertaken is
so impossible that in a sense it becomes possible again.
To convey in a single lecture any idea of the detail
of that immense and intricate structure of which
we are to speak is plainly beyond possibility.
More plainly so, as we approach the latter part of the
period, when the immense intellectual activity of the
German empire is supplemented by Austrian thought, and
we find ourselves in the presence of a vast organisation of
highly capable and energetic students, in continuous and
many-sided co-operation, whose articulate detail no one
but a working member of their body could expect fully to
appreciate. But it may be feasible, in the few minutes
before us, to express some relevant thoughts as to the
rhythm and main direction of that great composite
current. This at least is what I mean to attempt without
further delay.

The rhythm and main direction, I said. Let us hazard
one or two guesses at it, which by their several inadequacies

188 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

may throw light upon each other. At first sight we seem
to recognise the common triple rhythm, from which it is
so hard to escape; the rhythm of creation disintegration
and recovery; and in the end I believe that this simple
scheme will be found in a sense to hold good. But if such
is the rhythm of the movement, what is the main
direction? Is it circular or progressive? Is it, for
example, to be described as Metaphysic, Positivism, and
Metaphysic again? This is what many of us would like
to believe; say, for instance, in rough popular language,
that the movement was : first, Hegelian ; second, neo-
Kantian or anti-Hegelian ; and finally, neo-Hegelian. But
the third term, at least, in this latter division, would
be fiercely repudiated, I should suppose, by nearly all the
German scholars of to-day; and even in the first term
there would be an undue narrowness.

We shall be more cautious and more accurate if we start
purely from the relation to Kant, which is fundamental
for the German nineteenth century, and speak of the post-
Kantian, the neo-Kantian, and, to invent a horrible term,
which I will not use more than once, the post-neo-Kantian
period. In this rough blackboard sketch the term post-
Kantian would cover the time from the beginning of Fichte
to the final recognition of Schopenhauer by the world, say
from 1794 to 1844; the term neo-Kantian applies to the
movement made explicit in 1865 by Liebmann’s tract on
Kant and theEpigoni, which raised the banner of the return
to Kant, a phrase which came to indicate an anti-
metaphysical crusade; and the term which I applied
to the later neo-Kantian movement along with other
contemporary developments might be construed with refer¬
ence to 1888 and after, when Avenarius’ critique of pure
experience had suggested a return to constructive and
systematic thinking, and heralded the appearance of
affirmative speculation in many directions, including the
latest neo-Kantian work itself.

These terms are relative to Kant. Now it is hopeless for

The History of Philosophy 189

us to interpret Kant this evening. So the history must
interpret him for us. That is to say, we must make the
considerable assumption that whatever any serious school
of thinkers have found in Kant, must in some sense and
in some degree he really there. Thus while we devote no
special passage to Kant, our whole discussion will be in
substance an exegesis of him. And this is perhaps the
safest way of interpreting great men.

But now, before I can go forward with our scheme,
there is a comprehensive reservation to be made, which
you may think nearly fatal. In the latter two-thirds of
the nineteenth century there appeared a series of remark¬
able men whose attitude, so far as I understand it,
could not he adjusted on the whole to the scheme I have
indicated. And moreover they were the very men whose
names might first occur to us foreigners in approaching
our subject — distinguished men, such as Fechner, Lotze,
von Hartmann, Sigwart, Wundt, Paulsen. It is a strange
case. To some of these we owe, I suppose, what is most
characteristic in modern psychology, for example, the idea
of parallelism, which has even claimed to be more than
psychological, and the whole new departure of experi¬
mental psychology ; to others we owe excellent methodical
work in Logic; to all of them, striking suggestions in
special regions of philosophy. But, as far as I can judge,
in philosophy proper they were all working a thinner
vein than the great post-Kantians ; and though for that
very reason more popular at the moment, as for example
through the picturesque idea of pan-psychism, they did
not directly contribute to the central conflict of metaphysic
and anti-metaphysic which marks the rhythm of the
century.

For our purpose this evening then, our very meagre
purpose, I think we must simply set them aside, noting
in them, however, a certain growth of voluntarism, and
also an intensification of the psychological attitude, lead¬
ing by reaction to an emancipation from psychology, which

190 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

has had an important effect upon the central current of
philosophy.

Thus we return to try and obtain a definite impression
from our scheme of post-Kantian followed by neo-Kantian
thought leading to the latest forms of the latter along with
other constructive developments.

1. Let us place ourselves, to begin with, at the first
movement of the new rhythm, at the source of the great
current. Let us follow Hegel, at the age of 25, as he
writes to his precocious friend Schelling, a youth of 20,
in the year 1795, half-way through that last decade of the
eighteenth century in which all creative influences seemed
concentrating to make a new thing.1

“ From the Kantian system and its fullest completion I
anticipate a revolution in Germany, which will start from
principles already forthcoming and only needing to be
systematised and applied to existing knowledge. No doubt
there will always be something of an esoteric2 philosophy,
and the idea of God as the Absolute Ego will belong to it.”
Then, after referring to Kant’s Critique of the Practical
Reason, and to Fichte’s Foundation of the whole
Doctrine of Science (1794), he continues : “ The inferences
therefrom will one day astound a great many distinguished
people. They will be giddy at the supreme elevation by
which man will be so high exalted ; yet why has the world
been so slow to raise its estimate of human dignity (or
value, a Kantian phrase), and to recognise the capacity of
freedom (Kantian) which sets him in the highest rank of
spirits.” He is studying Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre ;
Schiller’s Letters on the ^Esthetic Education of Man,
which had just appeared in “ Horen,” seem to him a
masterpiece, and he is full of their language. Hegel’s
letter is revolutionary and humanitarian throughout. We

1. Hegel’s Brief e (Karl Hegel), p. 15.

2. Esoteric, because it involved what would now be called the identifi¬
cation of God with the Absolute, an idea diverging sharply from Kant,
and irreconcilable with the needs of religion in the strict sense.

The History of Philosophy

191

know, of course, how the opposite of all this was imputed
to Hegel in his later years. Nevertheless, this is the real
clue to the system.

Here we have in a single focus the operative elements of
the main post-Kantian movement. Hegel, we see, has
no doubt whatever that he is creatively inspired by Kant,
in pursuing Fichte’s idea of the self as the key to the
universe, while reinforcing it by the concrete aesthetic
insight of Schiller and Goethe. This latter element,
absent in Kant, came to Hegel in conjunction with
Schelling’s vision of a living concrete, as the revelation
of a spirit at one with sense, and a world of reality in
which mind and matter were only relative distinctions.
In Hegel’s own judgment3 — I refer for a moment to what
I have urged elsewhere — the deepest vein of philosophical
inspiration ran from Kant to Schiller, and from Schiller
to Schelling. It was in Schillers re-creation of the Kantian
aesthetic theory from letter to spirit, from fragments
to a living system, that Schelling, in Hegel’s opinion,
found the secret of the Absolute. Schiller treated the
question as one of liberating the spirit of Kant from the
letter.4 According to the letter of his philosophy, Schiller
observes, sense and reason, matter and mind, may be
hostile, but in its spirit they are at one. 14 Now if man
is free without ceasing to be sensuous, as the fact of
beauty teaches, and if freedom is something absolute and
supra-sensuous as its idea necessarily involves, then it can
no longer be a question how man ascends from the limits
(of time and sense) to the absolute.” This is what the
Kantian Schiller, blending his mind with Goethe’s in that
wonderful ten years, from 1790 to 1800, handed on to
Schelling and Hegel.

Thus, in terms of the standard we have selected, the

3. Hegel. Aesthetik, i. 78, 80. E.Tr. (Bosanquet), p. 116. Bosanquet’s
History of Aesthetic, p. 286.

4. Schiller. Brief e iiber die Aesthetische Erziehung des Menschen,
Br. 25 ; H. of A. 290-1.

192 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

essential character of the post-Kantian movement is, so
to speak, the forward interpretation of Kant ; the sweeping
away of distinctions and reservations, and repudiating all
phenomenalism and all the subjectivism of the “ As If.”
The world of a single experience, which Kant called into
being, but had left anchored, as it were, to unknown
external attachments, was now to be self-contained and
self-supporting, like the solar system, without reference
to any unfathomable beyond.

For comparison with later philosophy the attitude to
the criticism of knowledge is fundamental. It has been
said that the post-Kantian movement is based on a critical
theory of knowledge as a science essentially prior to
metaphysic.5 Now, if we mean that it accepted and built
upon the analysis of experience which revealed its central
and systematic unity, the contention is just. But if we
mean that it accepted the idea of a criticism which should
test the capacities of the intellectual instrument and
ascertain their limits before proceeding to its use, such
an epistemology is wholly foreign to the post-Kantian
movement, and was always regarded by it as an absurdity.
It is rejected by Hegel, in a wrell-known passage, as a
method of learning to swim before going into the water.6
The whole point and bearing of the new way was to go
straight to metaphysic, on the understanding that reality
is everywhere and in everything, and that truth is to be
attained only in the self-grounding and self-criticising
whole.

We are to bear in mind then, in order to understand
the rhythm we are following, that for this passionate and
revolutionary movement the enemy is every form of the

5. The New Realism , p. 60, and ib., Introd., p. 20. Cp. Riehl, Science
and Metaphysics, E.Tr., p. 137.

6. Encycl., S. 41. For Nelson’s comment, see Acts of the Bologna
Congress, i. 266. A question might be raised whether Nelson gives due
weight to the idea of knowledge being its own criterion, which I take
to be the position indicated by Hegel.

193

The History of Philosophy

inaccessible “ beyond/’ the unattainable “ ought,” the
unrealisable or fictitious “ ideal,” the asymptotic and
unending progress to perfection. The movement embodied,
we may say, the spirit of religion as opposed to, or as
containing in subordination, the spirit of morality. For it
the object of philosophy was “ not remote, but in the
fullest sense present ”7 ; perfection was always to be
realised, but none the less was the reality of things. The
paradox thus resulting, the realisation of the real, was for
those thinkers the very essence of life and of philosophy.
It involves the attitude which is expressed in the highest
teaching of Goethe : —

“ Und so lang du das nicht hast
Dieses ‘ Stirb und werde,’

Bist du nur ein triiber Gast
Auf der dunklen Erde.”

“ 4 Die to live ’ — for thou who hast not
Made this law thine own
Art but an embarrassed novice
In a world unknown.”

German scholars of to-day wrould, I suspect, approve the
poetry, but reject the philosophy. It is not my purpose
here to argue that they are w^rong ; but if any of them
should chance to see these words they will pardon the
enthusiasm of a foreigner to whom the poetry itself comes
as a greater thing wdien inspired with the argumentative
passion of a generation of philosophers wdiose thought and
courage were so high.

And now let us look for a moment at the character of the
method or argument which formed the mainspring of this
movement. Let us look at it with our own eyes, in its
primary form, as Eichte states it m his first and second

7. Hegel, Encycl., 94.

M

194 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

Introductions to the doctrine of Knowledge,8 where he
reiterates his account of the matter, failing to see why
anyone should misunderstand what seems to him so plain.

Intelligence, he says, is an action, not even an activity;
i.e. it only exists in and by acting — it is, as might be
said to-day, a function. The proper way to get to know
it is to set it at work and watch it. You must do some¬
thing; you must act or affirm. Then, and then only, you
can see how, essentially, intelligence must work if it is to
work at all, and again, essentially, what its working
implies. “As long as” — these are Fichte’s words — “you
have not shown the whole thing arising before the thinker’s
eyes, Dogmatism is not tracked to its ultimate lair.”
Or again, “ The thinker institutes an experiment.” He
sets the object at work, and traces the necessary connections
of the phenomena, and what further conditions they
involve.

So with the ego. He asks you to observe it acting;
and you see, for example, that essentially it must have
something to act on. The act involves an opposition; the
affirmation involves a reality beyond itself. This is the
only thing an affirmation as such can mean ; it means
that something is, independently of the affirmation. This
is the kind of reasoning by which Fichte has been supposed
to construct the universe out of the ego. It is, in essence,
observing very carefully what is necessarily implied in the
play of a certain function.

It is much the same with Hegel’s Dialectic, which owes

8. Fichte. Erste Einleitung in die Wissenschaftslehre. Werke, i. 440,
“ Die Intelligenz ist dem Idealismus ein Thun, und absolnt nichts weiter,
nicht einmal ein Thatigkeit soli man sie nennen.” 443 ff, 454, “ Er (der
Philosoph) stellt ein Experiment an.” Cf. W. Wallace, Prolegomena
to Hegel’s Logic, p. 125, “ Instead of a glance at the secret substructure
of the world, you see it [in Fichte] at a magician’s mandate building
itself up ; stone calling to stone, and beam to beam, to fill up the gaps,
and bind the walls together . . . you are summoned as a partner in the
work, etc.”

The History of Philosophy

195

a great deal to Fichte, and a great deal to Kant.9 It is at
bottom, I think, just the bare and fundamental appeal to
the essence of all system and inference. Hegel may have
talked rashly, but we have to look at the facts. It works
like this. Begin anywhere in experience; affirm anything
and let the mind work on the affirmation. You will find
your affirmation confronted with another, different, but
claiming the same place, that is, contradictory. Then, to
satisfy your thought, you have to discover or contrive some
further complex which will put both affirmations in their
right place with the necessary corrections. The driving
force is the necessity that the complex which your thought
affirms should be self-consistent. All thinking and
inference without any exception depends upon this
principle.

It is quite beside the mark to ask where the matter
of the affirmations comes from, whether from “ pure
thought ” or from “ experience.” It all comes from
somewhere; there can be no doubt of that; nothing comes
out of nothing, and, apart from methodical explanation,
this contrast is wffiolly meaningless. But the only
question is, what you have to think true or real when you
have got it before you. Before the court of Logic, the
history of a proposition is not evidence, but mere hearsay.
The question about any affirmation is how it now fits in
with all that you are aware of beside it. Every affirma-

9. For appreciations of the dialectic free from the bias of the reaction
see Wallace, op. cit., p. 369, McTaggart, Studies in Hegelian Dialectic ,
p. 4, and Bradley's Principles of Logic , Book III, Part 1, ch. 2, sect. 20.
Trendelenburg’s famous criticism (Logische Untersuchungen, 1840 — 1870)
belongs to the opening of our second phase — the reaction in full blast.
‘Trendelenburg,’ says Hartmann, “‘means low-water mark in German
philosophy,” ’ Wallace, l.c. Compare further with the passage
above quoted from Fichte, and with the principle of Husserl’s
Phenomenology, F. H. Bradley, Essays on Truth and Reality (1914)
p. 311. “The method actually followed (by Mr. Bradley) may be called
in the main the procedure used by Hegel, that of a direct ideal
experiment made on reality.”

196 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

tion is modified as you combine it with others. Even in
a common three-term inference the premisses modify each
other, and the conclusion is a new system. Thus, once
more, the method is one of ideal experiment. You survey
strictly a certain complex, and you find that in principle
it admits of only certain affirmations. The reason lies
in the systematic nature of reality, made evident by the
actual constructive work of mind, whose connexions are
necessary.

The post-Kantian movement, as we saw, was in its origin
humanitarian, revolutionary, aesthetic, socio-political, as
well as directly and concretely metaphysical. Besides its
basis in Kant, it owed much to Rousseau, much to the
reviving interest in Greek art, politics, and culture, very
much to the joint inspiration of Schiller and Goethe trace¬
able to Winekelmann. It was strong, by the common
consent even of a later day, in the sciences of humanity,
in the theory of history and in the history of philosophy,
in social ethics, in aesthetic, in the theory of religion. Its
metaphysical logic, though furiously attacked by a later
generation, at least aimed at being a system of the laws of
reality, and in no way took the side of “psychologism,’'
i.e. of identifying logical truth with mental occurrence.

Its weakest point, perhaps the main cause of what is held
to be its downfall, was its philosophy of nature. Sclielling
and Hegel would have done better for their reputation
with the world if they had never touched this subject at
all ; and Hegel in particular if he had never mentioned the
name of Newton.

But their own reputation was not Schelling’s or Hegel’s
concern. What they suffered from, and suffered for, was
not a defect but an excess of interest in nature and science
at a moment of singular excitement and suggestiveness in
the scientific world. They incurred great perils; and
they often tripped and fell. Their generation of naturalists
was pregnant with the theory of evolution; Buffon and

197

The History of Philosophy

Goethe,10 Erasmus Darwin, Treviranus, and Lamarck
were on tlie track. Perhaps no philosopher with a passion
for cosmic unity could at that crisis have kept his hands
oh the subject. The philosophers did not anticipate
Darwin, but they did see a good deal of the unity of
nature. Hegel remarked, for instance, that it could hardly
be the goal of chemistry to establish forty or fifty hetero¬
geneous elements.11

The history of science has sharp turnings, followed by
long lanes without much turning. A student who comes
just before the turn, is soon and suddenly superseded.
One vdio finds himself half-wTay along a lane inherits ideas
which endure longer. We think ourselves in a long lane
to-day, and we feel superior to those who were just before
the turning. And yet in a hundred years some of our
glimpses into nature may look as quaint as Hegel’s. I do
not doubt that his eagerness often led him to speak
inadvisedly. But I hold that the philosopher is in the
right to inform himself as he best can, and then to take
his chances. A glimpse or two of truth matters much
more than keeping oneself unspotted from mistakes.

However, to recur to the rhythm we are pursuing, the
point is that the forward, objective, aggressive or adven¬
turous interpretation of Kant’s central unity came first
in historical time — before the retiring, subjective, and, so
to speak, defensive interpretation. The fact seems to me
historically remarkable, and I do not know that it was
inevitable apart from historical and cultural influences.
The first phase, indeed, might call itself critical, if
criticism means reading all factors of experience in the
light of the whole. But it repudiated the critical attitude,

10. Wallace, op. cit., 152.

11. Encycl., sect. 334. Cf. Riehl, Science and Metaphysic, E. Tr. 110,
“ The advances in chemistry have by no means decreased the number of
elements, as the systematic impulse of pure thought demands, but have
increased it.” I take it, as things stand to-day, Hegel in 1807 has the
better of his critic in 1887.

198 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

if criticism meant the evaluation of a system, prima facie
subjective, in terms of its power to reveal reality and
truth. And this is on the whole the attitude of the second
phase, which we now have to consider. It begins with the
anti-metaphysical theory of knowledge. But we shall see
that it leads to a third phase, in which a rather different
relation to metaphysic appears at least to suggest itself.

2. It is impossible here to depict the historical and
cultural situation in which the post-Kantian idealism
together with the romantic movement lost its power.
Great scholars have connected it both with the revolution
of 1830, and with that of 1848. 12 Between these dates, and
for some time after them, a materialism and materialistic
social economics, which sprang in part out of the Hegelian
movement itself, were superseding idealism ; the natural
sciences and Comtism w'ere a rising force in Europe ; and
the pessimism and voluntarism of Schopenhauer, a genius
of the post-Kantian type, though but now coming into his
own, were impregnating general European culture with
the influence, which, surviving in Nietzsche, was to be
potent in the later half of the century.

The writings of Mill, Bain and Spencer had a curious
influence in Germany.13 They were not, I believe, accepted

12. Wallace, Life of Schopenhauer, p. 190. Albert Lange, History oj
Materialism (E. Tr.), ii. 245 ft The circular rescript from the Ministry
of Education of 21st August, 1824, warning the academic youth against
sham philosophy ( i.e . non-Hegelian philosophy), compares amusingly
with Hegel’s letter above cited. Lange, l.c.n.

13. These writers are referred to at length in Lange’s History of
Materialism (1873) and Mill and Spencer are treated as examples of
vicious “Psychologism” in Husserl’s Logische Untersuchungen (ed. 2,
1913), p. 78 ff. Husserl’s criticism of Mill’s psychologism seems to me
thoroughly just. But there is one small point of terminology on which
I think it probable that there is a misunderstanding. When Mill calls
Logic a “ Philosophy ” or “ Theory of Evidence,” he means a theory of
proof, not a theory of “self-evidence” or of the quality of
being “ evident,” which I take to be the meaning of the German word
“ Evidenz.” “Evidence” for us means facts or testimony alleged in

The History of Philosophy

199

as profound by thinkers of repute; but they were, as,
somewhat to our surprise, they remain even to-day, a
convenient text for criticism, and filled men’s minds with
the idea of an inductive, phenomenal and psychological
philosophy.

It was under influences like these that in 1865 Otto
Liebmann 14 published his tract entitled, “ Kant und die
Epigonen,” the sections of which, dealing in succession
with Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Herbart, Fries, and
Schopenhauer, ended severally with Liebmann’s watch¬
word, “ We must go back to Kant.” The test he applied
to all these thinkers was the problem of the thing-in-itself,15
the removal of which, as an inconsistency in Kant’s
philosophy and a mere excrescence upon it, appeared to
him essential to a true appreciation of the system. He
held that all these philosophers had in some way com¬
promised with the accursed thing ; Herbart being so far at
one with Hegel that even in his pluralist system of “reals”

support of a proposition. And Mill means by the “ Theory of
Evidence” or “larger Logic,” ( Examination of Sir W. Hamilton, 457,
461) practically his theory of Induction as opposed to
Formal Logic. If, as I imagine, the word “Evidence” on p. 181,
Husserl op. cit., is taken in the same sense as “ Evidenz ” on p. 189,
then I incline to think that in this trifling particular Mill isi misunder¬
stood. Partly because of the difference of usage I have referred to,
“ Evidenz ” is a very difficult term for an Englishman to understand. 1
should think the best rendering is “self-evidence.” In Mill’s controversy
with Whewell, he develops a non-psychological theory of evidence in
his sense of the word, which seems in the main sound. See my Logic,
ii, 226-9.

14. “ Otto Liebmann,” Kant u. die Epigonen, 1865, “ zur Analysis
der Wirklichheit,” 1876. His attack on Hegel’s handling of mathe¬
matics is in the later work.

15. Kiilpe in Realisirung (1912) accepts, as I understand, the Thing-in-
itself. “ Wir halten mit dem ein Ding an Sich und seine Beziehung zur
Erfahrung anerkennenden Kant,” i. 251. He means, I gather, something
like the “ physical object ” of science. Still, the comparison of his
position with Liebmann’s is instructive for the development of the
reaction into its sequel.

200 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

(simple underlying qualities) lie had set up a transcendent
something, beyond space and time. The only way
therefore was to go back to Kant and make a fresh start.

Liebmann treated it as a paralogism even to argue that
our world in space and time is phenomenal. It is
conditioned, he would allow, but self-conditioned; not
conditioned ah extra; and he denied Herbart’s prin¬
ciple, “So viel Schein, so viel Iiindeutung auf Sein.” So
far as I can see, his successors did not imitate his
thoroughness, but admitted for the most part that our
world is phenomenal of the unknown.

He anticipated, however, a very important feature in
later philosophy, by insisting on the philosophical value of
mathematics ; and his special hostility to Hegel was
expressed in a contemptuous criticism of the Natur-
philosophie directed to this point.

Here, then, as Liebmann clearly proclaimed, the critical
philosophy falls back into a criticism of knowledge. It
limits itself to what is given in consciousness and occupies
itself on this basis with examining the range of our
cognition and the limits of our intelligence, much like
Locke.

Thus, in the general neo-Kantian position, we have the
contradictory opposite of the post-Kantian reading of
Kant. That was a metaphysic; this is an epistemology.
And Epistemology, Theory of Cognition, Criticism of Know¬
ledge, remain, I think, on the whole the attitude of the
most progressive German thought from that day to this.
There is, indeed, a later change in its focus, which will
justify the distinction I have indicated between the second
and third phases of the intellectual rhythm which we are
studying. But the neo-Kantian mode of approach seems to
me to characterise on the whole both the second phase
which we are describing, and the third which we shall
indicate below. Criticism has returned into its shell; it
takes its stand on the given in consciousness; and con¬
siders what further, if anything, you can elicit from that.

The History of Philosophy

201

At once, therefore, there re-appear those Kantian
features which post-Ivantian thought had more especially
repudiated; the unrealised and unrealisable ideal in the
mind, the ever unattainable “ ought,” the infinite process
of approximation to moral perfection. In Liebmann,
Yaihinger, Lange, and the Marburg school, we find this
view maintained with extraordinary skill and tenacity,
and, by Yaihinger in particular, attributed with an
elaborate array of evidence from posthumously published
works, to Kant himself. That is to say, for example, in
the Kantian treatment of God, Freedom and Immortality,
we are not, if we respect the spirit of Kant, to go forward
in any sense or manner to incorporate or include these
features in an objective theory of the universe; but we are
to regard the familiar “ as if ” with which Kant conditions
them as we regard a conscious working fiction in any
special science, say, the fiction of dealing with a curve
as composed of very short straight lines. The thing is
a fiction and known to be a fiction; it is received purely
for its value as a practical rule, and not as having any
relation to theoretical truth. The “ as if ” is simply
to tell you in what way you are to act if you wish to
follow the ideal in your mind. The ideal has no
objectivity or reality of any kind, except that it arises in
your consciousness and you cannot get rid of it.

This view of the ideal, which to Hegel seemed self¬
contradictory and already obsolete, finds of course a strong
support, previously undreamed of, from all those modern
views which point to an unlimited horizon of change for
the future of our universe, and to a practical rather than
a theoretical function for knowledge. The tables seem
to be turned on the post-Kantian doctrine when absolutism
is treated as analogous to a geocentric hypothesis,16 and the

16. For this comparison, and the whole defence of the “ Sollen ”
against Hegel, see especially Natorp, “ Kant und die Marburger Schule ”
(1912). Yaihinger interprets the “As If” with extraordinary ingenuity

202 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

Kantian ideal is likened to the true modern conception of
a freely moving planet. The unending progress, the
fundamental antithesis of the real and the ideal, is just
what these views seem to demand.

A remarkable consequence of this critical attitude in the
epistemological sense is the difficulty of distinguishing the
cognitive theories, whose names still carry some philo¬
sophical significance, from each other. “ Critical ” or
“ Idealistic Positivism,” the doctrine of Vailiinger and
I presume of Mach (c/. the title “ Anti-metaphysical
Prolegomena ” in his work of 1886, Analyse der
Empfindungen), “ Critical Realism,” the doctrine of Riehl,
“ Critical Idealism,” the ultimate doctrine of Albert Lange
in his famous history of Materialism — these theories, all
alike anti-metaphysical, are hardly by any precise philo¬
sophical standard distinguishable from each other.17 In
truth, Critical Realism and Critical Idealism at this time
are much more like each other, than each of them is to its

in terms of the “ Sollen.” Fictions are for him a mere expression of
the ideal, with no objective warrant, yet ineradicable. Lange takes a
similar line. It is really the moral attitude made absolute.

17. See Kiilpe Realisirung , 103. Neither the earlier critical idealist
nor the earlier critical realist holds together the entire experienced world
as the reality. This is, for example, Schuppe’s complaint against the
prevailing critical realism, in his “ Bestatigung der na'iven Realismus ”
(reprinted in Avenarius’ der Menschliche Weltbegriff). Therefore, as one
is seldom quite certain that the idealist or positivist has not a thing in
itself in the background (as Vailiinger clearly has — an unknowable real),
and as the realist of Riehl’s type makes his reality rather like a thing in
itself (for you cannot get at it with any completeness) there is little
to choose between them but a difference of emphasis ; again, however,
when you come to compare, say Cassirer and Husserl (Idealists) with
Kiilpe (Realist) you find in both groups a fairly comprehensive view of
organised experience, and the main difference is merely in the realist’s
conviction that certain objects are independent of mind. I do not see
that Kiilpe’s conception of an Inductive metaphysic has necessarily to
do with Realism. It seems to me clear, however, that Induction can
only operate within a metaphysical position.

The History of Philosophy

203

successor of the same name. One might find the principal
watchword of the earlier or positivistic attitude in the
phrase “pure experience.’’ In what you are to find the pure
experience, and what you can elicit from it, are points
on which differences may exist. But that what you have
in consciousness unadulterated by beliefs about the
beyond, is the sole trustworthy datum, appears to be at
starting the universal critical postulate. At starting,
because it modifies itself in working out.

To obtain a distinct impression, let us consider in this
connection the ideas of Yaihinger, than whom, I suppose,
there is no more competent Kant-philologer. His
remarkable book, “ The Philosophy of the As If ” was
written, as we all know, in 1876-7, but partly because the
ideas of the day were not ripe for it, was not published
till 1911. Thus it embraces a long period of time; we
have in it the author’s views of 1877, copiously confirmed
and illustrated by ideas of the 80's and 90’s, including,
as he points out, Voluntarism, the biological theory of
cognition as an adaptation subserving economy of
thought, Nietzsche’s recognition of the value of fictions,
and Pragmatism in its more critical aspect as a protest
against one-sided intellectualism. In view of all these
influences, we may summarise Vaihinger’s neo-Kantianism
as follows.

Nothing in our experience is real but sensations in their
successions and co-existences. Possible sensations are in¬
cluded. All the constructive elements of our world, the
Categories, Number and mathematical ideas in general,
Things, Subject and Object, and indeed our experience as
an organised world, are without exception Fictions. By
“ fictions,” however, he does not mean mistakes or
illusions ; and here he believes himself to have a new point
of view, that of the high value of fictions. A fiction is a
working rule, contrived consciously or unconsciously as a
guide or facilitation to action, that is, to procuring sensa¬
tions. It is expressed through an analogy, an “ as if.”
And the whole world, as it is in our ideas, is an instrument

204 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

contrived for this purpose, and makes no pretence to be
a copy of reality, though it is a means by which we adapt
our action to the real, a real in its own character unknown.
The whole world, as it is in our ideas, lies between the
afferent and the efferent nerve (compare Bergson), and its
office is simply to make the communication between them
more adequate. Science indeed does at times make the
intellectual constructions thus arising an end in them¬
selves ; then they become a luxury and a passion ; “ and all
that is noble in man has an origin like this.” 18

Thus it is a fundamental error to treat knowledge as if
it aimed at copying the real world. The world as it is
in our ideas is itself a cosmic product, generated by the
instinct of the psyche through analogous apperception, to
facilitate practice. Real being is unknowable, not
because it is above our understanding, but because it is
below it. The world of our experience is a product of
the real world; it cannot possibly be a copy of it. It is,
Yaihinger seems to imply, a higher phase of it.

This conception, and the conception of the high value of
fictions, which at the same time are always self-contra¬
dictory, might lend themselves to quite other philosophical
theories. The main idea of sensational reality we need
not criticise; but these accessory interpretations breathe
new life into it. Our world, it would almost seem, is an
improvement on the “ real ” world. Thus when the idea
of fiction is applied to mathematics as a whole, its implica¬
tion of a purposive construction possessing supreme value
for the ordering of reality does much to remove what
is prima facie a fundamental contradiction between
Yaihinger and thinkers within the same movement, for
whom mathematics is the clue to all knowledge.

Onlv, it does still seem as if for him a fiction has its
value in its fictitiousness. And so it has, no doubt, but
only as a short cut has its value in its shortness. After

18. Vaihinger’s Philosophie des Als Ob, p. 95.

The History of Philosophy

205

all, it must be between the right places, and that is
determined by its relation to reality.

Now I cannot see that the situation is changed in
principle so long as the epistemological point of view
is retained, along with the assumption that our
world of perception is phenomenal. The emphasis may
be changed from the sensations in combination and
succession to the formulae of the succession and combina¬
tion of the sensations, so that in effect a recognition of a
systematic world may appear writhin the phenomenal
course or may be employed in an inference beyond it.
But until pure experience is interpreted from a less
psychical standpoint, the conception of a real world cannot
be genuinely entertained.

Thus I cannot help thinking that Mach and Riehl, for
instance, are fixed in the former attitude, so that critical
realism and critical monism, the doctrines of Riehl, —
“ critical ” as a prefix means, I think, in this period “ anti-
metaphysical ” — do not effectively go beyond the positivism
of Mach. On the other hand, a relatively new attitude
appears to me to begin with Richard Avenarius.

3. Here, then, with Avenarius’ Kritik der Reinen
Erfahrung (1888) and his “der Menschliche Weltbegriff,”
(1891), I venture to see the beginning of the third phase of
the rhythm wTe have been tracing.19 Of course these assign¬
ments of place and time, in the vast co-operation of
students to which I referred at starting, are not much more
than symbolic. One can say that the features I speak of
were apparent here ; one can hardly say that they were not

19. Cf. Kiilpe’s Realisirung, p. 114 (referring to the 80’s of last
century), “ Seitdem hat sich unsere Stellung zur vorgefunden Wirklich-
keit immerhin merklich geandert ” [Wirklichkeit = what is actual in
consciousness], “ Wir sind wieder im Begriff, uns ein ideales Reich zu
erschliessen, ein Reich das nicht von dieser Welt des Bewusstseins ist.”
“ Metaphysik ist kein verachtlicher Schlagwort mehr.” The “ ideales
Reich ” is, I take it, the realm of things as known to science [“ real ” as
opposed to “ wirklich ”].

206 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

previously apparent at all elsewhere. The Marburg school,
for instance, to which I shall refer below, had already
been at work from the earliest neo-Kantian period.

In any case, what I seem to observe at least from this
point onwards, is a systematic and logical crystallisation,
a solidifying or architectonic tendency, so to speak, within
the critical and epistemological position. The anti-meta¬
physical attitude lingers on, but tends to pass into an
attitude rather 'preliminary than hostile to metaphysic.
Cognisance is taken of the distinction between what is
given in consciousness and what is given to consciousness.
Mathematics asserts itself as a great fountain of neces¬
sary construction and non-psychical truth. Logic and
essential necessity recover their value in contrast with
psychological fact. For all these things precedent can be
found in Kant, Herbart, and Lange,20 and considering our
pregnant interpretation of the significance of fiction, even
in Yaihinger, who may seem most opposed to them. To
gain, once more, a vivid impression, let us look, in the
first instance, at the essential position of Avenarius.

Avenarius’ watchword is still pure experience ; pure
experience means for him what comes from our surround¬
ings ; and it is the destiny of all ideas which are not pure
experience to vanish like primitive animism from human
thought, and make way for what is. That is the side of
the epistemological tradition which he retains.

But, on the other hand, two things are noticeable.
His pure experience is always a system in itself, implying
a central term and its surroundings or counterparts.
Without a co-ordination of this kind there is no experience.
And the experience is not psychical more than physical.
The assumption that we begin from something psychical,
inward, ideal, and build up the physical world out of or on
the basis of this, is for him a fallacy with a perfectly
definite origin — the fallacy of Introjection. Introjection,

20. Cf. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, 1913, i. 213 ff, 224 ff.

The History of Philosophy

207

as I understand it, is simply the familiar tendency of each
of us to say to his neighbour, “ 1 am dealing with per¬
ceptible facts; you are dealing with your inward impres¬
sions.” Then, on reflection, we transfer to ourselves what
we have affirmed about our neighbours, and the thing is
done. We are no longer a central term in a world of
counterparts — a necessary element in a world inseparable
from us, but we have become a sort of vessel containing
airy and unreal images, out of which we ineffectually
struggle to elicit a physical reality beyond them.

All this, according to him, is sophistical and super¬
fluous. Experience is what it is, an actual system of
counterparts, all of which, ultimately and in principle,
have the power of being central members, what we should
call percipients, in a complex of such counterparts. To
go behind this arrangement, and ask what any term w^ould
be “ in and for itself ” is self-contradictory. You must
not answer, “ The cinnabar in itself is neither red or
black”; nor must you answer, “We do not know what
colour it is in itself.” In either answer you assume some¬
thing unthinkable, viz., a term which is not a counterpart
in the system of pure experience.

Thus it is worth observing that in the latter part of his
Weltbegriff he substitutes for the term “ pure experience ”
the term “ full experience,” meaning by the latter an
experience in which none of its inseparable conditions —
e.g. the presence of the human body and its surroundings,
are overlooked. Hence in his philosophy both the
psychical and the abstract nature which we have seen
ascribed to the real experience disappear; and Psychology,
in his view, is not merely Psychology without a soul,
which had been a familiar idea since Albert Lange, but
Psychology without a distinction between the physical and
the psychical. The object of Psychology is any experi¬
ence regarded from the point of view of the individual
whose “ statement ” it is. The ego has more things in it
than a tree has, and that is all. Of course in all this we

208 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

have only the substitution of function for substance which
may be traced back to Lotze, Hegel and Kant, and which
in a highly explicit form gives the title to a considerable
work of Cassirer, “ Substanz-B e griff und F unctions-
begriffF Its point for us here is in the democratic
equality, so to speak, which it is used to introduce into
the world of experience, giving the idea of mind as
constituted by the world, no less than the world, in Kantian
or post-Kantian phrase, as constituted by mind. We
feel ourselves getting back to a solid system of things,
which yet is free from the implications of the Thing in
itself. It is to be noted as essential to this position
that a given constituent can be constituent of the surround¬
ings of more than one person. We have therefore a
genuinely unitary world.

This “ empirio-criticism,” as Avenarius called it,
which he took to be one with man’s natural idea of the
world, we may set down, I presume, with Schuppe, as
meant to be a naive Realism. Schuppe complains that he
himself wanted to be a naive Realist, but everyone would
set him down as a subjective Idealist.

But we find no less of what we are looking fbr in
Cassirer’s fascinating work, to which I have just referred,
although his explicit position is that of “ Critical
Idealism.” It illustrates the force of the anti-meta-
physical tradition that lie yrima facie identifies the
“ metaphysical ” attitude with that of transcendental
realism — with the old attitude of the salto mortale from
subjective data to transcendent being, which we on our part
have rather held that epistemology implies and true meta¬
physic repudiates. And yet, in his own doctrine, we find
the greater part of what a genuine metaphysic would
demand. The preface indeed shows him to be aware that
he is handling metaphysical questions. The novelty and
interest of his position is, that in harmony with the neo-
Kantian tradition, and especially that of the Marburg school
to which he belongs, it is mathematics which furnishes him

209

The History of Philosophy

with the ideas, which come to the post-Kantian rather from
the organic universal. For him as for all Hegelian logic, the
enemy is the method of forming universals by abstraction,
with the view of retaining impoverished sensuous elements
as a generalised picture or copy of the real world, with the
old result expressed in the inverse ratio of intension and
extension. And the method which he opposes to this is
the further determination of sensuous data by mathe¬
matical formulation of their conditions, such that not
general resemblances but necessary connections of differ¬
ences, in series and complexes of series according to law,
give the true relation of universal and individual; with
the result that intension and extension increase pari passu ,
because increased intension means more complex articula¬
tion and a wider nexus of terms.

Thus he again, like Yaihinger, starts from the funda¬
mental principle that not copying, but construction
according to law, is what is aimed at in knowledge. And
his identification of reality with the comprehensive deter¬
mination of the datum through the precise articulation
which locates it in the whole system, shows us, surely, the
criticism of knowledge expanding into the realm of meta¬
physic, and often seems to repeat almost literally the
contentions 21 of a philosophy whose inspiration is of
organic and post-Kantian origin.

It is also noteworthy that while quite free from any
tendency to reduce logical and metaphysical necessity to
psychological fact, Cassirer rejects (so I understand him)
the extreme view of Mr. Kussell, that the conception of
mind is wholly irrelevant to that of logical and mathe-

21. Cf. e.g. T. H. Green, Works, ii, 288. “From the connection of
any set of phenomena as merely resembling, no science results ; once
connect them as constituents of a quantity, and we have the beginnings
of science.” The conception of a universal as constituted not by
resemblances but by a system of differences came to earlier philosophy,
e.g. to Plato and Hegel, from the idea of an organism, as to Cassirer
from mathematics.

N

210 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

matical truth and necessity. Spontaneity of thought,
as I gather from Cassirer, is correlative to objectivity,
and the separation between ideal truth and real existence,
though important, cannot be ultimate.

In all this, I submit, the criticism of knowledge, which
shrank into its shell in the second phase of the century’s
thought, is beginning to organise and solidify itself, and
to expand into a true immanent metaphysic — a metaphysic
which treats experience as ab initio and in principle in
touch with reality.

And we may note the same tendency in the important
theory of act, content, and object which a number
of thinkers, mostly but not solely German, have developed
in detail during the later years of the nineteenth century.
The distinction between what is given in consciousness and
what is given to it is of course not new,22 but as worked
out in detail it makes impossible a set of misapprehensions
which have been a serious hindrance in the way of a

. To say that the world
is my idea, if that means a sheer psychical state of my
consciousness, or an adjective of myself, should hence¬
forward be impossible.

Again, developing out of descriptive psychology, though
not identical with it, we now have a methodic treatment
of essential distinctions and connections given within
existent experience itself, of which essential truths an
elementary type is proffered in such a proposition as that a
sound is not a colour, or that a spatial object, so long as
it remains a spatial object, can only be perceived through
a variety ad infinitum of gradations and nuances,

22. Cf. Bradley, A'p'pearance and Reality, 301. On “ Akt,” “ Inhalt,”
and “Gegenstand,” with special reference to Meinong, compare Stout,
Some Fundamental Points in the Theory of Knowledge, Glasgow, 1911.
See, however, Husserl, Jahrbuch, 1913, i, 267- Natorp (Kant. u. d. Mar-
burger Schule, p. 16) contends that “Inhalt” and “Gegenstand” are
relative, so that what was “Gegenstand” can become “Inhalt” towards
a further “Gegenstand.” This seems to me important.

reasonable treatment of reality

The History of Philosophy 211

depending on the spectator’s point of view. No God could
make it perceptible otherwise.23 Or again, a precise relation
is determined between the “phyS4Cal thing”24 and the thing
of sense-perception — answering the question whether or
no they are in the same world; and this is a matter of
great importance for the starting point of metaphysic.

Truth of this kind, a 'priori truth, may be obtained, as
I read the theory, from the careful scrutiny of actual or
vital experience (Erlebniss) in a way in which its psychical
occurrence is not concerned, and by which the connections
and distinctions which its nature presents can be appre¬
hended as essential characters a priori of that nature.
I suppose (it is my own example) that harmonic relations
between musical sounds are in this sense essential and
a priori. It does not matter whether you hear them or
imagine them or how you get at the contemplation of
them. To the musically competent mind the relations
are essential (as the formal sestheticians said) and cannot
be otherwise while the complex is ideally the same. Such
a region of apriorism, independent of psychological occur¬
rence, but also unembarrassed by any affirmation of meta¬
physical reality or transcendence, is, as I understand,
what Husserl calls Phenomenology.

The vehemence with which here, as we observed also in
Cassirer, “ metaphysical postulates ” 25 or “ philosophical

23. Husserl, Jahrbuch, i. 81.

24. “ The 'physical thing.” Exact physical determinations do not fall
within experience proper. But the perceived thing itself is always and
essentially the precise thing which the physicist determines. “ Even
the higher transcendence of the physical thing indicates no reaching out
beyond the world which is for consciousness, ”i'6., 99-100. This conten¬
tion is directed against “the realism which is so prevalent” (p. 97),
“ which takes the actually perceived as phenomenal of a wholly unknown
reality.” This would hardly apply in full, e.g. to Kiilpe’s Realism.
But it would apply to Vaihinger’s Idealism, see above, p. 202, on the
difficulty of discriminating these attitudes. Husserl’s view indicates a
desirable completeness of treatment.

25. 76., 106-7.

212 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

argument from above,” are repudiated, is exceedingly
remarkable to tbe student of the method. Necessity
is ascribed to intuition, not in any mysterious sense, but
simply as looking carefully at a complex, and “ seeing ”
what it inevitably implies. And, as I gather, such an
“ intuition,” however sound under its conditions, may have
to be reconsidered or amended 26 through conflict with a
no less sound intuition based on a different complex. One
might almost suggest that we have here the principle that
“the truth is the whole” applied to every relative totality,
but so far only as that particular whole or complex will
carry us. So understood, it would be a strikingly
suggestive account of ayriorism.

I said near tJie beginning of this lecture that to the
unbiassed modern reader of Fichte and Hegel the differ¬
ence of method between them and the modern leaders
of German thought is not so great as might be supposed.
And also I am compelled to think that the term “ meta¬
physic,” disparagingly employed by these distinguished
moderns, is encumbered with a merely traditional refer¬
ence to the metaphysic which Kant criticised in the special
light in which he criticised it. Their usage does not seem
to me to imply reluctance to deal with questions which are
really metaphysical, or at least to prepare for dealing with
them. When we speak of a priori truth, even of an ideal
type, of the difference between ideal and real science, of a
system of reality whether immanent or transcendent, it
seems to me that we are beyond what in strict method
should belong to epistemology (though some would say
that if you leave to epistemology only what is its own, you
leave it nothing at all), and we are already well in the
realm of metaphysic. Nevertheless the critical attitude —
the attitude of anticipatory theory — is persistent, so far as
I can see, in the very best thought of the last fifteen
years in Germany. It almost seems as if what we called

26. lb., 36-7, 43-4.

213

The History of Philosophy

the first phase of the century’s rhythm had left behind it a
timidity — the burnt child dreads the fire — which is not in
itself altogether logically justified.

There are further examples in support of such a sugges¬
tion. So eminent a biologist and logician as Driesch,
intending, as I understand, to pave the way for a meta-
physic, feels bound to start from a solipsistic position.27
No less a thinker than Ehilpe, again, in promising an
account of the scientific affirmation of reality, appears to
advance the conception of an “ inductive metaphysic.” 28
And a question of principle might be raised, whether, if
you start from solipsism or from induction (in any
genuinely distinctive sense, such as verification of sugges¬
tions by sensuous experience) you can ever get to Meta¬
physic at all.

Even the latest utterance of the Marburg school,29 which
in plain words avows a certain affinity to Hegel in the
total determination of all experience by thought as con¬
trasted with the recognition of any given factor, such as
sensation — even this declaration adheres tenaciously to the
line of construction and progress ad infinitum which the
school’s mathematical preoccupation suggests. So that,

27. Driesch. Ordnungslehre, p. 4.

28. Kiilpe, Realisirung, 189 ff. This discussion of what is possible for
metaphysic to-day is of extreme interest. It is very strongly marked by the
sense of a total break with pre-Kantian ontology, which is characterised
in such a phrase as “ iiber alle Moglickkeit einer Erfahrung hinaus ” in a
way which I must confess impresses me as uncritical. Would it it be main¬
tained, e.g. that God is not experienced? But the central point is that
the substantive nature of metaphysic is judiciously assigned, though the
importance of the sciences for it is, as throughout our second and third
phases, in my view exaggerated. The main conception, however, which
we have suggested is sustained by all these latest developments, viz. that
after a very complete reaction, surviving in the terror of ontology which
still prevails, a new metaphysic is forming itself, which will in due
time, probably without much explicit recognition, reconquer and incor¬
porate with itself the valuable elements of the old.

29. Natorp, op. cit.

214 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

when we consider the open ideal as we might call it — the
eternal unfulfilment — to which this view abandons the
universe, we might doubt whether the school is not still too
“ critical to possess a genuine metaphysic. And yet, as
we saw in the case of Cassirer, it undoubtedly possesses in
detail many points of view which have considerable meta¬
physical value.

It is therefore with a good deal of interest that one notes
the revival by Nelson,30 in a new sense, of the old conten¬
tion that the theory of cognition, as an anticipatory enquiry
into the possibility of knowledge, is impossible because self¬
contradictory. There might indeed be a doubt whether
the “critical” doctrine offered as a substitute — the support
of metaphysical judgments by appeal to an immediate
non-intuitive cognition — is not itself a form of that search
for a “ pure experience ” which appeared to us to belong
to the epistemological attitude, if not, in this case, even
to a position which is psychological. But in any case,
the mere raising of the question is a strong instance of the
rapprochement to Metaphysic which we hope and believe
that we are right in ascribing to modern Germany.

We have now, I trust, seen something of the main
rhythm and direction of German thought in the nineteenth
century. It was no pleasure to me to neglect all the great
men whom I mentioned at the beginning, and to abstain
from noticing the ^Esthetic of Lipps, the value-philosophy
of Ehrenfels and Meinong, and the Denkpsychologie of
Ach and Watt and Bukler. And I could well have spent a
whole lecture or course of lectures on the significance of
the materialists, or the peculiar influence of Nietzsche.
But, to parody a sentence of Hegel, if we were to do
anything, it was necessary to do something in particular.
And the central battle, it seems to me, must always be
decided on the logical and metaphysical field. Ethics and
aesthetics, sociology and political science will “ follow the

30. See Acts of Bologna Congress, i. 266, and p. 192 above.

The History of Philosophy 215

flag ” ; will share the metaphysical orientation. And so I
hope that we may have gained a definite impression, not
wholly incorrect, of the pulse and tendency of the great
intellectual organisation which we have been contemplat¬
ing. And I shall venture to conclude by expressing, in
old phrases of my Oxford teachers and of my own, my
conviction that “ a nation does not lose what thinkers like
the great post-Kantians have taught it” ; that sensationalism,
materialism, and other “weak persuasions” matter much
less in a country where so deep a philosophical culture is
presupposed, than over here where they might be taken
au pied de la lettre; and that is it is true of the post-
Kantian movement, as T. H. Green, the Oxford Idealist,
is reported to have said, that “ it must all be done over
again,” we may at least find everywhere to-day, in the
wide and strong foundations which are being laid, a guide
and support for our undying faith in a future metaphysic,
which though not quite the meta physic of the past, will be
a metaphysic still.

VIII.— THE HISTORY OF MUSIC

BY

F. BONAVIA

t

THE HISTORY OF MUSIC

Any account within the present limits of German music
during the most eventful hundred years of its existence
can necessarily be no more than an outline of its main
course. It has therefore been considered preferable to
leave untouched important sections, like chamber music
and song, since they were fed by and dependent upon
the two great streams of activity — symphony in the first
half of the century, opera in the second. If Cornelius and
Marschner are not mentioned it is not that they were
considered unimportant but that they affected only slightly
the main current. Even of Beethoven and Wagner — the
two greatest figures of the century — only those aspects of
their music are discussed which show most unambiguously
the thought of the time and the progress towards a more
comprehensive ideal.

Considerable as the reform of Gluck had been in the
eighteenth century it yet left an opening for reactionary
tendencies. Gluck was not unwilling to admit the claim
of poetry in musical drama at the expense of music. Con¬
ventionality dictated the theme of the opera. Some fifty
operas were composed in the eighteenth century alone on
the subject of Ariadne and many more on Alexander.
Moreover, Gluck had left untouched the all-important
question of styles. After the death of John Sebastian
Bach musicians began to forsake the old polyphony for
a style which aimed at centering all interest on a single
line-melody, to which all the rest was made subservient.
For the sake of what they regarded as beauty of melody they
came in time to sacrifice all force and proportion. Com¬
position was gradually reduced to a search for the softest,
easiest medium. Everything except melody could be
expressed in terms of a stereotyped formula. Until
Schumann and Mendelssohn discovered it anew the

220 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

magnificent polyphonic machinery of Bach lay forgotten
and useless. His mournful presage, “ Die alte Art der
Musik will unsern Ohren nicht mehr klingen,” was proving
only too true. The baneful influence of Court patronage
had permeated the whole body of music and sapped its
natural vitality. Gluck had to devote years of his life
to the production of vapid entertainments for the Viennese
Court. Even the music of Mozart had no national signifi¬
cance. It was never in touch with the hulk of the people.
It was the pastime of courtiers, and the courtiers of
Vienna patronised with equal generosity the product of
German, Italian and Slav. From the day when Haydn
entered Vienna until Liszt produced “ Lohengrin ” in
Weimar, the Austrian capital was the most important
centre of music in Europe. But it was not a centre where
national characteristics were cultivated. The poetry of
the Italian Metastasio was applauded as well as the music
of Haydn — a Slav — or of Beethoven, the first of the great
German composers of the period. To give back to Germans
their patrimony of folk-song, to revive the art of poly¬
phony, to raise music from a delightful pastime to an art
of national importance was the task of the nineteenth
century.

To achieve this two things were essential. In the first
place, it was necessary to sweep aside all that was formal
and conventional in the texture of musical composition, to
fashion a new instrument capable of expressing deeper
emotions, of combining the majesty of Bach with the
charm of Mozart. This was the mission of Beethoven.
It was also necessary to assert once for all the right of the
composer over the singer and free the way for musical
drama which should not depend for its existence on the
skill of the chief interpreters. The history of opera before
the nineteenth century is based on the antagonism between
singer and composer. The conflict between the poly¬
phonic and the melodic style was certainly fostered by the
preference of singers for melody which enabled them to

The History of Music

221

pose as the autocrats of the operatic stage. Since singers
preferred Italian, Gluck and Mozart had to use Italian
libretti. To restore to his place the composer, to find
a juster proportion between music and drama was the task
of Wagner. Beethoven and Wagner are the two greatest
figures in the music of the nineteenth century, and the
advance marked by the symphonies of Beethoven find a
fitting parallel in the progress of Wagner’s operas. The
two" movements combined represent the most important
evolution music has ever known up to the present time.

At the close of the eighteenth century the most repre¬
sentative figures in music were Haydn and Mozart.
Neither of them foreshadows in any way the sudden
change to come. Of the two, Haydn is perhaps
nearer to the ideals of the future since he instinctively
felt the value of folksong. But Mozart, who has left a
deeper mark in history, belongs wholly to the older order
of things. His music represents the highest point reached
by those who made fineness and delicacy their chief aim.
Its simplicity and directness, its technical neatness, the
perfection of its proportions, the symmetry of its design,
its serenity — these were only made possible by the fact
that it compediates all the musical thought of Mozart’s
time. But it is not national. The best Italians come
considerably closer to Mozart than other more typically
German composers. A rich harmonic web, and the epic
grandeur of opera which have ever characterised German
music from Gluck to Strauss are not his, but the loveliness,
the naive charm, a certain scholastic clarity of counter¬
point, qualities which the Italians held to be the end of all
music. With Mozart the supremacy of the Austrian com¬
poser comes to an end. Schubert and Hugo Wolf, the
greatest Austrian musicians of the nineteenth century, did
not affect the course of music in the same degree as
Beethoven or Wagner. Brahms and Beethoven, although
they spent a considerable part of their life in Vienna, were
neither of them Austrians.

One act, however, of Mozart’s life is not without signifi-

222 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

cance for future history. When, after experiencing the
brutality of his patron, Bishop Hieronymus, Mozart
resigned his post in the jmelate’s household, he marked the
end of the era of patronage in music no less definitely
than Johnson’s “civil” letter to Chesterfield made an
end to patronage in English literature. In the nineteenth
century the patronage of musicians still existed, but it was
no longer the best means to success. The patron retained
the privilege of subscribing for the publication of the
composer’s work, of applauding and flattering him, but he
ceased to have an active influence. He could no longer
demand work or supply the occasion for it. Beethoven
wrote when he pleased and whatever he chose. The
“ piece d’occasion ” was a gracious act, not a duty. The
narrow-minded patronage which bound musicians to the
household of a prince was incompatible with the newT
movement towards independence of thought and action.
It is true that in some cases it might have freed the
recipient from the necessity of having to earn a precarious
livelihood, but it was also bound to isolate him from
the mass of the people. The great musicians of the
nineteenth century drew their strength from the thought
as well as from the songs of the masses. But the transition
from the patronage of the nobles to that of the public at
large was a period of severe trial, as the case of Schubert
and of Mozart himself proves, and a reversion to the old
conditions would not have been improbable if the first man
to stand alone had not possessed moral qualities as well as
musical genius of the highest order.

Beethoven was acquainted with both Haydn and Mozart.
The latter knew him only slightly. Haydn, on the other
hand, could number Beethoven amongst his pupils, and
although the lessons do not appear to have been much to the
taste of either pupil or master, it is not unlikely that they
at least had the effect of inspiring Beethoven with a love for
melody of the folk-song type and of drawing his attention
to the possibilities of the variation-form. In every way the
temper of the two was fundamentally different . Beethoven,

The History of Music

223

like Haydn, lived on good terms with the titled Maecenas
of Yiennese society, hut the great affliction which troubled
him during the greater part of his existence developed a
sensitiveness, a liking for solitude, a spiritual life which
recalls the later years of another giant who had to bear
the weight of misfortune, Milton . Beethoven was sincerely
religious, but his was one of those natures which shrink
from parading their profoundest convictions. Like most
of his predecessors, he could only express himself in
music. Weber, Schumann, Wagner, Berlioz, were, in
varying degrees, experienced writers; but for Beethoven
music was the only means of expression. We must look to
his work and to the known facts of his life rather than
to the few notes he left behind for an insight into his
character. His articles of faith are the “ canzone in
modo lidico,” the devotional mood which tempers the
gaiety of the last sections of the ninth symphony and
the “ Missa Solemnis.” Outwardly he was brusque
in manner and intolerant of conventionalities and
restrictions. Like General Yon Bose, he did not hesitate
to break rules when he found them an obstacle in his way.
After a few tentative efforts before the closing of the
eighteenth century he made directly for his goal and never
paused until he had reached it. To Mozart’s success the
definition of “ divine accident ” applies with some fitness —
not to Beethoven. Will-pow'er and moral force are
intrinsic qualities of the nine symphonies. Themes did
not occur easily to Beethoven in their finished form. He
had to cast them again and again before they acquired
the required shape — an operation which sometimes taxed
his uncommon strength to the utmost. Moreover, his
favourite forms — the symphony and the quartet — are the
most exacting of all musical schemes.*

* Gautier says : l’oeuvre sort plus belle

d’une forme au travail

Rebelle,

Vers, marbre, onyx, email.

224 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

Some of tlie earliest compositions of Beethoven contain
plain hints that a change is about to take place. Some¬
times it is a melodic phrase that is no longer gracious
and tender but passionately insistent. Or it may be that
the place usually assigned to the minuet in the symphony
is given to a scherzo so odd and whimsical that it seems
almost a witty caricature of the stately dance. The final
change came in 1802 when Beethoven announced definitely
his intention of setting out on a new path. The “ Eroica,'’
the immediate outcome of the resolve, is the first of the
nine symphonies to throw light on the new tendencies.
What are the chief characteristics of the Eroica, in what
does it differ essentially from all the symphonies written
before? In the first place, there is the extension of
structure; then there is the substitution of the dramatic
for a purely lyrical type of melody. The greatest struc¬
tural change takes place in the quick middle movement
which stands for the minuet of the older composers. The
change in the character of the melody is evident mostly
in the first and second sections. The scherzo retains the
barest outline of the parent dance-form, the matter is
altogether new, and implies a general refinement of
technical means opening sources hitherto unknown.
Rhythm is no longer a frame for the action but itself
an agent. Dissonance is not simply a retarder of conson¬
ance but acquires a significance and a value of its own as a
dramatic element. The change in the melody is slightly
more complex. There is, most notable, a tendency
to shorten its ordered measure, to compress it, to reduce it
to the marrow; then, enlarged and developed by a
manifold system of variations, to make it capable of ex¬
pressing every shade of thought. The poise of the very
first phrase with its suspended resolution arrests attention.
Themes are no longer found in rigid groups of four or
eight bars; they move freely, obeying a much subtler
rhythmical instinct. The second subject in the first
movement of the Eroica consists in its shortest form of

The History of Music

225

three bars with so touchingly human an appeal that it
has the eloquence of a sudden gesture, a glance, rather
than that which was then conceived to he peculiar to
music. Such examples are plentiful in all the later
Beethoven’s scores. This reduction of melody to a
pregnant symbol has proved the basis of all modern
advance. It enhances the emotional value of the sentence
which becomes more pointed, and it opens infinite possi¬
bilities of variation — the starting point of the Wagnerian
leitmotif. In the majesty of the funeral march there is
perhaps less of technical novelty; the imaginative quality
of its fugal section, in which the voices of the mourners
seem to rise in supplication, is, however, a wonderful
example of an old form galvanised into new life. The
pitiful wail at the end, which, it is said, ran insistently in
Moseheles’ mind as he stood by the death-bed of
Mendelssohn, is entirely of the new order.

The next landmark, the C Minor Symphony, carries still
further the lesson of the Eroica, and stands out as the first
musical composition to reflect the political events of its
time. The intended dedication of the Eroica to Napoleon
would have fitted this symphony far better. It was a
time requiring bold and quick action. Boldness, deter¬
mination and self-assertion are at the root of the C Minor
Symphony. In oneness of aim, in its splendid unity it is
without parallel. All the usual canons are set aside.
Contrast is obtained by viewing the subject from
another standpoint rather than by opposing themes of
different character. Immediately after the appearance of
the eight notes said to represent the second or subsidiary
subject the design of the first theme is added to it by way
of contrapuntal support, and this design, this symbol, is,
in fact, present throughout the piece. Its short frame is
contrived admirably for contrapuntal purposes. It is in
place everywhere and always used with telling effect. It
knits together the whole texture indissolubly. Even the
other movements partake of the general character approacli-

o

226 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

#

ing the central idea of the symphony from different points to
end invariably in an assertion of power and determination.
Every chord of the finale is an affirmation of indomitable
will. The usual divisions into main and subsidiary sub¬
jects lose their importance here, since all the subjects
express the same idea having the same aesthetic intention
and value.

With the Pastoral Symphony Beethoven touches upon
a very different aspect of the musical development of the
century. The Eroica stands for the warlike moods aroused
by the Napoleonic era. The Pastoral represents the new
feeling for Nature still embryonic, but none the less
perfectly genuine. Nature for him is a source of unceas¬
ing delight; he does not penetrate her subtler moods. He
finds in nature the peace and solitude the town-dweller
seeks vainly in his familiar haunts. Her sterner, awful
aspects, like her mysticism, music did not penetrate until
Wagner interpreted the symbol. Mendelssohn and
Berlioz caught the hidden threat under the external love¬
liness. But even the company of peasants in the Pastoral
Symphony, rejoicing in the return of the sunshine, are a
considerable advance on the Thirsis and Chloe affectations
of the previous era. And although Beethoven failed to
carry these ideas to their logical conclusion, he was perfectly
aware how nature ought to be approached. “ Mehr
Ausdruck der Empfindung als Malerei,” is the definition
he gives of the symphony. Yet, curiously enough, he
descends to a mere imitation as close as possible of the
song of the nightingale, the twitter of the quail, and the
call of the cuckoo. In spite of the many happy strokes of
a technical kind the “ Pastoral ” is still bound by a con¬
ventional conception. It is, in fact, little more than a
catalogue of Nature’s habitual effects.

These are the symphonies which stand out conspicuously
in the historic advance. The ninth symphony, the greatest
of them all, is, apart from the introduction of the chorus,
an enlargement of previous themes rather than a new

The History of Music

227

departure. It sums up all previous achievements ; its
melody is even more pregnant than before, its dramatic
appeal more searching. But the means by which the
result is attained are essentially the same.

The immediate result of the nine symphonies of
Beethoven was to place Germany highest amongst all the
musical nations — a position she has maintained ever since.
They fixed for all time the importance of the symphony
and opened the way for future progress not only in the
classical but in musical drama. How much Wagner owes
to Beethoven no one has yet attempted to compute, hut it
is generally acknowledged that the debt is great. The
symphony is a form peculiarly suited to the German
temperament as it demands besides inventive genius and
imagination a sense of order and power of organisation, —
qualities in which Germans have ever excelled. But even
in those countries where the symphony has never taken
firm root the example of Beethoven put heart into
reformers and stimulated progress. Beethoven was the
battle-cry of Berlioz and Boito when they sought to
free the music of France and Italy from the deadly grip
of conventional routine.

Beethoven had no immediate successor; Wagner is the
only nineteenth century musician whose reforms can he
compared with his. Less of a heroic temper than
these Schubert might have emulated Mozart in naive
simplicity if Beethoven had not been. The effect of
the combined influence of Mozart and Beethoven
was to make of Schubert the most romantic of the sym¬
phonic writers. A Southerner, he betrays his origin by
his reliance upon melody, by the want of intensity in his
style which is lucid rather than robust. The design,
sometimes too vast for the matter which rests upon it, is,
however, the chief failing of Schubert. Unrecognised
during his lifetime, he is now held to stand considerably
nearer to Beethoven than the accomplished, facile, admired
Mendelssohn. To Mendelssohn indeed posterity has

228 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

assigned a much lower position than his contemporaries
would have thought possible. Though a native like
Brahms of Hamburg, he has none of the characteristics
of the Northern men. Of his considerable output only
those works have survived which show to best advantage
his gift for colour. The rest is as forgotten as Lord
Lytton’s novels in spite of the unquestionable fluency
of his melody and the impeccable shape of his phrases.
Extremely sensitive to outside influence, he fell under the
sway of romanticism. “ The Midsummer Night’s Dream”
music, the Hebrides overture are fine examples of the
stimulating effect of poetry upon music. These are in
truth symphonic poems which admit of the usual divisions
of the classical plan, although critics who admire
Mendelssohn not wisely may hesitate to admit it. A
citizen of the world Mendelssohn could not well represent
national tendencies. But wherever he went, he carried
with him the passionate desire for fantastic beauty and
scenery. At the Hebrides he saw

.... the foam
of perilous seas ....

and he searched South and North Italy and Scotland for
the “faery lands forlorn.”

But neither Mendelssohn nor Schubert could assimilate
one feeling of romanticism. The worship of heroism
which sent Byron to fight for Greece and produced
Werther in Germany, Jacopo Hortis in Italy, which
stirred so deeply Berlioz in France, has no parallel in
German music until we come to Schumann, the last
and the most important of the romantics of the century.
Beethoven was of the people ; Schubert, like Mendelssohn,
stands for the new interest in extravagant and fantastic
beauty ; Schumann for the individual consciousness
aroused by the worship of heroism. It is the business of
the exponent of heroism to focus attention on the
individual and to excite emulation which must needs take

The History of Music

229

the form of a noble egotism. In Schumann we find for
the first time the striving after personality. “ Mensch
und musiker suchten sich immer gleichzeitig bei mir
auszusprechen,” he said. In many ways he forms the
most striking contrast to Mendelssohn. One was all for
colour, brightness, smooth curves, using material which,
ready at hand, could be made to appear new after polish¬
ing and re-fashioning. Schumann’s qualities are intimacy,
loftiness of ideas, personality and a disregard for common
effects which falls not far short of contempt. He was not
endowed with a capacity for writing fluent melodies like
Mozart, and he had too critical a mind to dare with the
boldness of Beethoven, yet he is the most important link
in the chain connecting the music of the nineteenth
century to the music of our own day. He saw the value
of closer unity and sought to achieve it by the use of a
“ motto ” which was to connect all the threads of the
symphony. He used the variation-form with the mastery
of Beethoven; his themes are, like those of Beethoven,
fraught with significance and possibilities. Without
Mendelssohn the music of the nineteenth century would
have lost much, though its course would not have been
different. But Schumann was needed to clinch the truth
proclaimed by Beethoven that plastic beauty is not the
only important element of music; that in song a close
connection between words and music is essential; finally,
that thought is of greater value than a naturally facile
temperament. Schumann was the first to hail the
advent of Brahms and to discover the importance of
Bach in German music to whom, he said, music owes as
great a debt as religion to its founder. He was, moreover,
the first and the soundest of critics. During the years in
which he owned and edited the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik
(1834 — 1853) he laid the foundation of all modern criticism.
The practical knowledge he possessed of the subject and his
keenly critical mind may have affected his composition, to
some extent, in a not auspicious manner since those whose

230 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

place is in the van must sometimes rely on instinct rather
than knowledge. But knowledge is the first qualification for
criticism, and some of his writings are as permanent as his
symphonies. Of catholic taste, he spoke with equal
authority on such varied composers as Berlioz and Chopin.
To his contemporaries his judgment of Meyerbeer may
have appeared severe ; posterity, however, has come to see
the justice of his strictures.

During the first half of the century the symphony was
the most important musical product of Germany.* In the
second half the operas of Wagner began to loom on the
horizon, hut before the claims of opera gained general
recognition the symphony found one more exponent
around whom the upholders of classicism or “ pure
music ” rallied to maintain its superiority against all
other forms. Schumann used a happy phrase when, in
a memorable article in the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik,
entitled “ Neue Bahnen,” he describes Johannes Brahms
as “ armed at all points.” He appears, in fact, invulner¬
able. No matter from what standpoint he is considered he is
found true and irreproachable. Although temperamentally
he differs considerably from Beethoven he carried to their
logical conclusion Beethoven’s innovations, and in many
ways his work is the complement of Beethoven’s. When
Wagner was opposed to Brahms and opera to symphony
his right to be regarded as Beethoven’s successor was
denied. But it is difficult to see on what grounds the
denial could be based. The affinity between the last of
Beethoven’s and the first of Brahms’ sonatas for piano and
violin is greater than that of any other two compositions
by men of strong individual character. Perhaps we are
ourselves too near to Brahms to express anything like a
final judgment. The very flawlessness of his armour
makes one fear that the future will discover the weakness
which is hidden from us. But if dignity of conception and
loftiness of ideas are the test of classicism, surely Brahms

* The first performance of Lohengrin took place in 1850 at Weimar.

The History of Music

231

is the most classical of them all. For all his aristocratic
taste he was not incapable of being swayed by the feelings
which appeal to the majority. On the contrary, no one
has utilised folk-song to better purpose, and the charm of
some of his songs as of his arrangements of Hungarian
dance-tunes is as clear to the cultivated as to the
unlearned. But even in the presence of death he main¬
tains a dignity which gives to the “ Ernste Gesange ” the
tone of a weighty prophecy. The modern symphony
recognises Beethoven as its founder. It found in Schubert
its most melodious voice. It became with Schumann the
medium of most intimate thought ; Brahms gave it its
loftiest, most serene expression.

In the symphony the Germans had practically the field
to themselves. In opera, however, the rivalry of the
Italians could not well be ignored. The antagonism was
based quite as much on style as on the actual technique of
the music. Germany had shown a distinct bias for
polyphony while the Italians favoured the melodic type.
The antagonism, although in a less acute form, exists to
this day. In the early nineteenth century and even later,
Italians denied practically all virtue to polyphonic music ;
the worship of melody was carried by them to such an extent
that the elementary rules of all drama were sacrificed for
the sake of conventional divisions which gave singers the
opportunity of excelling, first in the treatment of broad
melody then in the execution of technical feats.* Music
had no part in the unfolding of the story and was confined
to a number of melodious pieces which commented

* The Italian opera of the eighteenth century depended on singers as
much as the Commedia dell’ Arte depended on actors. The only differ-
ance was that in a musical entertainment pre-arrangement cannot be
altogether dispensed with. Virtuosi had, however, a full opportunity
for improvisation in the “cadenza.” In any case even serious artists
did not scruple to ignore the composer’s intentions to suit their tastes.
It is highly probable that one passage in the modern editions of
Beethoven’s violin concerto is an interpolation of a not too scrupulous
editor.

232 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

lyrically upon the dramatic situation. The actual business
of the drama was carried on mostly by the Recitativo, a
hybrid between song and speech, which seldom had any
musical interest whatever. The most varied situations
could be accompanied by a sequence of harmonies corre¬
sponding to a formula in which invention had no part.
The actual number of melodies — arias and cabaletta — was
dependent not upon the fitness of certain situations for
lyrical expression, but on the number of singers needed for
the action. No singer of reputation cared to take part in an
opera which did not give him a full opportunity of display¬
ing his individual peculiarities. So great was the tyranny
of the vocalist that in time “ arias ” came to be written
expressly for this or that singer, and the music had to be
arranged so as to bring out the qualities of the individual
performer. Pergolesi’s “La Serva Padrona,” probably
the best Italian example of the opera in which Recitativo
alternating with the Aria, obeys the most conventional
plan ever imposed on an artistic form. Mozart himself
only altered the pattern in so much that the Recitativo
is often no mere stereotyped formula but has sincerity and
interest of its own. The difficulties which stood in the
way of reform were many; chief amongst them the fact
that singers were naturally loath to abandon their position
as arbiters of the opera. The public besides had come to
look upon the opera as a collection of musical pieces for
which the action furnished the occasion.

In 1821 Spontini had just won a considerable success
with “ Olympie ” in Berlin, when Weber, then known
only as the composer of patriotic folk-songs, produced
“ Der Freischtitz ” at another theatre. The impression it
made was such that “ Olympie ” and its composer were
immediately forgotten, and in a short time all Germany
proclaimed Weber a national champion. And in many
ways Weber represented the spirit of his nation and of his
time. Apart from the patriotism which sent him to
Korner for the words of his songs, his music is imbued

The History of Music

233

with the romanticism which later led Wagner to “ Die
Meistersinger,” as well as to the “ Niebelungen Ding.'1
To Weber belongs the honour of having first understood
the full potentiality of a modern orchestra, its fitness to
suggest by means of music what till then had been reserved
for poetry. Just as Schumann later found the perfect
ratio between words and notes in song, Weber discovered
the just proportion between the singer and the orchestra.
The feeling for nature which found expression in
Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony becomes in Weber a still
deeper appreciation of the infinitely varied aspects Nature
can present. Not the beauty of lake and woodland
alone appeal to him, but also her mystery and terror. He
made even one attempt in “ Euryanthe ” to abolish the old
Pecitativo and to mould words and music into one great
scene or act; but “ Euryanthe,” for different reasons, did
not succeed, and it was reserved for Wagner to bring
German opera to its most perfect form. “ Eidelio,’’
magnificent as it is musically, did not affect the actual
form of opera. Weber’s one failing was the choice
of texts unsuitable for dramatic representation. “Oberon,”
like “ Euryanthe,” is built on a text which could not
possibly interest a critical audience.*

Much in the way in which Beethoven welded the sym¬
phony into an almost new form capable of expressing
what had been thought before to be beyond music, Wagner
evolved from the conventional opera of his predecessor a
type which has ever since been accepted as the best possible
combination of dramatic action and music. His reform in
regard to the drama is as radical as the advance in
technique. The most glaring faults of the old system
which wedded music to words of a diametrically opposite
character in order to show the skill of the singer in melody

* More judgment in this respect was shown by Heinrich Marschner,
Weber’s assistant at the Dresden Opera House, who, although consider¬
ably influenced by his colleague, yet shares with him the distinction of
having influenced in some degree Richard Wagner.

234 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

and “ bravura,” the utter absurdity of a conception which
subordinated the needs of the drama to the insatiable
ambition of singers — had been modified to some extent
by Weber. But Wagner was the first to distinguish
between dramatic subjects those to which music could best
be applied. He chose invariably a broad subject and situa¬
tions which gave music every opportunity for expansion
and comment. The first act of the “ Yalkiire,” for instance,
one of the longest single acts in existence, consists of three
scenes almost devoid of the incidents by which the
dramatic author usually interests his audience. Yet it is
so perfect a thing of its kind that the dramatic interest
never flags for a moment. Milton and sometimes
Shakespere show equal disregard for the pressing
of incident upon incident which is often miscalled
“ dramatic business ” ; they trust solely to the power of the
word as Wagner trusts solely to the power of music. Even
the earlier operas — “ Tannhauser,” “ Lohengrin ” — show a
considerable reduction of dramatic apparatus compared
with other operas of the time.

The symphonic recitative is the most important Wag¬
nerian contribution to the technique of opera, for it enables
the composer to give musical interest to those parts of the
action which in the old days would have been accompanied
by a few threadbare harmonies. By the use of the “ leit¬
motif ” the orchestra can assume the function of the Greek
chorus, commenting upon the action, or anticipating it, or
again describing and hinting at the events which led up to
the situation of the moment. It matters little whether
Wagner was the actual discoverer of the leit-motif, he was
certainly the first to use it to such excellent purpose.
But the leit-motif is not without its weak point.
Practically in the whole of “ Meistersinger ” it is used
with a skill and tact beyond praise, but in the “ Bing ”
it leads Wagner to indulge in repetitions he would prob¬
ably have avoided if he had not felt anxious to persuade
himself and his listeners of the absolute soundness of the

235

The History of Music

theory. The same story is told over and over again, and
every time it reappears the dramatic interest gives way to
the purely musical. The story of the stolen gold is told
again at considerable length in all the subsequent dramas,
and narrative is fundamentally opposed to drama. What
has been acted before our eyes will lose interest the oftener
we hear it told.

No doubt Wagner would hold by the argument he
applied to the words of his libretti. The words, he main¬
tained, are only a peg on which to hang music.* But if
words are used at all they cannot be disregarded. They
must be measured by the standard usually applied to
words. Good poetry must conform to the generally
accepted definition by which it is distinguished from bad
and indifferent poetry. The fact seems to be that Wagner
could conceive a drama with all the imaginative force of
the poet, although he lacked the technical facility to
express his conception effectively by means of words alone.
Tested by poetic standards these operas must be found
wanting.

From “ Tannhauser ” to “ Parsifal ” the Wagnerian plan
is the same, even if the execution follows different lines.
“ Tannhauser,” “ Lohengrin,” “ Tristan,” the three plays
forming “ The Ping of Niebelung,” “ Parsifal,” are
all in three acts. Every act exhibits either the prepara¬
tion, the development or the denouement of the central
idea. The motive power is, with the exception of “ The
Ping ” and, of course, of the great comic opera “ Meister-
singer,” common to all his plays. The great Christian
virtue of self-denial is the soul of “ Tannhauser ” as of
“ Parsifal.” Through sacrifice, through willing renuncia¬
tion alone can one attain salvation. Incontinence and greed
must end in disaster. The second part of “ The Ping”

* In this respect Wagner is opposed to Gluck. Gluck held that music
should be second to poetry, while Wagner maintained that the composer
reaching to the thought underlying the word is perfectly justified in
carrying his musical ideas beyond the limits warranted by the text.

236 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

seems to imply a different conclusion. The glorification
of Siegfried — the TJebermensch, the impulse of life — over¬
throws every obstacle heedless of consequences, has been
taken as typical of Wagner’s philosophy of life. But
Siegfried, like Tristran, like Amfortas, ends only in death
and punishment. Probably it did represent at the time
Wagner’s ideal hero. No man can know the full worth
of an idea of a system unless he tested and in the end
found fallacious the opposite ideas and systems. The
greatest saints have had to withstand the greatest tempta¬
tions. But Parsifal as a typical Wagnerian hfcro is much
more in accordance with precedents. Senta, Elisabeth,
pure like Parsifal, are the means of remitting punishment
and of salvation. Brunhilde and Elsa who break their
allegiance, Siegfried, Tristan, Tannhauser, Amfortas,
because incontinent, must suffer and be the cause of
suffering. The theme of Tannhauser ” is also the theme
of “ Parsifal,” though the treatment is essentially different.
There is in “ Parsifal ” a mellowing of tones, a new
sympathy with suffering, a feeling of pity which has no
parallel in the previous dramas and with it a less
sure handling of the story. By far the greater part
of its first act is given up to the narration and
later actual representation of the punishment meted out
to those who give way to temptation. There is here no
Tannhauser to stand up boldly and answer argument with
argument proclaiming that the denial of the senses means
the death of the world. But there is also no Siegfried to
trample others underfoot that he may reach his end the
sooner. The life of every breathing thing is sacred in the
domains of the Grail.

In his choice of themes Wagner was thoroughly of his
time. Religion is the first of the “ higher things ” for
Novalis. Overbeck headed a school of painting which
drew inspiration from religion. Fr. Schlegel attributed
all artistic weakness to the want of sound mythological
foundation. Self-restriction was for Goethe implied in

The History of Music

237

self -development. The interest in national ideas with the
concomitant interest in history was one of the most
important features of the quickening of imagination in the
new sensibility known as romanticism. After religion the
“ higher things ” for Novalis are love and politics. From
these motives are derived “Tristan/’ a masterpiece of unity
and directness, and “ The Ring of the Niebelung,” the
most representative work of German romanticism impreg¬
nated with all its speculative elements — philosophy, love,
religion, politics.

With tools refined and made perfect Wagner could
express an appreciation of Nature which far surpasses that
of all other composers with the possible exception of
Debussy. The realism of Richard Strauss approaches
Nature in the manner of the Pastoral with greater daring
and also less sympathy. Dvorak’s “ In Der Natur ” is
more an ode in her praise than a representation of Nature.
Mendelssohn and Berlioz were drawn towards her by
strange rather than subtle aspects. In Wagner alone we
meet a feeling of awe, of mysticism, an insistence on the
relation between the moods of Nature and the moods of
man. As a dramatic effect the sudden opening of the
door, the flood of moonlight which surprises the lovers in
Hunding’s hut has no parallel in opera. Siegfried,
Nature’s child, understands the language of birds and
waters. Parsifal bemoans the insensibility of nature to
the sorrows of men. It is never a question of simply
portraying Nature in music. It is always Nature in
regard to men — the consummation of the idea implied in
the “ Mehr Ausdruck der Empfindung Als Malerei ” of
Beethoven’s Pastoral.

As a critical writer Wagner commands attention no less
than as a musician, not because of unimpeachable logic
but because of the vastness of the argument and of the
weighty questions raised. He was too much of a pioneer
to rely purely on reason . He trusted to instinct first, then
he attempted to justify instinct by reasoning. How often

238 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

his instinct was right is shown by the enormous advance
he brought about in the technique of composition as in the
form and purpose of musical drama. He broke down the
conventionalities of the previous age. He substituted for
the old recitativo a device of the utmost dramatic value.
He fixed by his example certain rules in regard to the
relation of music to words and the construction of musical
drama. He raised the orchestra to equal rank with the
singer. He is the originator of the modern art of conduct¬
ing. Yet his writings are not always convincing. When
he pleads forcibly for the union of music and poetry he
starts on the initial fallacy that both arts have now reached
the utmost limit of their development. He denies that
Jews have a faculty of original invention. His
“Walschen Hunst und Walschen Tand ” has not yet
been forgiven him by the most brilliant French critic of
to-day. Wagner himself reversed the order in which
music and poetry stood in the preceding century. In
Gluck’s time music was considered the handmaiden of
poetry, Wagner made poetry the handmaiden of music.
His one essay in philosophy fails to be convincing since
it is open to doubt whether such a philosophy of music
can be said to exist at all. But when he is deeply moved,
as Nietzsche said, “ pages escape him which are amongst
the most beautiful that German prose possesses.” What¬
ever he tells us — be the subject Beethoven or the art of
conducting — has a note of unmistakable authority in spite
of the controversial tone which probably accounts for the
hitter polemics which once raged between his upholders and
his opponents. At one time he was probably the most abused
man in Europe, yet before the turn of the century he was
acknowledged by every civilised community as the most
important figure in the music of the nineteenth century.
His innovations carried still another step further the
reforms of Gluck. Technically they were not more —
if not less important — than those of Beethoven, but
Beethoven did not possesss the literary ability and the

The History of Music

239

deep-rooted passion of Wagner for knowledge as well as
for beauty in every form.

Of the small band wbicb from tbe very outset understood
and upheld tbe genius of Wagner no one has a better right
to be remembered than Franz Liszt. If Wagner had the
genius for devising and creating, Liszt had the genius
for penetrating the new ideas. Affable, extremely popular
with all grades of society, Liszt offered a striking contrast
to the unknown Wagner of the early days, yet in Weimar,
once the home of Goethe, Schiller and Herder, Liszt laid
the foundation of Wagner’s fame. The bond between them
was the keen interest both felt in the future development of
musical art. In spite of Wagner’s belief that music had
reached its utmost possible development the future loomed
very large in the eye of the Weimar group. After the
memorable first performance of “ Lohengrin ” at Weimar
Wagner was urged by Liszt to “ create a new work that we
may go still further.” Thus, founded on the common
passionate longing for the new, sprang up a friendship in
which Wagner was the leading spirit. Liszt, however, did
not stay his desire for novelty as Wagner did by bringing
music in contact with the thought of his time. Equally
sensitive to the possibilities of the opera and of the sym¬
phony, he imagined a third form which partakes of the
nature of both. Like the symphony, it requires no actor or
stage; like the opera, it is founded on a poetic basis.
Wagner held that words were not the first consideration
in musical drama. Liszt suppressed words altogether and
gave us the symphonic poem.* Bitterly resented, even in
our own day, the new form has yet found considerable
favour. The rules of the symphonic scheme are purely
arbitrary and aim at securing efficient contrast. If the
same end can be obtained by any other means, it becomes
a work of supererogation to insist upon their universal

* Schumann’s “Declamation,” with pianoforte accompaniment, was
an attempt in the opposite direction. It left words altogether free, and
added music purely as a corollary.

240 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

application. The limitations of Liszt are of a very
different order. It is not the supposed lack of symmetry
that stands in the way of greatness, but rather the singular
cosmopolitan character of Liszt’s most ambitious work,
the lack of marked individual features, the very catholicity
of the composer’s music, the fatal ease of some themes
which are sometimes more like a brilliant improvisation
than actual composition. Together with earnest striving
towards high ideals — the subjects of his symphonic poems
are derived from unimpeachable sources — there went a
curious indulgence for what is obviously theatrical and
undistinguished. Auber, Meyerbeer, Gounod, Verdi, were
all considered worthy of supplying the background for
brilliant pianoforte pieces. And most of his compositions
bear evidence of this want of discrimination. When the
subject is unambitious as in the Hungarian Rhapsodies he
is most brilliantly successful. When he attempts a musical
representation of the Divine Comedy one misses the direct¬
ness, the authority of the great individual utterance. That
he was a great performer we have on Wagner’s authority.
And he wTas much more than a great pianist. But he was
a little less than a great composer.

From Liszt it is but a step to the other great German
performers of the nineteenth century who alone made the
new music possible.

It is one of the most striking features of the wonderful
renaissance of German music that not one of its elements
failed at the time when it was needed. As the centre
of gravity was shifted from the singer to the instru¬
mentalist Germans came immediately to the fore as per¬
formers. Beethoven and Wagner gave new life to the
symphony and the opera. Spohr, Ernst, Joachim, trained
the violinists who were to play them. At the same time
Schumann, E. A. T. Hoffman, explained and popularised
the claims of music. Historical writers like Pohl, Ambros
and Jahn awakened interest in the past. Biilow and
Richter developed the art of the conductor on the lines

The History of Music

241

laid down by Wagner. There is not one branch of music
in which the Germans did not assume the lead to
retain to the present day. And the importance of the
school cannot easily be overrated. The success of the
Italians before Gluck was due in part to the fact that they
possessed far better schools than any other nation. Turin
had Giambattista Somis, Corelli taught in Tome, Yivaldi
in Venice, Tartini in Padua. To Italy once went the
young German musicians who on their return founded
the schools in which a Ilellmesberger, a Sarasate, a
J oachim were taught. At the present time the position is
reversed, and the sometime students of Berlin and Leipzig
are to be met with in Italy as well as in England and
France. The influence of Germany is paramount in every
branch of music. Grieg, who first showed us the charm of
the Norwegian folk-song, Tubinstein, Siloti, owe an equal
debt to German teaching.

Besides eminent composers and talented teachers,
Germany possesses an admirable system of organisation
on which sooner or later all other countries must model
their institutions. The concert society in Germany need
not be a flourishing commercial concern; the opera house
need not pay a handsome dividend to its directors. Music
is not expected to differ from painting in this respect.
The Government, which pays for the upkeep of
museums and picture galleries, endows with substantial
sums the opera house, which thus offers to the best students
of the Conservatorium an adequate return for their years
of training. From Spohr to Joachim, from Thalberg to
Billow Germany never lacked in the nineteenth century
teachers as authoritative as they were inspiring. But to
the commonsense of the people is due the rapid realisation
that no art can prosper which has scanty and uncertain
opportunity of employment. Controlled by a responsible
Government, freed from the anxiety of financial under¬
takings, the opera house can foster the love of good music
and help to bring to light the latent musical qualities of

242 Germany in the Nineteenth Century

the nation. Where order and organisation are unknown
much most valuable material must he lost. With subsi¬
dised theatres, well equipped schools, generously supported
concert societies Germany holds to-day the position of
leader and arbiter in the musical world, and since the
world has acknowledged her just claims there has been
no further question of “ Walschen Dunst und Walschen
Tand.” Yerdi found admirers in Brahms and Weingartner.
Sgambati, Saint-Saens, Elgar, Delius, found appreciation
in Germany sooner than amongst their own countrymen.

The history of the musical development of the nineteenth
century is in the main the history of German music. When
a similar movement towards freedom and a new order began
in France, in Italy and later in England, the impulse came
from Germany. The stimulus of Liszt and Wagner called
into being the Bussian School. In its completeness, in
its unparalleled advance on any previous movement, in the
rapidity &nd thoroughness with which it assailed and swept
aside the ideals of the preceding century this period of
musical history bears comparison with the most brilliant
periods of painting or literature. It might indeed be called
the golden century of German music were it not that sure
signs are at hand to prove that its glory has not grown
dim with the closing of the hundred years. Bichard
Strauss, Mahler, Beger, Humperdinck began their work
before the turn of the century, giving music yet greater
power and a richer complexity. But they belong essen¬
tially to the opening years of the following century. A
historical survey of their work can hardly be attempted as
yet, in the first place because in some cases it has not
yet reached completion, and moreover the bewildering
rapidity with which these men move implies constant
readjustment of the critical apparatus. Individuality
and technical progress are essential to-day to success
in musical composition. It is hence natural that
appreciation, critical or historical, should oscillate longer
to-day than in the past.

INDEX.

Ach, N. 214.

Act, content, object (Meinong and others). 210. Also under head
Metaphysics.

Act.

Education Act (England) 1870. 103.

,, ,, (Scotland) 1872. 103-4.

Industrial ,, (Australia). 96.

Acts of the Apostles. 15 1, 153!’, 156.

Acton, J. E. E. D., Baron. 56n.

Aesthetics. 29, 59, 70, 71.

Africa, Germans and English in. 19, 20.

Agreement, Anglo-German, of 1890. 20.

Agriculture. 81, 83, 84, 85, 86, 88, 92, 93, 95, 97.

Albert, Prince-Consort of England. 123.

Alliance, between France and Russia, 1795. 21.

Dual, ,, „ ,, „ 1895. 18, 19, 22.

Triple, between Germany, Austria and Italy, 1882. 18, 19.

America, influence of, on English education. 124.

Apologetic. 173.

Apostles. 148, 1 53f, 176, 183.

Army, Grand, of Napoleon I. 8.

Prussian. 12, 13, 123.

Arnold, Matthew. 36, 38, 123.

Art. 59, 69, 71.

State Department of Art and Science. 123.

Artisans, English. 116.

“ As if ” ; in Kant. 201.

in Vaihinger. 20m.

philosophy of the (Vaihinger). 203ff.

in Lange. 202.

Astruc, J. 158-160.

Auber, D. F. E. 240.

Auerbach, Berthold. 50, 70.

Australia, effect of Industrial Act of. 96.

Austria. 4, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 18, 19, 123.

joins with Prussia against revolutionary France. 4.

,, ,, ,, and Russia against revolutionary France. 8.

and the German Confederation. 9.

,, ,, German Zollverein. 10.

,, ,, Convention of Olmiitz. 11.

,, ,, Schleswig-Holstein question. 11-13.

defeat of, in Italy. 11. and in Bohemia. 12, 123.

Q

244

Index

Austria and Napoleon III. 14.

,, the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. 15.

,, the Triple Alliance of 1882. 19.

Austrian musicians. 221.

Austrian thought, its effect on German philosophy. 187.

Authority. 139.

Avenarius, R. 205.

his “ pure experience.” 2o6fif.

“ full experience.” 207.
his view of psychology. 207.
empirio-criticism. 208.

Babylonia and Israel. 164.

Bach, J. S. 219, 229.

Baden. 86, 106.

Baetentsch, B. 164.

Baethgen, F. W. A. 164.

Bage, Robert. 28n.

Bain, A., influence of. i98f.

Balance of power in Europe, the. 18, 22.

Banks. 89, 90.

Baudissin, W. W. 164.

Baur, F. C. 135L, 138, 143, 145, 150-157, 171.

Bavaria. 8, 10, 14, 86, 89, 106.

makes treaty with Austria, 1813. 8.

and the first German Zollverein. 10, 86.
comes to an understanding with Prussia. 14.
joint-stock companies in. 89.
education in. 106.

Bechuanaland. 20.

Beethoven, Ludwig van. 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 229, 231, 233,
238, 240.

and the symphony. 221, 227, 231.

character and temperament. 223.

earliest compositions. 224.

his treatment of melody. 225.

the C. Minor Symphony. 225.

the change in his style. 224.

the Eroica Symphony. 224, 225.

the Funeral March. 225.

the Missa Solemnis. 223.

the Ninth Symphony. 223, 226, 227.

the Pastoral Symphony. 226, 233, 237.

Violin Concerto. 23 m.

Index

245

Belgium. 18.

Bentham, Jeremy. 28 n, 32.

Bentley, Richard. 30.

Bergson compared with Vaihinger. 204.

Berlin. 5, 6, 9, 14, 15, 17, 19, 20, 125.

University of. 109.

Berlioz, H. 226, 227, 228, 230, 237.

Bertholet, A. 164.

Bible, the. 142, 144, 176-178, 183.
study of the. 28, 3on, 41.

Biedermann, A. E. 168.

Biology. 41, 58m

Bismarck, Otto Eduard Leopold von, Prince. 12, 14, 15, t6, 19,
22, 37, 65, 75, 76, 92, 94.
incites Napoleon III against Austria. 12.
and the Franco-Prussian War. 14-16.
at the Congress of Berlin, 1878. 19.

his work in unifying Germany. 22.
and the state of Prussia after the war. 92.
economic policy of. 94.
defects of the Bismarckian state. 76.

Bjornson, Bjornstjerne. 49.

Bleek, F. 158.

Boeckh, August. 39, 63.

Bohemians, the, and Austria. 11.

Bonn, University of. 109.

Bopp, Franz. 45.

Bosanquet, Bernard. 56 n, 59.

Bourbons, fall of the. 6371.

Bousset, W. 158.

Bradley, Andrew Cecil. 59.

Brahms, J. 221, 229, 230, 231, 242.
and the symphony. 231.
his Ernste Gesange. 231.

Hungarian dance music. 231

Bremen. 8,

Breslau, University of. 109.

Brest. 22.

Bretschneider, C. G. 144.

Britain, Great. 22, 103, 104, 106, 125.

Brooke, Henry. 28m

Brougham, Henry Peter, Baron. 123.

Brown, W. Adams. 137.

Brunswick. 9, 87.

246

Index

Buckle, Henry Thomas. 27 n, 68-69.

Buffon, G. L. L. 196.

Biihler, K. 214.

Biilow. 240, 241.

Burckhardt, Jakob. 68-69.

Burger, Gottfried August. 30.

Burke, Edmund. 28 and n., 29, 57.

Cambridge University of. 116.

Campaigns. See wars.

Canals. 96.

Capital. 85, 86, 89, 90, 98.

Carlyle, Thomas. 38, 65, 72-73, 123.

“ Teufelsdrockh.” 6.

Cassirer, E. Function and substance. 2o8ff.
relation to metaphysics. 208, 209.
relation to Russell. 209f.

Catholic Church, 154, 156E
Catholicism. 176, 18 1 f.

Cavour, Camillo Benso, Count. 12.

Cervantes, Saavedra Miguel de. 51.

Chalcedon, Formula of. 173.

Character-training in education. 120, 126.

Charlemagne. 5, 6.

Chateaubriand, Francois Ren6, Vicomte de. 28.

Chemistry. 41.

Cherbourg. 22.

Chopin, Frederic Frangois. 230.

Christ. 140, 142, 144-149, 157, i73'i8i> l83f-

Christianity. 134, 138-140, 143k, 146, 167, 173E, 176-179, 184.

Christology. 146, 168, 178.

Chronicles, Book of. 159.

Church, the. 175, 182.

domains of. See States, ecclesiastical.

Cities, the German free. 8.

Civil service, the German. 118.

Classes,

upper. 120.
middle. 118, 119, 120.
working. 113.

continuation and evening classes. 12 1.

Clementine Homilies. 153, 156.

Coal. 88.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. 28n, 30, 122, 123.

Colleges, training of teachers, no, in, 116, 12 1.

Index

247

Colonies and colonisation of Germany. 19, 127.

Colossians, Epistle to the. 155.

Commerce. 21, 22, 118, 122.

Committee on intermediate education in Wales, report of, 1881. 116.
Community. 141, 174-177.

Companies,

insurance. 90.
joint-stock. 89.

Comparative Religion. 174.

Comtism. 198.

Concert society, the, in Germany. 241.

Condorcet, Marie Jean. 56.

Confederation,

the North German. 14, 15, 17.
the, of the Rhine. 5.

Confessionalists, the. 167.

Congress of Berlin, 1878. 19.

Consciousness, the Christian. 139-141, 175.

Constitution of the German empire. 17.

Copernicus, Nicolaus. 29.

Corinthians, Epistles to the. 153, 155.

Cornill, C. H. 164.

Council, GEcumenical, at Rome, 1870. 15.

Court patronage, its influence on music. 220, 222.

Critical (idealistic) positivism, realism, idealism. 202.

Criticism. 144-153, 183.

and the “critical attitude.” 197k
literary. 71.
musical. 229, 230.

Cross, the. 149.

Cumberland, Ernest Augustus, Duke of. 10.

Customs’ Union of Germany. See Zollverein.

Cuvier, Georges, Leopold, 63.

Darwin, Charles, reception of his work in Germany. 55-56.

Erasmus. 197.

Debussy, Claude. 237.

Deissmann, A. 158.

Delitzsch, Franz. 163.

Democracy and democratic movements. 4, 10-11, 15, 41, 76, 118.
Denmark. 11, 12, 13.

Dependence. 135, 139.

Descartes, Ren6. 31.

Deuteronomy, Book of. 159.

248

Index

De Wette, W. M. L. 159.

Dialect poetry. 50.

Diez, Friedrich Christian. 44 n.

Dillmann, A. 161.

Dilthey, Wilhelm. 7m.

Divinity of Christ. 173.

Dogma. i34f., 139, 142, i6sf., 175-178, 183.

Dorner, I. A. 168.

Dostojevsky, Feodor Mikhailovich. 70.

Dover. 22.

Drama, the. 48.

Dramatic action and music. 233, 234.

Driesch, H. 213.

Droysen, Johann Gustav. 66.

Dual alliance. See Alliance.

Du Bois Reymond, Emil. 58 n.

Duhm, B. 160, 162.

Dvordk, A. 237.

East, question of the. 19.

Ecclesiastical states. See States, ecclesiastical.
Eckermann, Johann Peter. 38n, 397*.

Economics, study of. 41-42.

Edgeworth, Maria. 115.

Richard Lovell. 115.

Education. 7, 87, 98, 101-127.

Act, of 1870 (England). 103.

,, ,, 1872 (Scotland). 103-4.

bill of 1807. 103.

Board of. 124.

committee of council on. 103.

,, on intermediate, Wales. 116.
compulsory. 107, 112, 116, 117, 123.
elementary, no, hi, 115, 116, 120, 121, 123.
endowments. 116.
philosophy of. 125.

secondary. 104, 109, no, 118, 120, 121, 123, 124.
scientific. 122.

technical, no, in, 116, 118, 121, 123, 125.
university. 118.

Ehrenfels, Chr. (value-philosophy). 214.

Eichendorf, Joseph, Freiherr von. 43.

Eichhorn, Karl Friedrich. 29, 63.

Eichhorn, J. G. 158.

Index

249

Elbe duchies, the. n.

Elgar, Sir Edward. 242.

Elsass-Lothringen. 16.

Emotion. See Feeling.

Empire,

the Austrian. 10, 18.
the British. 20.
the French. 8.

the German. n, 16, 17, 18, 20, 93, 103, 105, 106.
the Holy Roman. 4, 5, 8, 9.

Empirio-criticism (Avenarius). 208.

Encyclopaedists, the. 56, 58.

England. 10, 13, 19, 21, 22, 26, 27, 28, 29, 32, 43, 47, 48, 57, 68,
84, 87, 90, 93, 94, 95, 97, 98, 106, 1 13, ii*, 115-118, 1 19,
120, 121-123.

severance from Hanover of. 10.

and the Schleswig-Holstein question. 13.

Bismarck and. 19.

place of, in literature of the 18th century. 27.
peasantry of. 84.

economic position of. 87, 90, 93, 97, 98.
educational tradition of. 106.
education in. 113-118, 122-125.

,, of, compared with that of Germany. 125-126.

,, German influence on. 122-125.
influence of, on German education. 126.
and German music. 242.

See also Britain, Great.

Ephesians, Epistle to the. 156.

Epistemology. See under Metaphysics.

Epistles. 176.

Ernest the Pious, Duke of Gotha. 107.

Eschatology, Radical. 183F
Eschenbach, Wolfram von. 72.

Eug6nie, Empress of the French. 14, 15.

Evolution, theory of. 58, 63.

Ewald, H. i6of.

Examinations, school, no, 112.

Exodus, Book of. 158.

Experience, “ full ” (Avenarius). 207.

“ pure ” (Avenarius). 203, 206, 207.

Exports. 88, 97.

Eylau, battle of. 26.

250

Index

Factory organisation. 87, 88, 92.

Fechner, Gustav Theodor. 28-29«., 29, 189.

Feeling. 135!., 139, 142, 180.

Fellowship with God. 139, i8of.

Festus. 18 1.

Feuerbach, L. i66f.

Fichte, Johann Gottlieb. 63, 72, 73, 74, 76, 104, 105, 106, 107, 109,
124, 188, 190, 191, 193, 194, 195, 199, 212.

“ Addresses to the German nation.” 74.
doctrine of knowledge. 194.

lectures on Characteristics of the Present Age. 104.
and education. 106, 107, 109, 122, 124.

Fictions, Vaihinger’s treatment of. 203ff.

Fielding, Henry. 55, 70.

Finance. 89-90
First Gospel. 148, 152.

Fischer, Kuno. 68.

Fisher, H. A. L. 6 n.

Flaubert, Gustave. 70.

Florence. 14.

Folk lore and songs. 43, 44, 46, 47, 70, 220, 222, 231.

Folk song, Brahms’ use of. 231.

Brahms’ use of. 231.

Forgiveness. 175, 177, 180.

Forster, William Edward. 103.

Fouqu6, F. H. K. de la Motte, Baron. 49.

Fourth Gospel. 140, 144, 148, 151-154, 156, 183.

France. 4, 9, 13, 14, 15, 19, 21, 22, 26, 27, 2S, 32, 43, 46, 48,
49 n> 57. 61, 68, 91, 125.

Revolutionary. 4.

on the eve of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. 14.

and the Dual Alliance of 1894. 19, 22.

France, advantages of, compared with Germany for attack on
England. 21.

effect of German music on. 242.
intellectual hegemony held by. 27.
political thought in. 28.
popularity of Hoffmann in. 49m
war indemnity paid by. 91.
education in. 125.

Francis II, Roman Emperor, afterwards Emperor of Austria.

4. 5> 6-7.

Frank, F. H. R. 168, 172, 182.

Frankfurt-am-Main. 8, 11, 6 jn, 87, 125.

Index

251

Frederick the Great, King of Prussia. 7, 65, 83.

Frederick William III, King of Prussia. 7, 8, 9.

Frederick William IV, King of Prussia. 11, no.

Freeman, Edward Augustus. 4-5.

Free cities. See cities.

Freytag, Gustav. 64-65.

Froebel, F. W. A. 124.

Galatians, Epistle to the. 153.

Games, school. 126.

Geddes, A. 158E
Genesis, Book of. 158.

Gentz, Friedrich von. 28n.

Geography of Germany. 21, 22.

George III, King of England. 17.

George Eliot. 167

German Government and music. 241.
influence on music. 241.

philosophy, state of, at beginning of nineteenth century. 188.
music, its debt to Beethoven. 227.

Gesenius, W. 164.

Gibbon, Edward. 28, 29 and n., 31.

Gierke, Otto 68.

Giesebrecht, F. 164.

Girls, education of. 112, 113, 117, 12 1, 122
Gluck, C. W. 219, 221, 235 n., 238, 241.

Gnosticism. 153.

God, Personality of. 136, 143.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. 5, 30 and n., 32-37, 38m, 39 and n.,
43. 47* 5°> 63«-, 65, 67, 68, 70, 72, 76, 191, 193, 196, 197.
his hopes of Napoleon I. 5.
review of R. Wood’s essay. 3on.

“ Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. ” 35, 70.

“Faust.” 5,36.

“Hermann and Dorothea.” 67.
his opinion of F. A. Wolf. 39 and n.

Gold, discovery of. 89.

coinage of. 91.

Gooch, G. P. 56n.

Gospel, the. 154, 175-178.

Gospels, the. 146, 148, 15 if. , i56f., 176.

Gotha. 107.

Gottingen, University of. 108.

Gounod, C. 240.

252

Index

Graf, K. H. 160, 163.

Grafian theory, the, 159-162.

Greek mysteries. 183.

philosophy. 176k, 183.

study and philosophy. 30 and n., 34m, 39, 57, 68, 109, no.
Green, T. H., referred to. 209n., 215.

Gregorovius, Ferdinand. 67-68.

Grieg, Edward, his debt to German music. 241.

Grillparzer, Franz. 48.

Grimm, Jacob. 44 and n., 45, 46, 49, 62, 63.

Wilhelm. 45, 49.

Groth, Klaus. 50.

Gunkel, H. 164.

Halle, University of. 108.

Haller, Albrecht von, Baron. 33 n.

Hamburg. 8.

Handwork. 87.

Hanover. 10, 87, 108.

Hapsburg, House of. 3, 6, 9.

Hardenberg, K. A. von, Prince. 86.

Harnack, A. 169k, 175.

Hartmann, E. von. I95n.

Hasse, Ernst. 81.

Haupt, E. 158.

Hauptmann, Gerhart. 50, 70.

Haydn, Joseph. 220, 221, 222.

his influence on Beethoven. 222.

Hebbel, Christian Friedrich. 48.

Hebei, Johann Peter. 50.

Hebrews, Epistle to the. 183.

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. 28-29 n-» 32» 4U 58, 59, 65, 73,
190.

his dialectic. i94ff.

,, ,, criticisms of it. i95n.

Hegelianism. 144k, 154k, 159k, 165k, 168, 170.

Hehn, Viktor. 7 in.

Heidelberg. 67.

Heilbronn. 67.

Heine, Heinrich. 38, 47, 50.

Hellenic studies. See Greek.

Hellmesberger. 241.

Helmholtz, H. L. F. von. 34 n.

Hengstenberg, E. W. 168.

Index

253

Herbart, Johann Friedrich. 124, 199, 200, 206.

Herder, Johann Gottfried von. 30 and n., 31, 44, 45.
Herford, C. H. 13 1.

Herrmann, J. G. i6gf., 181.

Hesse-Cassel. 9.

Hesse-Darmstadt. 10, 14.

Hesse-Nassau. 87.

Heyse, Paul. 70-71.

Hilgenfeld, A. 157, 171.

Historians. 29, 31, 32, 66.

History and historic study. 29, 40, 62, 63, 76.

in relation to theology. 139, 142-144.

Hitzig, F. 160, 163.

Hobbes, Thomas. 25.

Hoffding, Harald. 4m., 60.

Hoffmann, E. A. T. 240.

E. T. W. 49 and n.

Hofmann, J. C. C. 168, 171.

Hohenzollern, House of. 3, 4, 7, 9, 17, 22.

Holsten, K. J. 157.

Holzinger, H. 164.

Holtzmann, H. J. 157.

Home-industry. 87, 92.

Homer and Homeric study. 28, 30 and n.

Hugo, Gustav von. 29m
Victor. 47.

Humboldt, Wilhelm von. 63, 109, 122.

Hume, David. 22, 27m, 28, 29, 31.

Hungarians, the, and Austria. 11.

Hupfeld, H. 159L

Husserl, Ed. 195, 19871., 199W., 202 n., 2o6n., 2ioff., 2i2«.
his phenomenology. 21 1.

,, a priori truth. 21 1.

,, relation to metaphysics. 21 if.

„ view of physical thing. 211.

,, criticism of Mill’s psychologism. 19811.

Huxley, Thomas. 58.

Hygiene, school. 124.

Ideal, the Kantian view of. 201.

Idealism, critical. 202, 208
Ilgen, C. D. 158, 160.

Illumination Theology. 184.

Immortality. 143.

254

Index

Imports. 89, 92, 97.

Incarnation. 146.

Indian lore. 45.

Individualism. 118.

Industry. 81, 82, 84, 85, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 93-95, 98-99, 118,
122, 124.

Inspection, medical, of school-children. 117, 124
Inspiration. 176.

Institutions, study of primitive. 44.

Insurance companies. See companies.

Intelligence, Fichte’s account. 194.

Introjection, fallacy of, 2o6f.

Intuition, religious. 136-138.

Ireland. 103, 106, 1 15, 116.
education in. 115, 116.

Irish Nationalist Party. 116.

Iron trade and industry. 90, 92, 96.

Irony in German literature. 38.

Isaiah, Book of. 162.

Italian opera. 221, 231 and n.

Italians and the worship of melody. 231.

Italy. 12, 13, 14, 15, 19, 27.

Jena. 125.

battle of, 7, 26, 74.

John, Gospel of. See Fourth Gospel.

Joint-stock companies. See companies.

Josiah. 159, 162.

Judaising Christianity. 154.

Judaism. 1 56f.

Judgments of Value. i72f.

Jiilicher, A. 158.

Jungrammatiker, school of. 42^.

Justification. 175, i78f.

Kaftan, J. ifigf., 172.

Kalischer, Salomon. 3411.

Kant, Immanuel. 28-29n., 20 and n., 31, 71, 108, 109. 134, 144,

171, 184, 189, 191, 195, 196, 199, 200, 201, 206, 208, 212.
See post-Kantian, neo-Kantian, Post-neo-Kantian.
Kattenbusch, F. W. F. i68f., 175.

Kautzsch, E. F. 164.

Keil, C. F. 163.

Keller, Gottfried. 50-52, 55, 70.

Index

255

Kenotic Christology. 168.

Kerschensteiner, Georg Michael. 124.
Kindergarten. See schools.

Kingdom of God. 179b, 183L
Kleist, B. H. W. von. 49.

Klostermann, A. H. 164.

Knights, imperial. 8.

Knowledge. 172.

Konig, E. 164.

Koniggratz, battle of, 13.

Kuenen, A. 160.

Kiilpe, O. 199W., 205 n., 21m., 213 and n.
view of metaphysic. 213.

Labour. 84, 85, 86, 96, 99.

Lachmann, Karl. 45.

Lagarde, P. A. 163.

Lamarck. 197.

Lamprecht, Karl. 72.

Land-question, the. 84, 86.

Lange, A., history of materialism. 198 n.

psychology without soul. 202, 20 7.

Lange, Friedrich. 75.

Language, science of. 41-42, 64.

teaching of modern. 124.

Law, the. 154.

study of. 3, 29, 63, 64, 66, 108.

Latin, study of. no.

Lebrun, — , French general. 14.

Leger, Louis. 5 n.

Legouis, Emile. 32 and n.

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. 56, 72.

Leipzig, battle of. 8.

Lett motif, the. 234.

Leo III, Pope. 5.

Leskien, August. 42*1.

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim. 27, 29, 37, 38*1., 56.
Liberal Theologians. 167.

Libretti and the opera. 234-5, 235n-
Liebmann, Otto, “ back to Kant.” 199L
his view of Herbart. 199k
,, ,, of Hegel. 200.

Lipps, Th., Aesthetic. 214.

Lipsius, R. A. 137, 157, 168, 177.

256

Index

Liszt, Franz. 220, 239, 240, 242.

Local authorities and government. 116, 117, 1
Locke, John. 27.

Logic. 32.

London. 46n. , 49.

Lorraine. 16.

Lotze, H. 171, 189, 208.

Louis XIII, King of France. 16.

XIV, ,, ,, 27*

Louisa, Queen of Prussia. 7.

Love. i8of.

Lowe, Charles, nn., 17 n.

Lowth, Robert. 28, 30 and n.

Liibeck. 8.

Lucke, G. C. F. 158.

Luke, Gospel of. 171.

Luther, Martin. 37, 46, 65, 72, 122.

Lyric poetry. 46, 47, 48.

Mach, E. 202, 205.

Mackintosh, R. 13 1.

Maitland, F. W. 68n.

Malthus, Thomas Robert. 28n.

Manor, the German. 83.

Manufacture. 82, 90, 92.

Marburg. 125.

Marburg School, the. 201, 206, 208, 213.

relation to Hegel, 206, 213.

Marcion, Gospel of. 170L

Marie Louise, Empress of the French. 7.

Mark, Gospel of, 154, 156.

Marlborough, John Churchill, Duke of. 27.
Marschner, H. 219, 23311.

Marti, K. 164.

Martineau, J. 143.

Materialism. 75.

Mathematics. 57, 58.

Matthew, Gospel of. See First Gospel.
Mayer, Robert. 41 and n.

Mediating Theologians. 167.

Medical inspection of schools. See inspection.
Mechanics. 57.

Mecklenburg. 87.

Meinong, A. 2 ion.

Index

257

Melanchthon. 141.

Melody. 231.

Mendelssohn, Moses. 29.

Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Felix. 219, 226, 228, 229, 237.
his temperament. 228.
the decline in his popularity. 228.
the Hebrides overture. 229.

Midsummer Night’s Dream. 228.

Meredith, George. 50.

Merz, John Theodore. 58n.

Messiah. 147-149.

Messianic ideas. i48f.

prophecies. 148.

Metaphysics. 66, 75.

and Epistemology. 192, 200, 208, 210, 212, 214.
inductive. 202 n., 213.

Metternich-Winneburg, C. W. L., Prince. 7, 9, 10.
Meyer, H. A. W. 158.

Richard M. 66 n.

Meyerbeer, G. 230, 240.

Schumann’s criticism of. 230.

Michaelis, Johann David. 3on.

Michelet, Jules. 40.

Miklosich, Franz. 44*1.

Mill, J. S., influence of. I98f.

his psychologism criticised by Husserl. 198 n.
his use of word evidence. 1 98f.

Milton. 234.

Minerals and mining. 88, 90, 92, 93, 97.

Miracles. 140, 147k

Moli&re, J. B. Poquelin de. 48.

Moltke, H. C. B., Count von. 12.

Mommsen, Theodor. 66-67.

Monism, critical (Riehl). 205.

Montesquieu, C. de S., Baron. 29, 57, 6311.

Morality. 142, 179.

Moravians, the. 122. 133, 135.

Morike, Eduard Friedrich. 43 and n.

Moses. 158.

Mozart, Wolfgang. 220, 221, 222, 227, 232.
Mullenhoff, Karl. 45.

Muller, Johannes. 58.

Munich. 125.

University of. 109.

258

Index

Municipal self-government. See towns.

Music and philosophy. 238.
and history. 242.
and poetry. 238.

Musical criticism, 229, 230.

Mysticism. 172, 181.

Mythical Theory. 147.

Mythology. 41, 44, 45.

Napoleon I, Emperor of the French. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 16, 63.
as leader of Germany. 5-6.

Continental System of. 6.

marriage of, with Austrian Princess. 7.

Prussia rises against. 8.
overthrow of. 8.

Napoleon III, Emperor of the French. 12, 13, 14.

Natorp, P. (Marburg School). 20m., 210 «., 213m
Natural Religion. 134, 138, 144, 173.

Naturalistic Theory. 147.

Nature and music. 233.

Nature, study of. 58.

Navy, German. 19.

British. 21.

Neander, A. 132, 168.

Nelson, L. i92n, 214.

Neo-Kantian movement. 188, i98ff.

general epistemological character. 200.
contrast with post-Kantian thought. 201.

New Testament. 143, 175-178, 182.

Newton, Sir Isaac. 27, 31, 33-34 n.

Nicholas II, Emperor of Russia. 19.

Niebuhr, Barthold Georg. 29, 34m, 39, 62.

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. 73, 75, 76, 167, 198, 203, 214.
Nitzsch, C. E. 167.

Noldeke, T. 16 1.

North German Confederation. See Confederation.

Norway. 49.

Novel, the. 49, 70.

Nowack, W. 164.

Oken, Lorenz. 34 n.

Old Testament. 143, 148, 158-165, 176-178, 183.

Olmiitz, Convention of. 11.

Oncken, W. 19*1.

Ontology of the present day. 213*1.
pre-Kantian. 213*1.

Index

259

Opera, the. 230, 232, 241.

Orchestra, the. 234, 238.

Orthodoxy. 134b
Oxford, University of. 116.

Palmerston, H. J. T., Viscount. 13.
Pantheism. 136, 139, 143, 168.

Paris. 5, 6, 49.

Pastoral Epistles. 153.

Paul. 153-157, 181, 183.

Paul, Hermann. 42 «., 44n., 63n.

Jean. See Richter, J. P.

Pauline Epistles. 15 1, 154, 183.

Paulsen, F., debt to. 189.

Paulus, H. E. G. 147.

Peace of 1814-15. 9.

Peasants. 50, 83, 84.

Penitence. 181.

Pentateuch, the. 158-163.

Percy, Thomas. 30, 31.

Pergolesi’s “ La Serva Padrona. ” 232.

Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich. 107, 109, no.
Pfleiderer, O. 157, 168, 182.

Philology. 41, 44-45, no.

Philosophy. 31-32, 58, 68, 108, no.

and theology. 131, 144-146, 172, 177, 182.
of As If. 20m., 203.

Physics. 41, 58.

Physiology. 58.

Pietism. 172, i8if.

Pietists. 122, 134.

Plato. 133, 144, 209n.

Platonism. 133, 140.

Playfair, Lyon, Baron. 123.

Plymouth. 22.

Poetry. 30, 31, 32, 35, 43-45, 66.

Poetry and music. 238.

Poland. 9.

Political events first reflected in music. 225.
Polyphony. 219, 231.

Population. 19, 87, 88, 97.

Porson, Richard. 30.

Portsmouth. 22.

Posen. 9.

R

260

Index

Positivism, critical or idealistic (Mach). 202.

Post-Kantian movement. 188.

its essential character. 19 iff.

,, relation to metaphysic and epistemology. 192.

,, sources. 196.

,, philosophy of nature. 196.

,, loss of power. 198.

Post-neo-Kantian movement. 188, 205ff.

its general character. 206.

Pragmatism. 203.

Pre-existence of Christ. 178.

Presuppositions. 174.

Priestly Document. 160-162.

Propitiation. 180.

Protection. 95.

Protestantism. 176k, 18 1.

Prussia. 4. 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 65, 83, 86, 105, 106,
107, 108, no, in.

joins with Austria against France. 4.
acts with France and Napoleon I. 4.
reforms in. 7, 86.
helps to overthrow Napoleon I. 8.
position of, after the Napoleonic war. 9.
and the first Zollverein. 10.

,, ,, Convention of Olmiitz. n.

,, ,, Schleswig-Holstein question. 12-13.

„ Napoleon III. 13-14.

,, the Franco-Prussian war. 15.
peasants of. 83.

education in. 105, 106, 107, no, in.

Rescripts, the, of 1716-17. 107.

Psychologism, Husserl on. 19811.

Psychology. 75.

Piinjer, B. 137b
Pure experience, 205.

Rabbinism. j.77, 183.

Radcliffe, Mrs. Ann. 28n.

Railways. 94, 95, 96.

Ranke, Leopold von. 39-40 and n., 68.

Rationalists. 134, 139, 142, 144.

Realism. 202 n., 21m.

critical (Riehl). 202, 205.
naive. 208.
transcendental. 208.

Index

261

Recitativo in opera. 232, 233, 234, 238.

Redemption. 174k, 177, 179.

Reformation, the. 3, no, 122, 135, 176.

Reformers. 176.

before the Reformation. 176.

Reger, Max. 242.

Reichstag, the. 17-18.

Religion. 3, 59, 60, 64, 108, 133-143-
Renaissance, the. 62, 68-69.

Rescripts, the Prussian, 1716-17. 107.

Research, no, 120, 124, 125.

Reuss, E. i59f.

Reuter, Fritz. 50.

Revelation of John. 154, 156.

Revolution of 1789. 16. of 1848. 65.

industrial revolution in England. 98.

Rhine, province of the. 9.
frontier, the. 15.

Confederation of the. See Confederation.

Richter, J. P., ‘Jean Paul.’ 38.

Richter, Hans. 240.

Riehl, A. 202 and n., 205.

Ritschl, A. 13 1, i38f . , 141, 155, 167, 169-184.

Ritschlianism. 169-184.

Ritschlian School. 169^, 172, 182-184.

Roebuck, John Arthur. 123.

Romans, Epistle to the. 153.

Romantic Movement. 134.

Theology. 168, 175.

Romanticism in Music. 228.

Romantics, the, and Romanticism in German literature. 38, 40,
45 1 49, 65, 73, 108.

Roon, General von. 12.

Rothe, R. 168, 171.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques. 28 and n., 29, 44, 57, 109. 196.
Rousseauism. 43.

Rubinstein, A. E. 241.

Russia. 4, 6, 8, 9, 11, 13, 15, 19, 49.

Russian school of music. 242.

Saint-Hilaire, Geoffroy. 63.

Saint-Pierre, J. H. B. de. 28.

Saint-Saens, Camille. 242.

Sanday, W. 171.

262

Index

Sarasate. 241.

Savigny, Friedrich Karl von. 29 and n., 62, 63 and n.

Saxony. 86.

Scharnhorst, G. J. D. von. 7.

Schelling, F. W. J. 134, 190, 191, 196, 199.

Schiller, J. C. F. von. 28-29n., 29, 30, 32 n., 47, 70 and n., 190,

191, *96.

Schlegel, K. W. F. von. 45.

Schleiden, Matthias Jakob. 58.

Schleiermacher, F. D. E. 60, 109, 132-146, 167, 169, 171, 174,
I77-I79-

Schmiedel, P. W. 158.

Scholars and scholarship. 45, 62, 64.

Scholasticism. 177.

Schools. 122.

boarding. 126.
continuation. 124.

elementary. 7, 107, 109, no, 112, 115, 116, 124.
public. 1 16, 122.

secondary. 109, no, in, 113, 116, 119, 120, 121, 122.
kindergarten. 124.
technical, in, 12 1.
music. 241.

Schopenhauer, Arthur. 36, 41, 73, 75, 188, 198, 199.

Schrader, E. 161.

Schubert, Franz Peter. 221, 222, 227, 228, 231.

Schul-Methodus, the, of Duke Ernest of Gotha. 107.

Schumann, Robert. 219, 228, 229, 233, 239, 240.
and the symphony. 231.

,, „ worship of heroism. 228, 229.

Schuppe, W. 208.

Schtirer, E. 157.

Schwegler, A. 153k
Schweitzer, A. 145.

Schweizer, A. 168.

Science. 31, 32, 33-3411., 38, 40, 41, 42, 44, 58, 59, 61, 71, 76, 120.
political. 108.

State Department of Art and. 123.

Scotland, education in. 106, 115, 116.

Scripture. See Bible, the.

Sculpture. 38.

Sellin, E. 164.

Sentimentalism. 181.

Serfs and serfdom. 7.

Index 263

Shakespeare, William. 51, 55, 234.

Shelley, P. B. 48.

Shipping. 95, 96, 97.

Sigwart, Chr. 189.

Silesia. 15.

Siloti. 241.

Sin. 140, 168, 180.

Sinlessness. 140.

Smith, Adam. 115.

Socialism. 18, 95-96.

Sociology. 56.

Soden, H. von. 157.

Sombart, Werner. 81.

Spain. 21, 27.

“ Speeches on Religion.” 132-139.

Spencer, Herbert, writings of, influence of. 198, 199.

Spinoza, B. 134, 136, 144b
Spohr, L. 240, 241.

Stade, B. 163.

Stael, Madame de. 28.

State, study of the. 56-58, 59.

department of art and science. 123.

,, for elementary schools and training colleges. 1 16.
States of Germany. 8, 14, 17.

„ central Germany. 14, 105.

„ north ,, 3, 9, 14.

,, south „ 3, 9, 14, 17, 105.

States, ecclesiastical, secularisation of. 4, 8.

Stein, H. F. K., Baron von. 7, 86, 92, 108.

Stein-Hardenberg reforms in Prussia. 86.

Story, the, in German literature. 48-50, 71.

Strassburg. 17.

Strauss, David Friedrich. 60, 136, 144-152, 156, 165-167.

Strauss, Richard. 242.

his realism. 237.

Stuttgart. 17.

Subsidy, government,

for education in Ireland. 115.

,, industry, etc. 95.

“ Supernatural Religion,” author of. 1 7 1.

Siivern, Johann Wilhelm. 109.

Sybel, Heinrich von. 66.

Symphonic poem, the. 239.

Symphony, the. 227, 233.

264 Index

Symphony, the importance of. 227, 230.

,, modern. 231.

Synoptic Gospels. 15 1, 154, 156.

Talley rand-P6rigord, C. M. de. 4.

Tartini, Giuseppe. 241.

Teachers, conference of. no.

training of. no, in, 116, 117, 121.

Teaching, methods of. 125.

Technology. 116-117, 12 1.

Tennyson, Alfred, Lord. 47.

Teufelsdrockh. See Carlyle, T.

Texte, Joseph. 27 n.

Theatre, the. 48.

Theistic arguments. 173.

Theology. 59, 108.

Systematic. i38f., 141L, 171-173.

Thessalonians, Second Epistle to the. 156.

Thibaut, A. F. J. 63 and n.

Thomas, Albert. 14 n.

Thomasius, G. 168.

Thuringia. 87.

Tolstoy, Leo, Count. 49, 70.

Towns. 49, 88, 98.

biology and history of. 49, 67.
government of. 76.

Trade. 84, 85, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 96.

foreign. 88, 91, 96.

Travel, literature of. 43.

Treitschke, Heinrich von. 66, 76.

Trendelenburg, A, 195*1.

criticism of Hegel’s dialectic. i95n.

Treviranus. 197.

Triple Alliance, the. See Alliance.

Tubingen School. 145, 150-155, 159, i7of.

Turgenjev, I. S. 50, 51.

Turgot, A. R. J., Baron de Laune. 28 and n., 29, 56.
Twesten, A. D. C. 168.

Ullmann, C. 168.

United Kingdom. See Britain, Great.

Universities. 7, 108, no, hi, 116, 117, 118, 120, 121, 122, 124.
English. 1 16, 1 17, 1 18.

German. 108, 120.

Roman Catholic. 108.

Index

265

Vaihinger, H. 201, 202, 202n., 203, 204, 206, 209, 21m.

Vater, J. S. i58f.

Vatke, W. 159b

Verdi, Giuseppe. 240, 242.

Versailles, German Empire proclaimed at. 16.

Victor Emmanuel II, King of Italy. 14.

Victoria, Queen of England. 10, 13.

Vienna. 5, 6, 8, 14.

as a musical centre. 220.

Viennese, the. 11.

Vietor, K. A. T. W. 124.

Villeinage. 83, 86.

Virchow, Rudolf. 34*2.

Vocalist, the tyranny of, in opera. 231, 232, 233, 234.

Volkelt, Johann. 71.

Volkmar, G. 171.

Voltaire, F. M. Arouet de. 5, 2712., 31, 41, 42.

Voluntarism. 189, 203.

Vorparlament at Frankfurt. 11.

Wagner, Richard, 73, 219 n., 230, 233, 233m, 234, 235, 235m, 237,
238, 240, 242.
and nature. 226, 237.

„ opera. 233.

,, the leit motif. 234.
as a critical writer. 237-8.

Brunhilde (in the Ring of the Nibelungen). 236.

Elisabeth (in Tannhauser). 236.

Elsa (in Lohengrin). 236.
his choice of themes. 236.

,, contribution to music. 238.

„ „ to technique of opera. 234

,, debt to Beethoven. 227.

,, „ Liszt. 239.

,, ideal hero. 236.

,, operas. 221.

„ philosophy. 236, 238.

Lohengrin. 220, 230 n., 234, 235, 239.

Meistersinger, die, 233, 234, 235.

Parsifal. 235, 236.

Ring of the Nibelungen. 233, 234, 235, 237.

Senta (in the Flying Dutchman). 236.

Siegfried. 236.

Tannhauser. 234, 235, 236.

Tristan. 235, 236, 237.

Valkiire. 234.

266

Index

Waitz, Georg. 68.

Wales, education in. 116.

Walpole, Sir Spencer. 13 n.

Warren, Sir Charles, expedition of, to Bechuanaland.
War, the, between Austria and Prussia of 1866. 12, 13

the English Civil. 114.
the Franco-Prussian, of 1870. 15, 90, 91.

the Napoleonic. 6, 7, 8, 12, 13.
the Seven Years’. 32.
the Thirty Years’. 3, 27.

Watt, H. J. 214.

Weber, C. M. von. 232, 233, 234.

and the modern orchestra. 233.

Der Freischiitz. 232.

Euryanthe. 233.

Oberon. 233.

Weimar. 30, 43, 74.

Weinel, H. 158.

Weiss, B. 158, i83f.

Weiss, J. 158, 183^

Wellhausen, J. i6if.

Weltbegriff, der Menschliche. 205ff.

“ Weltpolitik. ” 19.

Wendt, H. H. 169, 172.

Wernle, P. 158.

Westphalia. 9.

Wiese, Ludwig, hi.

William I, King of Prussia, German Emperor. 15.
William II, „ ,, ,, ,, 21.

Willich, Henrietta von. 143.

Winckelmann, Johann Joachim. 38 and n.

Winckler, H. 164.

Windelband, Wilhelm. 26 n., 43.

Wolf, Friedrich August. 29, 30, 39 and n., 63, 109.
Wolf, Hugo. 221.

Wood, Robert. 28, 30 and n.

Wordsworth, William. 32, 33n., 47, 55.

Wundt, Wilhelm Max. 32, 47, 55, 75, 76, 189.
Wiirtemberg. 10, 86, 106.

Zahn, T. 158.

Zeller, Eduard. 68, 143, 154.

Zollverein, the German. 10, 86-87.

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