THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT IN GERMANY. 203 



philosophy of Kant and Fichte, the republican notions 

 which led the political movements in America and 

 France had been reduced to a system and theoretically 

 proved ; the discipline of a classical education was the 

 school in which leaders and youths were trained who 

 marched into the war against the great oppressor. This 

 ideal of Wissenschaft had thus acquired a practical mean- 

 ing, an ethical not to say a religious significance ; it 

 was allied to the religious revival preached by Schleier- 

 macher and a section of the Romantic school. Of its 

 value as a principle for guiding research and learn- 

 ing it had given proof in that great circle of studies 

 which, since the time of F. A. Wolf and Wilhelm von 

 Humboldt, was comprised under the name of Philology. 

 Under its influence new universities were being founded 

 and academies remodelled. 



Now, it is the peculiarity of all philosophical and 

 historical studies that they deal with one great subject, 

 which cannot easily be divided into a number of inde- 

 pendent parts capable of separate treatment ; since their 

 interest attaches mainly to the fact that they explore 

 the workings and manifestations of the human mind in 

 the past and in the present. These studies are there- 

 fore forced to keep always in the foreground the idea 

 of a great unity of action and purpose, to aim at com- 

 pleteness of view, and to refer all special researches to 

 general principles and standards. The encyclopaedic view, 26. 

 in fact, is forced upon all philosophical and historical preview 



necessary in 



sciences. Almost without exception the great masters ^" 

 and teachers who lived in the beginning of this century 

 adhered to this view, and however great in special and 



