GROWTH AND DIFFUSION OF CRITICAL SPIRIT. 123 



incorrectly be described as an importation into the 

 critical atmosphere then everywhere prevailing of the 

 spirit of Leibniz. The foremost representative of this 

 widely different " habit of thought" is Hermann Lotze. 

 On the other side, the strictly logical monism of Spinoza, 

 as detached from his mystical pantheism, has latterly 

 found favour among prominent representatives of 

 Naturalism, or even Materialism. Be this as it may, 

 Lessing and many of his followers certainly found in 

 the philosophy of Spinoza a resting-place and refuge 

 from the prosaic moralising and shallow rationalism of 

 the Deists in England and the Encyclopaedists in France. 

 Compared with these Spinoza rose before them as an 

 inspired writer, as one who looked at the great life prob- 

 lems not from a utilitarian and narrowly moralising 

 point of view but sub specie ceternitatis. 



Now though Spinoza is commonly instanced as a 

 decided dogmatist in opposition to Kant's criticism, and 

 though Kant himself knew little of Spinoza and never 

 mentions Lessing, these three thinkers nevertheless 

 contributed, each in his way, to cultivate an important 

 field of modern research which, perhaps more than any 

 other, exhibits the workings of the modern critical 

 spirit. Each in his way helped to establish what has 

 been termed the Higher Criticism in Theology. The 27. 



Spinoza, 



two great critical movements in modern German Theology, Lessing, 



Kant, and 



Higher Criticism as applied to the biblical records on * h ? B? gher 



* * 1/nticism* 



the one side, and the philosophical interpretation of 

 religious beliefs on the other, can both, to a large extent, 

 point to Spinoza, Lessing, and Kant as their earliest 

 representatives. 



