124 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



Lessing was not a university professor; he moved in 

 wider literary and artistic circles at Berlin and Hamburg, 

 and at last became librarian at Wolfenbiittel. His 

 influence was not that of an academic teacher; like 

 Leibniz before him, he did not gather around him a 

 circle of pupils. Accordingly criticism with him was 

 not reduced to a teachable method, but remained an 

 original and personal feature of his literary genius. It 

 was especially in his style that he marked an era in 

 German literature. 1 In this respect he resembled 

 Diderot in France, for whom he had the greatest 

 admiration. As for Kant, his academic activity 

 moved in the traditional courses of philosophical 

 teaching, and his peculiar method was made known 

 to the world mainly through his writings. His pupils 



1 Carlyle in his Essay ( ! Edin- like a toilworn but unwearied and 



burgh Review,' 1827) on the "State heroic champion, earning not the 



.of German Literature, " being a re- conquest but the battle ; as indeed 



view of two books on German himself admits to us, that ' it is not 



literature by Franz Horn, says of the finding of truth, but the honest 



Lessing : " It is to Lessing that an search for it, that profits.' " 



Englishman would turn with readi- In spite of this appreciation of 



est affection. . . . Among all the Lessing and of his style, which "will 



writers of the eighteenth century, be found precisely such as we of 



we will not except even Diderot England are accustomed to admire 



-and David Hume, there is not one most," Lessing is probably, of all 



.of a more compact and rigid intel- the German Classics, the one who 



lectual structure who more dis- is least known, read, or written 



tinctly knows what he is aiming at, about, either in France or England. 



JOT with more gracefulness, vigour, This is partly owing to the fact 



.and precision sets it forth to his that he is characteristically German, 



readers. He thinks with the clear- having, next to Luther, done more 



ness and piercing sharpness of the than any other writer to create 



most expert logician ; but a genial modern German style, of which he 



fire pervades him, a wit, a heartiness, is one of the very few really great 

 a general richness and fineness of ( representatives, but still more owing 



mature, to which most logicians are to the fact that in all his critical 



strangers. He is a sceptic in many writings he was a pioneer, and that, 



things, but the noblest of sceptics ; as such, his views have been either 



A mild, manly, half-careless enthu- largely developed or superseded by 



siasrn struggles through his indig- those who followed him. 

 nant unbelief ; he stands before us 



