OF THE SOUL. 257 



tion. The former aimed at an education and elevation 

 of the masses ; it centred in Pestalozzi, who was in- 

 fluenced by Eousseau. It had a distinctly religious side, 

 based upon an enlightened interpretation of Christian 

 doctrine. The later educational movement aimed at an 

 elevation of the middle and higher classes through a 

 reformation of the teaching at the high schools and 

 universities. It had a distinctly classical, in some 

 instances even a romantic bias, but in some of the 

 greatest leaders of thought, such as Lessing, Kant, 

 Herder, Schiller, and Goethe, the process of education 

 and elevation took a still higher flight, being conceived 

 as the process of the education of mankind under Divine 

 guidance. This fruitful but somewhat vague conception 40. 



The political 



assumed a more realistic aspect when the general tend- movement, 

 ency of the age towards elevation and liberation was led 

 into the channels of political life during the Anti- 

 Napoleonic Eevolution, which crystallised into definite 

 shapes in the administrative reforms led by Stein in 

 Prussia, and culminated in the war of Liberation and 

 the overthrow of foreign despotism. The general tend- 

 ency towards liberation and elevation became a definite 

 and real national movement, and, in this its realism, it 

 was not infrequently opposed to the vagueness of those 

 who would not descend from the ideal heights of Classi- 

 cism and Eomanticism. Something of this realism attached 

 also to the endeavours of popular educationalists who 

 experienced the necessity of descending from the tran- 

 scendental heights occupied by Kant and Fichte on to 

 the level of practical psychology and pedagogics. It is 

 known that Kant's academic teaching was in a different 

 VOL. III. R 



