OF KNOWLEDGE. 387 



impression upon the younger generation. What was 

 merely suggested by Leibniz, Lessing, and Kant, what 

 remained vague and elemental in Herder and found 

 poetical expression in Goethe, seemed to be raised to 

 the position of a definite science by Hegel. What was 

 the subject of a kind of inspiration with earlier and less 

 methodical thinkers became now, as it seemed, a teach- 

 able method. The great idea of development became 

 suggestive of researches on a larger or smaller scale 

 in many regions of historical, literary, aesthetic, and 

 theological criticism. Other thinkers who did not follow 

 Hegel into the same daring abstractions, and who could 

 not find in the rhythms of the dialectical process the 

 key for the understanding of the phenomena of mental 

 life or their historical development, supported neverthe- 

 less through their historical studies the same movement. 

 If they did not possess, they at least sought for, the 

 right points of view, the leading ideas, from which to 

 comprehend the mental life of earlier ages. Foremost 

 among these stood Schelling and Schleiermacher. Not- 

 ably, so far as philosophical thought is concerned, a 

 great gain must be recorded when the study of the 

 leading systems of ancient philosophy, pre-eminently of 

 Plato and Aristotle, was revived, the first by Schleier- 

 macher, the latter by Trendelenburg. In the year 1862 

 Trendelenburg could write : " Had such a powerful mind 

 as Schelling begun his philosophical studies with Plato 

 and Aristotle instead of going in the reverse order, back- 

 ward from Fichte and Kant to the analogies of Herder, 

 then to Spinoza, then to Plato and Giordano Bruno, 

 then on to Jacob Bohm, and only finally to Aristotle, 



