OF THE GOOD. 203 



I have also pointed out, on several occasions, that 

 the great forward movement which began in Germany 

 during the second half of the eighteenth century and 

 has continued up to recent times, started from two 

 independent beginnings, which we may define as the 

 higher educational movement emanating mainly from 

 the north of Germany with its ideal of classical 

 and humanistic studies and culture, and the popular 

 educational movement which started in Switzerland 

 under the influence of Eousseau, Pestalozzi, and their 

 followers. Its foundation was not classical studies, 

 but a simple and enlightened Christian belief which 

 allied itself with realistic rather than classical teaching. 



When, in the course of the nineteenth century, 

 owing to the critical spirit on the one side and to 

 political and ecclesiastical controversies on the other, 

 the religious foundation of popular education became 

 shaken, it was felt by many that moral teaching and 

 discipline not only among the higher, but also among 

 the lower classes, should be placed on an independent 

 basis, that the ideas of right and wrong, of justice 

 and of moral dignity, must be saved from a dis- 

 integration and internal conflict such as had been the 

 fate of religious and intellectual creeds alike. And 

 to force this still more strongly upon the teachers of 

 the younger generation, a real danger seemed to present 

 itself in the growing influence of that extramural 

 philosophy to which I referred above. For there had 

 crept in, mainly through the philosophy of Schopenhauer, 

 the spirit of pessimism. The optimism which formed 

 so distinguishing a feature of German philosophy since 



