292 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



religious spirit, though this was, in the school of Pesta- 

 lozzi, more spiritual and sympathetic, in that of Basedow 

 more practically ethical. The great representatives of 

 all the different shades of this movement disliked the 

 formalism of clerical teaching and the tyranny of priest- 

 hood, to which they opposed the warmth of true re- 

 ligious feeling as well as a practical and moral good 

 sense. But they were also distinctly averse from evapor- 

 ating the simple truths of Christianity in an abstract 

 intellectualism or a refined aestheticism. They stood 

 outside of the learned schools, and their classical ideals ; 

 in their appreciation of the new philosophy they did not 

 go beyond Kant's ethical and Fichte's popular writings. 

 Thus, in the general literature of the age, they probably 

 found themselves in more agreement with Lessing, 

 Herder, and Jean Paul than with Goethe and the 

 philosophical writings of Schiller ; but they had not; 

 only an important poetical literature after their own 

 taste, with such names as Gellert, Claudius, and Hebel ; 

 they assimilated also a truly artistic element througli 

 the great importance which was everywhere attached to 

 musical instruction, to a thorough acquaintance with 

 the large German hymnology and the great compositions 

 for the organ, in fact, sacred music was for them a 

 great educational instrument. 



Compared with the practical solution which this 

 widespread school of popular educationalists gave to 

 the religious problem, the metaphysical treatment which 

 the latter received in Kant's transcendentalism and in 

 the systems of his followers appeared abstract and un- 

 congenial, deficient in warmth and emotion, appealing 



