OF SOCIETY. 573 



in Ranke's writings is founded upon the philosophical 

 and religious background of the age and the surround- 

 ings in which Ranke's genius matured, how he liberated 

 himself from the systematising tendency of the philo- 

 sophy as well as from the dogmatising tendency of the 

 theology of his time, but how he nevertheless retains 

 the spiritual aspect as it was contained, e.g., in the 

 writings of Fichte and still more in those of Luther. 

 " Ranke was well aware that he possessed a kernel of 

 solid convictions, but he never attempted a formally 

 well-considered and detailed expression of this content; 

 he never systematised it or tried to reconcile its possibly 

 contradictory elements ; he shrank from putting the 

 innermost of his convictions into words. He ever goes 

 only a certain length ; the innermost remains undis- 

 closed, like those groves in which the old Teutons 

 considered the Deity to be directly active, and it 

 is therefore similarly grasped only intuitively sola 

 reverentia." * 



In this respect Ranke occupies a position similar to 

 that of Goethe. Such natures are wronged whenever 

 one tries to construct from their scattered expressions, 

 by hook or by crook, a rounded philosophical system ; 

 we can ever attempt only an indefinite indication of 

 the essence of their views. Nevertheless Lamprecht 

 finds Ranke's historical thought gathered up in two 

 characteristic points : the idealistic creed after the 

 manner of the then ruling philosophy, and the universal- 

 istic conception of history after the manner of the 

 cosmopolitan character of the classical literature of 



1 Lamprecht, op. cit., p. 31. 



