OF THE UNITY OF THOUGHT. 611 



hopeful of bringing about, by patient and enlightened 

 reforms, that liberty which the French Eevolution had 

 attempted to gain by more violent methods, but had to 

 a large extent lost again. This confidence of the human 

 mind in its own resources, be they speculative, scientific, 

 or practical, was confirmed and heightened by new 

 creations and discoveries in literature, poetry, art, and 

 science, by a revival of the religious spirit in England 

 which for a long time obscured the hidden influences of 

 Hume's scepticism, and by the educational interest in 

 Germany and Switzerland. The latter combined with 

 religious inwardness Eousseau's belief in the inherent 

 goodness of human nature. 



This hopefulness which characterised European thought is. 



Loss of con- 



till far on into the nineteenth century received its first 



the powers 



great blow through the reactionary movement in French ^f n 

 thought. It was aggravated by the disillusionment of mmd ' 

 the speculative mind in Germany towards the middle of 

 the century, when the resources of idealism failed, and 

 the belief in them was replaced by a belief in the methods 

 and principles of science on the one side, of historical 

 research and criticism on the other. An arrogant 

 materialism set in, which lacked the originality as well 

 as the literary graces so characteristic of the writings of 

 the French encyclopaedists two generations earlier. This, 

 as also the slow and changing processes through which 

 the historical schools matured their results, tended to 

 weaken the belief in the powers of human reason to 

 arrive at any certainty at all, and prepared younger 

 minds in Germany for the reception of that pessimistic 

 view which was brilliantly developed in the writings of 



