OF THE GOOD. 133 



few beginnings which were made in the direction of 

 national and independent thought, such as are to be 

 found in the writings of Maine de Biran, remained un- 

 published or unnoticed, to be taken up and studied 

 at a much later period. It was the age that produced 

 the reactionary writings of de Bonald and de Maistre 

 and the extreme socialistic theories of Fourier and Saint 

 Simon. None of these extreme systems rested on any 

 well-reasoned philosophical, historical, or psychological 

 basis, they contributed nothing to moral philosophy 

 proper, they did not really face and try to solve the 

 problem of the Good, 



If we now turn to Germany and look at the conditions ^^.^^ e. 

 which existed there in the latter part of the eighteenth f°^jj|^any. 

 century, we find that they neither resemble those 

 existing in this country nor those existing in France. 

 In the case of Britain we were able to recognise the 

 presence of, and the universal respect for, an existing 

 law and order of things, and, as a background for ethical 

 speculation, the conception of this order as natural, 

 political, moral or divine, according to the various 

 individual leanings and predilections of different thinkers 

 or schools of thought. This order was, however, rather 

 taken for granted than intellectually demonstrated. On 

 the other side we find that in Germany a strong desire 

 had made itself felt to throw the light of reason upon 

 these fundamental presuppositions of any and every 

 moral system. The sanction of the Church and of 

 tradition had, through the Protestant reform movement 



sophy, the one-sidedness of the geo- 

 metrical method ; but he did not 

 look, like British thinkers, to 



psychology for the truer method, 

 but to the more recent sciences of 

 biology and sociology or history. 



