OF THE SPIRIT. 



26i 



century.^ This does not mean that the religious literature 

 in both countries has not been equally important and 

 equally original, nor does it mean that there has not 

 existed in both countries an equally original philosophi- 

 cal literature in which religious questions have been 

 discussed. But owing to the fact that, till quite 

 recently, theological as well as philosophical litera- 

 ture in Germany emanated from the universities, with 

 their separate faculties, theological and philosophical 

 studies were kept apart ; with the result that the 

 same subject, the problem of the spirit, or the religious 

 problem, has been attacked from two distinct points of 

 view and discussed in two distinct interests, — in the 

 interest of the Church and in the interest of free in- 

 quiry. Accordingly we find in Germany two distinct 7. 



■^ •' ° -^ '' Distinction 



literatures, a theological and a philosophical literature, j,"^^^"?!*"^ 

 both dealing more or less with the same problem, — the and°[SiK*^ 

 religious problem. In general, and until quite recently, iTtenlture. 

 these two literatures have marched separately and been 

 cultivated without sufficient mutual recognition. We 

 find that many theological works on Dogmatics treat of 

 the same subjects as philosophical works under the title 

 of Philosophy of Eeligion ; we also find in German 

 literature the remarkable fact that histories of phil- 

 osophy for a long time took little or no notice of im- 

 portant philosophical speculations simply because they 

 emanated from professional theologians and not from 

 professional philosophers. Thus many important and 



^ Nor as it has existed in the 

 Roman Church since the middle 

 ages, having been systematised in 

 the ' Summa Theologica,' and re- 



vived under the name of "Thorn 

 ism " in Belgium, France, and Ger- 

 many in the course of the nineteenth 

 century. 



