474' 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



37. 



Influence of 

 France on 

 Germany. 



the eighteenth century. After the devastations of 

 former centuries, after the ruin of national prosperity 

 through the "Wars of the Eeformation, the Thirty Years' 

 AVar, and the Wars of the Succession, light had begun 

 to dawn in the middle of the eighteenth century and an 

 era of progress and comparative prosperity, and certainly 

 of national hope and confidence, seemed to have set in, 

 especially during the thirty years of peace which suc- 

 ceeded the Seven Years' War : the inspiring figure and 

 hero of the age being Frederick the Great.^ 



This increasing tide of prosperity and hopefulness, 

 under the influence of which were indited the well- 

 known opening lines of Schiller's Kiinstler (IVSQ)," 

 received a serious check during the greater part of 

 twenty years through the Wars of the Eevolution. It 

 was the latter with its seemingly hopeful beginnings, 

 not the social miserv of the masses,^ which gave the 



the Huguenots at the end of the 

 seventeenth century. Late in the 

 eighteenth century, a.s Biedermann 

 shows, the influence of the more 

 advanced state of England and 

 Holland made itself felt in many 

 directions, notably in Agi-iculture 

 and some of the trades. 



^ Inspiration came not only from 

 his military renown, but quite as 

 much, as Biedermann shows, from 

 the reforms in many directions 

 of legislature, administration, trade 

 and industry in which, during the 

 afternoon and evening of his life, 

 he, first among German princes, 

 led the way in the direction of pop- 

 ular progress. His literary tastes, 

 on the other side, as is well 

 known, were distinctly French. 

 See also Carlyle's ' Friedrich II.,' 

 Book XXL, Introduction. 



'■^ On these verses Kuno Fischer 



remarks : " The mastery of man 

 over nature, the reign of culture 

 which Bacon had proclaimed as 

 the theme and aim of the modern 

 age, is in full development. . . . 

 The moment in which Schiller 

 composes his ' Kiinstler ' is one of 

 ' eventful silence,' the last before 

 a storm. The poem appeared in 

 March 1789. Two months later 

 and the Assembly of the French 

 States General begins its session " 

 ('Schiller als Philosoph,' vol. i., 

 2nd ed., p. 152). 



* That such misery existed in 

 many parts of Germany at the 

 time of the outbreak of the French 

 Revolution there is no doubt, and 

 more recent historians are in- 

 clined to insist on the fact that the 

 revolt took place in France rather 

 than in other European countries 

 not because of the greater misery 



