OF SOCIETY. 477 



versity and perhaps the most important centre of modern 

 German thought and learning. Schelling and Hegel 

 came from Siiabia, the home of German poetry. But, 

 whereas Schelling lived more in the regions of Art and 

 Literature, Hegel was early interested and active in 

 political life, and had at the end of his career in Berlin 

 a distinctly political influence. Finally, in Schleier- 

 macher, the last great representative of German 

 idealism, philosophy came into immediate contact with 

 the practical problems of religion and the Church. In 

 another way we may see what very different aspects 

 social problems would present to these various thinkers 

 in the course of the fifty years from 1780 to 188 0. 



Kant lived under a despotic government which, in 

 one instance, censured him for stepping outside the 

 legitimate sphere of his duties. His successors enjoyed 

 greater academic freedom. They witnessed great changes 

 of literary taste and sentiment, the birth of a new litera- 

 ture abounding in original creations of Poetry and Art. 

 But more than this, they lived in an age of political 

 and social unrest, of revolution and reaction, of humilia- 

 tion and despair, followed by national regeneration with 

 renewed confidence and success. No one was more alive 

 to these stirring events and chang-es than Fichte. In so. 



° ° _ Fichte. 



spite of the very abstract and forbidding terminology 

 which he invented and through which he introduced his 

 theoretical philosophy, he was really a man of action 

 much less contemplative and patiently critical than 

 Kant was. He, more than any other of the great 

 thinkers, felt the necessity of infusing into the rising 

 generation an enthusiasm for ideal objects, for Intel- 



