26 INTRODUCTION. 



and German equivalents to look for a definition of my 

 intention in the English word " Thought." I am not 

 aware that French literature possesses any "histoire de 

 la pense"e," either of a longer or shorter period ; I know 

 of innumerable works in German which cover a similar 

 field, but they have mostly used the word Weltanschauung, 

 or expanded the meaning of Thought into the wider sense 

 of a history of Civilisation (Kulturgeschichte) or narrowed 

 it to that of Literature, proving as it seems to me 



46. the real want of a concise term such as the English 



Want of 



precise term language now supplies. And yet, I think I am right 



in German *- * 



and French. j n sa yi n g that the conception of Thought, in the sense 

 in which I am using it, is truly an outcome of interna- 



47. tional, not of specifically English progress, and belongs 



Conception J 



ma i n ly to the period of which I am treating, a period 

 spe " characterised, as I have already remarked, by the great 

 lsb ' interchange of ideas, by the breaking down of intellectual 

 barriers, between the principal European nationalities. It 



48. was above all in the mind of Thomas Carlyle, who first 

 first to give among Englishmen made a profound study of the intel- 



a special 



thTword to lectual agencies which brought about the great change in 

 Thought, modern Europe, that the conception formed itself of an 

 intellectual and spiritual organism, underlying and moving 

 external events. He first gave the peculiar sense to the 

 word Thought, in which we here employ it, and made it 

 an object of special study for those who came after him ; 

 an object, indeed, definable in various ways and to be con- 

 templated from differing points of view, but yet a some- 

 thing, a power recognised by every one, and for which no 

 better word could be invented. No other language has a 

 word so comprehensive, denoting at once the process and 



