288 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



of the nation. It has been called by some the roman- 

 tic l movement on the larger scale. 



The different cross-currents which made up this very 

 complex movement may be distinguished by referring 

 to the different extraneous influences which bore in 

 upon German thought during the period of its awaken- 

 ing to independence after the end of the religious and 

 political wars which had devastated the country and 

 decimated the population during the two centuries that 

 followed the Reformation. 



There was, first of all, the mechanical view which 

 tended to look upon nature, including the human organism, 

 as a mere machine ; this view had to be combated by 

 an opposite view which looked upon nature and life as 

 a divine unfolding; it was propounded in many varia- 

 tions and was accepted in different forms, but it 

 found its most congenial philosophical expression in 

 the philosophy of Spinoza, which came to be studied 

 through the influence of Lessing and Jacobi and Herder. 

 It was a view which lent itself not only to philosophical 

 but also to poetical interpretation, and was thus wide- 



1 This use of the term " Roman- Continental students of the history 



tic " in the larger sense is character- of literature, this broadening of the 



istic of the view we meet with in term so as to comprise, not only 



' The Periods of European Litera- some very unromantic writers, but 



ture ' (edited by Prof. Saintsbury), notably also the whole of what is 



and is explained there by Prof. termed the Classical School in 



Vaughan in the Introduction to Germany, is most inconvenient and 



the very excellent tenth volume misleading, as it obliterates what 



entitled 'The Romantic Revolt.' is there considered to be the prin- 



The " Period " begins with the cipal trait of romanticism. I have, 



deaths of Voltaire and Rousseau, therefore, confined the use of the 



1778, and ends in the eleventh term in these volumes to the nar- 



volume (by Mr Oman, 'The Ro- rower sense. (See ante, vol. i. p. 



mantic Triumph') with the middle 84 n.) 

 of the nineteenth century. For 



