OF SOCIETY. 



425 



6. 

 Herder's 



before his age the idea of humanity. This has been 

 correctly considered as embodying the ideals which lived H^anity 

 in the minds of all the great representatives of .the 

 classical period of German literature. It found its most 

 perfect realisation in the person, the life, and the works 

 of Goethe. Though Herder himself did not attain, either 

 in his personal or literary activity, to that elevated 

 expression of his ideal which lived in his contemporaries, 

 Goethe, Kant, and Schiller, and was bequeathed through 

 them to a large circle of poets and thinkers, he has the 

 merit of having formed the conception of a ' History of 

 the Human Eace ' as a development of the ' Idea of 

 Humanity,' and this in a truly philosophical spirit, with 

 no other practical and ulterior motive than that of the 

 education and elevation of mankind. 1 But other and 



1 Considering the important part 

 which Herder's ' Ideen ' played in 

 German literature, it is remarkable 

 that his name is so little familiar 

 to English writers, among whom 

 Flint was probably the first to do 

 full justice to him. Even Carlyle, 

 to whom two generations of English 

 readers were probably mainly in- 

 debted for their knowledge of 

 German literature, has little to say 

 about Herder, referring only to his 

 relations with Goethe and quoting 

 a characteristic passage from Jean 

 Paul on the spirit of Herder's style 

 (Miscellanies, ' Works,' vol. viii. p. 

 61). The main reason of the ne- 

 glect which Herder's writings ex- 

 perienced in this, and for a time 

 also in his own, country is probably 

 to be found in the fact that he fell 

 foul of the metaphysical interests 

 and tendencies of his age which 

 sprang up just after his principal 

 work had created, for the time, a 

 great sensation. But there is an- 

 other reason which is indicated by 



Haym ('Herder,' vol. ii. p. 336). 

 It is not in his larger unfinished 

 work that Herder excelled but in 

 the several collections of his smaller 

 pieces, which, as Haym says, give us 

 little gems, not all equally im- 

 portant, but each attractive in itself 

 and together of the most beautiful 

 effect. To express it in terms 

 now familiar to the reader of this 

 History, we may say that Herder's 

 mind took a comprehensive "syn- 

 optic" view, that he lacked the 

 power of the great artist to give 

 full expression to the same, but 

 that out of it he was able to 

 elaborate smaller studies of great 

 beauty and value. Thus it is that 

 many of his younger contemporaries 

 were stimulated through him to re- 

 searches which, though much more 

 limited, led to more definite re- 

 sults, whilst, with a comprehensive 

 and a synoptic view of the world 

 and life, Herder remained himself 

 as Haym says, "always fragment- 

 ary." In addition to this, Herder 



