448 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



Neither the social question, in. the narrower sense of the 

 word, nor the economic question demanded, therefore, 

 that special attention which they respectively enjoyed 

 in France and England. 



Germany, however, possessed through her universities 

 and educational system great liberty of thought and 

 a great organisation for intellectual work, which, in the 

 absence of more practical problems, furthered philo- 

 sophical speculation on the one side, historical learning 

 and research on the other. It was therefore natural 



23. that the third special problem, that of the origins and 



Problem of 



History of history of Society, should be there taken up as worthy 

 Germany, subjects for academic teaching and study. 



In spite, however, of this partial but tolerably well- 

 marked division of labour connected with the socio- 



24. logical problem, it is well to recognise that the centre 



Centre of 



Fra iol e Sy ' n ^ rom which the great impetus emanated, both so far 

 as practical and theoretical treatment are concerned, 

 was undoubtedly France, and that her politics as well as 

 her literature have during the last one hundred and fifty 

 years exerted an enormous, perhaps the leading, influence 

 over the whole region of sociology, and this not only in 

 Germany and England, which we are specially interested 

 in, but also over other European countries and in the 

 United States of America. 



During the second half of the Eighteenth Century the 

 philosophical literature of France brought into pro- 

 minence two very different but equally stimulating 

 conceptions, both of which exerted great influence on 

 the thought of the neighbouring countries, though in 

 very different directions. The first was the idea of 



