574 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



Germany. Lamprecht gives us here the key to an 

 understanding of the great change which has come over 

 German thought not only in his special line of research 

 but also generally in the treatment of all the larger 

 problems. Idealism has given way to realism, the 

 study of ideas to that of things ; and cosmopolitanism, 

 i.e., the world-wide view, to a national view. So far 

 as the social problem in its widest sense is concerned, 

 this transition was prepared in Germany by the progress 

 of learning as much as by the political events during 

 the latter part of the Nineteenth Century. To this I 

 have had occasion to refer frequently in the foregoing 

 chapters. Here it behoves us to recognise how the 

 comprehensive idea of humanity which inspired German 

 thought since the time of Lessing, Herder, and Goethe, 

 was replaced, in the course of the Nineteenth Century, 

 by a more closely defined expression of the aims and 

 interests, not of humanity at large, but of the German 

 people in their national existence and their central 

 European position, 

 so. The idea of nationality which has stirred several 



The idea of . 



Nationality. European nations has nowhere been proclaimed with 

 greater self-assertion than in Germany. This led primarily 

 to a political view of history which superseded not only 

 the philosophical view but also the universalistic of Eanke. 

 Great historical works were written with the undis- 

 guised tendency of understanding better the drift of 

 modern political events, such as the French Revolution, 

 and the more remote beginnings as well as the more 

 recent successes in the foundation of political and 

 national unity. The universalistic and philosophical 



