INTRODUCTION. 



59 



the surface ; it is not explicitly stated, it must be implied 

 rather than defined. The great object of our life and 

 labour has not been clear to us, as it seemed clear to those 

 who lived during the Reformation or the Eevolution, other- 

 wise we should not have philosophies of the Unconscious 

 and of the Unknowable, and the century would not end 

 in asking, Is life worth living ? 



Then, again, we find in history long periods of quiet 

 development, where men's minds seemingly run very much 

 in the same direction, exhibiting a general tendency of 

 ideas, the spreading of a defined habit of thought and of 

 simple methods, the application of a few principles : such 

 a period was that preceding the French Eevolution, the 

 greater part of the eighteenth century. It has therefore 

 been easy to characterise that century : it has been 

 termed the philosophical century, the century of the 

 Aufklarung, the century of Voltaire. 1 No such one 



1 The first who reviewed the 

 literature of the eighteenth century 

 from an international point of view 

 was Villemaiu, who as early as 1820 

 was engaged in lecturing at the 

 Sorbonne before the ilite of the 

 rising literary generation of France 

 on the literature of the eighteenth 

 century, taking France as the centre, 

 and showing the influence of foreign 

 literature, especially English, as like- 

 wise the reaction of French ideas 

 abroad. He was too early to recog- 

 nise the true meaning of the new 

 spirit which had then already gone 

 forth from Germany. In this respect 

 his ' Cours de Litterature franfaise,' 

 published in 1828 and republished in 

 1864, remains incomplete. Schlosser 

 next attempted to present in his 

 ' Geschichte des achtzehnten Jahr- 

 hunderts,' after the manner of 

 Gibbon, a picture of the combined 



political and literary work of the 

 last century. The first draft of it 

 appeared in 1824, after Schlosser 

 had passed two years in Paris, where 

 no doubt he must have come under 

 the influence of Villemain. The 

 work itself began to appear in 1826,. 

 and was finished in i848. It is 

 considered to be Schlosser's greatest 

 work, and had a large circulation. 

 The connection of political and 

 literary history was studied by 

 Gervinus, who with Hiiusser is 

 usually counted as a pupil of 

 Schlosser. But the great work 

 which Villemain had begun and 

 Schlosser taken up was adequately 

 carried out by Hettner, who in 

 his ' Literaturgeschichte des acht- 

 zehnten Jahrhunderts ' conceived 

 the whole intellectual movement of 

 that age as a battle for enlighten- 

 i meirt^Kampfder Aufklaruny). The 



