114 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



22. 



Winckel- 

 mann's 

 reform of 

 art by 

 criticism. 



Still more is it the case with his great younger con- 

 temporary and follower Herder (1744-1803), who, 

 starting with so-called critical dissertations in the manner 

 of Lessing, was very soon drawn away into new and 

 unexplored regions which it was more interesting, use- 

 ful, and congenial to his mind to explore than to 

 criticise. 



The second fact which interfered with a thorough- 

 going criticism and impeded the free development of the 

 critical spirit was this, that German literature and 

 thought had for some time past been moving in a 

 restricted area, had been under the dominating influence 

 of special schools of taste and thought. Out of these 

 limited regions, prescribed in literature by the canons 

 of French taste and in philosophy by a mutilated version 

 of Leibniz's ideas, the German mind broke loose under 

 the influence of English literature and philosophy. 



At the same time Winckelmann (1717-1768) initiated 

 in Germany quite a new era of artistic reform through 

 his anonymously published ' Eeflections on the Imita- 

 tion of the Grecian Works in Painting and Sculpture ' 

 (1755). Through the discovery in Germany of those 

 great artistic creations, which had been previously dis- 

 regarded, of the glories of Grecian sculpture by 

 Winckelmann on the one side and of the titanic and 

 elemental greatness of Shakespeare by Lessing on the 

 other, the purely critical attitude was changed into that 

 of a comparison of the modern French creations with 

 those of ancient Greece and of the Elizabethan period 

 of English literature. As so frequently afterwards, the 

 purely critical were changed into comparative studies, 



