GROWTH AND DIFFUSION OF CRITICAL SPIRIT. 127 



sidered the highest standards of academic teaching and 

 method. For our purposes it will be sufficient to single 

 out a few names as leaders and representatives of the 

 critical method which then already received the name 

 of the " Higher Criticism." ^ These names were J. M. 

 Gesner (1691-1761), C. G. Heyne (1729-1812), and 

 J. G. Eichhorn (1752-1827). I select these three 

 names, as from them emanated two prominent streams 

 into which the critical spirit poured its refreshing as 

 well as its devastating waters, namely, classical criticism 

 (philology) on the one side, and biblical criticism 

 (exegesis) on the other. 



I have already on a former occasion (vol. i. p. 164) 

 mentioned how the foundation of the University of 

 Gottingen marked an era in the history of German 

 thought. It not only initiated the modern conception 

 of liberal studies in Germany, it also gathered into a 

 focus intellectual developments which had before been 



28. 

 Representa- 

 tive higher 

 critics. 



29. 

 Gottingen 

 and the 

 critical 

 spirit. 



^ Higher Criticism is frequently 

 distinguished from Lower Criticism. 

 The latter is occupied mainly with 

 the text of writers, its emendation, 

 purification, and restitution : High- 

 er Criticism introduces the historical 

 and philosophical aspects. It studies 

 the genesis, hlstoi'ical surroundings, 

 and antecedents of its subject, and 

 advances to an interpretation of 

 the meaning of prominent writers, 

 notably tlie ancient Classics and 

 the Holy Scriptures, aiming, in the 

 last instance, at a reconstruction of 

 the thought and culture of im- 

 portant periods of history. This 

 Lower and Higher Criticism is, as 

 I have already remarked, quite 

 different from that criticism which 

 is allied to rhetoric on the one side 

 and to the history of literary taste 

 on the other — two distinct studies 



which have in modern literature 

 been carried on consistently and 

 continuously only in France. Prof. 

 Saintsbury in the work already 

 referred to {sitpra, p. 96) separ- 

 ates this criticism from that kind 

 of criticism I am now dealing 

 with, which is, in its development, 

 though not in its origins, a char- 

 acteristic creation of the modern 

 German mind. For this criticism, 

 with its philological, philosophical, 

 and theological branches, Prof. 

 Saintsbury has evidently only scant 

 appreciation (see loc. cit., vol. i. 

 p. 4). On the term Higher Criti- 

 cism, as connected with Bible 

 studies, see H. S. Nash, 'The His- 

 tory of the Criticism of the New 

 Testament' (1900), especially p. 

 12, &c. 



