130 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



30. 



Criticisms 

 an instru- 

 ment of 

 education. 



education. For it was mainly under influences coming 

 from Gottingen that a change in the liigher education of 

 Germany took place. This consisted in taking the 

 leadership in the learned schools out of the hands of 

 theological and placing it in the hands of classical 

 teachers. Under the enlightened guidance of these the 

 German gymnasium attained its great influence, which 

 has lasted for nearly a century. The mental discipline 

 and intellectual atmosphere at these schools during that 

 period was really owing to the workings of the critical 

 spirit in the wider sense of the word ; of free inquiry, 

 based upon methodical study : it took the place of the 

 theological spirit, which had ruled before but has had in 

 the end largely to give way to the ruling of the scien- 

 tific spirit in the narrower sense of the word that is 

 synonymous with the term exact or mathematical.^ 



^ All this is brought out very 

 clearly in Paulsen's work men- 

 tioned above (p. 116 note). As it 

 deals mainly with the teaching in 

 the learned schools, it casts only 

 side glances at literary criticism on 

 the one side and theological on the 

 other. Those who wish to con- 

 vince themselves at first hand of 

 the part that criticism has played 

 in German thought and literature, 

 and how, for the greater part of 

 the century, it ruled supreme at 

 the German Universities, need only 

 refer to the histories of the different 

 sciences published by the Munich 

 Academy (1864, onward). Note 

 especially the volumes by Dorner, 

 Protestant Theology ; Bursian, 

 Classical Pliilology ; Benfey, Com- 

 parative Philology ; Wegele, His- 

 toriography ; Roscher, Economics ; 

 Bluntschli, Staatswissenschaft ; Zel- 

 ler. Philosophy. Lotze's volume 

 on the ' History of Aesthetics in 

 Germany ' is a unique example in 



the whole series of a different treat- 

 ment of au important subject, in- 

 asmuch as little attention is given 

 to the influence of criticism, and 

 much more to the constructive 

 ideas which made themselves felt 

 in that field of inquiry. 



Another publication to which I 

 am much indebted, and which, 

 though not professedly a history of 

 the critical movement of thought, 

 yet leaves the impression of its 

 supremacy on the mind of the 

 reader, is the history of the German 

 Uziiversities written for the Ex- 

 hibition at Chicago ('Die Deutschen 

 Universitiiten,' 2 vols., 1893), and 

 edited by Prof. W. Lexis. It 

 contains a valuable general Intro- 

 duction by Paulsen. The diff'erent 

 subjects are treated in the order of 

 the different Faculties of the Ger- 

 man Universities, under a large 

 number of headings, by leading 

 representatives in eacii depart- 

 ment. 



