GROWTH AND DIFFUSION OF CRITICAL SPIRIT. 131 



The necessity of becoming an educational instrument 

 had a twofold influence upon the development of criticism 

 in the wider sense of the word. Criticism had to afford 

 a mental discipline to the learner, and it had to become 

 communicable and teachable. With these objects in 

 view, it became specialised and more or less reduced 

 to forms and methods. In the course of time it also 

 became more and more evident that criticism could 

 be carried on from two entirely different points of 

 view. These were not clearly separated by the earlier 

 representatives of the Higher Criticism. In dealing 

 with mental phenomena, such as the literatures and 

 culture of the past, and with opinions and bodies of 

 doctrine which have been handed down, we can pass 

 judgment upon them either from the purely philosophi- 

 cal or from the historical point of view. The first 

 point of view implies the existence of definite standards 

 and clear principles ; the latter leads us to the great 

 problem of historical genesis. In the first instance we 

 refer the subject we are interested in to standards and 

 principles which we must either assume or demonstrate ; 

 in the latter case we connect the object of our study 

 historically with its antecedents and surroundings in 

 time and place. Considerations of both kinds were 

 before the minds of all the great critics in ancient and 

 modern times ; but they were not clearly separated, 

 they were introduced promiscuously. It is one of the si. 



. . Difference 



most marked characteristics of the learned literature of of philoso- 

 phical and 



tjie nineteenth century, especially in Germany, that in |.\'ft^"g^' 

 the course of its development the fundamental difference 

 of historical and philosophical criticism has been brought 



