144 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



cal spirit had spread over other fields of research, we 

 find a similar stimulating audacity in the direction of 

 premature and problematical constructions. A notable 

 example is furnished soon after the Darwinian points of 

 view had gained favour, in such works, e.g., as Haeckel's 

 ' G-enerelle Morphologic ' (see supra, vol. ii. p. 347, s. 99). 

 If we now ask the question : What was it that stood in 

 the way of the unimpeded march of the critical spirit, 

 what was it that checked and tempered it in its greatest 

 exponents, we may say that it was the influence of those 

 high ideals which lived in the minds of the great heroes 

 of the classical literature of Germany and which, through 

 their original creations, influenced even those more 

 methodical searchers and thinkers who were most 

 inclined to draw a sharp distinction between the highest 

 fruits of academic method and erudition on the one 

 side and the dilettante creations of the purely literary 

 genius on the other.^ 



Alten Geschichte,' 1895, p. 29), 

 had stated already, in the preface 

 to the first edition of his Roman 

 History (1811), that criticism 

 alone was not sufficient. " We 

 haust try to separate fiction from 

 falsification, and strain our gaze 

 80 as to recognise the lineaments of 

 truth liberated from those retouch- 

 ings. The removal ff the fabul- 

 ous, the destruction of what is de- 

 ceiving, may satisfy the critic ; he 

 only desires to expose a deceptive 

 story. . . . The historian, how- 

 ever, requires something positive ; 

 he must discover at least some 

 probable connection and put a 

 more plausible narrative in the 

 place of that which he has had to 

 sacrifice to his conviction " (quoted 

 by Wachsniuth, loc. cit., p. 28). 

 1 See for instance what Niebuhr 



himself says, in the year 1826, 

 reviewing his early labours after 

 fifteen years (Fref., p. ix) : — 



"Towards the beginning of the 

 present century a new epoch dawned 

 for our nation. Superficiality no- 

 where gave satisfaction : empty 

 words, half understood, had no 

 longer any currency : but neither 

 did mere destruction, in which the 

 past age had indulged, satisfy any 

 longer : we strove for definiteness 

 and positive insight, as our 

 ancestors did ; but the latter had 

 to be true instead of illusory, like 

 that which had been destroyed. 

 We now possessed a literature 

 worthy of our nation and language; 

 we had Lessiug and Goethe ; and 

 this literature comprised, what no 

 other literature had done, a large 

 portion of that of the Greeks and 



