GROWTH AND DIFFUSION OF CRITICAL SPIRIT. 157 



prepared by him in two great undertakings which 

 occupied him during the larger part of his life, and 

 which, from a learned point of view, will probably 

 entitle him to greater and more lasting renown than the 

 history, which he wrote at the request of a prominent 

 Berlin publisher. This formed, together with Curtius' 

 ' History of Greece ' and some other text - books and 

 editions of classical authors, the first attempt to put 

 before the educated public the results of learned labours 

 in a popular and attractive form. The two lines of 

 study referred to resulted in the publication of his work 

 on ' Eoman Constitutional Law,' and in his edition of the 

 ' Latin Inscriptions.' As stated above, Eoman law, as 

 the foundation of the Roman State, formed for Mommsen 

 the key to Roman history. But there was another 

 influence which formed the background of his historical 

 conceptions. This was the peculiar position which 

 he took up with regard to the political events of 

 his time. Political views had already, before his time, 

 played a great part in German historiography. In most 

 cases, however, a strong political bias, exhibited in favour 

 of or against the existing regime and generated under 

 the influence of the startling events which followed the 

 great French Revolution all through the nineteenth 

 century, sufficed to place their authors outside of the 

 pale of genuine scholarship, which should be founded on 

 the unbiassed results of historical criticism Ranke had 

 kept singularly aloof from the politics of the day ; his 

 works really grew up on the older foundation of the 

 idealism of the first third of the nineteenth century to 

 which I have so often referred. Mommsen was probably 



