256 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



Creation of 

 ideals. 



39. 

 Tlie 



educational 

 movement. 



acterised German thought, literature, and culture during 

 the last quarter of the eighteenth and the first 

 third of the nineteenth century, covering a period of 

 about sixty years : I there defined this movement as 

 being led by the ideal of humanity. We may now 

 define it as an endeavour to elevate the minds of men, 

 to introduce a higher conception of the object of life and 

 of the dignity of the human mind. This endeavour to 

 elevate by the creation of ideals was in one form or 

 other common to all the great leaders in thought and 

 life during that period. This process of elevation or of 

 idealisation assumed a tangible form and became a 

 historical force in two definite directions. The first of 

 these was the educational movement, which itself has 

 again two distinct issues. The earlier one was tlie 

 widespread interest in popular education, the later 

 one was that referring to the higher or learned educa- 



youth ; his open forehead, made 

 for thought, was the abode of un- 

 disturbed cheerfuhiess and joy ; 

 thoughtful speech flowed from his 

 lips ; wit and humour were at his 

 command, and his instructive utter- 

 ance formed the most entertaining 

 intercourse. With the same spirit 

 in which he probed Leibniz, AVolff, 

 Baumgarten, Hume, and unfolded 

 the laws of Kepler, Newton, and 

 the physicists, he also received the 

 then appearing writings of Rousseau, 

 his ' Emile ' and 'Hc^loise,' as also 

 the most recent discovery in nature, 

 appreciated them and always came 

 back again to plain natural know- 

 ledge and to the moral worth of 

 man. . . . He encouraged and 

 forced you, in an agreeable way, to 

 independent thought ; despotism 

 was quite foreign to his miud. This 

 man, whom I name with the great- 

 est thankfulness and esteem, is 



Immanuel Kant ; his figure stands 

 agreeably before me" (Haym, vol. 

 i. p. 31). 



Herder also followed Kant in his 

 criticism of the prevailing phil- 

 osophy of the Aufkliirung, in his 

 dislike of traditional metaphysics of 

 the school which he characteristi- 

 cally terms Averroism, and in his 

 proposal to define the powers and 

 the limits of human reason. But 

 when Kant stepped forward with 

 his own transcendental philosophy 

 Herder seemed incapable of follow- 

 ing him. Kant, on his part, hardly 

 did justice to the far-reaching and 

 suggestive writings of Herder, which 

 in a poetical, attractive, but desul- 

 tory manner led the way into newly 

 discovered regions of anthropology 

 and the philosophy of history. All 

 this will he found elaborately treated 

 in Haym's volumes. 



