526 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



which have not become generally known and appreci- 

 ated, this country has not produced any foremost 

 thinkers who were burdened with the problem of 

 Existence and Eeality as we find them burdened on 

 the Continent ; the self - assurance of Fichte, the 

 triumphant confidence of Hegel, the mystical depth of 

 Schelling, Schleiermacher, and ISTovalis have no parallel 

 in this country. But neither does it exhibit such 

 typical examples of spiritual unhappiness, doubt, and 

 despair, as we meet with abroad in Holderlin, in de 

 Lamennais, in Mainlander, or of intellectual self-assertion 

 as in Nietzsche. Nevertheless the influences which 

 worked abroad in a sudden and catastrophic manner, 

 amounting to a Eevolution in thought as well as in 

 practical life, have made themselves slowly, and perhaps 

 more insidiously, felt also in this country. The sudden- 

 ness of the Kevolufcion abroad, the extremes of its 

 doctrines and passions, had at least the advantage that 

 they produced an equally sudden and powerful reaction 

 in an age and in surroundings which had not yet been 

 saturated with criticism or corrupted through the 

 commercial and industrial spirit. In this country all 

 these influences, which in Germany succeeded each 

 other, have towards the end of the nineteenth century 

 simultaneously combined to produce, slowly but surely, 

 in many thinking minds, the conviction that the solution 

 of the problem of Eeality offered by the Beliefs of 

 former days requires to be either abandoned or brought 

 into some kind of harmony with the principles of science 

 and the results of criticism. This has led to two distinct 

 and original attempts to face the great problem of 



