blood out of German thought and left a skeleton with divisions and subdivisions, nearly all the technical philosophers of the German Enlightenment belonged to the Leibnitz-Wolffian School or were indirectly connected with it.1 G. E. Lessing (1729-1781). The true interpretation of Leibnitz came in the second half of the eighteenth century in what is known as the German Romantic movement the first promises of a strong, native literary movement in modern Germany. Its real origin was in that part of the teaching of Leibnitz which the Wolffians had neglected, but which was the most essential part of Leibnitz's thought—the concept of the developing individual. The movement was championed first by Lessing. Then foreign elements entered into it; individuality was exaggerated; the normal course of the movement was interrupted by the Storm and Stress Period; the ideas of Voltaire, Locke, Rousseau, and 1 The school was only the central point around which the enlightenment of the intellect developed. After Wolff was returned to Halle in triumph, and Rationalism was further strengthened by the king of Enlighteners, Frederick, a development within the school appeared. Locke's influence was seen among the younger Wolffians. Empirical study of the soul was demanded. What are the intellect, the will, and the feelings, especially the aesthetic feelings? Rationalism received a check when other factors of the mind beside the intellect were discovered. The influence of Rousseau comes to the surface. It was the time of "beautiful souls." The fourteen years of the Storm and Stress Period was at hand. It is the period of "sentimentality." One studies himself, and writes his feelings in diaries and books. Then the reason becomes conscious of its own limitations. An Eclecticism grows up and Rationalism dies. The age awaits Kant. 2 From 1760 to 1780 there was every indication of a tremendous social upheaval in Germany as in France. The Storm and Stress movement of 1775-1787, which had been set in, motion by the wide currency in Germany of Rousseau's Héloïse and Émile, the spread of republican theories, the attitude and “enlightened" remarks of Frederick, and the imitation of him by all grades of society, the formation everywhere of secret societies, especially the Illuminati - all these things showed that Germany was being stirred from its foundation. Writers glorified the Spinoza appeared. The transformation of all these elements and their application was due to Lessing, Winckelmann, Herder, Hamann, Goethe, and Schiller. All these inspired minds had grown up in the Rationalism of Wolff in philosophy and Gottsched in literature that all truth was accessible to the reason and could be formulated into rules. All burst through the claims of such self-imposed omnipotence to see that truth is a goal and not an acquisition, that things grow and are not artificial. To use technical terms the genetic conception of life supplanted the mechanical. Evolution and possibility instead of finality were the working ideas in this great literary movement which possessed Germany in the last half of the eighteenth century. Lessing was the greatest philosopher of the German Enlightenment. He is not mentioned by the older histories of philosophy because the history of philosophy was then supposed to be the chronicle of school doctrines. He was like Leibnitz in not being a professional philosopher. He was a polished man of the world, a writer of epigrams, fables, and comedies, a dramatic and literary critic, a translator and essayist, a writer upon art, and a student of philosophical and ecclesiastical history. Modern German literature began with him. He rejected the French models accepted by Gottsched; he introduced Shakespeare to the Germans; he surpassed all his contemporaries in literary and artistic reforms, social enlightenment, and religious emancipations. Alindividual, called man back to primitive and uncorrupted nature, denounced civilization, and for twenty years it seemed as if at any moment the German Enlightenment might follow the sentimental appeal of Rousseau. There are three reasons why it did not: (1) the German princes adopted some wise political reforms; (2) in the segregated States of Germany concerted action was difficult; (3) a new intellectual and æsthetic movement began in Germany, for which Lessing was the spokesman. though his philosophy appeared through the medium of literature, and although the best of what he wrote was not effectual until after his death (1781), he, the critic, was the only creative philosopher in Germany between Leibnitz and Kant. Lessing's importance to us here is that he gave Leibnitz's conception of the evolution of the individual in history so clear a statement that it could be serviceable in literature. He himself said that if Leibnitz had chosen an interpreter, he would not have chosen Wolff. Lessing's wide reading of history made him conscious that the period in which he lived was a transition period. He was certain that neither Rationalism nor contemporary sentimentalism was representative of this period. He held no ultimate metaphysical thesis; but he was convinced of two things: (1) that the periods of history differ in their results; (2) that they are alike in their inner strivings. Rationalism with its possession of eternal truth was helpless before history.1 It was Lessing's sympathetic appreciation of the past that made him see in the heart of the Leibnitzian teaching the explanation of history. He saw in the man of history the ETERNAL STRIVING, the microcosm in the macrocosm the striving of all parts in continuity and harmony. History is the universal individual monad striving to actualize its possibilities. This doctrine 1 As an example of Lessing's application of his principle, we may take his discussion of the burning question of that day, namely, the place of Christianity in history. The religion of Christ was to him a different thing from the Christian religion. The Scriptures and their picture of Christ are but an episode in the development of religion. Christ is a step in the total progress of the race. The ultimate truth has not been and never,will be revealed. And, indeed, said Lessing, it is better so. For he said in his Duplik in the oft-quoted paragraph, if God offered him the choice between the completed truth and the pursuit of truth, he would choose the latter. "The chase is better than the prey." (Höffding.) of an evolutionary pantheism underlies, consciously or unconsciously, all the German writers from Lessing to Goethe, excepting the productions of the Storm and Stress Period. Leibnitz's principle was projected beyond the eighteenth century by the instruments of that century. CHAPTER X German Philosophy and its Two Divisions. The period of German philosophy extends from the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason by Kant in 1781 to the death of Hegel in 1830. In it all the germs of the Enlightenment come to efflorescence because the German land is filled with inspired men. The Pietism of Spener, the sentimentalism of Rousseau, the psychology of the English, the Rationalism of Wolff, the mathematical rigorism of Newton, the pantheism of Spinoza, and especially the evolutionary pantheism of the wonderful literature all these motifs come to the surface first in the Critical Philosophy of Kant and second in the great idealistic group which follows Kant. These form the two divisions of the period of German philosophy. The philosophy of Kant, which forms the first division, is the point of convergence of all the forces of the Enlightenment and it is also the point of departure of the idealists who follow him. While in a sense Kant marks the transition from the Enlightenment, and in another sense he introduces German idealism, in reality he forms an epoch between the two. The problem in the Kantian philosophy was like that which Wolff set before himself - the problem of epistemology, the relation between rational and empirical knowledge. The second division of German philosophy contains the names of the great German metaphysicians who followed Kant- Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, |