amous Quarrel) in artistic form. Within the limits of their own thought
and emotional experience the ancients achieved perfection of expression,
and perfection cannot be surpassed. But as thought progresses, as the
sum of ideas increases and society changes, fresh material is supplied
to art, there is "a new development of sensibility" which enables
literary artists to compass new kinds of charm. The Genie du
Christianisme embodied a commentary on her contention, more arresting
than any she could herself have furnished. Here the reactionary joined
hands with the disciple of Condorcet, to prove that there is progress in
the domain of art. Madame de Stael's masterpiece, Germany, was a further
impressive illustration of the thesis that the literature of the modern
European nations represents an advance on classical literature, in the
sense that it sounds notes which the Greek and Roman masters had not
heard, reaches depths which they had not conjectured, unlocks chambers
which to them were closed,--as a result of the progressive experiences
of the human soul. [Footnote: German literature was indeed already
known, in some measure, to readers of the Decade philosophique, and Kant
had been studied in France long before 1813, the year of the publication
of De l'Allemagne. See Picavet, Les Ideologues, p. 99.] [Footnote: We
can see the effect of her doctrine in Guizot's remarks (Histoire de la
civilisation en Europe, 2e lecon) where he says of modern literatures
that "sous le point de vue du fond des sentiments et des idees elles
sont plus fortes et plus riches [than the ancient]. On voit que l'ame
humaine a ete remuee sur un plus grand nombre de points a une plus
grande profondeur"--and to this very fact he ascribes their comparative
imperfection in form.]

This view is based on the general propositions that all social phenomena
closely cohere and that literature is a social phenomenon; from which
it follows that if there is a progressive movement in society generally,
there is a progressive movement in literature. Her books were true to
the theory; they inaugurated the methods of modern criticism, which
studies literary works in relation to the social background of their
period.

4.

France, then, under the Bourbon Restoration began to seek new light from
the obscure profundities of German speculation which Madame de Stael
proclaimed. Herder's "Ideas" were translated by Edgar Quinet, Lessing's
Education by Eugene Rodrigues.