inctness of
religion and ethics; and also witnessed the improved tone in the critical,
tending, if not to the recognition of a supernatural character in the holy
scriptures, yet to a more spiritual appreciation of their literary
characteristics, and of the psychological peculiarity of the facts
recorded. We adverted also, in conclusion, to a rival philosophical
influence, springing from the teaching of Hegel, which assisted the
reaction by seeking a philosophical reconstruction of religion, though
from a different point of view from Schleiermacher.

It was this school which gave origin to the subsequent movements in
Germany. The sudden alteration in German thought induced by Strauss, which
ushers in the modern period, arose from the union of the philosophical
principles of this school with the criticism of that of De Wette. We must
therefore endeavour to understand this movement, which forms the turning
point between the reaction before described, which is the second of the
three general divisions made of this portion of history,(802) and the
forms which succeed constituting the third division. Hegel,(803) a name
almost as important in its influence on the German mind as that of Goethe,
has been already mentioned(804) as the last of that band of philosophers
which strove to develop the mental as distinct from the material
principle, presented in Kant's philosophy. Kant had completed the process
of turning man's search inward, which Descartes had begun. Philosophy
became psychology; the discovery of the limits of knowledge, rather than
of the nature of the thing known. We have seen that Fichte and Schelling,
not content with this result, had sought, though by opposite processes, to
escape from this limited knowledge; to attain an ontology as well as a
psychology. All philosophy aims at attaining a knowledge of reality,
either _a posteriori_ by means of generalisation, or _a priori_ from the
data of mind. These two philosophers strove to attain it by the latter
mode; but their method either lacked system, or failed in its results:
their philosophy was poetry rather than logic. Hegel followed in their
steps, but adopted a basis which admitted of being developed in a formal
system. The logical rigour of his method, and the encyclopaedic grasp which
it gave over knowledge, partly accounted, as in the case of Spinoza or of
Wolff, for its popularity. The universe was to be interpreted from the
mind; the laws of thought were the