It grieved Wieland to see the work of half a
century destroyed: he fondly imagined that but for Kant's philosophy
it might have been perennial. With scepticism quickened into action by
such motives, Herder and he went forth as brother champions against
the transcendental metaphysics; they were not long without a multitude
of hot assailants. The uproar produced among thinking men by the
conflict, has scarcely been equalled in Germany since the days of
Luther. Fields were fought, and victories lost and won; nearly all the
minds of the nation were, in secret or openly, arrayed on this side or
on that. Goethe alone seemed altogether to retain his wonted
composure; he was clear for allowing the Kantean scheme to 'have its
day, as all things have.' Goethe has already lived to see the wisdom
of this sentiment, so characteristic of his genius and turn of
thought.

[Footnote 25: Schelling has a book on the 'Soul of the
World:' Fichte's expression to his students, "Tomorrow,
gentlemen, I shall create God," is known to most readers.]

[Footnote 26: See _Herder's Leben_, by his Widow. That Herder
was not usually troubled with any unphilosophical scepticism,
or aversion to novelty, may be inferred from his patronising
Dr. Gall's system of Phrenology, or 'Skull-doctrine' as they
call it in Germany. But Gall had referred with acknowledgment
and admiration to the _Philosophie der Geschichte der
Menschheit_. Here lay a difference.]

In these controversies, soon pushed beyond the bounds of temperate or
wholesome discussion, Schiller took no part: but the noise they made
afforded him a fresh inducement to investigate a set of doctrines, so
important in the general estimation. A system which promised, even
with a very little plausibility, to accomplish all that Kant asserted
his complete performance of; to explain the difference between Matter
and Spirit, to unravel the perplexities of Necessity and Free-will;
to show us the true grounds of our belief in God, and what hope nature
gives us of the soul's immortality; and thus at length, after a
thousand failures, to interpret the enigma of our being,--hardly
needed that additional inducement to make such a man as Schiller grasp
at it with eager curiosity. His progress also was facilitated by his
present circumstances; Jena had now become the chief well-spring of
Kantean doctrine, a distinction or disgrace it has ever since
continued to deserve. Re