2. Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz (1646 1716), a man of the great world, brought Ger man thought in contact with the advanced scientific spirit of France, Holland and Eng land. Through his influence the Berlin Academy was founded in 1700 with the aim to create a place for the real advancement of knowledge at a time when the universities felt, on the whole, satisfied with handing down the scholarly tra ditions. He created „the most elegant instru ment of natural science: the differential cal culus, which he published (1684), in his essay 'Nova methodus pro maxim's et minimis.) But still more important was his metaphysical sys tem. It shared with Descartes and Spinoza the rationalistic belief in the power of transcending experience through reason, but Descartes' sharp separation of mind and body and Spinoza's monism were left behind by Leibnitz's °monad ology." His monads, held together by pre established harmony, represent a continuous series of simple substances which are without windows, each containing the whole world as perceptions, but each apperceiving only a vary ing part of them. His system fulfils in an original way the purpose of every great philoso phy: to justify and to harmonize both the cau sal, mechanical, and the teleological idealistic knowledge of the time. And thus Germany had finally, as the last of European nations, a real philosopher who was to introduce the en lightenment of the 18th century.
While Leibnitz brought the modern interests to the German courts and academies; the uni versities, too, reflected the progressive time. Halle, founded in 1694, and Gottingen, founded in 1737, became the new centres of an activity which had no sympathy with the doctrines of authority, either the theological ones of the church or the classicistic ones of the humanists. An independent free thought, working with mathematics and logic and empirical observa tion, was the demand of the time in every field. The jurist Thomasius (1655-1728) became the leader of the academic movement of protest against all narrowness and prejudice, fighting alike against the mediaeval methods of legal and equivocal prosecution, against the superstitions of orthodox theology, and against the artifi classical learning. He was the first to emancipate German university instruction from the traditional Latin and to publish a literary critical magazine in the German language. After conflicts with Leipzig he became one of the founders of Halle, and his spirit of modern intellectualistic enlightenment came to be charac teristic of the place. To be sure, on theological grounds the opposition against orthodoxy did not move so much toward theoretical rational ism, but took at first the turn toward practical religiosity. The great pietistic anticlerical movement which Spener (1635-1705) started, influenced by English puritanism, was continued in Halle by Franke (1663-1727), to whom true Christianity was not an object of science but a living duty; and yet even the ,insistence on the Bible as the only true source of religion meant here, as two centuries before in Luther, in first line not a binding of the free intellect, but a liberalizing and modernizing opposition against the orthodox spirit of the past. The full de velopment of theological criticism in Halle be longs rather to the influence of Semler (1725 91), whose historical interpretations of the Bible open the way for the new rationalistic theology.
The most influential separation from church authority, however, on all fields of human thought came through Halle's fertile philoso pher, Christian Wolff (1679-1754). His sys tem was no great original construction — it was essentially Leibnitzian philosophy — but it gained its new strength and power by being really a system. Dogmatic rationalism herein reached its most self-conscious expression and Wolff's didactic treatment of ontology, cosmology, psychology, theology, ethics, economics, and pol itics soon penetrated the whole Protestant schol arship of Germany. Theology and metaphysics, morality and jurisprudence had to become "nat ural" and "rational"; the ideals of mathematical knowledge and social happiness determined the whole period. The Leibnitz-Wolffian movement was not without opponents like Crusius and Rildiger, and yet the adherents carried the day. Among Wolff's pupils, besides interesting phi losophers like Bilfinger and Lambert, Baumgar ten (1714-62) must be mentioned as the founder of German "zsthetics," a name which he invented. The scholarly rationalistic phi losophy yielded quickly to its natural tendency to subserve the practical purposes of human vir tue and happiness, to be reached by the emanci pation of the individual from every authority but its own reason, and with this practical aim came the tendency to popularization. It was a movement to which Frederick the Great lent himself from the Prussian throne, and authors like Moses Mendelssohn and Reimarus, Nicolai and Engel, Tetens and Moritz spread it through out Germany. Here also is the place for the important scholarly writings of the poet Lessing (1729-81), who stimulated theoretical msthetics as well as philosophy of religion and philosophy of history.
While thus the new philosophical and theo logical spirit of the 18th century radiated from Halle, it was the University of Gottingen in which the new scientific and philological im pulses started, till finally the light came from Konigsberg. In Gottingen taught (next to Linnaeus most eminent biologist of the time) Albrecht von Haller (1708-77), famous for his botanical books, but still more influential by his medical studies. He introduced the physio logical experiment, and his demonstrations of what he called sensibility and irritability of nerves and muscles, became the starting point for biological theories which controlled the med ical discussions of Europe down to the time of cellular pathology. Among those who took part in these physiological, pathological, and thera peutical controversies of the 18th century Frank, Weikard, Roschlaub, Pfaff, and others belong to Germany; and especially the group of those who defended that branch of Hallees system which had found its development in France under the name of • vitalism: Blumen bach, Reil, and Hufeland. Blumenbach (1752 1840), who interprets the organic world by his formativus," became the founder of anthropology; the doctrine of the five human races is his. He was also the first to lecture on comparative anatomy. Reil considers life as a galvanic process, and with Hufeland the doc trine of animalism becomes practical medicine. Side branches of this vitalistic movement are mesmerism and homoeopathy, whose founders, Mesmer (1734-1815), and Hahnetnann. (1755 184.3), are German physicians.