While biological studies flourished in GOttingen through Haller and Bltunenbach, mathematical and physical, historical, juristic, and philological scholarship also found there the most brilliant representation. Lichtenberg (1744-99) had there his model laboratory for physics and his theories of electricity became victorious. Tobias Mayer (1723-62) worked out there his famous catalogue of zodiacal stars and Kaestner (1719-1800) attracted the mathe maticians. All three stand as foremost repre sentatives of the inorganic sciences of the time; yet Euler (1707-83), whom Frederick the Great called to Berlin, was perhaps more original in his numerous works dealing with mechanics and dioptrics, integral calculus and astronomy. Chemistry which began to demolish the old phlogiston theory was largely enriched by the comprehensive analyses of Scheele (1742-86), by Klaproth and others, and Richter (1762 1807) became the founder of chemical, stoechiometry.
The classical philology of the 18th century also took, in Germany, a new turn. It was the time of the great literary movement in which every mind was directed toward the beauty
art. The new aim for the student of antiquity was to join the interest in classical fine arts with the interest in the writings and to approach the literature of antiquity with the attitude of esthetic appreciation. Gesner (1691-17611 had revived the Greek studies throughout Germany ; his Gottingen successor, Heyne (1729-1812), who edited Virgil, Homer, and Pindar, and ex plained Greek mythology, did much to give clas sical studies the esthetic interest. The whole revival was known as the neo-humanistic move ment. The greatest exponent was Heyne's pupil, F. A. Wolf (1759-1817), whose
3. While thus the spirit of enlightenment in philosophy and natural sciences, in jurisprudence and theology, and the esthetic spirit in litera ture, history and philology gave interest and value to the intellectual life of Germany, the greatest emanation of the German genius had prepared itself. In the year 1781 appeared the first of the three great critiques of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Kant's critique of pure rea son, critique of practical reason and critique of judgment, represent the most essential progress of human thought since Plato and Aristotle. The preceding rationalism which sought knowl edge of metaphysical reality through reason, and the preceding empiricism which sought knowledge from the impressions on the senses, were equally superseded by Kant's "criticism,* which proves that knowledge does not mean a reproduction of an independent reality, but a reconstruction of objective data by the subjec tive categories of perception and understanding. Knowledge is thus not concerned with a metaphysical reality; but we belong to the world of reality as free subjects of will who are de termined not by the causalty of phenomena, but by duties. This gigantic reorganization of hu man knowledge and morality inspired the leaders of German culture; in Schiller it came into live contact with the great literary move ment of Germany.
In the philosophical discussion of Kantian philosophy Jacobi, Beck, Maimon, Reinhold, Fries, represent most different attitudes, yet none of them suggests real progress. But Kant's system demanded further development; the subjective factor of his system was not really connected with the objective factor. The genius of Fichte (1762-1814) created a system whose ethical idealism made the object itself dependent upon the will-act of the subject, while Herbart (1776-1841) moved in the opposite direction, developing out of Kant's objective factor a realistic system which gave impulses to modern psychology. Directly from Kant, too, is derived Schopenhauer's (1788-1860) voluntar istic system of pessimism, which combines Kant's doctrine of the categories with Platonism and Buddhism. Schleiermacher (1768-1834) finally seeks to harmonize the ideal and the real factor in the interest of ethics and religion. It was Fichte's system which showed the direc tion for the further movement. The life of nature had been neglected in Kant and Fichte; as soon as it becomes a factor in philosophic thought, ethical idealism turns into the objective idealism of Schelling (1775-1854), and ulti mately into the absolute idealism of Hegel (1770-1831), which understands nature and mind as the logically necessary expression of the Absolute. At every stage idealism exercised influence on the intellectual life of the time. From Fichte started the ethical regeneration of Prussia, expressed in the foundation of the Uni versity of Berlin (1810), and the romantic move ment of Schlegel and Novalis. Schelling, on the other hand, influenced most deeply the natu ralists, men like Oken, Oersted, Carus, Ness von Esenbeck, and many others who brought natural science itself under the categories of Schelling's system of identity, but philosophers like Krause and Solger also followed him. The strongest philosophical influence, however, resulted from the Hegelian system which, at about 1830, entirely controlled the academic philosophy of Prussia. But the triumph of Hegelianiszn meant an overtension of purely speculative thought, the maximum distance of theoretical and metaphysical construction from the facts of observation. This neglect of ex perience demanded a necessary reaction against speculation; the breakdown of metaphysical one sidedness was disastrous. In the fourth decade of the 19th century the defeat of philosophy seemed complete and it meant the triumph of natural science as against metaphysics, of analysis as against synthesis, of realism and materialism as against idealism, of technique as against art, of specialization as against general ization. This naturalistic reaction filled the larger part of the 19th century in all civilized countries and brought to them the manifold discoveries and inventions which seem most characteristic of the time. Only at the end of the 19th century does the pendulum seem to begin again its backward swing with a new awakening of the idealistic spirit and deeper philosophical interests as re action against the philosophical superficiality and incoherency of mere specialistic science.