t In the world of mental sciences it is philology whose specialistic ramification in the 19th century is similar to the work of the natu ralists. The classical philologians led the way, and the grammatical scholar Hermann deepened the linguistic interest in the classical authors; his opponents, Boeck, Welcker, 0. Muller, and others stood for the wider view of F. A. Wolf, taking philology in its fullest meaning. Zeller, Niebuhr, Droysen, Mommsen, Curtius gave new life to the thought and politics of the old nations, and Lachmann, Haupt, Ritschl and others interpreted their authors.
Germanic philology is entirely a product of the 19th century. The romanticists, Schlegel and Tieck, stimulated interest in it, but it be came a real branch of scholarship through Lach mann, Benecke, and especially the brothers Jacob Grimm (1785-1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786-1859), whose studies in the history of the German language and literature became of paramount importance. As to other languages German scholarship has contributed much to Romanic, English,. Slavic, but most of all to Oriental philology in the widest sense of the word, and through Bopp, Pott, Benfey, W. v. Humboldt, Schleicher, etc., is the compara tive science of language essentially a German creation.
History, too, took the stamp of the special izing scholarship of the century. An over whelming mass of material has been gathered by the research of the German historical schools. Typical are the 'Monumenta Ger mania: historica.> But the pride of this field of German scholarship is the noble line of great historical writers. Niebuhr (1776-1831) gave to the world a perfect reconstruction of early Roman history, and Mommsen (1817-1903) equally eminent as historian, jurist, and phi lologist, gave in his Roman history the German masterpiece of classical history writing. Yet the greatest figure of this group was Leopold Ranke (1795-1886), whose works deal with the popes, with Prussia, England, France, especially in the 16th and 17th centuries, and in the last years of his life with world history; they are famous alike for their style and composition, for their richness of material, and for their objective presentation. Schlosser and Gervinus went their own way; Sybel and Waltz, Giese brecht and Treitschke, however, were deeply under Ranke's influence.
The economic life of the social community was seen at the beginning of the century through the eyes of France and England. The abstract theory of economy with its individualistic tend ency controlled the first decades; of this the work of Rau is typical. With the year 1840 begins the growing reaction. The historical relativistic view is developed by Roscher, Kries, and others, and List, in his 'National System,> Rodbertus, in his 'Social Letters,) Marx, in his (Kapital,' led the attack of collectivism against the abstract individualistic theory. Brentano, Knapp, and Schmoller turned the attention to the objective history of economic conditions.
The legal life of the community and the theory of law was the object of not less intense discussion. Among the leaders of the century Savigny, Windscheid, and Jhering may be men tioned for Roman Law, Eichhorn and Grimm for German Law, Mohl and Bluntschli for State Law, Feuerbach and Mittermaier for Criminal Law, Thibaut and Dernburg for Private Law, etc.
In the field of religion the naturalistic tend ency of this post-idealistic period demanded, first of all, historical criticism, and yet positive theology was not idle. In the study of the Old Testament most fundamental research work was done by Hengstenberg, Delitzch, and Hofmann; in the study of the New Testament by F. C. Baur, the founder of the school of Tubingen, D. F. Strauss, and in sharp contrast to them, Ritschl and Weizsacker; in the study of Church history by Planck, Neander, Ritschl, and Har nack; in the study of Systematic Theology by Schleiermacher, Rothe, Lipsius, Nitzsch, Ritschl.
And finally, philosophy. The period which we have just characterized by the abundance of its specializing work began with the downfall of Hegelianism. The age became indifferent to real philosophy and substituted either an un critical materialism with Biichner, Vogt, or the history of philosophy which naturally became the domain of Hegelians like Erdmann, Kuno Fischer, etc., or developed a specialistic study of empirical .psychology. In the latter field Germany founded, through Fechner and Wundt, the new science of experimental psychology. In the last two decades of the century new in terest in real philosophy has set in, partly in the midst of the special sciences, as mathematics, physics, history, etc., where a disappointment in mere fact-gathering has everywhere led to the deeper problems of principle,. partly in pure philosophy. This new idealistic movement has grown rapidly; logical, ethical, metaphysical, gsthetical discussions come again more and more to the foreground, welcomed by the em pirical sciences which held them in contempt for half a century. And thus it can be said that with the beginning of the 20th century the anti-idealistic specialistic movement, which be gan in the third decade of the last century, has come to an end and a new synthetic idealistic tendency appears to-day throughout German crienry and thnnaht The earliest religious ideas and forms of worship among the ancient Germans have been the object of scientific study since the epoch-making work of Jakob Grimm (q.v.) (d. 1863), but so far without such generally ac cepted results as give confidence in their cor rectness and completeness. The Germans ap pear to have shared the religious conceptions of the great gIndo-Europeano family, to which, in the absence of entire certainty as to their origin, we continue to assign them. Their religion thus presents, at the time when they first enter into the field of historical inquiry, the aspect of a well-developed mythology.