Much less sound was the remaining group of the rationalist school, that which followed the lead of Rousseau and formed the logical transition from rationalism to romanticism. There Were a number of important differences between Rousseau and Voltaire in their attitude toward historical and social problems. In the first place, Voltaire was purely intellectual and critical and little moved by sentiment; Rous seau was almost pathologically emotional, sym pathetic and sentimental. In the second place, Voltaire was realistic and practical; Rousseau was idealistic and utopian. Finally, Voltaire wrote from the standpoint of the bourgeoisie, praised enlightened despotism, and had little faith in the political ability of the illiterate masses; Rousseau wrote as an ardent exponent of the release of the Masses from despotic political power. Until the period of the French Revolution, Rousseau's views could gain little currency in France for the intellectual circles were controlled by aristocrats, but in Germany he found several enthusiastic disciples.
The most attractive of Rousseau's German disciples in the field of history was the poet dramatist-historian Friedrich Schiller (1759 1805), whose chief works were the 'History of the Rebellion of the Netherlands against the Spanish Rule' and History of the Thirty Years War.' His works presented a combina tion of the sentiment and pathos of Rousseau with the native powers of a great dramatist and poet. In his history of the Dutch revolt he found the basis of an epic of deliverance from oppression, while in the description of the Thirty Years' War he saw in Gustavus .Adolphus and Wallenstein the central figures for a great historical drama. It scarcely needs to be pointed out that in his grand epic and dramatic themes there was no place for the commonplace description of the elements of culture and civilization. He had great power of dear preliminary analysis of political move ments, but once his narrative got under way the poet and dramatist gained complete control over the historian, and his work, like that of Carlyle, was a contribution to great literature rather than to historiography. A much more influential historian among contemporaries, but incomparably inferior in every sense to Schiller, was Johannes Muller (1752-1809). His most famous work was the of the Swiss Confederation.' Though possessing a memory rivalling Macaulay's and a zeal for the study of sources comparable to that of Coulanges, he lacked wholly Macaulay's power of analysis, organization and narrative, and had none of the critical power of Coulanges. Though he read
all the available sources, he not only lacked in organizing ability, but was also so devoid of critical powers as to be unable to detect and exclude contradictions in his own narrative. To Rousseau's sentimental devotion to liberty he added a pedantic imitation of classical rhetoric. His Swiss history became an epic of freedom combining the methods of Rousseau and Livy. His 24 books of general history were significant only in that they contributed to the exaggeration of that radically erroneous conception of the general aGemiitlichkeit° of the Middle Ages, which had been given a power ful initial impulse in the work of Spittler. Rather a representative of several of the phases of the rationalistic historiography than a com plete disciple of Rousseau was Johann Gott fried Herder (1744-1803). His notable work —