The antithesis between symbolism and revelation - pagina 15

13 in

deep

its

reverence

and

Hghtheartedness

the

for

revolutionists cut off

all

could not but scorn at the

past,

superficiality,

with which the French

historical process,

and imagined themselves

flimsy

by the whimsical utterance of the popular

able

And

day to renew the face of the world.

was the

revival

of art

life,

Lessing and Goethe, which,

the third place there

in

permeating influence of

all

in its adoration for the classical beau-

Greek world, must

of the

tiful

under the

will of a single

feel

extolling of uncultured nature, as

scandalized

was

by the

ridiculous

French revolutionists

to the

the real point of departure for their system.

At been

that

time already the almost incredible defeat of Sedan has

The German mind,

prepared.

army on

to

rising

energy, slew the French spiritually, before

it

full

its

height of

annihilated the French

The French

revolution was a wild

stroke of madness, bordering upon suicide.

About the middle of

this

the

of battle.

field

Germany

century France sank,

came forward, we

Napoleon while

in

thought,

find

rose. In

France since the second

only middling sized capacities;

Germany a host of heroes and genii arose, and German German science, German education ruled all Europe and

took the lead

The French by their German mind and the German In twenty-five years Germany

every department of science.

in

insane upheaval had but roused the

from

strength

worked

itself

already

bined

it

the

to

measure of

full

its

grandeur, and then

could have been prophecied that henceforward the com-

spirit

of the

should

school

slumbers.

their

up

put

German its

philosophical,

historical

and

artistic

stamp upon the next period of our human

culture.

Now

in this threefold

German movement

there

was one common

trait:

the going back from an uncongenial present to an attractive

past,

and

in

that

past

tragic cross of Calvary

of

Plato

and

in

the attractive point was found not in the

and the

hills

of Gallilee, but

the studio of Phidias.

It

in

the

from weak and deadly pale Christianity to old Greece of

its

blossom.

tvorks ;

Stoa,

Luther translated

the Bible,

Academy

was one running back in the

acme

Schleiermacher Plato's

and the fundamental idea of pantheism, borrowed from the revived,

remodelled

and deepened, on the whole

glittering

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