pment was suffered to drop out of sight, and the dynamic element
which animated his speculation disappeared. In particular, he had laid
down that the sum of motive forces in the physical world is constant.
His disciples proceeded to the inference that the sum of morality in
the ethical world is constant. This dogma obviously eliminates the
possibility of ethical improvement for collective humanity. And so we
find Mendelssohn, who was the popular exponent of Wolf's philosophy,
declaring that "progress is only for the individual; but that the whole
of humanity here below in the course of time shall always progress and
perfect itself seems to me not to have been the purpose of Providence."
[Footnote: See Bock, Jakob Wegelin als Geschichtstheoretiker, in
Leipsiger Studien, ix. 4, pp. 23-7 (1902).]

The publication of the Nouveaux Essais in 1765 induced some thinkers to
turn from the dry bones of Wolf to the spirit of Leibnitz himself. And
at the same time French thought was penetrating. In consequence of these
influences the final phase of the German "Illumination" is marked by the
appearance of two or three works in which Progress is a predominating
idea.

We see this reaction against Wolf and his static school in a little
work published by Herder in 1774--"a philosophy of history for the
cultivation of mankind." There is continuous development, he declares,
and one people builds upon the work of another. We must judge past ages,
not by the present, but relatively to their own particular conditions.
What exists now was never possible before, for everything that man
accomplishes is conditioned by time, climate, and circumstances.

Six years later Lessing's pamphlet on the Education of the Human Race
appeared, couched in the form of aphoristic statements, and to a modern
reader, one may venture to say, singularly wanting in argumentative
force. The thesis is that the drama of history is to be explained as the
education of man by a progressive series of religions, a series not yet
complete, for the future will produce another revelation to lift him
to a higher plane than that to which Christ has drawn him up. This
interpretation of history proclaimed Progress, but assumed an ideal and
applied a measure very different from those of the French philosophers.
The goal is not social happiness, but a full comprehension of God.
Philosophy of religion is made the key to the philosophy of history. The
work does not amount to more th