rer, all the
processes of the mind, all human energy had become stronger; and when
the awakened need of a common aim was not satisfied in the State life
of the German Empire, the people became inert and worse. Again, after a
long and sorrowful time, a great Prince had given to at least a part of
the Germans new enthusiasm and an ideal aim. The warm interest in the
fate of their State, which ennobled Frederic's time, and the liberation
of the mind from the tutelage of the State and the Church, had been a
second great progress; and again had this progress required an
answering extension of general interests and a strengthening of
political action. But in the spiritless and powerless rule of the next
generation the popular energies again decayed. The fall of Prussia was
the consequence. Now, for the third time, a great portion of the
Germans had made a new progress, the nation had given its property and
its blood for its State, and it had become a passionate necessity to
care for the Fatherland, and to take a share in its fate; and as this
longing again met with no satisfaction, the people sank back for a time
into weakness. The distractions of the year 1848 were the result.

In almost every domain of ideal life the malady became apparent, even
in philosophy.

Extensive was the domain embraced by German philosophy; new branches of
knowledge had sprung up with surprising rapidity; there was scarce a
bygone people in the most distant regions of the earth whose history,
life, arts, and language were not investigated; above all, the past of
Germany. With hearty warmth was every expression of our popular mind,
of which there remained a trace, laid hold of. A wonderful richness of
life of the olden time was discovered and understood in all its
specialities. Round the German inquirer arose from the earth the
spirits of nations which had once lived; he learnt to comprehend what
was peculiar to each, what was common to all--the action of the human
mind on the highest phenomena of the globe. Equally did the knowledge
of objective nature increase. The history of the creation of the earth,
the organism of everything created, the countless objects invisible to
the naked eye, and the countless things which arise from the
combination of simple substances, became known; and again, beyond the
boundaries of this earth, the life of the solar system, the cosmical
unit, of which the solar world is an infinitesimal speck.

But the endless ab