ion in Germany. He was accordingly one of the first of those who
helped to turn the fructifying current of German thought upon the
somewhat arid soil of Puritan New England. This soil had indeed produced
great things and great men, but the mind of New England was still too
much dominated by the traditions of scholasticism, embodied in the
system of Calvin. It needed an infusion of the aesthetic element, and the
larger outlook of a truly speculative philosophy. The philosophy which
it had inherited was one of dogmatism, sophistical in that it made its
own syllogisms the final limit and bound of truth. The few Americans who
had studied in real earnest in Germany brought back with them the wide
sweeping besom of the Kantian method, and much besides. This showed the
positive assumptions of the old school to have no such foundation of
absolute truth as had been conceded to them. Under their guidance men
had presumed to measure the infinite by their own petty standard, and to
impose upon the Almighty the limits and necessities with which they had
hedged the way of their fellow-men. God could not have mercy in any way
other than that which they felt bound to prescribe. His wisdom must
coincide with their conclusions. His charity must be as narrow as their
own. Those who could not or would not acquiesce in these views were
ruled outside of the domain of Christendom. Had it not been for
Channing, Freeman, Buckminster, and a few others in that early day, they
would have been as sheep without a shepherd. The history is well known.
I need not repeat it here.

CHAPTER XIV

MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN THE SIXTIES

This decade, 1860-1870, marks a new epoch in my intellectual life. In
the period already described, I had found my way to recognized
authorship. In this later time, an even greater enlargement of activity
was before me, unanticipated until, by gradual steps, I came into it.

The results of my more serious study now began to take form in writings
of a corresponding scope. I remember to have heard John Weiss use more
than once this phrase, "the poets and men of expression." The antithesis
to this, in his view, evidently was, "the philosophers and men of deep
thought."

I confess that I myself am one of those to whom expression, in some
form, is natural and even necessary; and yet I think that my best
studies have been those which have made me most desirous to give to my
own voice the echo of other voices, and to ascerta