ing,--under the darkly lowering sky the endless
gray heath, peopled with the shadowy forms of departed heroes and
withered maidens. To quote the substance of Goethe's criticism:[7] Amid
such influences and surroundings, occupied with fads and studies of this
sort, lacking all incentive from without to any important activity and
confronted by the sole prospect of having to drag out a humdrum
existence, men began to reflect with a sort of sullen exultation upon
the possibility of departing this life at will, and to find in this
thought a scant amelioration of the ills and tedium of the times. This
disposition was so general that "Werther" itself exerted a powerful
influence, because it everywhere struck a responsive chord and publicly
and tangibly exhibited the true inwardness of a morbid youthful
illusion.[8]

Nor did the dawning nineteenth century bring relief. No other period of
Prussian history, says Heinrich von Treitschke,[9] is wrapped in so deep
a gloom as the first decade of the reign of Frederick William III. It
was a time rich in hidden intellectual forces, and yet it bore the stamp
of that uninspired Philistinism which is so abundantly evidenced by the
barren commonplace character of its architecture and art. Genius there
was, indeed, but never were its opportunities for public usefulness more
limited. It was as though the greatness of the days of the second
Frederick lay like a paralyzing weight upon this generation. And this
oppressing sense of impotence was followed, after the Napoleonic Wars,
by the bitterness of disappointment, all the more keenly felt by reason
of this first reawakening of the national consciousness. Great had been
the expectations, enormous the sacrifice; exceedingly small was the gain
to the individual.[10] And the resultant dissonance was the same as that
to which Alfred de Musset gave expression in the words: "The malady of
the present century is due to two causes; the people who have passed
through 1793 and 1814 bear in their hearts two wounds. All that was is
no more; all that will be is not yet. Do not hope to find elsewhere the
secret of our ills."[11]

This then in briefest outline is the transition from the century of
individualism and autocracy to the nineteenth century of democracy.
Small wonder that the struggle claimed its victims in those individuals
who, unable to find a firm basis of conviction and principle, vacillated
constantly between instinctive adherence to old tr