th
these doctrines was attractive to the German mind, with which the
vague and the vast are always pleasing qualities; the dreadful array
of first principles, the forest huge of terminology and definitions,
where the panting intellect of weaker men wanders as in pathless
thickets, and at length sinks powerless to the earth, oppressed with
fatigue, and suffocated with scholastic miasma, seemed sublime rather
than appalling to the Germans; men who shrink not at toil, and to
whom a certain degree of darkness appears a native element, essential
for giving play to that deep meditative enthusiasm which forms so
important a feature in their character. Kant's Philosophy,
accordingly, found numerous disciples, and possessed them with a zeal
unexampled since the days of Pythagoras. This, in fact, resembled
spiritual fanaticism rather than a calm ardour in the cause of
science; Kant's warmest admirers seemed to regard him more in the
light of a prophet than of a mere earthly sage. Such admiration was of
course opposed by corresponding censure; the transcendental neophytes
had to encounter sceptical gainsayers as determined as themselves. Of
this latter class the most remarkable were Herder and Wieland. Herder,
then a clergyman of Weimar, seems never to have comprehended what he
fought against so keenly: he denounced and condemned the Kantean
metaphysics, because he found them heterodox. The young divines came
back from the University of Jena with their minds well nigh delirious;
full of strange doctrines, which they explained to the examinators of
the Weimar Consistorium in phrases that excited no idea in the heads
of these reverend persons, but much horror in their hearts.[25] Hence
reprimands, and objurgations, and excessive bitterness between the
applicants for ordination and those appointed to confer it: one young
clergyman at Weimar shot himself on this account; heresy, and jarring,
and unprofitable logic, were universal. Hence Herder's vehement
attacks on this 'pernicious quackery;' this delusive and destructive
'system of words.'[26] Wieland strove against it for another reason.
He had, all his life, been labouring to give currency among his
countrymen to a species of diluted epicurism; to erect a certain
smooth, and elegant, and very slender scheme of taste and morals,
borrowed from our Shaftesbury and the French. All this feeble edifice
the new doctrine was sweeping before it to utter ruin, with the
violence of a tornado.