Alexander von Humboldt and the spirit of two centuries / by Dr Bernstein.

  • Bernstein, A. (Aaron), 1812-1884.
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Alexander von Humboldt and the spirit of two centuries / by Dr Bernstein. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    5/50 (page 5)
    toils of manhood. The gloomy characteristic of minds enslaved by rehgion, had been overcome. Freed from the fetters of the authority of the Cathohc Church, a spirit of hberty influenced the higher classes in France, and paved the way to a period of enlightenment, which now in a fi'ivolous manner, and now in a spirit of deep earnestness, held out the prospect of a grand regeneration in the views and regulations of society. The superior class of persons in Germany, who, in the latter part of last century, had no specific national home education, and were entirely ruled by the more highly cultivated minds which dominated in France, were no less weary of the obstinate dispu- tations of the Protestant Theologians, than of the fetters with which the Jesuits had loaded them. In the courts of Vienna and Berlin, there reigned a spirit of humanity and philosophy, which strove to introduce great reforms in the condition of society. Yoltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, and d'AIembert, animated now by their wit and fervour, and now by philosophical, and strictly scientific observations, a zeal for the reorganization of society, which they thought might be easUy attained by the noble deter- mination on the part of the higher classes, and by raising the people from the condition of total ignorance into which they had fallen. Philosophy and Reform was the basis of the endea- vours made by Frederick the Great in the Protestant districts of Germany, and by Joseph the Second in the Catholic. For- tunate circumstances, and other influences, had produced the revival of a vigorous and tolerant spirit in German literature. Engel, Garve, Jacobi, Moses Mendelssohn, refined the senti- ment for philosophical speculations, and implanted principles of universal philanthropy and toleration in the minds of men, ■who had hitherto shown bitter enmity towards each other iu theological controversy, Klopstock, Lessing, Goethe, Herder