Bentham has attempted the same scrutiny in reference
to Civil Law. Pestalozzi out of a deep love undertook the reform of
education. The ambition of Coleridge in England embraced the whole
problem of philosophy; to find, that is, a foundation in thought for
everything that existed in fact. The German philosophers, Schelling,
Kant, Fichte, have applied their analysis to nature and thought with
an antique boldness. There can be no honest inquiry, which is not
better than acquiescence. Inquiries, which once looked grave and
vital no doubt, change their appearance very fast, and come to look
frivolous beside the later queries to which they gave occasion.
This skeptical activity, at first directed on circumstances and
historical views deemed of great importance, soon penetrated deeper
than Rome or Egypt, than history or institutions, or the vocabulary
of metaphysics, namely, into the thinker himself, and into every
function he exercises. The poetry and the speculation of the age are
marked by a certain philosophic turn, which discriminates them from
the works of earlier times.
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