This second period of modern thought――the Enlightenment――begins when the “new man” turns away from his intellectual struggles with his environment and attempts to understand his own nature. Thus the more important of the two objects emerges last; and this turn to self-reflection constitutes the century of the Enlightenment. The Renaissance had been subjective and spectacular; the Enlightenment was subjective and tragic. The mental activity of the Renaissance had been vital, spontaneous, and unconscious, like the awakening from sleep; that of the Enlightenment was self-conscious and attitudinizing. The man of the Renaissance had been in love with nature; the man of the Enlightenment was in love with himself. Like the Greek Sophistic Illumination, which is its parallel in ancient history, the Enlightenment turned away from cosmological and metaphysical problems. On the other hand, the philosophy of the Enlightenment penetrated all departments of life and found expression in practical questions. Erdmann has well expressed the meaning of these nine decades of the Enlightenment as “an effort to raise man, so far as he is a rational individual, into a position of supremacy over everything.” It was during this period, which we are now about to enter, that Herder brought into currency in Germany the word “humanity.” In England the same sentiment was uttered by Pope in 1732 in his _Essay on Man_:―― “Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man.” The Enlightenment marks, therefore, the rise of modern individualism; and the concerns of the individual become the important object of consideration. The novelty of the great discoveries and inventions of the Renaissance had lost its lustre. The “new universe” had become old and familiar, but through his accomplishments the “new man” had begun to feel the strength of his liberated powers. For had not the wonderful world of the Renaissance been his own accomplishment? Had not all its notable constructions been the creations of his powers? The “struggle of traditions” to revive antiquity and to incorporate the “new universe” upon an old basis; the “strife of methods” to reorganize the “new world” upon a new basis――revealed this great fact: that man has “world wisdom.” Man in his supremacy occupies the entire foreground, and interest in the “new universe” fades away. The “new universe” is now seen in the light of one’s personal interests. Man is supreme, and to his word there can be no exception. There is constant reference during this time to the “light of reason”――to a bright inner, rational illumination in contrast to the vagaries of mysticism and the obscurities of dogmatism. The worship of genius arises and with it a contempt for the unenlightened. “Thus would I speak, were I Christ,” said Bahrdt. No wonder that Goethe described the Enlightenment as an age of self-conceit!