Empirical psychology led to self-inspection, and this is the age when self-inspection was universal. It is the age of the founding of “societies for the observation of man.” It is the age of sentimental diary writing. Rousseau wrote his autobiography in France, and it was followed by a flood of autobiographies in Germany. Even memoirs of such scoundrels as Laukhardt were written and read as matters of public interest. Religion, too, took the form of personal experiences and individual conversions; and the church was more interested in the experiences of the saved than in the dogma of salvation. The Methodist movement arose in England and spread over the continent and to America. Individual opinions were more important than conventions; friendships than marriage; societies than corporations. The historical was lost to view because the personal and particular occupied the foreground. Gibbon said, “All ideas were equally true in the eyes of the people, equally false in the eyes of the philosophers, equally useful in the eyes of the magistrates.” (b) =Questions of Criticism.= In the second place, the Enlightenment is a period of criticism and stands in contrast with the constructive Rationalism of the Renaissance. From Locke’s invective against innate ideas to Hume’s skepticism of the law of cause, from Voltaire’s examination of the foundations of religion to Rousseau’s polemic against society, the age was one of the criticism of authority. The psychologists, moralists, deists, and sociologists were revolutionists――all striking directly or indirectly at absolute political sovereignty, against the theoretical dogmatism and the ceremonious morality in which the Renaissance was complacent. The revolution began in the realm of the intellect and spread to political society. It was natural that the beginnings should be made in the apparently harmless theoretical examination of the grounds of knowledge and the principles of morality; but the outcome was a general sweep of historical criticism, in which authority and science, the church, the state, and education came under censure. The spirit of man was impatient. Man became indifferent to “learning.” In contrast with the Renaissance, this was a time when books were little read, proper names infrequently appeared in writings, authorities were little cited. Let man study himself if he would learn about history and understand the world. Man stands above the scholar, the Christian, the German. He is independent of tradition, and should substitute the useful for the historical. Cosmopolitanism takes the place of patriotism. The Enlightenment is practical and yet imaginative. Its criticism aims to strip man of all his artificialities and to find his natural state. Its emphasis is negative and destructive.