The Revolution was the natural consummation of the Enlightenment in France. The immediate issues out of which it grew were the practical ones of finance, legislation, economics, and policy. The growth in the physical sciences (beginning 1760), in the study of political science, in the theory of government, as well as the financial distress of the French government, the success of the American Revolution, the advance of the French middle class to a position of power, the foolish and half-hearted measures of the French statesmen――all these were factors that at the end brought on the crisis. Yet the words of Rousseau, falling on fruitful soil, were the real cause. In the years immediately preceding the Revolution there was a world-wide agitation, an enthusiasm for nature, an exaltation of man, and a contempt for the age and for the society then existing. There was a vague presentiment of impending change, which most people were prepared to welcome. Thinkers were full of illusions. Even such despots as Frederick the Great, Catherine of Russia, and Joseph of Austria affected a radicalism, and Spain, Portugal, and Tuscany, as well as England, France, and Germany, were moved with great humanitarian sentiments. The debate was universal as to the condition of the human race. Rousseau was the eloquent expression of this world-wide movement. =The German Enlightenment= (1740–1781). As the Enlightenment in France, so the Enlightenment in Germany had its introductory period. The history of Germany from the end of the Thirty Years’ War (1648) to the publication of Kant’s _Critique_ (1781), or 133 years, is divided into two periods at the year 1740, when Frederick the Great was crowned. The period from 1740 to 1781, or forty-one years, is the German Enlightenment. The period from 1648 to 1740, or ninety-two years, is introductory to the Enlightenment, and, as in France, a period of absolutism. =The Introductory Period= (1648–1740). =Absolutism.= The spirit of absolutism, both politically and intellectually, dominated Germany from the end of the Thirty Years’ War (1648) to the crowning of Frederick the Great (1740). Absolutism dominated Germany and France a full one hundred years. There are some differences between the two countries, however. It began and ended in Germany about thirty-five years later than in France. Again, in France it grew in splendor from the efforts of Richelieu and Louis XIII (1610) to the great protective idea of Louis XIV, who for seventy-two years ruled as absolute political and intellectual dictator. In Germany, on the other hand, it was a spectre hovering over a disintegrating and decaying nation once known as the Holy Roman Empire, but since the Thirty Years’ War only a collection of states under a nominal central government. The idea of absolutism prevailed none the less, for within the several states each monarch was dictator as to the religious, intellectual, and political opinions of his subjects.