The law of contrasts is by no means limited to the relation between separate contents of consciousness existing side by side or following each other, but we see its most important influences in those places where it extends over more extensive groups of mental experience. Thoughtful historians have long since noted the fact, that in historical development not only do periods of rise and fall follow each other, but also periods of a special direction of mental life. And these periods, both in the impression they make upon us and in the objective relations in which they stand to each other, are so intensified that the following phase is every time increased by means of the contrast with the preceding one. Let us take an example from the near past. The German literature of the classicist period received its peculiar stamp of contemplative calm and beauty of form to a great degree from the contrast with the "storm and stress" period that was marked with such strong emotions. In the same way romanticism, which was inclined to the cult of the imagination and of a poetical past, was influenced by contrast with the preceding classical period, that laid most stress upon the understanding, and that regarded the present as the ripest fruit of human development. And lastly this change of contrasts shows itself most clearly and with the shortest oscillations in economic life, where it is in part assisted by the oscillations in the conditions of civilisation. We see this, for example, very well in the fluctuations of our national credit and of stocks and shares. And these sharp contrasts can be ultimately explained by the inner life of man that fluctuates between hope and hesitation, and in this fluctuation intensifies the emotions.