In his later period of inflamed patriotism this innocuous speculation grew a sting. He had determined that the present age--the Europe of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution--is the age of liberation from the external authority in which Reason had presented itself in the second age. Hence it is inherently negative: "an age of absolute indifference toward the Truth, an age of entire and unrestrained licentiousness." But the further evolution of the Divine Idea demands a Folk which has retained the primitive principle of Reason, which may redeem, therefore, the corrupt and rebellious modes of humanity elsewhere existing. Since the Germans are this saving remnant, they are the _Urvolk_, the Normal Nation, of the modern period. From this point on, idealization of past Germanic history and appeal to the nation to realize its unique calling by victory over Napoleon blend. The Fichtean scaffolding tumbled, but these ideas persisted. I doubt if it is possible to exaggerate the extent to which German history has been systematically idealized for the last hundred years. Technically speaking, the Romantic movement may have passed away and an age of scientific history dawned. Actually the detailed facts have been depicted by use of the palette of Romanticism. Space permits but one illustration which would be but a literary curiosity were it not fairly typical. Tacitus called his account of the northern barbarians Germania--an unfortunate title in view of later developments. The characteristics assigned by him to the German tribes are such as any anthropologist could duplicate from any warlike barbaric tribe. Yet over and over again these traits (which Tacitus idealized as Cooper, say, idealized the North American Indian traits) are made the basis of the philosophic history of the German people. The Germans, for example, had that psychological experience now known as mana, manitou, tabu, etc. They identified their gods, in Tacitus' phrase, with "that mystery which they perceive by experiencing sacred fear." This turns out to be the germinal deposit of spiritual-mindedness which later showed itself in Luther and in the peculiar genius of the Germans for religious experience. The following words are from no less an authority than Pfleiderer: "Cannot we recognize in this point that truly German characteristic of _Innerlichkeit_ which scorns to fix for sensuous perception the divine something which makes itself felt in the depths of the sensitive soul, which scorns to drag down the sublime mystery of the unknowable to the vulgar distinctness of earthly things? The fact that the Germans attached but little importance to religious ceremonies accords with this view." To others, this sense of mystery is a prophetic anticipation of the Kantian thing-in-itself.