During the Forties men had arrived at the persuasion that there was something of greater value than sudden inspiration and a life of pure intellectuality. There was humble and daring work to be done in science and in politics. We see German philosophy develop in the direction of radicalism, and we come upon poets whose aim it is to prepare the way for political liberty. [1] Karl Hillebrand: _Zeiten, Völker und Menschen_, ii. 5. _Aus dem unzünftigen Schriftthum Deutschlands.--La société de Berlin. Revue des deux mondes_, 1870. [2] All virtues are one virtue; yea, verily, they are all one and the same. Wouldst thou know its name? Its name is justice. [3] Because justice is truth. Simplicity, fairness, unselfishness, a share for all. [4] _Rahel, ein Buch des Andenkens für Freunde_, i.-iii. _Briefwechsel zwischen Varnhagen und Rahel_, i.-ii. Varnhagen: _Gallerie von Bildnissen aus Rahels Umgang_, Ludmilla Assing: _Aus Rahels Herzensleben_. [5] _Briefe Goethe's an Sophie von la Roche und Bettina Brentano nebst dichterischen Beilagen_. 1879. [6] _Dies Buch gehört dem König_, p. 531. [7] Pour out thy horn of plenty; give us blossom and fruit together; let there be not only wisdom, but wit and youth in thy words. In thy pages let us find human beings, beings who have lived and thought; let love, let anger's lightning-flash kindle thy Muse's flame. XXIV FREDERICK WILLIAM OF PRUSSIA With the year 1840 the literary movement enters upon a new, more philosophic, and more political phase. Yet another generation had arisen, a generation which owed its profoundest culture to Hegel, and which, strangely enough, he had influenced chiefly in the direction of politics. Schelling in his day had declared art to be the highest manifestation of intellect. His principle, and that of the Romanticists, was that the artist is the true man. What art had been to Schelling, history was to Hegel--history, that eternal progress of the idea of liberty, that great liberty-epic. And what the work of art had been to Schelling, the State was to Hegel. To him the true, the perfect human being is not the artist, but the citizen of a constitutional State. This youngest generation was inspired by the Hegelian philosophy to make the reform of the State its aim. It held the adherents of the Young German school in light esteem, being of opinion that they had not stood bravely by their colours, either in philosophy or politics, that they were too belletristic, too epicurean. It would not join in the old cry for the rehabilitation of the flesh, would not even listen to it. Heine, in _Atta Troll_, had told the young generation that a man of character without talent was no better than a bear; the young men retorted that a man of talent without character was nothing but a monkey--possibly a very amusing monkey, but nothing more.