The Interdependence of LiteratureCurtis, Georgina Pell
General
The Interdependence of Literature
Curtis, Georgina Pell
Comparative literature
The earlier German philosophers were influenced by the grosser forms of
the science, as found in Locke and Helvetius. Leibnitz and Wolf taught
pure Idealism, as did Bishop Berkeley in England. It remained for Kant
to create a new era in modern philosophy. His system vas what has
become known as the Rationalistic, or what we can know by pure reason.
Kant was followed by Lessing, Herder, Hegel, Fichte, and a host of
others.
These German philosophers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
have had a powerful influence in shaping literature in England, France,
Denmark, Sweden and America. The mystic and profound German mind has
often been led astray; but its intellectual strength cannot be
questioned. Schelling was the author of theories in philosophy that
have been adopted and imitated by both Coleridge and Wordsworth, while
Van Hartmann teaches that there is but one last principle of
philosophy, known by Spinoza as substance, by Fichte as the absolute
I., by Plato and Hegel as the absolute Idea, by Schopenhauer as Will,
and by himself as a blind, impersonal, unconscious, all-pervading Will
and Idea, independent of brain, and in its essence purely spiritual,
and he taught that there could be no peace for man's heart or intellect
until religion, philosophy and science were recognized as one root,
stem and leaves all of the same living tree.
It is curious to trace how these various philosophies, recognized by
Van Hartmann under different names to be one, can be merged into the
sublime Christian philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, who taught that
religion, philosophy and science were indeed one--root, stem and leaves
of the one life-giving tree, which is God.
All that is deepest and most profound is to be found in this modern
German philosophy, which is diametrically opposed to the flippant and
sensual philosophy of the Voltarian school. However far the German
philosophers are from true philosophy as seen in the light of Christian
truth, they command a respect as earnest thinkers and workers, which it
is impossible to accord the eighteenth century French school.
ENGLISH.
No country in the beginning owed so much to the language and literature
of other nations as the English.
Anglo-Saxon, Latin, Norman-French, Cymric and Gaelic have all been
moulded into its literature.
Three periods stand out in its history--the first beginning with the
end of the Roman occupation, to the Norman conquest--this includes the
literature of the Celtic, Latin and Anglo-Saxon tongues. The second
from the Norman conquest to the time of Henry VIII, embracing the
literature of the Norman-French, the Latin and Anglo-Saxon; the gradual
evolution of the Anglo-Saxon into English; and the literature of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
The third period includes the Reformation, and the golden age of
Elizabethan literature; followed by the Restoration, Revolution, and
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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