The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 1, December, 1850Various
History
The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 1, December, 1850
Various
Art, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- History -- Periodicals
Two other striking contributions to the history of this stormy epoch
have been made by Bruno Bauer, the well known rationalist. Bauer treats
the political and religious parties of modern Germany with the same
scornful satire and destructive analysis which appear in his theological
writings. He delights in pitting one side against the other and making
them consume each other. His first book is called the _Bürgerliche
Revolution in Deutschland_, (the Burghers' Revolution in Germany); it
was published above a year ago, and attracted a great deal of attention
from the fact that it took neither side, but with a sort of
Mephistophelian superiority, showed that every party had been alike
weak, timid, hesitating, short-sighted, and useless. The New-Catholics
of Ronge's school were especially treated with unsparing severity. Bauer
has now just brought out his second book, which is particularly devoted
to the Frankfort Parliament. In this also the Hegelian Logic is applied
with the same result. The author proves that all that was done in that
body was worth nothing and produced nothing. There is not a particle of
sympathetic feeling in the whole book; but only cold and contemptuous
analysis. It has not made very much of an impression in Germany. Both
these works, and, indeed, the whole school of ultra-Hegelian skeptics
generally, are a singular reaction upon the usual warmth and
sentimentality of German character and literature. They are the very
opposite extreme, and so a very natural product of the times. For our
part we like them quite as well as the other side of the contrast.
* * * * *
Germany is the richest of all countries in historical literature.
Nowhere have all the events of human experience been so variously,
profoundly, or industriously investigated. Ancient history especially
has been most exhaustively treated by the Germans. One of the best and
most comprehensive works in this category is that of Dr. Zimmer, the
seventh edition of which, revised and enlarged, has just been published
at Leipzic. Dr. Zimmer does not proceed upon the hypotheses of Niebuhr
and others, but conceives that the writing of history and romance ought
to be essentially different. The whole work is in one volume of some 450
pages, and of course greatly condensed. It discusses the history of
India, China, and Japan; the western Asiatic States, Assyria, Babylonia,
Syria, Phoenicia, India, down to the fall of Jerusalem; the other
parts of Asia; Egypt to the battle of Actium, with a dissertation on
Egyptian culture; Carthage; Greece to the fall of Corinth; Rome under
the emperors down to the year 476; and concludes with an account of the
literature of classical antiquity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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