302 MENDELSSOHM. empirical philosophy of England, * eclecticism in the spirit of Thomasius took full possession of the stage in the Illumination period. There was the less hesitation in com- bining principles derived from entirely different postulates without regard to their systematic connection, as the inter- est in scholastic investigation gave place more and more to the interest in practical and reassuring results. Metaphysics, noctics, and natural philosophy were laid aside as useless subtleties, and, as in the period succeeding Aristotle, man as an individual and whatever directly relates to his welfare — the constitution of his inner nature, his duties, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of God — became the exclusive subjects of reflection. The fact that, besides ethics and religion, psychology was chosen as a favorite field, is in complete harmony with the general temper of an age for which self-observation and the enjoyment of tender and elevated feelings in long, delightfully friendly letters and sentimental diaries had become a favorite habit. Hand in hand with this narrowing of the content of phil- osophy went a change in the form of presentation. As thinkers now addressed themselves to all cultivated peo- ple, intelligibility and agreeableness were made the prime requisites; the style became light and flowing, the method of treatment facile and often superficial. This is true not only of the popular philosophers proper — who, as Windelband pertinently remarks (vol. i. p. 563), did not seek after the truth, but believed that they already pos- sessed it, and desired only to disseminate it ; who did not aim at the promotion of investigation, but the instruction of the public — but to a certain extent, also, of those who were conscious of laboring in the service of science. Among the representatives of the more polite tendency belong, Moses Mendelssohn t (1729-86); Thomas Abbt {On Death for the Fatherland, 1761 ; On Merit, 1765); J.J. Engel {The
- The influence of the English philosophers on the German philosophy of the
eighteenth century is discussed by Gustav Zart, 1881.
Mendelssohn : Letters on the Sensations, 1755 ; On Evidence in the Meta-
physical Sciences, a prize essay crowned by the Academy, 1764 ; PhcBdo, or on Immortality, 1 767 ; Jerusalem, 1 783 ; Morning Hours, or on the Existence 0/ God, 1785 ; To tJu Friends of Lessing (against Jacobi), 1786 ; Works, 1843-44. Cf. on Mendelssohn, Kayserling, 1856, 1862, 1883.
