After a demand for the union of Leibnitz and Locke, of rationalism and empiricism, had been raised within the Wolffian school itself, and still more directly in the camp of its opponents, under the increasing influence of the empirical philosophy of England,[1] eclecticism in the spirit of Thomasius took full possession of the stage in the Illumination period.  There was the less hesitation in combining principles derived from entirely different postulates without regard to their systematic connection, as the interest in scholastic investigation gave place more and more to the interest in practical and reassuring results.  Metaphysics, noetics, 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 philosophy went a change in the form of presentation.  As thinkers now addressed themselves to all cultivated people, 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 possessed 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[2] (1729-86); Thomas Abbt (On Death for the Fatherland, 1761; On Merit, 1765); J.J.  Engel (The philosopher for the World, 1775); G.S.  Steinbart (The Christian Doctrine of Happiness, 1778); Ernst Platner (Philosophical Aphorisms, 1776, 1782; on Platner cf.  M. Heinze, 1880); G.C.  Lichtenberg (died 1799; Miscellaneous Writings, 1800 seq.; a selection is given in Reclam’s Bibliothek); Christian Garve (died 1798; Essays, 1792 seq.; Translations from the Ethical Works of Aristotle, Cicero, and Ferguson); and Friedrich Nicolai[3] (died 1811).  Eberhard, Feder, and Meiners will be mentioned later among the opponents of the Kantian philosophy.

[Footnote 1:  The influence of the English philosophers on the German philosophy of the eighteenth century is discussed by Gustav Zart, 1881.]

[Footnote 2:  Mendelssohn:  Letters on the Sensations, 1755; On Evidence in the Metaphysical Sciences, a prize essay crowned by the Academy, 1764; Phaedo, or on Immortality, 1767; Jerusalem, 1783; Morning Hours, or on the Existence of God, 1785; To the Friends of Lessing (against Jacobi), 1786; Works, 1843-44.  Cf. on Mendelssohn, Kayserling, 1856, 1862, 1883.]