Madame de Stael had raised anew the question which had been raised in the seventeenth century and answered in the negative by Voltaire:  is there progress in aesthetic literature?  Her early book on Literature had clearly defined the issue.  She did not propose the thesis that there is any progress or improvement (as some of the Moderns had contended in the famous Quarrel) in artistic form.  Within the limits of their own thought and emotional experience the ancients achieved perfection of expression, and perfection cannot be surpassed.  But as thought progresses, as the sum of ideas increases and society changes, fresh material is supplied to art, there is “a new development of sensibility” which enables literary artists to compass new kinds of charm.  The Genie du Christianisme embodied a commentary on her contention, more arresting than any she could herself have furnished.  Here the reactionary joined hands with the disciple of Condorcet, to prove that there is progress in the domain of art.  Madame de Stael’s masterpiece, Germany, was a further impressive illustration of the thesis that the literature of the modern European nations represents an advance on classical literature, in the sense that it sounds notes which the Greek and Roman masters had not heard, reaches depths which they had not conjectured, unlocks chambers which to them were closed,—­as a result of the progressive experiences of the human soul. [Footnote:  German literature was indeed already known, in some measure, to readers of the Decade philosophique, and Kant had been studied in France long before 1813, the year of the publication of De l’Allemagne.  See Picavet, Les Ideologues, p. 99.] [Footnote:  We can see the effect of her doctrine in Guizot’s remarks (Histoire de la civilisation en Europe, 2e lecon) where he says of modern literatures that “sous le point de vue du fond des sentiments et des idees elles sont plus fortes et plus riches [than the ancient].  On voit que l’ame humaine a ete remuee sur un plus grand nombre de points a une plus grande profondeur”—­and to this very fact he ascribes their comparative imperfection in form.]

This view is based on the general propositions that all social phenomena closely cohere and that literature is a social phenomenon; from which it follows that if there is a progressive movement in society generally, there is a progressive movement in literature.  Her books were true to the theory; they inaugurated the methods of modern criticism, which studies literary works in relation to the social background of their period.

4.

France, then, under the Bourbon Restoration began to seek new light from the obscure profundities of German speculation which Madame de Stael proclaimed.  Herder’s “Ideas” were translated by Edgar Quinet, Lessing’s Education by Eugene Rodrigues.  Cousin sat at the feet of Hegel.  At the same time a new master, full of suggestiveness for those who were interested in the philosophy of history, was discovered in Italy.  The “Scienza nuova” of Vico was translated by Michelet.