then called philosophy. After the teaching of Leibnitz and Wolff had found scholars in a larger circle of the learned, there was a sudden change in the views held about the peasant and his state. Everywhere began a more human conception of earthly things, the struggle against the orthodox errors. We find, again, in the scholars and proclaimers of the new philosophy, somewhat of the zeal of an apostle to teach, to improve, and to free. Soon after 1700 a hearty interest in the life of the peasant appears again in the small literature. The soundness of his calling, the utility and blessings of his labour, were extolled, and his good qualities carefully sought out; his old songs, in which a manly self-consciousness finds graceful expression, and which had once been polished by the single-minded theologians of the sixteenth century, were again spread in cheap publications. In these the poor countryman modestly boasts that agriculture was founded by Adam; he rejoices in "his falconry"; the larks in the field, the swallows in the straw of his roof, and the cocks in the farm-yard; and amidst his hard labour again seeks comfort in the "heavenly husbandman, Jesus."[34]
On the other hand, there was even help in the severity of a despotic State. The oppressed peasant gave, through his sons, to the ruler the greater part of his soldiers, and, through his taxes, the means of keeping up the new State. By degrees it was discovered that such material ought to be taken care of. About 1700 this may everywhere be perceived in the provincial laws. The Imperial Court, also, was influenced in its way by this awakening philanthropy. In 1704 it even gave a grand privilege to the shepherds, wherein it declared them and their lads honourable, and graciously advised the German nation to give up the prejudice against this useful class of men, and no longer to exclude their children from being artisans, on account of magic and plying the knacker's trade. A few years afterwards it gave armorial bearings; it also granted them the rights of a corporate body, with seal, chest, and banner, on which a pious picture was painted.[35] More stringent was the interference of the Hohenzollerns, who were themselves, during four generations, the princely colonists of Eastern Germany. Frederick II. made the most fundamental reforms in the conquered provinces; many examples are cited of the blessings resulting from them. When he took possession of Silesia, the village huts were block-houses, formed from the stems of trees, and roofed with straw or shingles, without brick chimneys; the baking ovens, joined on to the houses, exposed them to the danger of fires; the husbandry was in a pitiful plight; great commons and pastures covered with mole-hills and thistles, small weak horses, and lean cows; and the landed proprietors were for the most part harsh despots, against whom the clumsy Imperial and magisterial administration could scarcely enforce any law. The King carried on three severe wars in Silesia, during which his own soldiers, the Austrians, and the Russians, consumed and ravaged the province. Yet, only a few years after the Seven Years' War, 250 new villages and 2000 new cottages were erected, and frequently stone houses and tiled roofs were to be seen. All the wooden chimneys and all the clay ovens had been pulled down by the conqueror, and the people were compelled to build anew; horses were brought from Prussia, and the sheep shorn once in the year; peat cutters from Westphalia, and silkworm-breeders from France, were introduced into the country. Oaks and mulberries were planted, and premiums were given for the laying out of vineyards. At his command the new potato was introduced; at the beginning of the Seven Years' War, by the celebrated patent of the Minister of Justice, von Carmer, commons and general pastures were abolished, and divided among separate holders. With far-sighted forethought, a state of things was introduced which has only recently been carried out. The inheritance of property, also, was secured by law to the villeins. The peasant obtained the right of complaint to the royal government, and this right became for him a quick and vigorous law, for, however much the King favoured the nobility when it was serviceable to the State, yet he was constantly occupied, together with his officials, in elevating the mass of tax-payers. The most insignificant might present his petition, and the whole people knew, from numerous examples, that the King read them. Many of this great Prince's attempts at civilization did not succeed; but on all sides the pressure of a system was felt which so assiduously raised the strength of the people, in order to utilise them to the utmost in the State. Nowhere is the work of this mighty ruler so thankfully acknowledged by contemporaries as by the peasantry of the conquered province. When, on his numerous journeys through Silesia, the country-people thronged round his carriage with respectful awe, every look, every fleeting word that he addressed to a village magistrate was treasured as a dear remembrance, handed down carefully from generation to generation, and still lives in all hearts.
Ever greater became the sympathy of the literary classes. It is true that poetry and art did not yet find in the life of the peasant, material which could foster a creative spirit. When Goethe wrote "Hermann and Dorothea," it was a new discovery for the nation that the petty citizen was worthy of artistic notice; it was long, however, before any one ventured lower among the people; but the honourable philanthropists, the popular promulgators of enlightenment in the burgher classes, preached and wrote with hearty zeal upon the singular, uncouth, and yet numerous fellow-creature, the peasant, whose character frequently only appeared to consist of an aggregate of unamiable qualities, but who, nevertheless, was undeniably the indispensable foundation of the other classes of human society.
One of the most influential writings of this kind was by Christian Garve, "Upon the Character of the Peasants, Breslau, 1786," taken from lectures given shortly before the outbreak of the French revolution. The author was a clear-sighted, upright man, who was anxious for the public weal, and was listened to with respect throughout the whole of Germany, whenever he spoke upon social questions. His little book has a thoroughly philanthropic tendency; the life of the peasant was accurately known by him as it was by many others who were then occupied with the improvement of the country people. The propositions which he makes for the elevation of the class are sensible, but unsatisfactory; as indeed are almost all theories with respect to social evils. Yet, when we scan the contents of this well-meaning book, we are seized with alarm; not at what he relates concerning the oppression of the peasant, but at the way in which he himself seems necessitated to speak of two-thirds of the German people. They are strangers to him and his contemporaries: it is something new and attractive to their philanthropy to realize the condition of these peculiar men. There is an especial charm to a conscientious and feeling mind in ascertaining clearly, what is the exact nature and cause of the stupidity, coarseness, and evil qualities of the country people. The author even compares their position with that of the Jews; he discusses their condition of mind much in the same way that our philanthropists do those of gaol prisoners; he sincerely wishes that the light of humanity may fall on their huts; he compares their sloth and indolence with the energetic working power which, as was even then known, the colonists developed in the ancient woods of the new world. He gives this well-meaning explanation of the contrast, that in our old and as it were already becoming antiquated state, the many work for the one, and a multitude of the industrious go without remuneration, therefore zeal and desire are extinguished in a great portion of them. Almost all that he says is true and right, but this calm kindliness, with which enlightened men of the period of Immanuel Kant and the poetic court of Weimar regarded the people, was unaccompanied by the slightest suspicion, that the pith of the German national strength must be sought in this despised and ruined class; that the condition of things under which he himself, the author, lived, was hollow, barbarous, and insecure; that the governments of his time possessed no guarantee of stability, and that a political state--the great source of every manly feeling, and of the noble consciousness of independence--was impossible, even for the educated, so long as the peasant lived as a beast of burden; and little did he think that all these convictions would be forced upon the very next generation, after bitter sufferings in a hard school, by the conquest of an external enemy. His work, therefore, deserves well to be remembered by the present generation. The following pages depict not only the condition of the peasantry, but the literary class. Garve speaks as follows:--
"One circumstance has great influence on the character of the peasantry: they hang much together. They live far more sociably one with another than do the common burghers in the cities. They see each other every day at their farm work; in the summer in the fields, in the winter in the barns and spinning-rooms. They associate like soldiers, and thus get an esprit de corps; many results arise from this: first, they become polished after their fashion, and more acute through this association. They are more fit for intercourse with their equals; and they have better
