- 7 -

reason. This belief changed men's ideas of God and led to the idea of "natural" religion inherent in human nature, rather than "revealed religion" mediated to man by the churches and the Bible, but did not usually lead to doubts about God's existence.

Much of the progress in science and other non-classical subjects took place outside the universities, which taught current knowledge within their limited curriculum reasonably well, but there was little pushing back of the frontiers except in a few countries such as Holland, Germany and Scotland. Secondary education was supplied mainly by small private schools or private tutors, and to some extent by the universities as well, since students were often enrolled at an early age. Primary education was controlled by the churches, and varied widely from one country to another. Very generally speaking, the Protestant countries had more schools but were short of qualified teachers, the Catholic countries had better teachers but some Catholic regions were very short of schools. Only a small minority of countries, including Scotland, Prussia and some of the Habsburg domains, even attempted to provide universal primary education.

The intellectual movement for which the 18 th century is remembered, the Enlightenment, did not bring about any extensive reforms in the early part of the century, but it provided tools which were used to great effect later. Chief of these was its claim for freedom to criticise all existing institutions of any kind, in politics, religion, science and history, to re-examine every kind of received idea and discard it if it could not stand the test of reason. Yet even among educated people there were strong intellectual counter-currents where reason was still subordinated to faith and idealism. Pastor Lavater of Zürich, for example, who was famous for his wisdom, believed in faith-healing, mesmerism and occult powers. In religion the Pietist movement, established in the 17 th century in northern and eastern Germany, revived and spread over much of Europe and the American colonies. To a Pietist, the claim to understand God by reason was not only absurd but sinful; religion had to be centred on the heart. To be a good citizen and live an upright life was not enough, every soul had to seek after holiness. One of the most lasting effects of Pietism was that it turned the spotlight on everyone. The testimonies of individuals as to God's personal dealings with them developed quite quickly into a new interest in autobiography, not only of high-born or important people, but of those who were in worldly terms quite undistinguished. Bräker's impulse to write about his own life may well be something that we owe to Pietism.

In literature the tendency towards greater individualism was even more obvious. The long dependence on Classical models, which in many countries meant not just on the authors of ancient Greece and Rome, but also on their interpreters in French literature, gradually decreased as writers felt more free to describe their own society and use language more natural to them. Even in some German-speaking countries, for example Prussia, the German language had been considered useless for expressing refined thoughts or sentiments. The heroes and heroines of plays and novels were no longer general types of valour or fidelity but recognisable as individuals, a mixture of moral strengths and weaknesses, reacting to their individual circumstances. This change took a long time and many of its best results in literature and the visual arts did not appear until the 19 th century. The greatest artistic achievements of the 18 th century were in music, especially in opera and oratorio, and architecture.

Very few of the common people of Europe took any part in these new developments. Many aspects of their lives were guided by superstitious beliefs of a previous age, some of them dating from pagan times. Even those who could read were very restricted as to the literature available to them. Anderson [p 352] mentions popular books on astrology, ancient legends, and manuals on practical subjects such as the health of people and animals. He cites one popular pamphlet on health which was first published in Switzerland in 1474 and was still being reprinted completely unchanged in 1846. One category which he does not mention is pornography, though books of dirty jokes had been widespread since the invention of printing. Oral literature held an important place in peasant culture, but it was not until the end of the century that fairy-tales and folk customs were collected and studied by anthropologists and historians of literature. Folk music too was seldom written down, perhaps because many folk songs had a satirical element that was suspect politically. To Bräker "folk culture" would have meant its debased forms, as when he

Contents