German philosophers, would-be philosophers, and beaux esprits,
eagerly seized on this literature, only forgetting, that when
these writings immigrated from France into Germany, French social
conditions had not immigrated along with them. In contact with
German social conditions, this French literature lost all its
immediate practical significance, and assumed a purely literary
aspect. Thus, to the German philosophers of the eighteenth
century, the demands of the first French Revolution were nothing
more than the demands of "Practical Reason" in general, and the
utterance of the will of the revolutionary French bourgeoisie
signified in their eyes the law of pure Will, of Will as it was
bound to be, of true human Will generally.
The world of the German literate consisted solely in bringing
the new French ideas into harmony with their ancient
philosophical conscience, or rather, in annexing the French ideas
without deserting their own philosophic point of view.
This annexation took place in the same way in which a foreign
language is appropriated, namely, by translation.
It is well known how the monks wrote silly lives of Catholic
Saints over the manuscripts on which the classical works of
ancient heathendom had been written. The German literate
reversed this process with the profane French literature. They
wrote their philosophical nonsense beneath the French original.
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