From what has been said it is clear that Schiller regarded the writing of history as essentially an exercise of the creative imagination. And such in a sense it really is and always must be, since no historian can divest himself of his own personality. He will inevitably see the events with his own eyes and put his own construction upon them. His very arrangement of his materials, his distribution of lights and shades, his selection of the matters to be recorded and commented upon, will involve a subjective coloring of his narrative. This being so, one cannot reasonably criticize Schiller for having his point of view, but only for taking too little trouble in the gathering and verification of his facts. He did not think it important to study his subject from first-hand sources of information. He quotes more than a score of authorities in Latin, French and German, but he uses them quite uncritically, and chiefly, it would seem, to give his work a semblance of learning. The facts were for him nothing but the raw material of history; the important thing was their philosophic truth, that is, the intellectual formula that should explain them. In our day we have grown distrustful of the 'philosophy of history', especially of any philosophy that does not rest upon a basis of long and thorough investigation.
'The Defection of the Netherlands' was very favorably received by the German public. Its merits lay on the surface, while its defects were not patent to the casual reader. Every one felt that Schiller had set a new pattern for historical composition. In his hands history had become literature. With such an achievement to his credit it was natural that his _début_ in Jena should be looked forward to in academic circles as a great occasion. Feeling that much would be expected of him he prepared with great care his inaugural discourse upon the study of universal history. The address, which was subsequently published in the _Merkur_, begins with a vigorous elucidation of the difference between the bread-and-butter scholar and the philosophic thinker. The former is depicted in caustic terms as a narrow, selfish, timorous time-server. He is the enemy of reform and discovery, because he is forever dreading that the enlargement of the human outlook may disturb his little private routine. He cares for truth only so far as it can be turned to his personal gain in the form of money, praise or princely favor. The philosophic thinker, on the other hand, is a joyous lover of his kind. Feeling the essential solidarity of all knowledge he seeks ever for the unifying principle. He loves truth for its own sake. Every advance of knowledge is welcome to him, and he willingly sees his private edifice go to ruin for the joy of building a new and better one. Then the lecture proceeds to describe the splendid progress of the human race. The task of universal history is declared to be the explanation of this evolutionary process. It must show how all things hang together, and, selecting for description those portions of the record which have a more obvious bearing upon the present form of the world, it must seek to bring home to the modern man the full import of his heirship.
