[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.