In praise of the contributions of German writers to intellectual and artistic life, Herder cites the radical philosopher Gabriel Wagner who wrote under the pseudonym Realis de Vienna. Herder emphasizes Wagner’s condemnation of German imitation of other nations, particularly the French. Wagner also criticized the abstractions of the so-called school-philosophy in Germany in the 1730s and 1740s. He emphasized the restoration of reason, a faith in nature and the sciences of life, and the transformation of statecraft. Herder then cites a botanical praise-poem by Carl Emil von der Lühe as evidence of the way the artistic spirit can enrich human understanding. While the boundary between mania and madness is blurry, Herder distinguished these to show the difference between artistic inspiration and the various harmful, divisive, and violent actions that can result from inspiration. One of philosophy’s tasks is to distinguish between mania and madness, and Herder cites examples of philosophers and writers who have done this: Ludovico Ariosto, Jacques August de Thou, Karl Ludwig von Knebel, and Thomas Gordon’s commentary on Tacitus. He ends by praising history as a scientific study of humanity.

This chapter is devoted to several brief sections and sets the stage for what follows by dealing with some of the key elements of context and background for the remainder of the book. These include: ancient politics and political thought in Greece and especially Rome; the distinction (and non-distinction) between party and faction; Jacobitism; Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and the nature of the eighteenth-century British fiscal-military state; and sociability and partisanship. It concludes by highlighting that the most common way to discuss and write about political parties in the eighteenth century was in political, historical, and constitutional terms.