Froebel's Chief Writings on Education - Rendered Into English #231217

The second source of Froebel's inspiration was that idealistic philosophy from which all the great German thinkers of the time derived their intellectual and Spiritual nourishment. Towards the close of the eighteenth century Germany was politically at its lowest ebb, and the dream of a united German nation seemed doomed never to be realized. Just then came redemption — not from warriors and statesmen, but from poets and thinkers, such as Schiller the poet of philosophers, and Schelling the philosopher of poets. Not from the world of facts but from the realm of ideas came the new Spiritual force which breathed into expiring Germany a fresh vitality, and won for her that proud position in the intellectual life of the human race which the whole civilized world has long so readily recognized.