Note 125 — Chapter V · ROMANTIC MORALITY: THE REAL

The best account of Rousseau’s German influence is still that of H. Hettner in his Literaturgeschichte des 18. Jahrhunderts. Compared with Rousseau’s German influence, says Professor Paul Hensel in his Rousseau (1907), “his influence in France seems almost trifling.” In Germany “Rousseau became the basis not of a guillotine but of a new culture (Kultur). … We have drawn his spirit over to us, we have made it our own.” (121.) See also Professor Eugen Kühnemann, Vom Weltreich des deutschen Geistes (1914), 54-62, and passim. German idealism is, according to Kühnemann, the monument that does the greatest honor to Rousseau.