Once again, from Fred Beiser's The German Historicist Tradition (OUP, 2011), p. 103, discussing Herder's "Philosophy of Humanity":

In demanding that philosophy be practical, Herder was expressing a common concern in the 1760s.  It was during this decade that many thinkers in Germany began to react against the scholasticism of Wolff's philosophy, which, since the 1740s, had become the dominant doctrine in Protestant universities. The chief purpose of Wolff's philosophy was to achieve the classical ideal of a philosophia prima, a self-evidence foundation for all knowledge.  Philosophy was for Wolff scientia, the search for complete certainty, which required the use of a mathematical method with self-evident axioms, strict definitions, and rigorous syllogistic reasoning.  The problem was that the Wolffians' devotion to this ideal–so it seemed to some–was taking them away from a more pressing and fundamental need:  enlightenment, the education of the public….The Wolffians were engaging in ever more subtle demonstrations, ever more esoteric disputations, much like the schoolmen of the Middle Ages, so that their philosophy had no meaning for the general public.  In short, the Wolffians were making philosophy a scholastic exercise, an intellectual pastime removed from everyday life.  And so in the 1760s voices of protest could be heard….They insisted that philosophy should become popular, i.e., it should address the needs of human beings, and it should write in a manner comprehensible to the common man.  Rather than serving up dry and dreary demonstrations, philosophy should strive for elegance, because only then coudl it capture the interest of the public.