d homely way, as from the heart, and it
must be a subject which would make the heart beat quicker. Goethe knew
well why he referred the whole of the youthful intellectual life of his
time to Frederic II., for even he had in his father's house been
influenced by the noble poetry which shone from the life of that great
man on his contemporaries. The great King had pronounced "Goetz von
Berlichingen" a horrible piece, yet he had himself materially
contributed to it, by giving the poet courage to weave together the old
anecdotes of the troopers into a drama. And when Goethe, in his old
age, concluded his last drama, he brought forward again the figure of
the old King, and he makes his Faust an indefatigable and exacting
master, who carries his canal through the marsh lands of the Vistula.
And it was not different with Lessing, to say nothing of the minor
poets. In "Minna von Barnhelm," the King sends a decisive letter
on the stage; and in "Nathan"--the antagonism betwixt tolerance and
fanaticism, betwixt Judaism and priestcraft--is an ennobled reflex of
the views of D'Argen's Jewish letters.

It was not only the easily moved spirit of poets that was excited by
the idea of the King: even the scientific life of the Germans, their
speculative and moral philosophy, were elevated and transformed by it.

For the freedom of conscience which the King placed at the head of his
maxims of government, dissolved like a spell the compulsion which the
church had hitherto laid on the learned. The strong antipathy which the
King had for priestly rule, and every kind of restraint of the mind,
worked in many spheres. The most daring teaching, the most determined
attacks on existing opinions, were now allowed; the struggle was
carried on with equal weapons, and science obtained for the first time
a feeling of supremacy over the soul. It was by no accident that Kant
rose to eminence in Prussia; for the whole stringent power of his
teaching, the high elevation of the feeling of duty, even the quiet
resignation with which the individual had to submit himself to the
"categorical imperative," is nothing more than the ideal counterpart of
the devotion to duty which the King practised himself and demanded of
his Prussians. No one has more nobly expressed than the great
philosopher himself, how much the State system of Frederic II. had been
the basis of his teaching.

Historical science was not the least gainer by him. Great political
deeds were so