of universal military service. By calling upon each individual to
sacrifice property and life for the good of the community, he gave the
clearest expression to the idea of the State, and created a sound basis
on which the claim to individual rights might rest at the same time
Stein laid the foundations of self-employed-government in Prussia.

While measures of the most far-reaching historical importance were thus
being adopted in the State on which the future fate of Germany was to
depend, and while revolution was being superseded by healthy progress, a
German Empire of the first rank, the Empire of intellect, grew up in the
domain of art and science, where German character and endeavour found
the deepest and fullest expression. A great change had been effected in
this land of political narrowness and social sterility since the year
1750. A literature and a science, born in the hearts of the nation, and
deeply rooted in the moral teaching of Protestantism, had raised their
minds far beyond the boundaries of practical life into the sunlit
heights of intellectual liberty, and manifested the power and
superiority of the German spirit. "Thus the new poetry and science
became for many decades the most effectual bond of union for this
dismembered people, and decided the victory of Protestantism in German
life." [B]

[Footnote B: Treitschke, "Deutsche Geschichte", i., p. 88.]

Germany was raised to be once more "the home of heresy, since she
developed the root-idea of the Reformation into the right of
unrestricted and unprejudiced inquiry". [C] Moral obligations, such as no
nation had ever yet made the standard of conduct, were laid down in the
philosophy of Kant and Fichte, and a lofty idealism inspired the songs
of her poets. The intense effect of these spiritual agencies was
realized in the outburst of heroic fury in 1813. "Thus our classical
literature, starting from a different point, reached the same goal as
the political work of the Prussian monarchy", [D] and of those men of
action who pushed this work forward in the hour of direst ruin.

[Footnote C: _Ibid.,_ i., p. 90.]

[Footnote D: _Ibid._]

The meeting of Napoleon and Goethe, two mighty conquerors, was an event
in the world's history. On one side the scourge of God, the great
annihilator of all survivals from the past, the gloomy despot, the last
abortion of the revolution--a

"Part of the power that still
Produces Good, while still devising Ill";