make Berlin a cultural centre; the Berlin Academy had as its perpetual President an eminent
Frenchman, Maupertuis, who, however, unfortunately became the victim of Voltaire's deadly
ridicule. Frederick's endeavours, like those of the other enlightened despots of the time, did not
include economic or political reform; all that was really achieved was a claque of hired
intellectuals. After his death, it was again in Western Germany that most of the men of culture
were to be found.
German philosophy was more connected with Prussia than were German literature and art. Kant
was a subject of Frederick the Great; Fichte and Hegel were professors at Berlin. Kant was little
influenced by Prussia; indeed he got into trouble with the Prussian Government for his liberal
theology. But both Fichte and Hegel were philosophic mouthpieces of Prussia, and did much to
prepare the way for the later identification of German patriotism with admiration for Prussia.
Their work in this respect was carried on by the great German historians, particularly by
Mommsen and Treitschke. Bismarck finally persuaded the German nation to accept unification
under Prussia, and thus gave the victory to the less internationally minded elements in German
culture.
Throughout the whole period after the death of Hegel, most academic philosophy remained
traditional, and therefore not very important. British empiricist philosophy was dominant in
England until near the end of the century, and in France until a somewhat earlier time; then,
gradually, Kant and Hegel conquered the universities of France and England, so far as their
teachers of technical philosophy were concerned. The general educated public, however, was very
little affected by this movement, which had few adherents among men of science. The writers who
carried on the academic tradition--John Stuart Mill on the empiricist side, Lotze, Sigwart, Bradley,
and Bosanquet on the side of German idealism--were none of them quite in the front rank among
philosophers, that is to say, they were not the equals of the men whose systems they, on the whole,
adopted. Academic philosophy has often before been out of touch with the most vigorous thought
of the age, for instance, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when it was still mainly
scholastic. Whenever this happens, the historian of philosophy is less concerned with the
professors than with the unprofessional heretics.