Napoleon, whereas the Prussia of the nineteenth century, behind whatever other pretence, was governed by an oligarchy of intellectual 'Experts'—staff officers, bureaucrats, professors. Frederick, sole organiser, raised only administrators, with the result that when he died he left Prussia a mere mechanism, to be broken on the field of Jena.
In the very winter of Jena the philosopher Fichte came to lecture in Berlin, while it was still in the occupation of the French.[1] There was no University in the Prussian capital of those days, and the lectures were delivered not to young students, but to the maturest brains of the country in the fever of a great crisis. Fichte taught the philosophy of Patriotism at a time when the German Universities were devoted to the abstract worship of knowledge and art. In the next few years, between 1806 and 1813, was established that close connection between the army, the bureaucracy, and the schools, or, in other words, between the needs of government and the aims of education, which constituted the essence and perverse strength of the Prussian system. Universal military service was corre-
- ↑ See The Evolution of Prussia, by Marriott and Grant Robertson. Clarendon Press, 1915.
