FOUNDING OP THE BERLIN UNIVERSITY. 687 



upon it, as it were, his sign manual. It had been his fortune to be 

 teacher in Jena at that period of greatest luster, when the poet princes 

 inaugurated a new era in literature and a host of excellent scholars 

 joined them. Among the younger men pouring in from all sides were 

 the brothers Humboldt, who built the bridge across which Fichte 

 passed to the northern capital. In 1793 the professorship of i)hilosophy 

 was conferred upon him at Jena. This is the first step toward that 

 departure in philosophy which, in its essence idealistic, led to "Natur- 

 philosophie" and in quick succession transformed one branch of science 

 after another on lines of a priori reasoning. Fichte was soon accused of 

 atheism, and when a strong and agile antagonist arose in his own camp 

 in the person of Sclielling, lie preferred to leave the little town of the 

 muses. Frederick William III received him in Berlin, even before the 

 university was organized, and so created for him the possibility of 

 applying his idealism on the field of practical politics in a way probably 

 never before vouchsafed to a philosopher. His fiery zeal, his eloquence, 

 his love of liberty, insured an influence, which would certainly have 

 become paramount for a long period after the establishment of peace, 

 had fate not decreed otherwise. On January 27, 1814, Fichte died of 

 typhoid fever, contracted at the bedside of his wife, who had brought 

 the infection from the military lazaretto. 



At the instigation of Schleiermacher, Hegel was proposed to the min- 

 istry in 1816 as Fichte's successor. Despite the opposing' vote of De 

 Wette, who represented that this philosopher's system contradicted 

 Christianity and no less the reliable principles of Aristotelian logic, and 

 in reality was but a form of " Katurphilosophie," the Government 

 offered no objections. But the negotiations were without result on this 

 occasion. A little while later, in 1818, the services of the ready dia- 

 lectician were secured for Berlin. Everybody awaited his lectures with 

 eagerness. The circle of his adherents grew rapidly and annually 

 became greater. Soon his influence over the thought and speech of his 

 contemporaries had become so decided that Hegelians were to be found 

 in every faculty. The Avhole body of science was remodeled by them, 

 and their master's terminology was carried to the remotest depths of 

 every specialty. When, on November 14, 1831, he succumbed to the 

 cholera on its first march through our land, he left a veritable staff of 

 drilled disciples who undertook to continue the work in his sj)irit and 

 transmit the traditions of his system to future generations. Nothing 

 could have seemed more firmly joined than the system of this self- 

 centered school. Theology and jurisprudence, political science, and 

 a?sthetics all wore the garb of Hegelian language and theory; only in 

 medicine and the natural sciences the invasion had confined its depre- 

 dations to individual authorities. Although the master was gone, his 

 halo remained visible for fully a decade, one may say, up to the death 

 of King Frederick William III, whose minister, Altenstein, himself an 

 enthusiastic Hegelian, kept the system in power by his favor. But not 



