But such a being as this, one who has turned to adamant in heroic mold, cannot sympathetically comprehend the finer currents about him. There was going on, quite unnoticed by King Frederick, an awakening in the German mind, and while he was building a structure of material greatness, there had commenced, unobserved by him, another structure, which was to be the chief glory of Germany. The passion for speculative thought awakened by Spinoza was stirring the German soul to its depths. Kant had found that Spinoza's _Eternal Order_ must be a _Moral Order_. That the moral instincts which guided mankind, and were the all in all, were the God in us, the in-dwelling of the Divine. Thus was embodied the essence of Christianity in a new and speculative philosophy. Klopstock and Lessing were creating a national literature, which revealed for the first time the strength, resources, and unsuspected beauty of their own language, and which was for the first time being used to express a genius untouched by foreign influence. But all unconscious of this new, rushing stream of life, Frederick was entertaining Voltaire, spending his evenings in listening to the latest satirical verses of that vain and gifted Frenchman, and laughing at the latest witty epigram from Paris. It had been one of Frederick's dreams, in his youth, to have his great friend some day reside in his Court. In 1750 this was realized, and the King and the poet settled down to what was to be an everlasting banquet of sympathetic tastes and opinions, seasoned with mutual admiration and friendship! Frederick felt that he was something of a poet himself, and that he was only prevented by cares of state from letting the world find it out. The wily Frenchman had been the literary confidant of his royal friend, and many pages of verses had been submitted to him during their long correspondence, and had received flattering commendation from the great critic. So one of the pleasantest features in this closer companionship was expected to be this drop of honeyed praise to sweeten the evening after the day's work was done. But Frederick's verses bored Voltaire very much, and the royal host began to discover that his great guest was selfish, and cold, and jealous, and even malignant. The nimbus of fascination began to fade. He could be cutting and satirical as well as Voltaire. The great poet was no less hungry for praise than he, and it was an easy matter to yawn and be bored by his verses, too. And so they became gradually estranged, and finally enemies. They parted in anger, and Voltaire returned to France, to write bitter satires about the King, whose character and ideals he had been one of the chief agents in forming.