But a more definite and visible kind of influence has constantly proceeded from the centres of the higher education. The universities--especially of Germany, next, perhaps of Scotland, but also of England and the United States, and even in less degree of France and Italy--have both fostered and shaped the evolution of critical and reflective thought, and of its product as philosophy. In Germany during the eighteenth century the greater universities had been emancipating themselves from the stricter forms of political and court favoritism and of ecclesiastical protection and control. This emancipation had already operated at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and it continued more and more to operate throughout this century, for participation in that free thought whose spirit is absolutely essential to the flourishing of true philosophy. All the other colleges and universities can scarcely repay the debt which modern philosophy owes to the universities of Germany. The institutions of the higher education which are moulded after this spirit, and which have a generous share of this spirit, have everywhere been _schools of thought_ as well as schools of learning and research. Without the increasing numbers and growing encouragement of such centres for the cultivation of the discipline of critical and reflective thinking, it is difficult to conjecture how much the philosophical development of the nineteenth century would have lost. _Libertas docendi_ and _Academische Freiheit_--without these philosophy has one of its wings fatally wounded or severely clipped.