  Jacobi’s extensive travels took him to London in 1786 and to Paris in 1801 (Prantl, 1881: 581, 582). Though first exposed to philosophy in a French cultural milieu, Jacobi was an Anglophile throughout his life and favourably compared British philosophers with the French philosophes. He credited the British for never having denied that virtue has value on its own; for never having made it just an instrument of happiness. The French, on the contrary, the moment their philosophizing progressed beyond mere common sense, were always all too prone in moral matters of falling into materialism (Jacobi, 1812–125: vol. 5, 73–74).