RECENT PROGRESS OF NATURAL SCIENCE. S97 



THE RECENT PROGRESS OF NATURAL SCIENCE. 



ON the occasion of the celebration at Breslau of the twenty-fifth 

 anniversary of Prof. Goeppert's presidency of the Silesian Society 

 for National Culture, Prof. Ferdinand Cohn delivered an address, char- 

 acterized by eloquence of the highest kind, on the above subject. As the 

 wanderer, he said, who is climbing toward a high mountain-peak, feels 

 from time to time the desire to stand still a little, and look back on 

 the way over which he has passed, to enjoy the wider outlook which 

 he gains from his higher stand-point, so, he thinks, there are moments 

 in the uninterrupted progress of science, when we long in some meas- 

 ure to strike a balance, and see how much acquired property the 

 present puts aside as useless, how much it uses only for temporary pur- 

 poses, and how many enduring acquisitions have been made. 



Dr. Cohn refers, no doubt with justice and some pardonable pride, 

 to the foremost place held by Germany, during the last quarter of a 

 century, in the march of science. At the same time he awards due 

 praise to other European states, and above all to England, which, dur- 

 ing that time and more particularly at present, he thinks, abounds in 

 men of the highest eminence, whose scientific achievements stand 

 prominently out on account of their astonishing energy, clearness, 

 depth, and independence of thought. Still, we cannot but admit that 

 Dr. Cohn is right in asserting that Germany is free from the dilettante- 

 ism which abounds in this country, and that as a rule science in Ger- 

 many is both far more wide-spread and far more thorough than it is 

 among ourselves, and that the opportunities furnished there to all 

 classes for scientific study at the ordinary educational establishments 

 have until recently left us almost nowhere. But, happily, signs of the 

 beginning of the end of this state of things among us are becoming rife. 



After briefly referring to the intellectual awakening of Germany 

 along with the rest of Europe at the time of the Reformation, and 

 showing how this start forward was, especially in the case of Germany, 

 in a great measure frustrated by the Thirty Years' War, Dr. Cohn 

 pays a high and justly-merited tribute to France, and especially to 

 Paris, on account of the supreme place she took during the first thirty 

 or forty years of the present century in nearly all the sciences. The 

 glory of France in this direction has, however, he thinks, departed, 

 and Germany is becoming daily more and more the intellectual centre 

 of the world. Had Dr. Cohn written his lecture now, he might have 

 somewhat modified his language ; for, within the last few months, the 

 signs have been many, that in the direction of science the French are 

 determined to try to hold their own with the foremost in Europe. 

 Their professors are prosecuting an amount of research which puts our 



