20 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



men, and to note their conclusions as to the probable responsibility of 

 these agents. In most of the points considered his own opinions have 

 been guided by and subordinated to theirs. 



THE SCIENCE OF THE PRESENT PERIOD* 



By EMIL DU BOIS-EEYMOND. 



WHILE the memorial days of Frederick the Great and of Leibnitz 

 turn the view of the Academy back to the times of its origin 

 and of its new birth, this festival directs its vision upon the present. 



Whoever, having a nature like that of an academician of the old 

 school, prefers to live a contemplative life far from the tumult of the 

 market and the strife of the forum, or even from the stimulating com- 

 petition of the lecture-room, intent only on the accumulation of the 

 treasures of knowledge, the solution of intellectual problems, the en- 

 largement of his inner circle of thought, he might well at this period 

 long for the undisturbed rest and the quieting gloom of a middle-age 

 Benedictine cell. Happy monks of Monte Casino and of Montserrat ! 

 Concealed in the turbid wake of the people's flood, you looked down 

 from your peaceful height upon the world, whose strife and anxieties 

 troubled you not. 



But the gates were opened, the walls fell long ago. The bright 

 daylight casts an incongruous illumination upon the rubbish and dust 

 of Faust's study-room. The inexorable to-day no longer allows a 

 peaceful dream-life. We need no Mephistopheles to tempt us into 

 an active career ; we are seized with a thousand hands, some rude, 

 some caressing, and the steam-horse instead of the enchanter's cloak 

 is our servant. Our only trouble is to resist these calls, to keep 

 our senses in the whirl that carries us along, to perform the outer 

 work imposed upon us and still be true to the inner work which is 

 our real calling. We can no longer, like our peers of old, freely fol- 

 low our personal inclinations, only exercising the gifts which God has 

 bestowed upon us. From childhood we belong to the state. Every 

 condition of exemption has vanished. Examinations, military service, 

 and the duties of citizenship, are common to all ; and, while one ought 

 not wholly to shun the duties of politics, he may regret the exagger- 

 ated prominence which its fruitless excitements, its ephemeral tri- 

 umphs, and its sharp partisan strifes, have assumed in the culture-life 

 of the day. 



And how little quickening, in many respects, is this life of the 

 latest fashion ! The hydra of morbidly exaggerated patriotism raises 



* Address delivered on the Emperor's birthday, in the Academy of Sciences, at Berlin, 

 March 23, 1882. 



