\jo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



public policy is a question of right and wrong. To sucli ques- 

 tions all matters of party ascendency, all matters of individual 

 advancement must yield precedence. There is no virtue in the 

 acts of ignorant majorities. The danger of ignorance is only 

 intensified when rolled up in majorities. Truth is strong and 

 error is weak, and the majorities of error melt away under the 

 influence of a few men whose right acting is based on right 

 thinking. 



Right thinking has been your privilege : right acting is now 

 your duty ; and at no time in the history of the world has duty 

 been more imperative than now. 



THE UNIVERSITY AS A SCIENTIFIC WORKSHOP. 



By Prof. Dr. FEIEDEICH PAULSEN. 



THE peculiar character of the German university springs 

 from its combining the two purposes of instruction and re- 

 search. It is at once a high school and an academy, meaning by 

 academy an institution for scientific investigation. The relation 

 in which these two functions stand to one another corresponds 

 with the form of the university in the difl'erent epochs of its de- 

 velopment. The tendency now evidently prevails to give research 

 the preference over instruction. In the estimates of the universi- 

 ties themselves, scientific work has the higher rating. The sci- 

 entific purposes are most conspicuous in the public view ; and the 

 credit in which German universities are held abroad depends 

 first upon their scientific achievements. The estimate is in agree- 

 ment with the facts, and no wrong will be done to the German 

 professors if we say that many among them work less in instruc- 

 tion than in scientific labor, that they are more academicians than 

 teachers. 



It was not always so ; it has been so only for a short time. 

 Instruction had the foremost place till in the eighteenth century, 

 and the change that has taken place did not fairly begin till within 

 the nineteenth century. I shall endeavor to trace this develop- 

 ment and its causes in a short historical review. 



The universities originated in the middle ages as schools. 

 Especially were the universities in Germany, in their beginning, 

 what their ofl&cial name studium generale implies, places for 

 general study. The professors were likewise at first called school- 

 masters {magistri regentes, sc, scliolas), and the students scholars 

 {scJioJares). The artistical, now the philosophical faculty, which 

 regularly comprised by far the largest proportion of the students, 

 had wholly the character of a school. Its object was to give 



