THE UNIVERSITY AS A SCIENTIFIC WORKSHOP. 177 



Wlien we inquire into the consequences of this situation to 

 teaching, we begin to ask whether our universities have not de- 

 clined as institutes for instruction ; whether there is not danger, 

 at least, that teaching will suffer from its combination with re- 

 search ; whether the professors are not disposed to neglect it in 

 their zeal for investigation ; and whether they are not too much 

 inclined to draw their students to that side, with the result that 

 the training for practical occupations is shortened. Are not our 

 teachers and pastors, our jurists and officers, and even our doctors, 

 too much devoted to theorizing and doctrine, and too little to life 

 and reality ; and do they not acquire this habit at the university ? 

 Are they not led by their teachers and by the customs into an ex- 

 aggerated valuation of pure scientific work ? And do not many 

 come to regard practical work as something inferior, which they 

 take up as a means of support only while the more distinguished 

 career of the academy is for some cause inaccessible to them ? 



Fears of this kind, which are often expressed, are possibly not 

 without ground ; but I have another result to present of the asso- 

 ciation of research and teaching at our universities. I have 

 already referred to it in an essay on the Nature of the German 

 Universities, and content myself now with the repetition of two 

 remarks made there : " According to the German idea the univer- 

 sity professor is both a teacher and a scientific investigator, prin- 

 cipally the latter, so that one may truly say that in Germany sci- 

 entific investigators are at the same time the teachers of academic 

 youth. This fixes the position of scientific men in the life of the 

 German people. Our thinkers and investigators are known to us 

 not merely from their writings, but face to face, as personal teach- 

 ers. Men like Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Schleiermacher 

 labored during their lives before the public as teachers. So Kant, 

 Christian "Wolff, Heyne, and F. A. Wolf, as personal teachers of 

 our people, trained its leaders and teachers. . . . The relation is 

 undoubtedly advantageous to both. The German youth, who at 

 the university come into immediate contact with the intellectual 

 leaders of the people, receive there the deepest and most enduring 

 stimulus. On the other side, the relation is delightful to our sci- 

 entific men. They continue young in contact with youth; the 

 personal exchange of thought acquires something moving and 

 vivifying through the silent but intelligent reaction of the stu- 

 dents which is lacking to the solitary writer. And if knowledge 

 stands nearer to the hearts of the public in Germany than with 

 other people, that also is connected with the fact that here the 

 great men of science have always been, too, the personal teachers 

 of the young men." 



I think there are advantages which may well compensate us 

 for the few embarrassments and disadvantages that may arise 



