i8o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



deliberately and willfully confine themselves to their special 

 branch, boasting of their independence, and boldly despising what 

 lies beyond their borders. Their scorn is especially expressed 

 toward philosophy; not merely against this or that philosophy, 

 but against philosophy itself, against the seeking for universal 

 knowledge knowledge of the whole. 



This spirit of specialism is the danger. It tends to impede the 

 pursuit of theory ; for it is still true that science originally looked 

 not to this or that particular, but to the whole, its nature and its 

 significance. When science ceases to give an answer to these 

 questions, general interest will be turned away from it. Men will 

 then regard research with similar feelings to those with which 

 they look at a sport, in which great exertions are made for a pur- 

 pose of no value in itself. Is not this feeling sometimes mani- 

 fested now, even though it is not expressed in words ? What 

 means the dissatisfaction with the present shape of our intel- 

 lectual life, especially with our science, which can not achieve a 

 whole, but wearies itself to exhaustion in endless collection and 

 endless analysis the indignation against the haughtiness with 

 which the specialist rejects the assistance and even the sympathy 

 and inquiry of the layman, the dilettante f In fact, narrowness 

 readily goes with limitation, and conceit with narrowness that 

 special conceit which thinks itself superior to all because it can 

 see no one in its field besides itself. 



Just this spirit of specialism is now dangerous to university 

 teaching, paralyzing the teacher's work and the interest of the 

 learner. At the bottom it is the philosophical in every science 

 that inspires to instructive participation. Man has an innate dis- 

 position to propagate his convictions, his view of the world, and 

 his faith. That is the Eros which inspired Socrates to seek inter- 

 course with his pupils. The Eros is wanting to the specialist, 

 along with the philosophical disposition and the love of teaching. 

 To impose a duty of teaching upon him seems to him like a rob- 

 bery of his precious time. This feeling is responded to by a de- 

 cline in interest on the part of his hearer. The attraction that 

 draws him is again the philosophical, the humanly significant 

 I)art of the teaching. Detail and virtuosity and exactness can not 

 take the place of this. 



Further, the more the teaching is specialized the less does it 

 give the student what he most needs a comprehensive survey of 

 the whole of a field of knowledge. Take history : Instead of a 

 lecture on universal history, or the history of the German people, 

 five or ten lectures upon as many fragments or single sides of the 

 subject. Excellent and thorough as they may be in themselves, 

 they afford the beginner less than the others. He most needs the 

 leading direction-lines for the comprehension of the whole, and 



