28 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



plot against the order of the state, or leads him to adopt extreme 

 views in politics and religion. On the contrary, I believe that the im- 

 portance and value of scientific training must be recognized by every 

 unprejudiced observer in the sound, tolerant, temperate bearing which 

 scicntitically educated members of society maintain with reference to 

 questions of public life ; which is evident both in itself and as com- 

 pared with the bearing of men in other conditions. Nothing pro- 

 motes free, independent thought in men, so well as the sense of obliga- 

 tion to the demands of the generality, so much as the knowledge of the 

 great diversity with unity and the all-prevailing order that rule in 

 Nature. Against the demands of priestly rule and anarchical lawless- 

 ness, natural science asks for freedom of movement and orderly sub- 

 jection, insisting that both are necessary conditions. It must be con- 

 ceded that neither the order of the theologians nor that of the Jesuits, 

 notwithstanding the nature of both in principle inclines to the con- 

 servative rule, affords relatively so few representatives of extreme or 

 radical tendencies as that of the naturalists. The time certainly can 

 not be far distant when the natural sciences shall be given a very dif- 

 ferent position from that they now hold in general education. Only 

 they can, in the future, furnish the basis, which is becoming more 

 needed as the significance of our public life increases, for the removal 

 of unnatural contradictions in the thoughts of men, for the bringing on 

 of sound, practical, and likewise ideal — I might say, normal — views 

 on the fundamental questions of human society and human life ; after 

 exclusive theological and philosophical instruction in these matters 

 has been abrogated. 



What an amount of contention, strife, misunderstanding, and hos- 

 tility among men might have been extinguished or prevented by a 

 more general knowledge of the relative importance of natural pro- 

 cesses and laws ! Yet the great majority — and of "educated" men, 

 too — even in Germany, die without having obtained more than a vague 

 knowledge of the structure and functions of their own bodies, and that 

 onl}"- serving to the preservation of bodily health. And this deficiency 

 is associated through life with the erroneous and cruel doctrine that 

 there is an impassable gap between man and the rest of Nature ; 

 while the best force of instruction is wasted upon fruitless philosophi- 

 cal speculations that contradict the most incontestable principles of 

 natural science. Still these zealots demand for their faith the right 

 to stand at the head of the schools and of the state. Should it not be 

 the task of the state to provide for the filling up of the gulf which is 

 thus kept open amid the most fundamental ideas of men, b}^ means of 

 an education conducted on a scientific basis? But the state unwit- 

 tingly fosters these contradictions of spirit and fritters away its re- 

 sources, when it leaves its most important representatives, the jurists, 

 who, by the practical nature of their calling and the many-sided char- 

 acter of their relationships, should have the broadest fundamental 



