PHYSICAL SCIENCES TO SCIENCE IN CxENERAL. 227 



perfect and compreliensive as the laws of nature. In sucli cases we 

 have no other alternative but to divine the intention of the law-giver 

 from the analogy of the laws for similar cases. 



Grammatical and legal studies have certain advantages for cultivat- 

 ing- the mind, because they uniformly exercise its different faculties. 

 The education of the modern Europeans is, for this reason, based 

 especially upon the grammatical study of foreign languages. The 

 mother tongue and foreign languages, that are learned by practice alone, 

 do not exercise logical thought, althougii they may teach us artistic 

 beauty of expression. The two classical languages, Greek and Latin, 

 in common with most ancient and original languages, have the advantage 

 of an extremely artistic and logical development, and of full and dis- 

 tinct inflections, which clearly indicate the grammatical relation of 

 words and sentences. By long use languages become worn down, 

 grammatical forms are sacriticed for practical brevity and rapidity of 

 utterance, and the resultis greater indistinctness. This is clearly seen by 

 comparing the modern European languages with the Latin. The wearing 

 down of inflections has proceeded furthest in English. This seems to 

 me to be the reason why modern languages are less fit for educational 

 l)urposes than the ancient. 



As grammar is best adapted to the education of youth, so are jurid- 

 ical studies a means of culture for a maturer age, even where they are 

 not immediately necessary for practical use. 



The extreme opposite of the philological and historical sciences, as 

 far as the kind of intellectual labor involved is concerned, is found in 

 the natural sciences. I do not mean to deny that, in many branches of 

 these sciences, an instinctive perception of analogies and a certain 

 artistic tact play a conspicuous part. In natural history it is, on the 

 contrary, left entirely to this tact, without a clearly definable rule, to 

 determine what characteristics of species are important or unimportant 

 for purposes of classification, and what divisions of the animal or vege- 

 table kingdom are more natural than others. It is furthermore signifi- 

 cant that Goethe^ i. e., an artist, has first suggested comparative ana- 

 tomical investigations of the aimlogies of the corresponding organs of 

 different animals, and also of the analogous metamorphosis of leaves 

 in the vegetable kingdom, thus determining materially the direction 

 which comparative anatomy has since taken. But even in these 

 branches, where we have to do with the effects of vital processes, as yet 

 not understood, we can generally form comprehensive ideas and dis- 

 cover clear laws more easily than in cases where our judgment depends 

 upon an analysis of the actions of the soul. The peculiar scientific 

 character of the natural sciences appears most sharply defined in the 

 experimental and mathematical branches, especially in pure mathe- 

 matics. 



The essential difference between these sciences, in my opinion, con- 

 sists in that it is comparatively easy in the latter to unite individual 



