694 FOUNDING OF THE BERLIN UNIVERSITY. 



it to submit to experimentation — knowledge which the worhl owes 

 primarily to our own Johannes Mliller and his school — no one speaks 

 of vital force. But this knowledge does not finally solve the question 

 about the nature of life any more than the question about the nature 

 of the human mind is answered by the proof that mental activity is 

 connected with nerve substance. And so long as these are open ques- 

 tions, so long the gates are not closed to mysticism. 



With regard to this fear, nothing is more instructive than the pro- 

 ceedings of the medical faculty, since 1812, on the establishment of a 

 professorship of animal magnetism. When a considerable number of 

 petitioners, among them sensible physicians, entreated the appointment 

 of a professor of this branch, the minister of state, Von Schuckmann, 

 said that, convenient though it might be to absorb wisdom during 

 sleep, he could never consent to the employment of a master of the art, 

 because his common sense taught him to consider it jugglery. The 

 medical faculty and the department of medicine were also opposed 

 thereto. A few years later the chancellor. Von Hardenberg, expressed 

 the urgent wish to advance Wolfart and Koreff", the chief representa- 

 tives of animal magnetism, and curiously enough Wilhelm von Hum- 

 boldt seconded the proposition. So it happened that by a royal cabinet 

 order the two men were made professors. This was in 1816 and 1817. 



In more recent times animal magnetism has been replaced by spirit- 

 ism, and at present hypnotism is making tremendous exertions to dis- 

 lodge it and rise to the rank of a recognized science. It is a conflict like 

 that with homeopathy. Will science succeed in warding oft" the danger, 

 and will the Government remain strong enough to keep the paths of 

 science free from obstructions? 



Our time, so sure of itself and of victory by reason of its scientific 

 cansciousness, is as apt as former ages to underestimate the strength 

 of the mystic impulses with which the soul of the nation is infected by 

 single adventurers. Even now it is standing bafHed before the enigma 

 of anti-Semitism, whose appearance in this time of the equality of rights 

 is inexplicable to everybody, yet which, in spite of its mysteriousuess, 

 or perhaps on account of it, fascinates even our cultured youth. Up to 

 the present moment the demand for a professorship of anti-Semitism 

 has not made itself heard; but rumor has it that there are anti-Semitic 

 professors. He who knows the "JSTaturphilosophie" in all its minute 

 branchings is not astonished at such phenomena. The human mind is 

 only too prone to leave the diflflcult path of well-ordered thinking and 

 to indulge in fanciful musing. Such aberrations can be counteracted, 

 to speak with Schuckmann, only by sound common sense; and he who 

 has lost good sense through a perverted education can rescue himself 

 only by rigorous empiric work. There is nothing for it but to learn 

 and get accnstomed to explain the unknown from the vantage ground 

 of the known, instead of choosing as the premise for fantastic deduc- 

 tions the dark and the unknown, as though they were new truths. The 



