FOUNDING OF THE BERLIN UNIVERSITY. 695 



natural sciences owe their triumi)bant career to tlieir loyal clinging to 

 actual knowledge, whence they pierced the darkness of unexplored 

 regions. The first aim always was to search out the old law in new 

 phenomena and so link them with the old ones. He who hopes to find 

 a new law in every exception is no better off than he who sees a miracle 

 in every exception. 



And, as in the intellectual world, so it is in the moral world. The 

 impulse to do the good and act uprightly rests upon the inner satisfac- 

 tion experienced when we perform an action in accord with human 

 nature, reason, and the reciprocal duties of men. The satisfaction 

 becomes the greater if in its performance we offer resistance to the 

 suggestions of passion, personal interest, or worldly advantage. Is a 

 positive creed or a compelling obligation necessary for this? Is there 

 not a moral law proceeding from our inner nature which urges us to be 

 true and to act nobly witliout human statute? Was Kant's categorical 

 imijerative naught but a philosophic formula ? To be sure, there is a 

 moral education which teaches and strengthens the habit of acting 

 justly and avoiding wrong — true moralit}^ — but in point of fact no 

 education can create the moral impulse where it does not exist. There- 

 fore our academic discipline leaves to students a certain measure of 

 personal liberty, which their feeling of responsibility grants them with- 

 out restriction, and which permits them to develop independently, 

 according to the bent of their minds. They are not bound down to 

 certain religious ceremonies; they are given no ethical code created 

 specially for them. What we expect and demand of them now, as in 

 former days, is the free development of a self-centered, honest, wholly 

 fine personality. May this aim be aspired to by all that come to us; 

 may it be reached by a goodly number ! Then will the hope wherewith 

 King Frederick William III founded and cherished this university be 

 fulfilled. 



