170 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



10. 



Has been 

 developed 

 under the 

 German 

 university 

 system. 



Germany each stands at the head, and forms the begin- 

 ning, of a (^finite scientific movement. The distinction 

 between scientific and philosophical thought which I have 

 explained in the Introduction would be unintelligible if 

 science were translated simply by Wissenscliaft ; the word 

 Wissenschaft is not opposed to, but embraces, the word 

 philosophy : Fichte, whose whole doctrine was, according 

 to French and English ideas, almost the reverse of scien- 

 tific, uses the word Wissenschaftslehre to denote and char- 

 acterise his system. 1 In fact the German word for science 

 has a much wider meaning than science has in French or 

 English; it applies alike to all the studies which are 

 cultivated under the roof of " alma mater " ; it is an 

 idea specially evolved out of the German university 

 system, where theology, jurisprudence, medicine, and 

 the special philosophical studies are all held to be 

 treated "scientifically," and to form together the universal, 

 all-embracing edifice of human knowledge. 2 Such an 



in him kindred tendencies, though 

 in a different direction (see Watten- 

 bach, ' Zum Andenkeu Lessing's,' 

 p. 23). 



1 Fichte (1762-1814) begins his 

 first philosophical work, published 

 in 1794, with the words, "Philo- 

 sophy is a science," and he then 

 proceeds to give to his philosophy 

 the term Wissenschaftdehre, or gen- 

 eral doctrine or theory of science. 

 A further definition which he gives 

 is as follows : "A science has a 

 systematic form ; all propositions 

 in it hang together in one single 

 fundamental proposition, and are 

 united by it into a whole." It is 

 evident that whoever approached 

 Fichte's writings with the ideal of 

 science, as it was established by 

 the labours of Lavoisier and the 

 great French academicians, would 



not accept these first sentences of 

 Fichte's book. He would admit 

 that the sciences as cultivated by 

 the great Frenchmen had a unity 

 of method, the exact method, the 

 method of observation, measure- 

 ment, and calculation, but not 

 necessarily a unity of system, or 

 a highest all-embracing proposition. 

 It is evident that science means 

 to Fichte something more than it 

 meant to the Academie des Sciences : 

 it meant Witsenschaft, not merely 

 methodical, but systematic, unified 

 knowledge. 



2 It would be an interesting task 

 to trace in German literature from 

 the time of Leibniz the gradual 

 evolution of the idea of Wissen- 

 schaft, to see how the word has 

 grown in pregnancy and signifi- 

 cance till it became firmly estab- 



