THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT IN GERMANY. 



171 



idea, the use of such a term, could only be born and 

 developed where the different faculties, the various 

 branches of knowledge, lived habitually, for many ages, 

 under the same roof, coming into continual contact, and 

 learning to regard each other as members of one family, 

 as integral parts of one whole. The German university 



Halted as denoting a moral as much 

 as an intellectual ideal, which it was 

 the duty of the German university 

 to uphold and to realise. Such an 

 investigation would have to show 

 how the encyclopaedic view is repre- 

 sented by Leibniz, how Winckelmann 

 applied the term to the studies 

 of antiquity, how Lessing taught 

 method and clearness, how Herder 

 widened and deepened the view, ex- 

 tending it to the elemental forces 

 as well as to the finished forms of 

 human culture, how it was finally 

 raised as the standard of German 

 university teaching by F. A. Wolf 

 and W. von Humboldt, finding an 

 eloquent exposition in Fichte's lec- 

 tures on the " Nature of the 

 Scholar " (' Vorlesungen iiber das 

 Wesen des Gelehrten,' Erlangen, 

 1805), and a practical realisation 

 in the foundation of the University 

 of Berlin in 1809, during the period 

 of Germany's greatest degradation. 

 The following words of Fichte 

 have reverberated in the soul of 

 many a German scholar to whom 

 Fichte's philosophy was unknown 

 or distasteful, and this same spirit 

 has leavened and united studies 

 which stand apparently in no con- 

 nection with each other. "The 

 scholar " (and specifically the 

 teacher of scholars) "shows his 

 respect for science [ Wissenwhaff] 

 as such and because it is science, 

 for science generally as one and 

 the same divine Idea hi all the 

 various branches and forms in 

 which it appears." Of one who 

 may be seduced into overestimat- 



ing his own branch, Fichte says : 

 " It becomes evident that he has 

 never conceived science as One, 

 that he has not comprehended his 

 own branch as coming out of this 

 One, that he thus does not himself 

 love his branch as science but only as 

 a trade ; this love of a trade may 

 otherwise be quite laudable, but in 

 science it excludes at once from the 

 name of a scholar. ... In the aca- 

 demic teacher science is to speak, 

 not the teacher himself," he is to 

 speak to "his hearers not as his 

 hearers but as future servants of 

 science," he is to represent the dig- 

 nity of science to coming genera- 

 tions (Fichte, Werke, vol. vi. p. 

 436, &c.) I have myself heard 

 expressions similiar to these from 

 the mouth of one who represented 

 what we should now consider the 

 very opposite phase of nineteenth- 

 century thought, from one of the 

 earliest representatives in Germany 

 of exact research, Wilhelm Weber 

 of Gottingen. Driven into a corner 

 by the questionings of devoted 

 friends as to his own discoveries 

 and contributions, which he was 

 modestly fond of tracing to Gauss, 

 and unable to deny his own part, 

 he would warmly exclaim, "But 

 is it not possible that science 

 could do something herself ? " Pro- 

 fessor Adamson has pointed out 

 ('Fichte,' in "Philos. Classics," p. 

 79) how the fundamental idea in 

 these writings of Fichte has been 

 made familiar to English readers 

 through the teaching of England's 

 greatest modern moralist, Carlyle. 



