THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT IN GERMANY. 173 



Before the methods of exact science were introduced 

 into Germany under English and French influences, the 

 Germans possessed many scientific methods. There was 

 the science of philosophical criticism, established by 

 Kant; the science of historical criticism, of Biblical 

 criticism ; the science of philology : all these professed 

 to have methods as definite, aims as lofty, and a style 

 as pure, as the exact sciences brought with them. 



At present a tendency of thought may exist in Ger- 

 many, akin to the positive philosophy in France and 

 England, which aims at introducing the methods of the 

 natural sciences so as to cover the whole ground of re- 

 search, and to allow of no other methods. Should it 

 succeed, it will destroy the essential features of the 

 German university system, and with it the ideal of 

 Wissenschaft as it has existed in all the leading minds 

 of Germany during the last hundred years. 



I intend to come back to this subject later on, and 

 to define more clearly what the German ideal of science 

 what Wissenschaft is. That which we are occupied 

 with at present is the diffusion of the scientific spirit, in 

 the narrower sense, as it was firmly established in France 

 through the great mathematicians and scientists at the 



the studies of classical antiquity"; 

 he maintained that philology, as 

 science, not the barren training of 

 a pedagogic seminary, is the only 

 right thing for future masters. 

 "The good teacher must, even for 

 teaching purposes, have and know, 

 both in quantity and quality, more 

 than he requires for immediate 

 progress ; the portion he requires 

 for immediate communication, for 

 practical teaching purposes, must 

 be delivered out of the fulness and 



the depth of knowledge ; it must, 

 even in its circumscribed nature, 

 contain the germs of further mental 

 development. Such depth, such 

 fructifying power, comes only from 

 science " ( Wissenschaft). See Rib- 

 beck, ' Leben Ritschl's,' vol. ii. p. 

 277. And as every mode of thought, 

 if clearly felt and active, finds its 

 expression in language, so Ritschl 

 was fond of characterising his scien- 

 tific method by the word 



