THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT IN GERMANY. 211 



are closely allied to psychological and ethical questions. 

 To start with, here also that untiring industry is required 

 which applies itself to pure science for purely ideal pur- 

 poses, without immediate prospects of practical usefulness. 

 And indeed we may glory in the fact that in this German 

 scholars have always distinguished themselves by their 

 enthusiastic and self-renouncing diligence, which labours 

 for inner satisfaction and not for outer success." 



This habit of self-renouncing labour, of singleness of 32. 



Science for 



purpose in short, the ideal of pure science and its pur- its own sake, 

 suit had been elaborated in many a secluded workshop 

 of a retired German university mainly under the influence 

 of the classical and philosophical studies of the end of 

 the last and the beginning of the present century. It was 

 held up high and conspicuous by the priests of humanity, 

 beginning with Lessing, Herder, and Kant, and ending in 

 Schleiermacher, Hermann, and Bb'ckh, at the head of a 

 great army of devoted followers, travelling through the 

 wilderness of national depression, barbarism, and despair 

 into the promised land of freedom, culture, and hope. 

 Such an ideal is of priceless worth, and it is this ideal 

 which the philosophical and classical school of thought 

 bequeathed during the first half of the century to that 

 new school of thinkers which was destined to study, in 

 an equally patient and unselfish spirit, the seemingly less 

 elevated, but not less mysterious and fascinating, prob- 

 lems of Nature. Truly Gauss, Weber, and Johannes 

 Miiller worthily headed the new army of labourers. 



But though the elevated spirit in which scientific work 

 is carried on may be the most valuable bequest of the 

 classical and philosophical to the exact and empirical school? 



