ON ACADEMIC FEEEDOM IN GERMAN UNIVERSITIES. 261 



remained outside the Universities. The answer to such 

 an inquiry is given in the not infrequent jest or sneer 

 that all wisdom in Germany is professorial wisdom. If 

 we look at England, we see men like Humphry Davy, 

 Faraday, Mill, Grote, who have had no connection with 

 English Universities. If, on the other hand, we deduct 

 from the list of German men of science those who, 

 like David Strauss, have been driven away by Govern- 

 ment for ecclesiastical or for political reasons, and those 

 who, as members of learned Academies, had the right 

 to deliver lectures in the Universities, as Alexander and 

 Wilhelm von Humboldt, Leopold von Buch, and others, 

 the rest will only form a small fraction of the number 

 of the men of equal scientific standing who have been 

 at work in the Universities ; while the same calculation 

 made for England would give exactly the opposite result. 

 I have often wondered that the Koyal Institution of 

 London, a private Society, which provides for its mem- 

 bers and others short courses of lectures on the Progress 

 of Natural Science, should have been able to retain 

 permanently the services of men of such scientific 

 importance as Humphry Davy and Faraday. It was 

 no question of great emoluments; these men were 

 manifestly attracted by a select public consisting of 

 men and women of independent mental culture. In 

 Germany the Universities are unmistakably the insti- 

 tutions which exert the most powerful attraction on 



