THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT IN GERMANY. 



163 



very strongly here is the existence in the midst of 

 European life, all through our century, of this vast organis- 

 ation for intellectual work, this great engine of thought ; 

 and to assign to it one of the foremost places among the 

 great agencies with which we shall have to deal. 



The beginning of the present century found this great 

 institution of university education in full swing among all 



* 



the German-speaking nations. 1 The eighteenth century 

 brought it to that state of perfection in which we have 

 been accustomed to see it. In the course of that century 

 it outgrew its earlier and more limited phases of existence, 

 its period of more restricted usefulness; it emancipated 

 itself from Court and personal favouritism, from ecclesias- 



4. 

 pmnt of 



the German 



medicine and surgery, whereas Ber- 

 lin concentrated the great repre- 

 sentatives of the more recent scien- 

 tific developments. In the course of 

 the last hundred years no one uni- 

 versity has been allowed to retain 

 for any length of time the supremacy 

 in any single branch. The light 

 has quickly been diffused all over 

 the country, when once kindled at 

 one point. How will the future 

 compare in this respect? 



1 This is not quite the case as 

 regards Switzerland. The city of 

 Basel, which before the Reformation 

 was the seat of much learning, the 

 names of Sebastian Brandt, Reuch- 

 lin, and Erasmus being intimately 

 connected with it, had a university 

 from 1459. The antagonism to 

 classical and polite literature which 

 characterised a large section of the 

 Reformers (see Paulsen, p. 128 sqq.) 

 destroyed many nourishing centres 

 of culture ; amongst them the Uni- 

 versity of Basel, which was sus- 

 pended in 1529, when the city ac- 

 cepted the Reformation, but re- 

 opened three years later in 1532. 



Geneva, though this is outside of the 

 German-speaking area and presents 

 a culture quite peculiar to itself, 

 had an academy from 1559, with 

 many celebrated professors and 

 numerous students of theology from 

 all countries of Europe. Lausanne, 

 Bern, and Zurich had colleges or high 

 schools in the seventeenth century. 

 But down to the nineteenth century 

 Basel remained the only university 

 in the Continental sense. The 

 reasons why Switzerland developed 

 her university system so late are 

 discussed in Tholuck, 'Das akade- 

 mische Leben des 17 ten Jahrhun- 

 derts,' vol. ii. p. 314, &c., where 

 also minute information is given on 

 the several high schools of Switzer- 

 land. The question is interesting, 

 seeing that the greatest in many 

 branches of science such as Ber- 

 noulli, Euler, Haller, Cuvier, 

 Steiner have come from Switzer- 

 land, and that by reason of the 

 names of Rousseau and Pestalozzi it 

 has become the centre of modern 

 ideas on education. 



