214 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



35. ' 



Combina- ' 

 tion of re- 

 search and 

 teaching. 



labours had to fit in with the general plan, to find a 

 place in the one great edifice. 



Thirdly, the German man of science was a teacher ; he 

 had to communicate his ideas to younger minds, to make 

 the principles and methods of research clear, to guarantee, 

 in his course of lectures, something like completeness, 

 to give a comprehensive survey ; not to teach " une 

 science faite," but to draw out original talent in others, 

 to encourage co-operation in research, to portion out the 

 common work to the talents which surrounded him, or it 

 might be to direct the flight of the aspiring genius. 1 



1 Here the two main objects of 

 academic teaching are to impart 

 a knowledge of the right method 

 in the special science, and to give 

 a survey of the whole domain 

 of the science. The two principal 

 institutions by which these ob- 

 jects are attained were first set 

 going in the classical branches of 

 study, and may be defined by two 

 terms the "seminary" and the 

 lecture on " encyclopaedia." Both 

 terms are taken from earlier insti- 

 tutions. The seminary was origin- 

 ally a training - school for priests 

 or teachers. Under such masters 

 of methodical research as F. A. 

 Wolf and Gottfried Hermann, the 

 institution acquired a different 

 character. " The seminaries are 

 the real nurseries of scientific 

 research. They were founded, in- 

 deed, with a different object ; the 

 first seminaries, the philological 

 seminaries, which were started 

 during the last century at Halle 

 and Gottingen, were or should have 

 been pedagogic seminaries for the 

 future masters in the learned 

 schools. In reality they were 

 especially that of F. A. Wolf 

 in the first place institutions in 

 which the art of philological re- 

 search was taught. This is even 



more the case in the philological 

 seminaries and societies which 

 during the nineteenth century 

 have been conducted by G. Her- 

 mann, Fr. Thiersch, Fr. Ritschl, and 

 others : they were nurseries of 

 philologists, not of teachers. And 

 the same may be said of the numer- 

 ous seminaries which in modern 

 times have grown up in the other 

 sciences within the philosophical 

 faculty, and also in the faculties 

 of theology and law : they set up 

 as their aim with few exceptions 

 the training for scientific work 

 and research, not the utilisation of 

 knowledge for a practical purpose " 

 (Paulsen in Lexis, ' Die deutschen 

 Universitaten,' vol. i. p. 74, &c.) 

 The same idea was in the mind of 

 Liebig when he started the first 

 chemical laboratory at Giessen (see 

 supra, p. 188, note). The ency- 

 clopaedic treatment of every large 

 subject in a special course of lec- 

 tures arranged for this purpose 

 had the object of preventing the 

 different studies from falling asun- 

 der or ultimately failing to unite 

 in the realisation of one great aim. 

 This great aim of all philological 

 studies, for instance, was always 

 held up by men like Wolf, Her- 

 mann, Bockh, and Ritschl, among 



