178 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



13. 



Science not 

 yet domi- 

 ciled at the 

 German uni- 

 versities 

 during the 

 eighteenth 

 centurj'. 



The general impression we receive from a perusal of 

 the histories of science and learning in Germany at the 

 close of the eighteenth century is, that the university 

 system had, so far as philosophical and classical studies 

 were concerned, attained almost to the eminence which 

 it has held during this century, hut that it had not with 

 the exception perhaps of Gottingen received into its pale 

 the modern spirit of exact research, such as it had been 

 developed by the great French Academicians. Eminent 

 students of science lived outside of the universities, belong- 

 ing wholly or largely to the international Eepublic which 

 had its centre in Paris, exerting little influence on higher 

 German education through the universities, and hardly 

 any on German literature, which had meanwhile ripened 

 into the age of Classicism. This scattered condition of 

 German science gave it on the one side a character 

 which was foreign to the general tendencies of German 

 thought, since this had come under the excessive in- 

 fluence of the speculative spirit without that whole- 

 some check which exact research has always exerted.^ 



Bradley in specula astronomica 

 Grenovia3nsi per A. 1750-62 insti- 

 tutis' (1818). By his determina- 

 tion (1838-40) of the parallax of the 

 star 61 Cygni he made the first ac- 

 curate calculation of the distance of 

 a fixed star, which he computed at 

 12 billion astronomical miles. 



1 It was the age of the Natur- 

 2yhilosophie, which, through the in- 

 fluence of Schelling in the south 

 and Hegel in the north of Ger- 

 many, tilled the chairs in the uni- 

 versities, and penetrated into the 

 learned societies. This philoso- 

 phy of nature had the effect of 

 frequently replacing induction by 

 speculation, the patient work of 



the calculator, the observer, the 

 experimenter, and the dissector by 

 general theories, such as, applied 

 to literary, historical, and poetical 

 subjects, had acquired a certain 

 importance, and a semblance of 

 veracity and usefulness. In France 

 the whole spirit of the Academy of 

 Sciences opposed this form of learn- 

 ing. Cuvier denounced it or re- 

 garded it with fsuspicion, in Eng- 

 land it remained unknown, and in 

 Germany itself individual great 

 minds opposed it, or did their 

 work outside of its influence. 

 Such were notabl}^ A. von Hum- 

 boldt and Gauss. Younger men, 

 such as Liebig and Joh. Miiller, 



