THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT IN GERMANY. 



213 



nation which requires them least ^ possesses the most 34. 



Complete- 



and the best translations of roreien authors. But the nessand 



" thorough- 



quality of greatest value for science which springs from "1^^^^^'^' 



the cosmopolitan and historical spirit is that of complete- ' 

 ness and thoroughness of research. 



Secondly, the German man of science was not only 

 thorough, but was as little as the German philosopher 

 or classicist had been, an isolated thinker. He was 

 neither the member of an academy only, nor a solitary 

 genius reduced to the resources of his own study. He 

 lived mostly at a university, surrounded by others, whose 

 labours came in contact with his own, or who treated the 

 same subject from a different point of view. He had thus 

 to define the limits of his science, and to see that no part 

 of the common field was left uncultivated and unexplored. 

 His object could not be to produce simply a work of indi- 

 vidual greatness or of finished artistic merit ; his work 

 was an integral portion of the one great science ; his 



' This must not be misunder- 

 stood. A knowledge of the master- 

 pieces of foreign literature was as 

 necessary to the development of 

 the German mind as it is to that 

 of any other nation ; it was and 

 is more complete there than in any 

 other country : what I mean is, 

 that as a knowledge of French and 

 English has been for a long time 

 so common among the educated 

 classes in Germany, translations are 

 more easily dispensed with there 

 than in other countries. In spite 

 of that, German literature abounds 

 in excellent translations of the 

 classics of France and England 

 both in general literature and in 

 science. It is also interesting to 

 note that no modern language 

 has succeeded so well in imitating 

 foreign and classical metres as the 



German, hexameters having become 

 domiciled in Germany through Voss 

 and Goethe, the Alcaic and Sapphic 

 metres through Klopstock and Her- 

 der, the more complicated stanzas 

 through Platen, and above all 

 through Donner's excellent ren- 

 derings of the Greek dramatists. 

 Riickert excelled in the imitation 

 and reproduction of Persian, Indian, 

 and Ai-abic poetry, and through him 

 and Friedrich Bodenstedt German 

 literature has been enriched by 

 many lines of which it would be 

 difficult to say whether their home 

 was in Germany or in the far East, 

 so perfectly is the spirit and dic- 

 tion reproduced. The well-known 

 ' Weisheit des Brahmanen ' of 

 Riickert, and Bodenstedt's 'Mirza 

 Schaffy ' are examples. 



