THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT IN GERMANY. 223 



agencies have combined to produce the effect. In this 

 regard the spectacles presented by French, German, and 

 Enghsh thought differ. And there seems to me little 

 doubt that during a considerable portion of this century 

 the German universities, grown out of theological, legal, 

 and medical studies, and widening gradually till they 

 embraced and deepened all three by the philosophical, 

 the classical, and the exact spirit of research, present that 

 organisation in which the different elements of thought 

 are most equally balanced, through which modern know- 

 ledge and the scientific spirit have been most widely 

 and successfully diffused, and that the German ideal of 43. 

 Wissenschaft embraces at once the highest aims of the the German 



^ ideal of Wis- 



exact, the historical, and the philosophical lines of ^'wc^a/t. 

 thought. 



Nor would it be right to pass from the consideration of 

 this peculiar feature of nineteenth-century thought, which 

 is an outcome of the German university system, without 

 noticing the moral significance which this ideal of Wis- 44. 



^ Moral value 



senschaft acquired, and which marks it as a factor in 4.^f**"' 

 progress and in culture of much more importance even 

 than the lasting discoveries in science which it has made, 

 or the monuments of learning which it has reared. It is 

 not the political side of this movement which I refer to, 

 not even pre-eminently the educational, though these are 

 interesting and important enough to demand special his- 

 torical treatment. What I should like to point to as the 

 greatest in this movement is, that it belongs to the few 

 and rare instances in the history of mankind when we 

 see a large number of the most highly gifted members of 



