GERMAN SCIENCE 10s 
on this that Germari achievements in science and in scientific 
industry have rested. 
The position of science in the Germany of to-day presents 
an extraordinary contrast to the state of things discussed and 
lamented by Liebig. 
So far as pure science is concerned, I will restrict myself to 
very few words. If we take the whole range of the sciences, 
biological and physical, I think we may affirm that in no 
country in the world are there so much activity, so many 
workers and teachers, so much state endowment, so great 
an output of publications as in Germany. It is the great 
number of scientific men and the great volume of their pro- 
ductions that are the most noteworthy features. 
If you visit the twenty-one German universities you not 
only find professors of science but you find them surrounded 
by eager workers, often of mature years, engaged in original 
investigation, creating a real atmosphere of research. You 
feel that the great business of the universities is not to retail 
knowledge but to discover new knowledge and to, train young 
men in the art of discovery. This is very different from our 
_ own country, where professors have so much of their time 
absorbed in teaching or trying to teach pupils the known, 
rather than training them to explore the unknown, and where 
in addition they have often to deal with material quite inad- 
equately prepared and sometimes quite indisposed for higher 
studies. At the same time I repeat, and I say it emphatically, 
that it is quantity rather than quality that is the distinguishing 
characteristic of German science. I do not think that any im- 
partial person who surveys the history of science during the 
nineteenth century: will affirm that England has been behind 
Germany, or is behind Germany now, in the quality of her 
scientific leaders, or that we have been in any degree behind — 
in giving to science those master ideas and fundamental dis- 
coveries which are the great impulses to advance and which 
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