122 GERMAN SCIENCE 
a 
endeavour after knowledge and self-realization is lacking ; 
that we have, indeed, made progress in the domain of in- 
dustry, commerce, and material life, but, on the other hand, 
the old German quality of striving after the essence of things, 
the hidden soul of phenomena, and the delight in this en- 
deavour—free from all secondary ends—is more and more 
beingslost ; that we,have lost the old idealism and in its place 3 
have put phrases and pomposity and high-sounding words.’ ! 
‘A one-sidedness which only esteems material values and an ~ 
increasing control over nature is destructive in its influence,’ 
wrote Professor Dr. Rein, of Jena, recently, ‘ and this one-sided- 
ness set in during the second half of the nineteenth century 
in Germany. We Germans have ceased to be the nation of — 
thinkers, of poets, and dreamers, we aim now only at the 
domination and exploitation of nature... Have we Germans 
kept a harmonious balance between the economic and the 
moral side of our development, as was once the case with 
the Greeks? No; with the enormous increase of wealth dark 
shadows have fallen on our national life. Inthe nation as in g 
the individual we see with the increase of wealth the decrease 
of moral feeling and moral power.’ 
‘At the beginning of the nineteenth century,’ writes Pro- 
fessor Paulsen, of Berlin, than whom no one has more right to 
speak upon this subject, ‘speculative philosophy was in the 
ascendant, and with it went humanistic philology, both being 
i # 
one in that their aim was contemplation. At the end of the 
century natural science was predominant, and natural science in 
the service of technics and medicine. One has only to notice 
the increase of technical colleges and the expenditure which 
the State incurs on behalf of science ;—for new institutes 
of natural science and medicine, new millions are always ready, 
but is any liberality shown towards the most modest need of 
philology or philosophy ?’? 
1 Unser Kaiser und sein Volk, by a ‘ Schwarzseher’ (‘ Pessimist ’), p. 155. 
2 Zur Ethik und Politik, p. 62. 
