TOO GERMAN SCIENCE 



Mathematics, and natural sciences give to the child a one-sided- 

 ness, to be counteracted fully by linguistic study, first in its form 

 and later by its content in historical and other kinds of 

 knowledge.' 



But the strife of the pedants against science is that of 

 the tallow-chandler against the gaslight, of the innkeeper 

 against the express post, of the courier against canals and 

 railways. ' These dull-witted people, strangers to all true 

 humanity, will not have it that the State shall provide 

 means for the citizen and countryman to clothe themselves 

 better or to bear with ease and affection burdens of the 

 State and pay their dues. They will not have it that 

 the doctor shall visit our universities, that he shall derive 

 true value from our lectures, which remain to him, exclusively 

 trained in the grammar schools, wholly unintelligible. They 

 will not have it that industry and commerce shall develop 

 and enrich the State. They fight against materialism, 

 against the utilitarianism of the time, against phantoms of 

 their own imagination.' And yet it is they on whom the 

 natural sciences have conferred the greatest boon. The 

 benignant influence of science during fifty years has enabled 

 the salaries of these people to be raised threefold without 

 causing oppression, poverty, or discontent among other castes, 

 whom they do not regard as human beings because they 

 understand no Greek nor the variants of the Latin authors. 

 To these same creatures of darkness are we indebted for 

 the fact that our theologians only become acquainted with 

 the goodness and infinite wisdom of the Creator out of 

 books, that our lawyers remain detached from the actual 

 life in a State, from its organic development and completion, 

 that their vision is not sharpened, their mind not awakened 

 to discern what is truly useful or truly harmful. To them 

 we owe it that those curious for knowledge in the country, 

 desiring to understand and to be instructed about natural 



