GERMAN SCIENCE 105 



on this that German 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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