122 GERMAN SCIENCE 



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 

 being lost ; that we have lost the old idealism and in its place 

 have put phrases and pomposity and high-sounding words.' l 



( 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. In the nation as in 

 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 

 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 ? ' 2 



1 Unser Kaiser undsein Volk, by a ' Schwarzseher ' (' Pessimist '), p. 155. 



2 Zur Ethik und Politik, p. 62. 



