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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LIII. No. 1.370 



entific work. These universities form one of 

 the greatest intellectual agencies of the modem 

 world. Among them arose the now universal 

 habit of looking- upon private study and re- 

 search as a necessary qualification of the 

 teacher. They teach not only knowledge but 

 also research. To them largely is due the 

 fact that German investigators stand under 

 the generalship of a few great leading minds. 

 They, more than any other single force, 

 should be credited with the fact that so many 

 persons in Germany are devoted to the pure 

 ideal of knowledge for its own sake. 



It is true that this ideal had been somewhat 

 dimmed, even before the Great War, by the 

 incessant demands of utilitarian motives; 

 but it is to be hoped that it will again come 

 into the ascendency and once more renew 

 faith in the importance of the more ideal 

 values. 



There is danger that the ideal of knowledge 

 for its own sake may dull the sense of values 

 and lead one to a practise of treating trivial 

 things with the same care as the matters of 

 great moment. Indeed it seems that the Ger- 

 many of the past has suffered in this respect. 



In no country has so much time and power been 

 frittered away in following phantoms, and in syste- 

 matizing empty notions, as in the Land of the 

 Idea. 



Emerson somewhere employs a beautiful 

 fable of antiquity, pregnant with rich truth, 

 that "the Gods in the beginning divided 

 Man into men that he might be more helpful 

 to himself, just as the hand was divided into 

 fingers the better to answer its end." In our 

 day Man has been broken into smaller pieces 

 than ever before to make the men of the gen- 

 eration, a process which has been carried fur- 

 ther in Germany perhaps than anywhere else. 

 We have specialists instead of Man special- 

 izing. We have scientists instead of Man in- 

 vestigating nature. We go much further than 

 that; we have the geologist, the biologist, the 

 entomologist instead of Man intensely study- 

 ing earth formations, living things, insects. 

 Instead of having the mere specialist of a par- 

 ticular sort we should have Man investigating 



nature, having special tools to be sure and 

 confining attention to a particidar range of 

 subject matter not too vast for him, but pre- 

 eminently Man. The individual, in order to 

 possess himself and to orient his work in the 

 general activity of mankind, " must sometimes 

 return from his own labor to embrace all 

 other laborers." Man should not be so 

 minutely divided and peddled out as to be 

 spilled into drops that can not be gathered 

 up again. 



The more universal is the character of the 

 national temperament the more difficult it is 

 to single out its peculiar traits. Striking 

 characteristics are more readily recognized 

 than hig'hly developed features of central im- 

 portance. "V^laether from this fact or from 

 some other it is not so easy to determine the 

 characteristics of French thought as of British 

 or German, when one confines his attention to 

 the present generation of thinkers. But if 

 one looks into the historj' of the past century 

 he will have no occasion of doubt as to the 

 way in which the scientific spirit has mani- 

 fested itself in France. Its flower can be 

 easily recognized to-day in the elegance and 

 finish, sense of proportion and importance, 

 careful emphasis of the greater matters, which 

 are characteristic of the work of the French. 

 Intimately connected with this and inter- 

 acting with it to the advantage of both is the 

 fact that France has done more than other 

 counti'ies to popularize science — a thing which 

 must be recognized as affording a very valu- 

 able and powerful stimulus to the growth of 

 the scientific spirit. 



In the first decades of the last century the 

 home of the scientific spirit was in France. 

 Paris was the capital of the republic of exact 

 truth. Interest in scientific discovery and 

 creation was widespread among her people. 

 The spirit of literature flourished alongside 

 the spirit of exact researches and both found 

 place in the same creative intellect. Out of 

 this union of elements, too much separated in 

 other countries, there gTew up a tradition of 

 literary excellence in scientific exposition which 

 abides to the present and contributes in no 

 small way to the comfort and delight which 



