May 24, 1912] 
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in the course of time was largely due to the 
loss of freedom. As the universities ob- 
tained endowments and buildings, as their 
governing bodies became organized, they 
lost their spontaneity and creative leader- 
ship. The great philosophers, scholars and 
men of science of the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries worked in large 
measure outside the universities. Bacon, 
Hobbes, Locke and Berkeley; Descartes, 
Spinoza and Leibnitz; Harvey, Huygens 
and Laplace; Linnus, Buffon, Lamarck 
and Cuvier; Lavoisier, Priestley and Dal- 
ton, were not university professors or not 
primarily such. Newton was, but he re- 
linquished his chair at Cambridge to take 
a position in the mint at London. The men 
of science of the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries worked largely in connection with 
the academies of science, which were then 
established, and in the newly founded mu- 
seums, observatories and botanical gardens. 
This movement is analogous to the contem- 
porary establishment of research institu- 
tions outside the universities. There was 
too much dogmatism, formalism, discipline, 
routine, control, machinery—it might have 
been called efficiency if they had had the 
word in those days—in the university, and 
scientific men found greater freedom and 
stimulus in the academies, which, though 
under the patronage of the court, they 
themselves controlled. 
Toward the close of the eighteenth cen- 
tury the universities throughout Europe 
had sunk to a low level. Within a period 
of a few years as many as thirteen Ger- 
man universities became extinct—Mainz, 
Cologne, Bamberg, Dillingham, Duisberg, 
Rinteln, Helmstedt, Salzburg, Erfurt, Alt- 
dorf, Frankfort, Ingolstadt and Witten- 
berg. But the new era of freedom and 
democracy, represented and caricatured by 
the French revolution, gave fresh life to 
the universities. The centralized scheme 
SCIENCE 
799 
of Napoleon aggrandized Paris at the cost 
of the provincial universities, which only 
just now are regaining their autonomy. 
In Germany the modern university attained 
its fruition. The University of Berlin, es- 
tablished in 1809, when the political for- 
tunes of Prussia were at low ebb, played a 
great part in the regeneration of the nation. 
It was partly founded on the basis of the 
existing Academy of Science, as was the 
University of Munich a little later. It ig 
possible that our newer research institu- 
tions, if placed under the control of men 
of science, may become the freer universi- 
ties of the future. 
During the nineteenth century the Ger- 
man universities rivaled in their influence 
those of the medieval period. The ad- 
vances of democracy and of science have 
been the great achievements of our era. 
In the advancement of science and to a 
certain extent in the maintenance of a 
democracy of scholarship, the German uni- 
versities have been dominant forces. In 
Germany the university is indeed the crea- 
ture of the state and subject to it. But 
during the nineteenth century academic 
freedom and the independence and influ- 
ence of the professor attained a remarkable 
supremacy. Any student who showed abil- 
ity could become a Privatdocent ; if he con- 
tinued to advance his subject with sufficient 
distinction and did not starve to death in 
the meanwhile he became a professor. The 
professorship has been maintained as a 
position of dignity, honor and freedom. 
The professor receives his appointment by 
the decision of his peers and holds it for 
life. He may lecture about as much or as 
little as he likes, on almost any subject, 
well or poorly as the case may be, with 
complete freedom in the expression of his 
views; he is but little concerned with 
grades, absences, discipline, routine reports, 
committee meetings and the like; he gives 
