October 4, 1912] 



SCIENCE 



441 



by institutions of a different 'type. And al- 

 though the universities have altered less than 

 the nation at large, and the national culture, 

 they too have felt the influence of the years. 

 In particular, the distinction between the city 

 and the country universities has become more 

 marked with the surprising growth of the 

 cities themselves. This holds especially of 

 Berlin. The old university building there 

 remains outwardly the same — one of the few 

 reminders in the present capital of the city 

 we used to know. Only the statues of Helm- 

 holtz, of Mommsen, and of Treitschke, by the 

 entrance, suggest that earlier days, and the 

 former giants, have departed. But in other 

 respects there are many changes. The student 

 body has enormously increased, numbering in 

 the last winter semester, if the Sorer be in- 

 cluded, more than ten thousand souls. And 

 such numbers create new problems of them- 

 selves. Class-rooms and laboratories grow 

 crowded : in the summer semester of this year 

 the Philosophical Seminary at Berlin had 

 thirty-five members and sixty-five Zuhorer — 

 a Publicum almost in itself. And professors 

 are borne down by the burden of their varied 

 engagements, rather than by the pressure of 

 their normal work. But even this army is 

 swallowed up in the metropolis into which 

 Berlin has grown. Did we a generation ago 

 fiU so small a place in the life of the city ? 

 Perhaps, in the pride of youth, we exaggerated 

 our importance, but it seems hardly possible 

 that we were so little in evidence as the stu- 

 dents of to-day. In any case, it is certain 

 that we found conditions then more easily 

 adaptable to the needs of our academic life. 

 The old Berlin student could live reasonably 

 near the university; now, like his professors, 

 he must seek residence remote from the costly 

 center of the town. Not only the price of his 

 lodgings, but his other expenses have increased. 

 About him, also, he finds a more commercial 

 environment, one less in harmony with the 

 spirit of his work. The rush, the roar, the 

 distractions, the temptations of the city force 

 themselves upon his notice in new, it may be 

 unpleasant, ways. In spite of " Amerika 

 Houses " and the several lines of communica- 



tion between the university and our own insti- 

 tutions, the student far from home encounters 

 problems less familiar, and more grave, than 

 those which his predecessors had to face. 



Within the universities, on the other hand, 

 the student of to-day enjoys comforts which 

 our generation lacked. Throughout Germany 

 progress has been made in adapting the con- 

 ditions of study to the standards of the 

 times. New Gollegien Hauser have been 

 erected, for example the fine academic center 

 at Jena. Libraries have been built on mod- 

 ern lines, as at Freiburg i. Br. and Berlin. 

 New seminaries, laboratories and clinics have 

 been completed or projected — so just now in 

 Heidelberg one sees the extensive plans for 

 the enlargement of this phase of the univer- 

 sity's equipment. And the older quarters 

 have been improved somewhat into modem 

 forms. The change is welcome, even if to our 

 judgment incomplete. For nothing restores 

 one's feeling of acquaintance so quickly as an 

 hour's attendance at a university lecture. In 

 the fine new buildings the rooms seem de- 

 signed on the familiar lines, the benches and 

 the desks remain, in shape at least, un- 

 changed. As of yore, they cramp the listener's 

 body as much as his mind is expanded by the 

 wisdom which he hears. 



The students who throng the precincts of 

 the universities seem familiar, and yet altered. 

 Their comparative youthfulness may be 

 ascribed to a subjective, rather than an ob- 

 jective change. But in certain ways the 

 students of the present generation give real 

 occasion for surprise. They come late to lec- 

 tures — at least we noticed it in Heidelberg 

 and Berlin — as public sentiment would never 

 have permitted them to do in earlier days. 

 They discriminate in their note-taking, even 

 to the point of shorthand abstracts, whereas 

 it was part of the old dogmatic faith so far 

 as possible to record every word which fell 

 from the lecturer's lips. Strangest of all to 

 the returning veteran is the presence of wo- 

 men. Co-education, at least in the east of the 

 United States, is dying out, we told our Ger- 

 man friends. "But why? Our experience is 

 different," came the answer — a reply which 



