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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXII. No. 558. 



It must, therefore, be of especial interest to 

 people in this country to know that he has 

 recently referred at some length to the sub- 

 ject of the relation of Europe (and espe- 

 cially Germany) to American science, and 

 to learn, in brief at least, what are his 

 views concerning it. 



Waldeyer discussed the matter in a Fest- 

 rede delivered at an open session of the 

 Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences in 

 Berlin early this year.^ The occasion was 

 the double celebration of the Kaiser 's birth- 

 day and the anniversary of King Fred- 

 erick II. The first part of the address 

 dealt with the political relations of Ger- 

 many and America, with especial reference 

 to Frederick's attitude toward the Amer- 

 ican republic at its birth, a natural topic 

 in view of the recent presentation of the 

 statue of Frederick the Great to the Amer- 

 ican nation. It is the second part of the 

 address which is of chief interest to the 

 readers of Science, as it considers the 

 special matter of the relation of Europe 

 and of Germany to science in America. 

 The whole address is characterized by a 

 wish for harmonic relations, by a keen 

 desire to foster and favor international 

 scientific intercourse and by a plea for the 

 avoidance of everything in the way of 

 mutual misunderstanding and unseemly 

 discord. It is a liberal and broad-minded 

 statement, certainly as fully lenient to 

 America as one could ask; it can scarcely 

 fail to cement good feeling and to promote 

 intercontinental harmony among scientific 

 men. On adverting to this special topic 

 Waldeyer points out that if two peoples are 

 to cooperate in the work of the advancement 

 of culture, the first necessity is mutual re- 

 spect between them. Each must have 

 something good, something self-achieved 

 to otfer, each must preserve its own indi- 



^ Waldeyer, W., ' Festrede,' Sifzher. d. kg. 

 Preuss. Al-ad. d. Wissensch., 1005, IV;, 105-121. 



viduality, not with obtrusive ostentation, 

 but quietly and with that certainty which 

 naturally accompanies the feeling of health 

 and strength ; for nations are like men — he 

 who has not confidence in himself will also 

 soon be given up by others. He urges the 

 necessity of stilling those tendencies which 

 arise from time to time in one nation to 

 unjustly threaten or injure another, the 

 desirability of getting rid of prejudices and 

 of clearing up misunderstandings and un- 

 j.ust suspicions of the other, the importance 

 of directing attention in each nation to the 

 good in the other, of which it is often 

 ignorant, owing to lack of knowledge of 

 the nature of the people and of their civic 

 and social institutions. This, he points out, 

 is why Germans, in order to maintain a 

 healthy and useful relation to American 

 science, must, above all, know how the 

 American thinks about culture and science, 

 what the present position of science and 

 scientific investigation in America really is, 

 and how it is likely to shape itself in the 

 near future. 



Waldeyer admits that in Germany the 

 false opinion that the American turns pre- 

 dominantly toward material interests and 

 that he has but little inclination for purely 

 scientific things is still widespread. Those 

 who hold it, he says, forget America 's great 

 universities — Harvard, nearly 300 years 

 old, with its 5,000 students per year ; Yale, 

 more than 200 years old; Princeton; 

 Brown; the University of Pennsylvania, 

 contemporaneous in foundation with Got- 

 tingen ; Columbia, established seven decades 

 ago ; and young institutions, like Johns 

 Hopkins, Cornell, the University of Chicago 

 and the University of California, already 

 grown to powerful positions in the country. 

 If Germany bore in mind the great public 

 libraries which exist in America, with their 

 magnificent equipment, their easy access 

 and their prodigious use by all classes, in- 



