SKETCH OF WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER. 263 



litical than on the economic element. It seemed to me then, how- 

 ever, that the war, with the paper money and the high taxation, 

 mnst certainly bring about immense social changes and social 

 problems, especially making the rich richer and the poor poorer, 

 and leaving behind us the old ante-war period as one of primitive 

 simplicity which could never return. I used to put this notion 

 into college compositions, and laid the foundation in that way for 

 the career which afterward opened to me. 



" I enjoyed intensely the two years which I spent at Gottingen. 

 I had the sense of gaining all the time exactly what I wanted. 

 The professors whom I knew there seemed to me bent on seeking 

 a clear and comprehensive conception of the matter under study 

 (what we call ' the truth ') without regard to any consequences 

 whatever. I have heard men elsewhere talk about the nobility of 

 that spirit ; but the only body of men whom I have ever known 

 who really lived by it, sacrificing wealth, political distinction, 

 church preferment, popularity, or anything else for the truth of 

 science, were the professors of biblical science in Germany. That 

 was precisely the range of subjects which in this country was 

 then treated with a reserve in favor of tradition which was preju- 

 dicial to everything which a scholar should value. So far as 

 those men infected me with their spirit, they have perhaps added 

 to my usefulness but not to my happiness. They also taught me 

 rigorous and pitiless methods of investigation and deduction. 

 Their analysis was their strong point. Their negative attitude 

 toward the poetic element, their indifference to sentiment, even 

 religious sentiment, was a fault, seeing that they studied the Bible 

 as a religious book and not for philology and history only ; but 

 their method of study was nobly scientific, and was worthy to 

 rank, both for its results and its discipline, with the best of the 

 natural science methods. I sometimes wonder whether there is any 

 one else in exactly the same position as I am, having studied bib- 

 lical science with the Germans, and then later social science, to 

 mark the striking contrast in method between the two. The later 

 social science of Germany is the complete inversion in its method 

 of that of German philology, classical criticism, and biblical sci- 

 ence. Its subjection to political exigencies works upon it as dis- 

 astrously as subjection to dogmatic creeds has worked upon bib- 

 lical science in this country. 



" I went over to Oxford in the spring of 1866. Having given 

 up all my time in Germany to German books, I wanted to read 

 English literature on the same subjects. I expected to find it 

 rich and independent. I found that it consisted of second- 

 hand adaptation of what I had just been studying. I was then 

 quite thoroughly Teutonized, as all our young men are likely to 

 be after a time of study in Germany. I had not undergone the 



