Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 10.djvu/516

 character of any publication, the men of that time, it is true, hit upon a somewhat absurd one in making the test a test of bulk—books of more than twenty forms were exempt from censure. But however awkward the outcome, the aim of the provision is not to be denied.

These ancient traditions, with more than five hundred years of prescriptive standing; this principle which prevailed by usage and acceptance among all modern peoples long before it was embodied in legal form; this primordial deliverance of the spiritual life of the Germanic nations is the substantial fact which our modern society has now finally embodied in Article 20 of the Constitution and so has constituted a norm for the guidance of all later law-givers, in other words: "Science and its teaching is free."

It is free without qualification, without limits, without bolts and bars. Under established law everything has its limitations,—every power, every function, every vested authority. The only thing which remains without bounds or constituted limitation, whose privilege it is to overspread and to overlie all established facts, in such boundless and unhindered freedom as the sun and the air, is the irradiating force of theoretical research.

Scientific theory must be free even to the length of license. For, even if we could speak of a license in science and its teaching,—which, by the way, is most seriously to be questioned,—this is by all means a point at which an attempt to guard against abuse in one case would be liable in a million instances to put a check upon the blessings of rightful use. If any given measures of state, or any given class institutions, were shielded from scientific discussion, so that science might not teach that the arrangements in question are inadequate or detrimental, iniquitous or destructive,—under these circumstances, what genius could there be of such comprehensive reach, so far overtopping the spiritual level of all his contemporaries and all succeeding generations, as even to surmise the total extent of the loss which would thereby be sustained? What fruitful discoveries and developments, what growth of spiritual power