Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/193

Rh these, even if the teacher can and does give them, are less plainly set forth among the mass of details and by being scattered through the hours. Or take natural science and archaeology: A hundred years ago a teacher went over the whole subject in a reasonable number of lectures. Now it takes several teachers to do the work, each of whom devotes a course of lectures to a special field. It is evident that this method will make it much harder for the student to get a simple comprehension of the whole. It may easily come to pass that he is bewildered and distracted by the mass of detail, and amid the diversity of views and methods of different teachers gropes unintelligently hither and thither, and does not reach a clear understanding and free view of the whole till after many terms have been wasted. Or, if he seeks to escape this evil by attaching himself to a single teacher, he encounters the other danger of confining himself in that special field, giving himself up to the working out of a single problem, and of soon burying himself in it so deeply that he can see nothing else in heaven and earth, and of ultimately leaving the university a one-sided specialist. Another evil result that occurs to me is, that the increasing division of labor is attended with a loosening of the relation of the university teacher to practical work. This is especially evident in the juridical and theological faculties. The law professors formerly, as members of the bar, regularly took part in the administration of justice. Now they are quite outside of legal practice, and by a reflex action their teaching has become more abstract and dogmatic. The theological professors were formerly engaged also in preaching and pastoral work, and in church and school direction. In the beginning the relation was often such that the pastoral office was regarded as the chief object, and the theological professorship as a secondary work; and the instruction given to the students was a direct introduction to the duties on which they were about to enter.

It should not be forgotten that very earnest and successful efforts have been put forth during the present century to make scientific instruction more fruitful. Among the results of these are the exercises and experiments in seminaries and institutes of various kinds, of which students enjoy the advantages; the increase of means of instruction, such as the more extensive use of demonstrations with which the lectures are accompanied, and the great increase and freer use of libraries, are not to be despised.

After considering all these facts, we conclude that the association of scientific research and scientific teaching, as it has been developed in the history of the German universities, may be regarded as a happy joining, which we should by all means maintain in the future. The universities have so far devoted themselves legitimately to both purposes, and on the whole with good