Prerequisites to University Studies The high goal we pursue in dedicating ourselves to knowledge has been, I believe, sufficiently clarified in the foregoing lecture. And so I can be brief in formu- lating the requirements that must be met by those who choose a scientific vocation. The idea of study as such, especially in modern cul- ture, has two aspects. First, the historical, which involves no more than learning. That the student of any science must surrender his will in obedience to the thing to be learned needs no further proof. What misleads even the better class of minds in meeting this condition is the result of a very common illusion. The fact is, they feel that learning requires effort rather than real activity; and because activity is the more natural condition, they consider every kind of activity a higher expression of their innate faculties even though the reason they find it easy to have original ideas lies in their ignorance of the true objects and real problems of scientific knowledge rather than in a genuinely over- flowing productiveness, When we learn, even guided by a teacher, we have no choice: we must take it all in ourPrerequisites to University Studies 33 stride, the difficult and the easy, the attractive and the less attractive. We do not pick our tasks arbitrarily ac- cording to some association of ideas or inclination, but according to an inherent necessity. When we merely play with ideas, a moderately active imagination, espe- cially if we are unaware of scientific requirements, is sufficient to enable us to pick out what we like and to omit what we don’t like or cannot discover by ourselves without effort. Even a student who is by nature fitted to take up sub- jects in a new branch of knowledge not previously treated will not be successful unless he has trained his mind by the process of learning. Without this training his progress will be desultory even in original endeavors. Only those who have learned all there is to be learned in a given field, who can grasp it with a sure instinct as an organic whole, will be able to work in it creatively. A certain popular tone in the higher sciences, which is supposed to make them everybody's affair and suited to everybody's comprehension, has greatly encouraged intellectual laziness to such an extent that pleasant su- perficiality has become the mark of a so-called finer edu- cation. In the end, the purpose of university culture has become to taste only so much of the wine of the higher sciences as might properly be offered to a lady. The universities deserve some credit for having checked the rising tide of superficiality which recent reformers of education have been encouraging. In all fairness, however, it must be allowed that these same dubious methods of instruction represented a reaction to the stodginess, the listlessness, and the boring ped- antry into which the university faculties had lapsed. Besides its own peculiar aspect of inquiry, every sci- ence has another which it shares with the arts. This is34 On Univenrsiry Stupres the aspect of form, which in some sciences is quite in- separable from content. All excellence in art, all shaping of a precious material into adequate form is rooted in the limitations the artist imposes upon himself. Perfect form is attained only by dint of practice, and all true instruction should emphasize technique rather than con- tent. Some forms are transient and perishable, and the forms in which the spirit of science is clothed are but eternally different modes of the manifestation of genius forever renewing itself. In particular forms, however, there dwells a universal and absolute form of which the particular forms are but symbols, and a work of art is the greater the more it succeeds in revealing this single uni- versal form. But the arts, too, have an aspect which can be acquired only through learning. To dislike forms and alleged limitations is to dislike the “art” involved, i.e., the creative aspect in science. Ready-made knowledge can only be memorized; knowledge is not truly our own until we are capable of reproducing the given content in a form of our own making. Memorizing is but a negative condition; true intussusception or organic assimilation is impossible without inner transformation of what we learn. All rules for study are summed up in this one: learn only in order to create. Only by his divine capacity for production is man truly man; without it, no more than a tolerably well-devised machine. He who has not—with the same high impulse as the artist who out of the raw material calls forth the image of his soul—his own invention, who has not fashioned the image of his science in all its parts 8 It should exercise the organ rather than transmit subject matter. But the organ of science, too, is art, and art must be learned and devel- oped by practice.Prerequisites to University Studies 35 and features in perfect harmony with the archetype, has not truly grasped it. All creation is the result of a meeting between the universal and the particular, an interpenetration of the one and the other. The secret of creation is to seize sharply the opposition between the particular and the absolute, and in the same indivisible act, simultaneously to grasp the former in the latter and the latter in the former. In this way are produced the higher points of confluence between the separate parts and the Idea—the higher formulas in which the concrete is resolved, “the laws born of the heavenly ether, not generated by man’s mortal nature.” In the ordinary division of knowledge into rational and historical, the former includes investigation of causes, the latter is defined as a mere science of facts. It might be argued that causes, too, can only be known histori- cally, but the point is that then they are not conceived of as causes. The sciences that are most obviously suscepti- ble of utilitarian application are disparagingly called “bread-and-butter” sciences. But no science in itself de- serves such a name. To a student who treats philosophy or mathematics as a means, they are as much bread-and- butter sciences as law or medicine to the student who has no higher interest in them than their usefulness to his career. The purpose of “bread-and-butter” study is merely to learn the results of a science. The causes or principles are either entirely omitted or learned solely for some extraneous purpose, such as exhibiting a mini- mal knowledge at the regular examinations. Students of this kind pursue knowledge exclusively for utilitarian purposes; in other words, they look upon themselves as a mere means. Surely, no one with a spark of self-respect holds so low an opinion of himself as to36 On University Srupres value science purely as an apparatus for achieving ma- terial ends. The consequences that follow necessarily from such an attitude to science are these: First, it is impossible properly to assimilate knowledge acquired in this way, and as a result it is falsely applied since the possessor of it does not rely on a living vision but merely on his memory. All too often universities turn out just such bread-and-butter scholars who have memorized all there is to be learned in their profession, but are completely wanting in judgment, utterly incapable of subsuming the particular under the universal. Living interest in scientific knowledge develops the creative imagination, the intuitive vision in which the universal and particu- lar are always one. The merely bread-and-butter scholar, on the other hand, lacks vision and imagination when faced with particular problems. And inasmuch as his school could scarcely prepare him for every problem he might conceivably encounter, his learning turns out to have been of no avail to him much of the time. Another inevitable consequence is that such a scholar is quite incapable of keeping up with the advancement of knowledge, incapable of going beyond what he has learned. He thus lacks the chief characteristic which dis- tinguishes a man, especially the true scholar. The reason is that genuine advances in knowledge cannot be judged by the standards of an earlier teaching; they must be judged on their own merits in the light of absolute prin- ciples. At best the bread-and-butter scholar will be re- ceptive to some new-fangled remedy, to one or another new theory that arouses curiosity, a new formula, a learned novelty, etc. He can grasp only the particular for only the particular can be learned—and once it is learned everything becomes a particular. Hence such aPrerequisites to University Studies 37 man becomes the sworn enemy of every genuine dis- covery in the realm of the universal, of every idea he cannot grasp, of every real tuth that disturbs his peace of mind. If he forgets himself so far as to declare that he is against it, he puts himself in the awkward position of judging the new according to the very principles and theories it challenges, invoking principles and authori- ties which were valid in an earlier stage of knowledge. Or, conscious of his own emptiness, he stoops to slander and abuse, smugly convinced that every new discovery is really a personal attack on him. How much any student accomplishes at the beginning of his study depends to some extent on what type and degree of knowledge he brings with him to the univer- sity, Of the intellectual and moral culture required at this early stage I shall not speak; all that could be said about it is self-evident. As for so-called preparatory training, the kind ac- quired before entering the university, it surely cannot be described otherwise than as practical familiarity with the elements of knowledge. As far as this knowledge is concerned, no doubt we should recognize an upper and a lower limit within which the student should have been prepared. The higher sciences cannot be mastered in the same way as the mechanical rudiments used in their study. It would be inadvisable to try to impart to children, in- capable of attaining absolute insights, the kind of knowl- edge that is inherently absolute and communicates this quality to all other knowledge. Indeed, even in the case of the lower sciences, when they contain elements that can be truly appreciated only in the context of the whole, the elements should not be taught to the student before familiarity with the higher sciences has made38 On University Strupies him capable of understanding this whole. Otherwise, he would forget what he had been taught without deriving any benefit from it. In recent years some zealous re- formers have tried to turn the lower schools into some- thing little short of universities, but they have only given fresh encouragement to superficiality. It is necessary that the student spend enough time at every stage of learning to acquire a firm footing. It seems that a few can skip one or another stage, though this is never really so. Newton as a child read the Ele- ments of Euclid with as great ease as if he had himself written it for his own amusement. He was thus able to pass directly from elementary geometry to higher inves- tigations. As a rule, what happens is the exact opposite: the training offered in preparatory schools is woefully inade- quate. What the student should have acquired before entering the university is the rudiments or elementary mechanics of the sciences. Every science has a mechani- cal aspect. Thus, in mathematics there are elementary and general operations to be performed. The university professor can develop the scientific principles under- lying these operations, but it is not for him to teach arithmetic. In some disciplines, mechanical aids are in- dispensable—for example, knowledge of ancient or mod- ern languages—since they alone give access to the highest sources of culture and science. More generally, prepara- tory training should include just about everything that can be memorized; memory is at its sharpest and needs most to be exercised in the young. In this connection, I shall speak chiefly of language study, which is not only an indispensable preliminary in all scientific education but also has an independent value.Prerequisites to University Studies 39 The wretched arguments advanced by modern edu- cators against study of the ancient languages need no longer be refuted. Such arguments merely confirm the intellectual poverty upon which modern education is based and are primarily prompted by mistaken zeal against what an empirical psychology regards as exces- sive cultivation of the memory. We are supposed to be convinced by the fact that certain scholars who mem- orized a rich store of information of all kinds were nonetheless unable to acquire in this way what nature had denied them. The fact that no man can be a great general, mathematician, philosopher or poet without possessing a strong, capacious memory seemed to these reformers of no moment—after all their purpose was not to form great generals, mathematicians, philosophers or poets, but rather useful and industrial burghers. I know of no occupation better calculated to exercise at an early age the dawning wit, acumen, and powers of invention than study of the ancient languages. What I have in mind here is not linguistics in the abstract sense, not language as a direct expression of reason and, as such, an object of scientific construction. Nor do I refer to philology in relation to which knowledge of Jan- guages is but a means to a much higher end. To call the mere linguist a philologist is to misuse the term; the philologist stands with the artist and the philosopher at the highest peak—or rather, he is both artist and philos- opher. His task is the historical construction of works of art and science; he must understand their history and expound it vividly. At the university, philology in this sense only should be taught; the university professor should not be a mere teacher of languages. But I digress. Language in itself, even considered from the gram- matical point of view, is a continuously applied logic.4o On University Srupies True scientific culture consists in the ability to recog- nize possibilities, whereas ordinary knowledge grasps only realities. When a physicist has recognized that under certain conditions a phenomenon is actually pos- sible, he has also recognized it as real. Study of language as an art of interpretation, encouraging conjectural im- provements on the reading of a text, cultivates this abil- ity to recognize possibilities, at first in ways appropriate to childhood and youth, in later life as a pleasant diver- sion for the adult who has retained something of his youth. Nothing forms the intellect so effectively as learning to recognize the living spirit of a language dead to us. To be able to do this is no whit different from what the natural philosopher does when he addresses himself to nature. Nature is like some very ancient author whose message is written in hieroglyphics on colossal pages, as the Artist says in Goethe’s poem.* Even those who in- vestigate mature only empirically need to know her language in order to understand utterances which have become unintelligible to us. The same is true of philol- ogy in the higher sense of the term. The earth is a book made up of miscellaneous fragments dating from very different ages. Each mineral is a real philological prob- lem. In geology we still await the genius who will an- alyze the earth and show its composition as Wolf * analyzed Homer. It is not possible here to go into each division of the university curriculum to explain the whole edifice from the ground up without at the same time discussing the various branches of knowledge and showing that they form an organic whole. I shall accordingly begin by showing how all the sciences are interlinked and howPrerequisites to University Studies 41 their internal organic unity is expressed objectively in the external organization of universities. In a sense, this outline might take the place of a gen- eral encyclopaedia of the sciences. However, I shall never consider these purely in themselves, but always in special relation to my course of lectures, and hence you cannot expect me to present a system of the sciences rigorously deduced from the highest principles. In these lectures I cannot aim at an exhaustive treatment of the subject. That could be done only by actually developing and demonstrating the whole system. I shall leave unsaid much which perhaps deserves to be said, but, on the other hand, I shall avoid saying anything which is better left unsaid either because of its own nature or because silence is dictated by present conditions, especially those obtaining in the sciences.