The concept of higher institutions of learning as the summit where everything that happens directly in the interest of the moral culture of the nation comes together, rests on such institutions being designed as places where learning in the deepest and widest sense of the word [Wissenschaft] may be cultivated, and where the contents of learning, produced not with the intention of serving education, but being naturally best suited for it, may be. given over to the nation's mental and moral education.

Their function therefore consists in the inward relating of objective learning to subjective education, and in the outward connection of a student's completed schooling to his independent study - or rather to aid in the transition between them. But the main standard of reference remains learning itself. For if it remains pure, it will be properly applied as a whole, disregarding individual deviations.

Inasmuch as all such institutions can attain their purpose only by continual confrontation with the pure idea of learning, the principles ruling their administration are isolation and freedom. Since, however, human spiritual activity, like any other, only flourishes under cooperation . . . the inward organization of these institutions must produce and maintain an uninterrupted cooperative spirit, one which again and again inspires its members, but inspires them without forcing them and without specific intent to inspire.

It is a further characteristic of higher institutions of learning that they treat all knowledge as a not yet wholly solved problem and are therefore never done with investigation and research. This in contrast to the schools, which take as their subject only the completed and agreed upon results of knowledge and teach these. This difference totally changes the relationship between teacher and student from what it was when the student still attended school. In the higher institutions, the teacher no longer exists for the sake of the student; both exist for the sake of learning. Therefore the teacher's occupation depends on the presence of his students. Without them he could not pursue his work with equal success; if students did not assemble around him, he would have to seek them out just so that he might come closer to his own goal. He wishes to join his more practiced (but therefore more easily overspecialized arid less spontaneous) abilities to their weaker (but therefore less prejudiced and bolder arid more varied) ones.

What are called higher institutions of learning are therefore, if we divorce them from the outer form they assume in their relation to the government, nothing other than the spiritual life of those human beings who are moved by external leisure or internal pressures toward learning and research. Even if they did not exist formally, one person would privately reflect and collect, another join himself to men of his own age, a third find a circle of disciples. Such is the picture to which the state must remain faithful if it wishes to give an institutional form to such indefinite and rather accidental human operations. The government, when it establishes such an institution, must:

1. Maintain the activities of learning in their most lively and vigorous form and
2. Not permit them to deteriorate, but maintain the separation of the higher institutions from the schools, not merely the general theoretical schools, but particularly from the various practical ones.

At the same time the government must always remain conscious that it really neither brings about such results, however desirable, nor can it bring them about. It must remember, in fact, that its intervention is invariably an obstruction to attaining the desired results, that everything would proceed infinitely better without its help, and that the true situation is really as follows:

Since, in an established society there must be external forms and means for all sorts of general operations, it is the duty of the state to provide them for higher learning as well.

It must recognize, however, that not merely the way in which it provides these forms and means may be harmful to the nature of the thing it is supposed to foster, but the very fact that there are such things as forms and means is a disadvantage which serves to pull something lofty and spiritual down to a level of low and materialistic reality.

Therefore it is all the more the state's duty to remember the inward nature of the thing, and to make good what by its very intervention, even without evil motives, it has already spoiled or obstructed.

It may be argued that this is only a verbal viewpoint about certain governmental activities. But even just stating it will prove beneficial because under the influence of such views, the state will intervene more modestly and humbly than it would without them. It is a general practical truth, anyway, that any incorrect theoretical views the state may hold will never go unpunished, because there are no purely mechanical activities of government.

This much agreed upon, it is easy to see that in the inner organization of higher institutions of learning everything depends on the preservation of the principle that knowledge is to be regarded as something not wholly found and never wholly findable, but as something ever to be searched out.

As soon as one stops searching for knowledge, or if one imagines that it need not be creatively sought in the depths of the human spirit but can be assembled extensively by collecting and classifying facts, everything is irrevocably and forever lost, lost for learning which soon vanishes so far out of the picture that it even leaves language behind like an empty pod, and lost for the state as well. For only that learning which comes from the inside and can be transplanted into the inside can transform character; and the state, like humanity in general, cares little about knowledge and talk but a great deal about character and actions.

In order to prevent this error once and for all, one need only maintain alive and vigorous a threefold effort of the human spirit:

1. To derive everything from one original principle (which will progressively raise the mechanical explanation of nature, for example, into a dynamic, an organic, and finally, a psychic interpretation, in the widest sense of the word).
2. To approximate all things to their ideal.
3. To relate such an original principle and such an ultimate ideal within an idea.

This is an ideal which cannot exactly be promoted, but everyone knows that among Germans especially, it will hardly need to be promoted. The intellectual national character of Germans contains these tendencies, and one need only prevent their being suppressed, either by force or by antagonism toward them (which of course also exists in Germany).

Since all one-sidedness must be banned from higher institutions of learning, there will naturally be many people active in them to whom the above triple endeavor is alien, as well as some to whom it is actually objectionable. Such endeavour in its full and pure functioning can only be the work of a very few, anyway, and it does not need to shine forth except rarely, for when it does, its influence is felt far away and long after. The principal consideration must be that those who have an inkling of its power respect it, and those who would like to see it destroyed, fear to do so.

With this we rest our demands so far as the inner nature of the institution is concerned.

As regards its outward, formal relationship to the government, we ask that the state assure it an abundance (both as to strength and variety) of spiritual energy by its choice of men, and guarantee them their freedom to do their work. This freedom is threatened not only by the state itself but by the very nature of institutional organization which, as soon as it is under way, takes on a certain color and spirit and likes to choke out anything not in keeping with it. This too the state must try to obviate.

The main thing is always the choice of men. Corrective measures against one-sidedness, insofar as such choice is concerned, will be discussed in connection with the various internal sections of the institution.

After choice of men, the next consideration is that there be few and simple but profoundly interdependent organizational laws, which again we shall take up in connection with specifics.

Finally, the aids to learning must be considered. Here we can only make the general observation that the heaping up of dead -collections must never be taken for the important thing. In fact it must be remembered that it may readily contribute to a dulling and deteriorating of the spirit of an institution. The richer academics and universities have by no means always been the ones where the various disciplines enjoyed the greatest and most spirited treatment.

Something can be said specifically, however, about the relationship of higher institutions to the schools, and their pure as opposed to practical learning.

The government must treat its universities neither as though they were secondary schools nor as though they were special training institutes. And it must not make its Academy of Sciences serve as a technical or scientific (in the narrower sense) consulting committee. On the whole (some exceptions to this in the case of the universities will be discussed below) the state must demand nothing of them which directly concerns itself or its own operations, but must hold fast to the inner conviction that if the higher institutions reach their ultimate aim, its own aim, too, will be thereby fulfilled, and from a much loftier point of view than any that could have been arranged directly by the state itself.

On the other hand, it is up to the state to organize its schools in such a way that they work properly into the hands of the higher institutions of learning. This must be founded on correct insight into their interrelationship. The conviction must flourish that the schools are not called upon to anticipate the instruction given in the universities, nor are the universities to be the complement and completion of the schools-a postgraduate course, as it were-but that the transition from school to university is a division in the life of a youth which the school, when successful, produces so purely and clearly that first the young man may be given his physical, moral, and intellectual freedom and independence, and second, that he has acquired a yearning which makes him long not for idleness or for immediate practical activity when the compulsion of school is lifted, but for elevation to that spirit of learning which has previously revealed itself to him only from afar.

A young mind, thus prepared, will come to higher learning of itself. An equivalent bundle of zeal and energy, if its preparation were different, will bury itself in practical pursuits, thereby rendering itself unfit even for practical pursuits, or else scatter itself among unrelated facts without making a directed effort toward higher learning.

Principles of classification of higher institutions of learning

Usually one means by higher institutions of learning the universities and the academics of the sciences and of the arts. It is not difficult to describe these historical forms as though they were necessarily derived from principles intrinsic to them, but this kind of derivation, very popular since Kant, either leaves a lopsidedness or else is simply useless.

Very important, on the other hand, is the question whether it is today still worth the trouble to found or maintain an academy side by side with a university. And what sphere each of them, as well as both together, should occupy if each is to be activated to its greatest possible degree.

If one limits the university to instruction in and communication of learning, and the academy to research, one obviously does the university an injustice. Surely all the disciplines have been extended as much (more, in Germany) by university professors as by members of academies, and these men made progress in their studies just because they also occupied teaching positions. For free oral expression before listeners, a significant number of whom are also thinking heads, surely inspires a man who is accustomed to this type of work as deeply as solitary leisure may inspire another - that of an author, for example, or loose association with a number of academic fellow researchers. The course of learning is obviously quicker and livelier at a university where it is constantly rolled around in a large number of energetic, sturdy, and youthful heads. In any event, knowledge as knowledge cannot be properly presented without having it independently and spontaneously accepted, and it would be incomprehensible if a great many discoveries did not stem precisely from such direct interaction. Furthermore the task of teaching at a university is not so time-consuming and difficult that it could be taken as a troublesome interruption of private studies. It may rather be taken as an aid toward them. Besides, any large university contains some men who lecture very little if at all and only do research. For all these reasons, one could surely dispense with the academies and entrust research to the universities, provided they are properly organized toward this end.

The social, cooperative aspects of academic associations, which to be sure are not necessarily very strong among university professors, should hardly be considered a sufficient reason to found such expensive institutions as academies. On the one hand, such association is very loose even in an academy, and on the other hand it really serves a useful purpose only in those experimental sciences where ready communication of current facts and findings is useful. But for such subjects there will always be private associations which present us with no difficulties and which are totally removed from the intervention of the state.

If one pursues the matter somewhat more closely one finds that academies have flourished mainly in countries other than Germany, at a time when universities in those countries stood at a low level, and, within Germany, in locations where there were no universities nearby, or at times when our universities, too, were lacking a more liberal and many-sided spirit. In recent times, no academy has particularly distinguished itself, and in the recent progress of German science and art the academies played little if any part.

In order to retain both types of institution alive, it is necessary to connect them in such a fashion that, although their functions remain separate, their members do not belong to one or the other exclusively. This is where their separate existence can be of new and excellent benefit. . . .

A university always stands in a somewhat closer relationship to practical life and to the needs of the state than an academy does, since a university conducts one of the state's principal tasks: the guidance of youth. An academy, on the other hand, has to do purely with knowledge alone. University professors stand in a very general relationship, insofar as they share with each other the problems of outer and inner institutional discipline, but as regards their specialized work, they communicate with each other only at random, as individual preference may dictate; other than this they go their own way. An academy, on the other hand, is made for subjecting the work of each of its associates to the judgment of all.

Because of this function of an academy, its idea must be retained as the highest and last sanctuary of learning and the body most independent of the state. We must risk the possibility that such a body by activities which are too few in number or too one-sided in quality will demonstrate that the right things do not always flourish best under most favorable external conditions. I say we must risk it, because the idea of an academy itself is beautiful and beneficial, and there may always come a moment when it shall also be implemented in a worthy manner.

Meanwhile there will be some rivalry and antagonism between university and academy, and the resultant interaction should provide an automatic balance between too much activity in the one and too little in the other.

The first aspect of the antagonism will be the choice of members in both institutions. For every academician should have the right to conduct lectures, with or without formal habilitation, without thereby necessarily becoming a member of the university. A number of scholars must be both university members and academy members, but both institutions must contain others who are members of only one.

The appointment of university professors must be exclusively reserved to the state, and it is surely not good to permit the various faculties more influence in this matter than an understanding and fairminded administrative body will do of its own accord. For antagonism and conflicts within a university are salutary and necessary. But the disagreements among professors on their specialties can, even unintentionally and without ill will, distort completely their point of view as to what is good for the whole. Furthermore, the quality of the universities is closely related to the immediate public interest of the government.

The choice of members of an academy, however, must be left to themselves, subject only to confirmation by the King which should present no difficulties. For the academy is an association in which the principle of internal unity is far more important. Also its purely scientific or artistic purposes are less closely connected with any interests of the state.

Here however arises the above mentioned corrective in the membership of higher institutions of learning. For since state and academy thus share the responsibility of appointments (the state for the university, the academy for itself), it will soon be evident what sort of spirit moves them, and public opinion will judge both impartially where they err. But since both will hardly fail simultaneously and surely not in the same direction, not all appointments are threatened at all times, and the total institution, comprising both academy and university, is safe from one-sidedness.

The variety of all the men working in all parts of both institutions should be very great, since a third class is added to those appointed by the state and those elected by their peers: the Privatdozenten who are carried, at least at the beginning of their career, solely by the approval of their listeners.

The academy may perform a unique function in addition to its academic studies by organizing laboratory research and experimentation in a systematic fashion. Some of these projects should be instigated by itself, others received in the form of commissions, and such commissions should be influenced by activities of the universities. . . .