THE FREEDOM OF SCIENCE

This book has issued from the throes of dissension and strife, seeing the light at a time when, in Austria and Germany, the bitter forces of opposition, that range themselves about the shibboleth Freedom of Science, were seen engaging in a combat of fiercer intensity than ever. Yet, notwithstanding, this Child of Strife has learned the language of Peace only. It speaks the language of an impartial objectivity which endeavours, in a spirit of unimpassioned, though earnest, calm, to range itself over the burning questions of the day—over those great Weltanschauung questions, that stand in such close relation with the compendious motto: Freedom of Science. Yes, Freedom and Science serve, in our age and on both sides of the Atlantic, as trumpet-calls, to summon together—often indeed to pit in deadly combat—the rival forces of opposition. They are catch-words that tend to hold at fever-pitch the intellectual life of modern civilization—agents as they are of such mighty and far-reaching influences.