of thought, and to lead you to a dispassionate historical conception and judgment of things of the past of foreign lands. Scientific work of this kind does not separate, it unites; it teaches to understand and to discern, not to despise. While I am saying this to you, the figure of my teacher, Gaston Paris, appears before me. Those years of study, those fellow-students, arise before my mind, with which are connected indelible memories of distant days of my youth and of recent happy intercourse. You have often heard from me the names of these collaborators and investigators. I have often here expressed to you what our science owes them, for what I myself am indebted to them.
"Beyond the bloody struggle of the present looms the dominating personality of Gaston Paris. Gratefully I salute his spirit from this place. I have often acknowledged the deep decisive influence he has exercised upon me; the best that I can give you has been aroused in me by him. Listen to the words with which he, the man of thirty, reopened his lectures at the Collège de France in December, 1870, in besieged Paris, 'surrounded by the iron ring, which the German armies have closed about us.' After a short reference to the work of the last term and to the students who had followed the call to arms, and some of whom might be in the hostile army of the besiegers, he spoke of the scientific problems which even in these anxious hours, 'when the Fatherland claimed all our thoughts,' still had a right to be considered.
I do not believe that, on the whole, patriotism has anything to do with science. The lecture-room is no political platform. Whoever uses the lecture-room to defend or to attack anything that lies outside of its purely intellectual province diverts it from its true purpose. I advocate unconditionally and without reservation the doctrine that science must adopt as her only aim the search of truth—truth for her own sake, without troubling herself whether this truth may, if put into practise, have good or evil, regrettable or gratifying consequences. Whoever indulges in the slightest concealment, the most trifling change in the presentation of those facts which are objects of his research, or in the deductions which he draws therefrom—though led by patriotic, religious or even moral considerations—is not worthy of a place in the great laboratory to which honesty is a much more indispensable title than skill or cleverness.
If the studies pursued in common are so conceive and are carried on in this spirit in all civilized countries, then they will constitute a great Fatherland, high above all barriers of hostile nationalities, undefiled by war, unmenaced by conquerors, in which minds can find the refuge and union which the Civitas Dei offered them in other days.
"Thus a young French scientist, who was at the same time an ardent patriot, spoke to his hearers on December 8, 1870. I do not know if patriotism in Paris has found similar expression today. Time will show. But I wish to remind you to-day of the words of this strong and noble man, who combined in wonderful harmony loyalty to the soil and citizenship of the world—love of his country and love of truth. May his words not have been spoken in vain!
"The German student of Romance subjects finds the fields of his labors to a great extent covered with ruins. The blossoms which had promised fruit have been blighted. The fruit which seemed already garnered is destroyed. New life will surely blossom from these ruins, for nature wills it so, for the salvation of mankind. Wherever the ground is strewn with wreckage we shall again draw furrows and scatter seed, and those who come after us will gather the harvest. And Teutons and Latins will enjoy it in common. Without this faith in the power and the perpetuity of the Civitas Dei of science, I should not stand before you to-day as your teacher of Romance philology, and your guide through French literature of the eighteenth century, which domain we expect to explore during this winter term quietly and with steadfast purpose.
