Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 211

Chap. IV]

OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY

which their study bore

at

first.

The

187 facultas

lltteraria,

either in or out of connection with the faculty of natural its place by the side of the Clergymen, lawyers and physicians above-named three. were everywhere needed, while a man of letters and a natural philosoplier could find a place only in a few schools. To every one hundred young men, who studied in the first three faculties, there were scarcely five who found their career in the study of literature or natural philosophy. And for this reason the first three faculties were for a long time the principal faculties, and the study of the Artistse and Ph3^sicists were mere auxiliaries to them. Propaideutics was the all-important interest, and not the independent

philosophy, only gradually takes

From this study of Letters or of Natural Philosophy. it must also be explained, that at so many universities the study of Letters and of Natural Philosophy has always

been combined in the same faculty. In Holland the untenability of this union has long since been recognized, and the Literary and Natural Philosophy faculties have each been allowed a separate existence; and the fact that elsewhere they still remain together is simply the result of the

common

proppedeutic character which was

stitute their reason for being.

The

deemed

to con-

practical needs of life to

broaden the knowledge of nature have for more than a century caused the independent character of the natural sciences convincingly to appear, and this very detachment of the study of natural philosophy has quickened the literary studies to a sense of their own independence. The difference of method especially, between the two kinds of sciences, was too pronounced to allow the auxiliary character of literary studies to be maintained. This last process of the emancipation of the literary faculty, however, is still so imperfect, that no common opinion has yet been obtained on the unity of matter, or, if you please, on the real object of this group of sciences. The philological, historical and philosophical studies still seek their organic unity. But in any case it seems an accepted fact, that the cyclus of studies will run its round in the circle of these five faculties. Although tliere seems

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