I. UNIVERSITIES. 
I. A Short View of the Historical Development of the 
German Universities with special Reference to their 
Connection with Scientific Knowledge. 
The following pages are intended to give a brief outline of the 
development of the German Universities, chiefly with reference to 
scientific knowledge and methods of instruction, to impart which 
forms indeed their essential function. 
Division of the History of the German Universities. — 
The division of the History of the Universities, as based on their con- 
nection with science and scientific research, presents, naturally, two 
iarge sections. The first and larger of these embraces the time of 
their rise in the 12th century to the beginning of the 17th century; 
he second comprises the 18th and 19th centuries. During the first 
period the Universities were, in the first place, schools that were 
made subservient to the handing down and acquirement of a fixed 
fund of scientific knowledge. In those schools the ancient philosophy 
and science, since the 16th century the whole literature and mental 
culture of classical antiquity, were admitted and digested. In the 
second period, the Universities, especially those in Germany, have 
recome the chief bearers of the fully and indenendentlv develoned 
modern philosophy and science. 
Each of those two larger periods falls again into two sub- 
divisions, so that we obtain the following fourfold partition. 
First Period. The Middle Ages. — Growing up on the 
soil of the universal Church and its spiritual life, the Universities, in 
this period, reduce the western world to the formative discipline of 
(Greek philosophy and science. especially of the Aristotelian system.