country is oncerned, for some generations. Least of all shall we be inclined to study German Philosophy, Ethics, and Theology. No one in this country desires to learn morals or religion from present-day Germany.

It would be an affectation to pretend that this loss of touch with German scholarship will be of no account; for Germany's contributions to knowledge have been brilliant and undeniable. A period now lies ahead of us in which the past influence of Germany will be at a great discount; the present almost entirely cut off; and the future small and uncertain. Yet, apart from the not unjust prejudices of the war, it may none the less be reckoned that the loss will by no means be without considerable compensations. Whilst the relations between this country and Germany were cordial, many expressed the view that the characteristic methods of German scholarship were defective; and to exempt this article from the charge of war bias, it may be mentioned that its writer has always held and expressed that opinion. But, with our leading thinkers and Universities spellbound by the obsession that Germany was the pioneer on every path of progress, the originator of everything noteworthy, these suspicions received scant attention. Now that the glamor is gone, we are free to consider more impartially those defects, and to make a more candid estimate of the strength and weakness of German methods of scholarship. Freed from the intellectual domination of Germany, we shall be left to ourselves to discover whether a development on fresh lines may not prove more fruitful than the past has been.

Speaking generally, one may say that the best characteristics of German scholarship have been patience, thoroughness, and industry; all of which have been specially manifest in

the close attention it has always given to details. Its defects, especially so far as Theology, Philosophy and like subjects are concerned, have been the tendency to give a wholesale application of one particular fact, rule, or method to all instances, and the prejudicing of critical investigations by conducting them, not with an open mind, but manifestly and sometimes even avowedly, with a view to establishing a previously adopted theory.

A ready example of the first-named tendency is afforded by a reference to much recent German Biblical criticism. The first established and undoubted success of the application of critical principles to the Old Testament was the discovery of a plurality of sources in the earlier narrative, a fact which was subsequently proved to obtain also in regard to other books. But the German zeal to apply one method to every instance, has resulted in creating a veritable obsession which has seriously impaired the dignity and value of much modern Biblical research, namely, the fixed idea that every book in Scripture is capable of being partitioned between various sources and "redactors." Of course, it is not to be denied that the conditions under which ancient documents were produced and transmitted make it always possible that they are composite in origin. Discrepancies, glosses, and interpolations may be suspected also. But, even with the plainest of cues, it is not easy to partition a book between its various sources with certainty; so that, even where composite authorship is probable, it is often improbable that the various portions can be accurately identified.

The clue to the original Pentateuchal discovery, found by a French layman, was, of course, the distinct use of the terms "Yahweh" and "Elohim." Other books have afforded no such patent

hint, but German scholarship has exploited the original suggestion everywhere. An orgy of dismemberment has resulted, and much ancient literature has been torn to pieces, generally to different pieces, by each individual critic; for as confident allocation of various portions to various anonymous sources have often been made on purely subjective grounds, it is not surprising few agree as to the sources, their extent, and the division of the narrative between them. The only unanimity they have attained is in the desire to apportion every book to a panel of authors, and in the right they have assumed to expunge, revise or recast whatever does not coincide with their preconceived notions of what they would have set down, had they been in the writer's place. In a few instances, of course, the proof of composite authorship has been satisfying and illuminating. Unhappily, however, we have paid over and again for what we have satisfactorily acquired, by time and thought devoted to subjective theorizing concerning other books, which has added nothing to our knowledge, though much to our perplexities.

It must be held that this German zeal for the ruthless application of one rule to all cases is primarily responsible for the comparative unproductiveness of recent Biblical criticism, and for the time and labor wasted without adding to our understanding of the character, contents, and meaning of the Scriptures. After its initial successes, the subsequent contributions of Biblical criticism have been disappointing. Indeed, it is not uncommonly said that the real gain lies in the establishment of the method and right of free criticism, rather than in specific results. Whilst that is an exaggeration, it is not an untruth. The reason is that critics have wasted their energies trying to divide the indivisible, or, at

least, that which is indivisible by us. Some books are probably an unalloyed unity.

The composite character of others, whilst it may be suspected, cannot be proved. Apart from distinct literary and historical evidence, subjective considerations are highly untrustworthy, and can only be applied in a very few instances. But German criticism has utilized them with dogmatic confidence, and much British scholarship has wasted itself in patiently assimilating or arguing upon these whimsies. It will be a distinct gain if our release from German influence in this respect allows a rest to criticism of the purely literary type; for it is probable that, until fresh information comes from other quarters, there is little to be gained by continuing to put emphasis upon criticism of this sort. No one who understands the situation thinks that we have come to the end of the subject. We are still much nearer to the beginning. It is simply that a certain method has been overworked, with disappointing results. If that method is suspended, whilst fresh information is gathered and fresh avenues of approach are opened out, it will be resumed later, and will have new and much richer veins to operate upon. For the present the old seam is not worth working further.

Another prime defect of German scholarship has been its tendency to adopt a theory hastily, and then to force the facts within it. German logic has inclined to be deductive rather than inductive. An ingenious hypothesis has been received far too often as an established truth, and the facts have been cross-examined with the craft of a leading counsel to elicit evidence to support the approved standpoint. No doubt such theories bear some relation to the facts, but again and again German scholarship has betrayed itself by adopting views

gained from hasty and superficial consideration of the data, and forcing an aileged proof of them by distorting or rejecting whatever is not favorable to their adoption. Years ago "the Tubingen school" seized upon the fixed idea that the key to the understanding of primitive Christianity was a radical opposition between St. Peter and St. Paul. The Acts of the Apostles did not lend itself to the support of that view, and thereupon much printers' ink was spilt to prove that it established the truth of the theory in that it was evidently an attempt to mediate between the rival apostles' adherents, and accordingly paralleled the deeds of the one by the doings of the other. The theory ran its course to obsolescence, but its after-effects are still calculable, and its method has remained fashionable in those works of German criticism which attracted most attention amongst us before the war. Schweitzer's Quest of the Historical Jesus was written, it will be remembered, under the influence of one dominant idea, namely, that Jesus was above all else an eschatological enthusiast who sacrificed Himself and His career to the belief in His speedy second advent. The belief was, as the facts have shown, unfounded; but, somehow, out of this abortion, Christianity spread and grew. Schweitzer started upon his quest with this conviction clearly established in his mind. After a long journey "from Reimarus to Wrede," he finished as he had begun; having shaped everything he touched with much plausibility to show its harmony with his notion, or else its utter untenability. We were called upon by his British admirer to hail this exhibition of Teutonic acumen as a notable product of modern scholarship. Now Schweitzer had certainly made a point that needed consideration. The eschatological teaching of Jesus has been in

sufficiently studied, and in consequence not properly estimated. So far Schweitzer was justified. His error was the typically German one of thinking that the part, the part he knew and had studied best, was the whole. If the New Testament consisted of certain verses merely, it might be held that Schweitzer's was the master-key. But reading the New Testament as a whole, no one but Schweitzer or a disciple of his, could hold such a view. Schweitzer's method was, in essence, a repetition of Baur's, thoroughly German and highly misleading.

As an example of the same thing, even more glaringly exhibited, Drew's Christ Myth may be recalled. Its inconsistencies and false judgment were palpable, and its vogue was brief. But its exaggerated absurdities were merely an intensified example of this common defect of German scholarship, the examination of the evidence to support a theory rather than to elicit from it candid conclusions.

The same defect is as manifest in German philosophy as in German theology. The modern change of emphasis from theology to the philosophy of religion, has made philosophy more influential in all theological studies, and the German philosophers have been as guilty in this respect as their theological brethren. In this country we have only comparatively recently extricated our philosophy from the spell cast over it by Hegel and the Neo-Hegelians. Despite Hegel's genius, and the impetus his great brain gave to the world's thinking, it is open to question whether he gave any direct help to the quest for reality. Hegel fitted experience into the "Dialectic" in characteristically German fashion, relentlessly pushing it between the millstones of thesis and antithesis to bake the bread of synthesis. He elaborated a system viciously artificial, which in its day was worshipped as an

idol, but ultimately proved itself like Frankenstein's famous monster. Bergson and the Pragmatists have helped to clear away the still lingering influences of post-Hegelism, and whatever may be the outcome of these modes of thought, they have at least the merit of being attempts to seek for truth in a way entirely unfettered by previous theory.

The latest German cult in this country, prior to the war, was that of Eucken. Eucken's system was, of course, unlike Hegel's but it none the less shares in the same artificiality and in the same domination by a fixed idea. Eucken's obsession is "The Spiritual Life," a vague term which envelopes human and divine aspects, and is the alpha and the omega of Eucken's philosophy. From a library of somewhat verbose works, only one idea really emerges, "The Spiritual Life," which serves for everything, and is served by everything. Eucken's views will be obsolete in much less time than it took to dispossess Hegel's influence, but owing to our inveterate hero-worship of German scholarship they attracted great attention and respect in this country at a time when our own thinkers were scantily appreciated.

There is no need to multiply examples. A period is now before us when our scholarship will develop apart from the somewhat warping influence of German methods. The question, therefore, arises how we may best utilize it, and construct theology without Germany.

In the first place, one must try to discover the reason for the defects which have been exhibited in German scholarship. Partly they lie in racial characteristics, which will not affect us; for the rest, however, there is good reason to believe that the German system of specializing too much and too early is largely to blame.

German universities have encouraged the student to peg out a small claim in the field of knowledge, and attain a minute and intimate acquaintance with it. The British universities have tended to copy the practice. The approved qualification for a thesis to obtain a doctor's degree is often a certain narrowness of knowledge, and students of imperfect general education have been encouraged to specialize, in order even to obtain a bachelor's degree, a highly premature proceeding.

The advantages of specialization need not be denied. But they are most manifest in those paths of knowledge which are separated from each other by tolerably clear and definite lines of demarcation. In such branches of learning as medicine, chemistry, engineering, and the like, and even in the study of languages and history, it is fairly easy to allot the specialist his own field, out of which he will not wish to stray, and from which he will not wish to dictate to others in different fields. But in such subjects as theology and philosophy, which have the world for their parish, the place of specialization is much smaller. More than that, in them the lines of division between one part and the next are less distinct, and in consequence immature specialization in these subjects has resulted in much application of the rule of the particular to the universal, and a continual inability to appreciate relative values, or the importance of the part in the scheme of the whole. In such subjects one must stand in the middle of the polygon of truth, and not interpret it from the range of vision afforded by a single angle.

It is an open question, therefore, whether the disadvantages of specialization as Germany has practised it, have not overborne its merits. It has produced the shortsightedness which, metaphorically as well as literally,

often characterizes the German student. Hence he fails to see the wood for the trees, or examines the trees under the conviction that they must belong to a certain type of wood. Specialists' blindness has been shown not only in the ignorance of other factors, but in the over-emphasis of those with which the specialist alone is truly familiar. The specialist, moreover, has felt the natural ambition to make himself known; and in Germany nothing has secured this end more rapidly than the promulgation of some daring and eccentric theory. Such theories have been readily provided by the specialist's exaggerated estimate of his own particular subject. The result has been a veritable deluge of theories, hardly any of which have contributed permanently to the increase of knowledge. None the less, they have occupied the time and attention of other scholars, even if only for the purpose of refuting them. Constructive work has suffered in consequence, and time has been wasted in pulling down that which was never worth putting up.

We shall probably be wise, therefore, in discouraging a too intensive system of culture, in theology and philosophy especially, and in requiring that the student has a mature training in general knowledge of his subject before he is set to specialize upon a portion of it. The false emphasis, the over-theoreticalness, the ex parte character of so much German scholarship are directly traceable to the practice of setting incompletely developed minds to specialize. In addition, moreover, to a fuller general training, it is necessary to arrange for some system of co-operation and co-ordination amongst men who are specializing on the various parts of any subject, whatever values there may be in specializing, all are dependent upon the work of each fitting into its proper

place in the work of all. Merely to set hundreds of individual students working on separate lines of study, without effective means of collating, correcting and classifying their work, is to invite and receive utter chaos instead of the harmony of knowledge. Whilst this may be difficult of attainment in the case of isolated investigators, it could be much more easily effected in the case of those who are still in touch with their universities; and, after all, they form the majority of our scholars. What our universities lack most is the formation of fellowships of work between their postgraduate students, their older men, and their professors. We teach men together. Having taught them, we leave them to work for themselves, out of touch, save for the voluntary aids of journals, reviews, and societies, with the work of each other. There is surely no reason why the universities should not organize systematic work upon definite lines and invite maturer scholars to take up certain portions of it, and work in a general collaboration, the bond of which would be the university itself, with others who are engaged on similar tasks. As things are at present, every man is a free lance in learning, or, at most, captain or member of his own guerilla band. What might be, is an organized and united army of vast dimensions working each in his own direction, but all to one common aim.

Our immediate aim, however, is not the establishment of a new and better system of specialization in work, but to get rid of the results which have accrued largely by reason of former and false methods. For that purpose a period of free, even destructive, criticism is needed; to get rid of many preconceived notions, to pull down that we may afterwards reconstruct. The work of Bergson, the Pragmatists, Personal Idealists, and other "infidels