History has been the fountainhead of the Science. Even where sciences were set in motion by practical problems in the real world, by questions raised by Joe American or by statesmen theses ideas from the historical tradition have been of vital importance. The study of history must constantly be revitalized if it were not to be dissipated into merely a service industry. Thus it would seem to be obvious that the essential task of the university or college is to make all students feel at home in the historical profession.

The actual state of affairs is very different. History and history departments are mostly deemed superfluous as a private hobby only fit for decorative purposes. What has caused this decline in the study of history?

The main cause was probably the spirit of the times, which for a century and a half has been devoted to the practical tasks of scientific specialization, technology, economics, and power, while history often ignoring the weight of those sciences on human history.

Today, at the universities and colleges is the decaying of history is due to the isolation in which it is traditionally cultivated, removed from the realities of the age as by a kind of inbreeding. Almost all teachers of history have lived their lives true to type, from the day they entered college: history majors and graduate students, Ph.D., lecturer in philosophy, and then called to a professorship. This is one way, to be sure, but as the only way it lets philosophy dry up, in manner of speaking. Instead of coming from life, from reality, from science to the flower of the historical profession, instead of nurturing it from the soil in which it grew, the historian often deals only with past histories and with fine books on everything under the sun. The historian treats their subject like a herbarium of beautiful plants, with which they operate without arousing new life in them by an infusion of their own blood. One studies history and acquires a virtuosity of intellectual movement, but one does not study in history in dead earnest, concerned with the truth by which, and with which, we will live.

It seems fatal, too, that in the sciences themselves history has been more and more eclipsed by specialized research technology. It is no compensation that occasional historical times are used in introduction and conclusions though unrelated to the actual work of research and instruction.

This is too dark a picture of present-day history and science; it is exaggerated, for there are many exceptions. However, on the whole it may not be untrue. If this is the case, we may ask: what can be done to bring the young into a closer contract than they now have with the substance of true historical study.

A great, true, present historical study with which we might identify, which would illuminate the meaning of our existence and pervade our lives and let us commutate with the truth-such a historical study cannot be planned. No person can say when the human spirit will move the course of history.

Something can be done to prepare the conditions, in case a spark, however feeble, should be struck in young minds. The most important of these conditions is still a knowledge of histories philosophical importance. By this I do not mean the ability to quote textbooks, but an exposure to the contents of the original texts.

History should always be taught in the schools as well as at the universities. Neither high school nor university students should be obliged to take it. The personality of the history teacher and the interest of youth must be free to find each other. Compulsion is the end of history.

In a historical age it would be a matter of course to find history carried on in all the sciences, for it is there that history has one of its concrete manifestations. It animates the sciences, gives meaning and elan to them, without having to turn into an explicit subject. In our time, neither scientific history nor the one that is taught outright can be relied upon. It all depends on the people who represent them. For those, however, ways to be active in the framework of the academic disciplines must be kept open even at the risk that some will fail.

At the universities we cannot do without history courses, seminars, and libraries. To give a chance to the new and the original, there should be several historians teaching at the same institution-so that the student will not be inured to the words of one, but will learn to compare, to complement and to correct.

For the students, the study of history must remain free. It must not be required of anyone. Although history is needed in every profession, this necessity is more disturbed than fostered by imposing compulsory courses, or by decreeing that amination in history. There is not much to a history that has no attraction of its own, nor to students who are force to take these courses.

The spirit of meditation, the capacity for penetrating self-analysis, the way of unbiased thinking, an openness for all substantial possibilities-all of this cannot be directly taught, but it can be awakened and trained in the comprehension of great history. How it will come about is incalculable. Men have to be given scope for it. Their fulfillment of the scope depends on every individual.

These brief random remarks on an extraordinary problem of our time must necessarily remain inadequate. The questions that arise in these paper cannot be solved by any institution, only by the inner life of the individual student or teacher. It is of the essence of the Western University that everyone working there should seek and find his intellectual way on his own responsibility. The teachers’ advice, and the opportunities available for instruction, may provide an orientation, but the individual chooses what, for him, will bear the fruit of truth.

The College with the highest standing is one where the greatest number of students will not be led by apron strings of the curriculum, where they follow their own path instead, directed by their own genius.

But we-students and teachers-should neither vilify nor deify each other; rather, we ought to play ball together in a spirit of cheer and encouragement. We old ones teach on the grounds of experience and skill; the young ones must acquire insight and self-confidence by themselves. The old ones keep learning and building to the end-of which Kant said that a man has to step down just when he is ready to take up real teaching and research. But the young ones who set out on the same quest will do so on other premises, and with new chances.