Wolf, who is a person that seeks and loves the truth, who is to
be held in high honor among all men, and I believe you will have
achieved a veritable conquest in the realm of truth if you persuade
Wolf to return to us."

So it appears, then, that also this conflict serves only to add force
to the ancient principle that scientific research and the presentation
of scientific truth is not to be bound by any limitations or by any
considerations of expediency, and must find its sole and all
sufficient justification in itself alone. This principle hereby
achieved a new lustre and gained the full authentication of the crown.

Even the existence of God was not shielded from the discussion of
science. Science was allowed, as it is still allowed, to put forth its
proofs against his existence. The provisions of the new penal code
bear only upon blasphemous utterances, such revilings of God as may
offend those who believe otherwise, not upon the denial of his
existence.

For many decades before the days of the Constitution the
unquestioned liberty of science on Prussian ground had served the
antagonists of Prussia as their supreme recourse, their chief
boast and proudest ornament. You will remember the extraordinary
sensation created by the case of Bruno Bauer, the Privat Docent
on the theological faculty at Bonn, whom it was attempted to
deprive of his _licentia docendi_[51] at the ominous instance of
the absolutist-pietistical Eichhorn ministry, because of his
peculiar doctrine concerning the gospel. This was the first case
during the present century in which an assault has been attempted
upon the freedom of scientific teaching, and even this was an
infinitely less heinous one than the present. The faculties of
the university were deeply stirred, and for months together
official pronunciamentos swarmed about the town; men of the
highest standing, such as Marheinecke and others, declared that
protestantism and enlightenment were threatened in their very
foundations in case such usurpation, hitherto unheard of in
Prussia, were allowed to take its course. And even such
expressions of opinion as reached a conclusion subservient to the
ministerial view based their conclusion on the ground that
the case in question concerned a _licentia docendi_ in the
theological faculty, with the fundamental principles of which
Bauer's doctrines were incompatible. They took care expressly to
declare that had the question concerned a _licentia do