to the commonly instructed
intelligence.

But to pass a negative opinion in the face of the expert testimony to
which I provisionally appeal as a subsidiary recourse;[55] to that
your competence does not extend, for the nicer question, whether in a
given case the most profound researches of science may not, with a
view to their readier apprehension, be presented in a facile and
popular form, whether this fact of a facile presentation may not
itself mark a peculiarly high achievement of scientific endeavor, in
which all traces of the struggle, all difficulties and all the
refractoriness of the materials handled have been successfully
eliminated and the whole has in the outcome been reduced to the
simplest and clearest terms; where the result presented is a
scientific work of art, which, in the words of Schiller, has risen
above the limitations of human infirmity and moves with such ease and
freedom as to give the impression that it offers but the free play of
the auditor's own unfolding thought; to decide with confidence whether
you have to deal with a scientific work of this class, and to decide
it with that certainty and security that is required in order to pass
a sentence, that is something of which none but men trained in the
science are capable.

This question, therefore, I beg that the following gentlemen: Privy
Councillor August Boeckh, Efficient Privy Councillor Johannes Schultze,
formerly Director of the Ministry of Public Worship, Professor Adolf
Trendelenburg, Privy Councillor and Chief Librarian Dr. Pertz, Professor
Leopold Ranke, Professor Theodor Mommsen, Privy Councillor Professor
Hanssen, all members of the Royal Academy of Science, and as specialists
capable of judging in the matter, be constituted a subsidiary tribunal
to pass on the question, whether the address in question is not in the
strict sense a scientific production.

But, if such is found to be the case, then, as I have already
explained, it has nothing to do with the penal code.

I have permitted myself to go exhaustively into an exposition of this,
my first ground of defense, because, for the sake of the country
itself and the dignity and liberty of science, and for the sake of
establishing once for all a precedent which shall bar out all similar
endeavors of the public prosecutor in the future, it is incumbent on
me to adjure you to acquit me under Article 20 of the Constitution.

But it is not that recourse to this article is necess