The most marked feature of Schwann's career is the unfailing friendships that linked him to those with whom he was associated. At Louvain, and later at Liège, he was the personal friend of most of his students, while at Berlin he made friendships with some of the great men in German medicine which endured to the end of his life. When the celebration of his fortieth anniversary came around, the hearty tributes from all over Europe showed in what lofty reverence the kindly old man was held, who had sacrificed some of his chances for greater scientific fame in order to be a teacher of others, and a living exponent of the fact that the frame of mind which leads to great scientific discovery and that which bows humbly to religious truth, far from being hopelessly and essentially opposed to each other, may be peacefully united in the same person in their highest expression.
CLAUDE BERNARD, PHYSIOLOGIST
The experienced eye, the power of perceiving minute differences and fine analogies which discriminate or unite the objects of science, and the readiness of comparing new phenomena with others already treasured up in the mind--these are accomplishments which no rules can teach and no precepts put us in possession of. This is a portion of knowledge which every man must acquire for himself; nobody can leave as an inheritance to his successor. It seems, indeed, as if nature had, in this instance, admitted an exception to the will by which she has ordained the perpetual accumulation of knowledge among civilized men, and had destined a considerable portion of science continually to grow up and perish with individuals.
--Dr. John Brown, Edward Forbes, Spare Hours.
CLAUDE BERNARD, THE PHYSIOLOGIST.
With the recent development of post-graduate education the Collège de France has become a favorite shrine of pilgrimage for educators who visit Paris. It represents the oldest educational institution deliberately founded with the idea of combining teaching with investigation. The professors were not bound to teach definite doctrines, literary or scientific, but to give rather the results of recent investigations and personal meditation on great scientific and philosophic problems. The college was not meant, in a word, so much for students as for specialists. It was intended not to convey a definite body of knowledge on any subject, but rather to round out the knowledge acquired in the regular course at the University of Paris, and to dwell particularly on recent lines of advance in special subjects in a manner that would encourage original investigation.
In a word, the Collège de France was the first modern post-graduate school. We have learned in recent years how important are post-graduate departments for their influence on the regular work of a university. Unless original investigation of a high order is constantly done at a university, it is inevitable that the regular course will cease to be up to date. Modern educators are coming to realize very forcibly this quality of a successful teaching institution. Hence the interest that will surely continue to grow in the Collège de France, its foundation, its history, its teachers, and its methods.
To the great majority of those who come to pay their respects at this shrine of original investigation, it will prove a [{272}] distinct surprise to find the centre of the court of the Collège de France occupied by a statue of Claude Bernard. Bernard is not well known, and is still less appreciated out of scientific circles. By many it is forgotten that the original free school, the Collège de trois langues, in which Hebrew, Greek, and Latin were the only chairs, has extended its scope, and that in our day the natural sciences represent the most fertile field of its achievements. The absolute freedom of opinion guaranteed to professors originally, and which constituted the principal reason for an educational institution apart from the University of Paris and its trammels, has proved a precious heritage to later generations. Science has flourished vigorously, and the memorial to its representative cultivator at the college in this century has deservedly been given the place of honor in its court.