On the coat-of-arms of Harvard University is written the beautiful word “Truth.” Upon the human mind, too, is inscribed the word _Veritati_—_for the truth_. The human mind exists for the sake of truth; for the truth it reasons and searches; it is its natural object, as sound is the object of the human ear, and light and colour the object of the eye. And truth attracts the mind strongly. The child wants the truth, and tries to get it by its many questions; the historian wants the truth, and tries to get it by his incessant searching and collecting. “I can hardly resist my craving,” _William von Humboldt_ confesses, “to see and know and examine as much as possible: after all, man seems to be here only for the purpose of appropriating to himself, making his own property, the property of his intellect, all that surrounds him—and life is short. When I depart this life I should like to leave behind me as little as possible unexperienced by me” (apud _O. Willmann_, Didaktik als Bildungslehre, 3d ed., II, 1903, p. 7). The great physicist, _W. Thomson_, a few years ago closed a life of eighty-three years—he died in December, 1907—devoted to the last to unabated search for the truth. It is true not all are called to labour in this field like _W. Thomson_. But every one who has capability may and should help to promote the noble work. Only they are excluded who do not want to look for the truth, or who are even ready, for external considerations, to pass off falsehood for the truth, unproved for established results. “I know of nothing,” says the ancient sage, _Plato_, “that is more worthy of the human mind than truth” (Rep. VI, p. 483 c.). And so the poet _Pindar_ sings: “Queen Truth, the mother of sublime Virtue.” If this is the aim of the human mind and its science, there is but one freedom of research, the _freedom for the truth_, the right not to be hampered in searching for the truth, not to be forced to hold as true what has not been previously vouched for to the intellect as true; in a word, the freedom to wear but one chain, the golden chain of the truth. Hence, if the scientist should be compelled by party interest, or public opinion, to pursue a course in science which he cannot acknowledge as the right one; if the younger scientist should feel constrained to conform the results of his research to the pleasure of his older colleagues or of men of name, against his own better judgment, then he would be deprived of his rightful freedom of searching for the truth, and of deciding for himself when he has found it. But there is one sort of freedom the scientist should never claim—_freedom against the truth_, freedom to ignore the truth, to emancipate himself from the truth. He is bound to accept every truth, sufficiently proved, even religious dogmas, miracles too, provided they are authenticated. Not freedom, but truth, is the purpose of research: emancipation from the truth is degeneration of the intellect, destruction of science.