Part 15

The range and the method of the instruction is a more highly developed gymnasial instruction; though in its limitation to what is afterwards required in the examination, and in the minute study of the contents of prescribed text-books, it is more like the Repetitoria which are here and there held in our Universities. The acquirements of the students are controlled by searching examinations for academical degrees, in which very special knowledge is required, though only for limited regions. By such examinations the academical degrees are acquired.

While the English Universities give but little for the endowment of the positions of approved scientific teachers, and do not logically apply even that little for this object, they have another arrangement which is apparently of great promise for scientific study, but which has hitherto not effected much; that is the institution of Fellowships. Those who have passed the best examinations are elected as Fellows of their college, where they have a home, and along with this, a respectable income, so that they can devote the whole of their leisure to scientific pursuits. Both Oxford and Cambridge have each more than 500 such fellowships. The Fellows _may_, but _need not_ act as tutors for the students. They need not even live in the University Town, but may spend their stipends where they like, and in many cases may retain the fellowships for an indefinite period. With some exceptions, they only lose it in case they marry, or are elected to certain offices. They are the real successors of the old corporation of students, by and for which the University was founded and endowed. But however beautiful this plan may seem, and notwithstanding the enormous sums devoted to it, in the opinion of all unprejudiced Englishmen it does but little for science; manifestly because most of these young men, although they are the pick of the students, and in the most favourable conditions possible for scientific work, have in their student-career not come sufficiently in contact with the living spirit of inquiry, to work on afterwards on their own account, and with their own enthusiasm.

In certain respects the English Universities do a great deal. They bring up their students as cultivated men, who are expected not to break through the restrictions of their political and ecclesiastical party, and, in fact, do not thus break through. In two respects we might well endeavour to imitate them. In the first place, together with a lively feeling for the beauty and youthful freshness of antiquity, they develop in a high degree a sense for delicacy and precision in writing which shows itself in the way in which they handle their mother tongue. I fear that one of the weakest sides in the instruction of German youth is in this direction. In the second place the English Universities, like their schools, take greater care of the bodily health of their students. They live and work in airy, spacious buildings, surrounded by lawns and groves of trees; they find much of their pleasure in games which excite a passionate rivalry in the development of bodily energy and skill, and which in this respect are far more efficacious than our gymnastic and fencing exercises. It must not be forgotten that the more young men are cut off from fresh air and from the opportunity of vigorous exercise, the more induced will they be to seek an apparent refreshment in the misuse of tobacco and of intoxicating drinks. It must also be admitted that the English Universities accustom their students to energetic and accurate work, and keep them up to the habits of educated society. The _moral_ effect of the more rigorous control is said to be rather illusory.

The Scotch Universities and some smaller English foundations of more recent origin--University College and King’s College in London, and Owens College in Manchester--are constituted more on the German and Dutch model.

The development of French Universities has been quite different, and indeed almost in the opposite direction. In accordance with the tendency of the French to throw overboard everything of historic development to suit some rationalistic theory, their faculties have logically become purely institutes for instruction--special schools, with definite regulations for the course of instruction, developed and quite distinct from those institutions which are to further the progress of science, such as the _Collège de France_, the _Jardin des Plantes_, and the _École des Études Supérieures_. The faculties are entirely separated from one another, even when they are in the same town. The course of study is definitely prescribed, and is controlled by frequent examinations. French teaching is confined to that which is clearly established, and transmits this in a well-arranged, well worked-out manner, which is easily intelligible, and does not excite doubt nor the necessity for deeper inquiry. The teachers need only possess good receptive talents. Thus in France it is looked upon as a false step when a young man of promising talent takes a professorship in a faculty in the provinces. The method of instruction in France is well adapted to give pupils, of even moderate capacity, sufficient knowledge for the routine of their calling. They have no choice between different teachers, and they swear _in verba magistri_; this gives a happy self-satisfaction and freedom from doubts. If the teacher has been well chosen, this is sufficient in ordinary cases, in which the pupil does what he has seen his teacher do. It is only unusual cases that test how much actual insight and judgment the pupil has acquired. The French people are moreover gifted, vivacious, and ambitious, and this corrects many defects in their system of teaching.

A special feature in the organisation of French Universities consists in the fact that the position of the teacher is quite independent of the favour of his hearers; the pupils who belong to his faculty are generally compelled to attend his lectures, and the far from inconsiderable fees which they pay flow into the chest of the Minister of Education; the regular salaries of the University professors are defrayed from this source; the State gives but an insignificant contribution towards the maintenance of the University. When, therefore, the teacher has no real pleasure in teaching, or is not ambitious of having a number of pupils, he very soon becomes indifferent to the success of his teaching, and is inclined to take things easily.

Outside the lecture-rooms, the French students live without control, and associate with young men of other callings, without any special _esprit de corps_ or common feeling.

The development of the German Universities differs characteristically from these two extremes. Too poor in their own possessions not to be compelled, with increasing demands for the means of instruction, eagerly to accept the help of the State, and too weak to resist encroachments upon their ancient rights in times in which modern States attempt to consolidate themselves, the German Universities have had to submit themselves to the controlling influence of the State. Owing to this latter circumstance the decision in all important University matters has in principle been transferred to the State, and in times of religious or political excitement this supreme power has occasionally been unscrupulously exerted. But in most cases the States which were working out their own independence were favourably disposed towards the Universities; they required intelligent officials, and the fame of their country’s University conferred a certain lustre upon the Government. The ruling officials were, moreover, for the most part students of the University; they remained attached to it. It is very remarkable how among wars and political changes in the States fighting with the decaying Empire for the consolidation of their young sovereignties, while almost all other privileged orders were destroyed, the Universities of Germany saved a far greater nucleus of their internal freedom and of the most valuable side of this freedom, than in conscientious Conservative England, and than in France with its wild chase after freedom.

We have retained the old conception of students, as that of young men responsible to themselves, striving after science of their own free will, and to whom it is left to arrange their own plan of studies as they think best. If attendance on particular lectures was enjoined for certain callings--what are called ‘compulsory lectures’--these regulations were not made by the University, but by the State, which was afterwards to admit candidates to these callings. At the same time the students had, and still have, perfect freedom to migrate from one German University to another, from Dorpat to Zurich, from Vienna to Gratz; and in each University they had free choice among the teachers of the same subject, without reference to their position as ordinary or extraordinary professors or as private docents. The students are, in fact, free to acquire any part of their instruction from books; it is highly desirable that the works of great men of past times should form an essential part of study.

Outside the University there is no control over the proceedings of the students, so long as they do not come in collision with the guardians of public order. Beyond these cases the only control to which they are subject is that of their colleagues, which prevents them from doing anything which is repugnant to the feeling of honour of their own body. The Universities of the Middle Ages formed definite close corporations, with their own jurisdiction, which extended to the right over life and death of their own members. As they lived for the most part on foreign soil, it was necessary to have their own jurisdiction, partly to protect the members from the caprices of foreign judges, partly to keep up that degree of respect and order, within the society, which was necessary to secure the continuation of the rights of hospitality on a foreign soil; and partly, again, to settle disputes among the members. In modern times the remains of this academic jurisdiction have by degrees been completely transferred to the ordinary courts, or will be so transferred; but it is still necessary to maintain certain restrictions on a union of strong and spirited young men, which guarantee the peace of their fellow-students and that of the citizens. In cases of collision this is the object of the disciplinary power of the University authorities. This object, however, must be mainly attained by the sense of honour of the students; and it must be considered fortunate that German students have retained a vivid sense of corporate union, and of what is intimately connected therewith, a requirement of honourable behaviour in the individual. I am by no means prepared to defend every individual regulation in the Codex of Students’ Honour; there are many Middle Age remains among them which were better swept away; but that can only be done by the students themselves.

For most foreigners the uncontrolled freedom of German students is a subject of astonishment; the more so as it is usually some obvious excrescences of this freedom which first meet their eyes; they are unable to understand how young men can be so left to themselves without the greatest detriment. The German looks back to his student life as to his golden age; our literature and our poetry are full of expressions of this feeling. Nothing of this kind is but even faintly suggested in the literature of other European peoples. The German student alone has this perfect joy in the time, in which, in the first delight in youthful responsibility, and freed more immediately from having to work for extraneous interests, he can devote himself to the task of striving after the best and noblest which the human race has hitherto been able to attain in knowledge and in speculation, closely joined in friendly rivalry with a large body of associates of similar aspirations, and in daily mental intercourse with teachers from whom he learns something of the workings of the thoughts of independent minds.

When I think of my own student life, and of the impression which a man like Johannes Müller, the physiologist, made upon us, I must place a very high value upon this latter point. Anyone who has once come in contact with one or more men of the first rank must have had his whole mental standard altered for the rest of his life. Such intercourse is, moreover, the most interesting that life can offer.

You, my younger friends, have received in this freedom of the German students a costly and valuable inheritance of preceding generations. Keep it--and hand it on to coming races, purified and ennobled if possible. You have to maintain it, by each, in his place, taking care that the body of German students is worthy of the confidence which has hitherto accorded such a measure of freedom. But freedom necessarily implies responsibility. It is as injurious a present for weak, as it is valuable for strong characters. Do not wonder if parents and statesmen sometimes urge that a more rigid system of supervision and control, like that of the English, shall be introduced even among us. There is no doubt that, by such a system, many a one would be saved who is ruined by freedom. But the State and the Nation is best served by those who can bear freedom, and have shown that they know how to work and to struggle, from their own force and insight and from their own interest in science.

My having previously dwelt on the influence of mental intercourse with distinguished men, leads me to discuss another point in which German Universities are distinguished from the English and French ones. It is that we start with the object of having instruction given, if possible, only by teachers who have proved their own power of advancing science. This also is a point in respect to which the English and French often express their surprise. They lay more weight than the Germans on what is called the ‘talent for teaching’--that is, the power of explaining the subjects of instruction in a well-arranged and clear manner, and, if possible, with eloquence, and so as to entertain and to fix the attention. Lectures of eloquent orators at the Collège de France, Jardin des Plantes, as well as in Oxford and Cambridge, are often the centres of the elegant and the educated world. In Germany we are not only indifferent to, but even distrustful of, oratorical ornament, and often enough are more negligent than we should be of the outer forms of the lecture. There can be no doubt that a good lecture can be followed with far less exertion than a bad one; that the matter of the first can be more certainly and completely apprehended; that a well-arranged explanation, which develops the salient points and the divisions of the subject, and which brings it, as it were, almost intuitively before us, can impart more information in the same time than one which has the opposite qualities. I am by no means prepared to defend what is, frequently, our too great contempt for form in speech and in writing. It cannot also be doubted that many original men, who have done considerable scientific work, have often an uncouth, heavy, and hesitating delivery. Yet I have not infrequently seen that such teachers had crowded lecture-rooms, while empty-headed orators excited astonishment in the first lecture, fatigue in the second, and were deserted in the third. Anyone who desires to give his hearers a perfect conviction of the truth of his principles must, first of all, know from his own experience how conviction is acquired and how not. He must have known how to acquire conviction where no predecessor had been before him--that is, he must have worked at the confines of human knowledge, and have conquered for it new regions. A teacher who retails convictions which are foreign to him, is sufficient for those pupils who depend upon authority as the source of their knowledge, but not for such as require bases for their conviction which extend to the very bottom.

You will see that this is an honourable confidence which the nation reposes in you. Definite courses and specified teachers are not prescribed to you. You are regarded as men whose unfettered conviction is to be gained; who know how to distinguish what is essential from what is only apparent; who can no longer be appeased by an appeal to any authority, and who no longer let themselves be so appeased. Care is also always taken that you yourselves should penetrate to the sources of knowledge in so far as these consist in books and monuments, or in experiments, and in the observation of natural objects and processes.

Even the smaller German Universities have their own libraries, collections of casts, and the like. And in the establishment of laboratories for chemistry, microscopy, physiology, and physics, Germany has preceded all other European countries, who are now beginning to emulate her. In our own University we may in the next few weeks expect the opening of two new institutions devoted to instruction in natural science.

The free conviction of the student can only be acquired when freedom of expression is guaranteed to the teacher’s own conviction--the _liberty of teaching_. This has not always been ensured, either in Germany or in the adjacent countries. In times of political and ecclesiastical struggle the ruling parties have often enough allowed themselves to encroach; this has always been regarded by the German nation as an attack upon their sanctuary. The advanced political freedom of the new German Empire has brought a cure for this. At this moment, the most extreme consequences of materialistic metaphysics, the boldest speculations upon the basis of Darwin’s theory of evolution, may be taught in German Universities with as little restraint as the most extreme deification of Papal Infallibility. As in the tribune of European Parliaments it is forbidden to suspect motives or indulge in abuse of the personal qualities of our opponents, so also is any incitement to such acts as are legally forbidden. But there is no obstacle to the discussion of a scientific question in a scientific spirit. In English and French Universities there is less idea of liberty of teaching in this sense. Even in the Collège de France the lectures of a man of Renan’s scientific importance and earnestness are forbidden.

I have to speak of another aspect of our liberty of teaching. That is, the extended sense in which German Universities have admitted teachers. In the original meaning of the word, a doctor is a ‘teacher,’ or one whose capacity as teacher is recognised. In the Universities of the Middle Ages any doctor who found pupils could set up as teacher. In course of time the practical signification of the title was changed. Most of those who sought the title did not intend to act as teachers, but only needed it as an official recognition of their scientific training. Only in Germany are there any remains of this ancient right. In accordance with the altered meaning of the title of doctor, and the minuter specialisation of the subjects of instruction, a special proof of more profound scientific proficiency, in the particular branch in which they wish to habilitate, is required from those doctors who desire to exercise the right of teaching. In most German Universities, moreover, the legal status of these habilitated doctors as teachers is exactly the same as that of the ordinary professors. In a few places they are subject to some slight restrictions which, however, have scarcely any practical effect. The senior teachers of the University, especially the ordinary professors, have this amount of favour, that, on the one hand, in those branches in which special apparatus is needed for instruction, they can more freely dispose of the means belonging to the State; while on the other it falls to them to hold the examinations in the faculty, and, as a matter of fact, often also the State examination. This naturally exerts a certain pressure on the weaker minds among the students. The influence of examinations is, however, often exaggerated. In the frequent migrations of our students, a great number of examinations are held in which the candidates have never attended the lectures of the examiners.

On no feature of our University arrangements do foreigners express their astonishment so much as about the position of private docents. They are surprised, and even envious, that we have such a number of young men who, without salary, for the most part with insignificant incomes from fees, and with very uncertain prospects for the future, devote themselves to strenuous scientific work. And, judging us from the point of view of basely practical interests, they are equally surprised that the faculties so readily admit young men who at any moment may change from assistants to competitors; and further, that only in the most exceptional cases is anything ever heard of unworthy means of competition in what is a matter of some delicacy.

The appointment to vacant professorships, like the admission of private docents, rests, though not unconditionally, and not in the last resort, with the faculty, that is with the body of ordinary professors. These form, in German Universities, that residuum of former colleges of doctors to which the rights of the old corporations have been transferred. They form as it were a select committee of the graduates of a former epoch, but established with the co-operation of the Government. The usual form for the nomination of new ordinary professors is that the faculty proposes three candidates to Government for its choice; where the Government, however, does not consider itself restricted to the candidates proposed. Excepting in times of heated party conflict it is very unusual for the proposals of the faculty to be passed over. If there is not a very obvious reason for hesitation it is always a serious personal responsibility for the executive officials to elect, in opposition to the proposals of competent judges, a teacher who has publicly to prove his capacity before large circles.

The professors have, however, the strongest motives for securing to the faculty the best teachers. The most essential condition for being able to work with pleasure at the preparation of lectures is the consciousness of having not too small a number of intelligent listeners; moreover, a considerable fraction of the income of many teachers depends upon the number of their hearers. Each one must wish that his faculty, as a whole, shall attract as numerous and as intelligent a body of students as possible. That, however, can only be attained by choosing as many able teachers, whether professors or docents, as possible. On the other hand, a professor’s attempt to stimulate his hearers to vigorous and independent research can only be successful when it is supported by his colleagues; besides this, working with distinguished colleagues makes life in University circles interesting, instructive, and stimulating. A faculty must have greatly sunk, it must not only have lost its sense of dignity, but also even the most ordinary worldly prudence, if other motives could preponderate over these; and such a faculty would soon ruin itself.