From an address at the Frederick William University of Berlin, 1877.

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 five hundred 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 Fellowship 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 favorable conditions possible for scientific work, have in their student career not come sufficiently in contact with the living spirit of inquiry, to work on afterward 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 endeavor 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 organization of French universities consists in the fact that the position of the teacher is quite independent of the favor 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 toward 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 favorably disposed toward 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 afterward 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 honor 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 honor 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 honorable behavior in the individual. I am by no means prepared to defend every individual reputation in the Codex of students’ honor; 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.