The English type, represented by the two old and venerable universities Oxford and Cambridge, is the oldest. We find represented in it the original form of the Middle Age university, because England is the most conservative country in Europe, a country in which ancient customs are most faithfully preserved. The university in England is a free corporation resting upon a church basis; it has its own government and maintains itself from funds and estates derived from bequests; the state government has nothing to do with the routine of the management. The regulations of life and conduct are in fundamental principles similar to those of the university of the Middle Ages: teachers and scholars live together in colleges and halls in a kind of monastic community. The instruction also resembles both in matter and form the instruction of an ancient university, and its chief faculty is the facultas artium. Its aim is essentially an extensive and profound general education suitable for a gentleman; scientific investigation as well as scientific preparation for the learned professions lie outside the pale of English university instruction. The chief branches of study are those that promote general education, such as languages, history, mathematics, natural sciences, and philosophy. The mode of teaching is that of a school; in many cases it is purely private instruction.

The French type of a university has departed farthest from the ancient form. The great revolution swept away with one stroke the ancient universities like many other institutions, intending to make room for a new structure to be erected according to geometrical lines. Not until the imperial throne was set up did the new university plan assume shape and form. The place of the ancient universities was taken by independ ent faculties for the several learned professions that necessitate scientific preparation: facultés de droit, de médecine, des sciences, des lettres. The ancient combination of the faculties to the unity of a university was abandoned, even the term university would have vanished had it not been preserved in a changed significance in the Université de France. Here it means the great centralized body of administration of public instruction that embraces every public educational institution of the land, from the elementary to the scientific professional school. The facultés are now state institutions for certain professions; the instructors are state officers and as such they conduct state examinations. Scientific investigation and general scientific education are not, properly speaking, their object in view; the former is a matter of the Academy of Science, the latter that of preparatory schools.

The German type, as it is found in Germany and in neighboring countries, the institutions of which have had a similar development (Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and partly, also, Russia) represents, as far as the outer form is concerned, a type between the English and the French. This type has preserved more of the original than the French; on the other hand it has yielded more to the demands of modern times than the English. The German university is, like the

French faculté, a state institution; it is established and maintained by the state and subject to state administration and supervision. Yet, it has preserved some important features of the ancient constitution of a corporation: It possesses a certain measure of self-government; it elects its own officers, rector, senate, and deans; it exercises an impor tant influence upon the selection of the professors, first, by defining the circle from which the professors may be chosen through granting the degree of doctor, and deciding the question of admission of private lecturers (Privat-Docenten); secondly, by submitting to the government the names of candidates for vacant chairs. In its character as an educational institution the German university has preserved the original form in its purest type; the four faculties have remained actual institutions of learning, while in England instruction and student life have withdrawn to a great extent into the colleges; on the other hand, the combination of the faculties to a living unity in the university, the centralized institution for all the learned professions, in contradistinction to the French plan, has also been preserved.

Viewing the inner character of the German university its special feature becomes apparent at once, namely, that it is both a laboratory of scientific investigation and an institution for the highest scientific instruction, general as well as professional. Like the English universities it offers an extensive and profound general scientific education; this is the special aim of the philosophic faculty. Like the French facultés the German university offers professional instruction for the learned professions, for the clergymen, the judges, the higher adminis trative officers, the physicians, and teachers of secondary schools. Besides this, the German universities are something which the English and French universities are not, namely, the principal seats of scientific labor-and likewise the nurseries of scientific investigation. According to the German acceptation of the term a university professor is both a teacher and a scientific investigator, and the latter is considered the more important, so that the true statement should read: In Germany the scientific investigators are at the same time the teachers of the academic youth. From this it follows that academic instruction is thoroughly scientific; above the technical preparation for a profession stands the introduction into scientific truth and investigation.

This unity of investigation and instruction characterizes the German university. There certainly are excellent scholars in Oxford and Cambridge, but no one will say that the English universities are the representatives of scientific labor in England. Many of the most noted scholars of England, men like Darwin, Herbert Spencer, Grote, the two Mills, Macaulay, Gibbon, Bentham, Ricardo, stand or stood outside of the university, and of many of them it may be said that they are impossible in an English university. Even the great learned men of such a university are not really the teachers of the academic youth; they may deliver a few dozen lectures a year, but the real instruction

lies in the hands of the fellows and tutors. A similar state of affairs is found in France-the scientific investigator, the great learned man, belongs to the Académie, to the Institut de France; he is, perhaps, also a member of the Collège de France, or the Sorbonne, and, as such, he may read a few public lectures, to which everybody is admitted, but he is not, like the German professors, the actual daily teacher of the academie youth. Of course it can not well be expected of all the teachers of the facultés, notably in the provinces, that they shall be independent scientific investigators.

In contradistinction to this, the presumption is raised in Germany that all university teachers are scientific investigators, really learned men, or that all really learned men are university professors. Naturally, there are some exceptions. Germany has had, and has now, very distinguished scholars who are not university professors; it suffices to mention Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt; likewise among the professors of secondary schools there are many who have gained fame and distinction as learned men. Similarly there are among the university professors some who do not accomplish much as scholars, who lay all their stress upon being successful teachers; but that is not the rule. The rule is the congruency of the two terms, learned man and professor. When in Germany a great scholar is mentioned the question is asked at once: In what university is he active? And if he is not in a university, it may be confidently expected that he feels this official disregard. Again, when a professor is mentioned the question is asked: What has he written? what are his scientific achievements? The consequences of this relation have been most significant for the formation of the entire German intellectual and scientific life.

The German scholar is also an academic teacher; upon that rests his position in the life of our people. Our thinkers and investigators have been known to the people not only as authors, but as personal teachers with whom they have sat face to face. Men like Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schleiermacher, have influenced their time as academic teachers; a large part of their works was not published until after their death, either from their own notes or from memoranda made by the students. Just so Kant and Chr. Wolff were university professors. The same is true of the great philologists, of Heyne, F. A. Wolf, and G. Hermann; they have accomplished much by their personal activity as teachers; their students, afterward as teachers in secondary schools, carried the spirit and method of these men into the youth of the nation. Or think of the activity that historians like Ranke and Waitz displayed in their seminaries; and it deserves special mention that among the most distinguished poets of the German nation more than one was a university professor; thus, Uhland, Rückert, Bürger, and Schiller. The one fact, that Luther and Melanchthon were university professors, speaks volumes.

This is undoubtedly a most fortunate circumstance. The young

generation in Germany being brought into immediate contact in the university with the intellectual leaders of the nation, receives the strongest and most abiding impulses. In German biographies the period spent in the university plays an important rôle; not unfre quently the instruction received by one academic teacher determines the direction of the student's subsequent efforts. On the other hand, the relation stated is a delightful and fruitful one for our men of erudition and investigation; they remain young in their intercourse with youth. Personal transmission of ideas has a stirring and revivifying influence through the quiet, yet appreciable counter-effect among the students, an influence which the lonely author misses. The presence of an audience directs the attention of the instructor constantly upon essential and general ideas. Inclination towards philosophy, a direction toward leading ideas and generalization, which are said to be characteristics of the German intellect, may be explained by the fact that knowledge is here, more than elsewhere, acquired and generated for the purpose of ingenuous communication in oral instruction.

Of course this has its disadvantages. Certain disagreeable features of our scientific life are directly traceable to the "university cut" which science in Germany receives; thus we notice a literary overproduction; an inclination toward forming schools and science sects; a disregard for all efforts not emanating from the university, a slight which is felt keenly and resented violently, as is shown by Schopenhauer's disquisition upon the learned guild. It is true that a learned man not connected with a university can not secure appreciation in Germany as readily as he can in France or England; and it is also true that it would prove a useful corrective of our university education if independent scientific labor could flourish better, for it might in some questions furnish less prejudiced minds and more reliable standards of judgment.

Nevertheless the German nation has no cause to be dissatisfied with existing conditions that have historically developed. If in Germany science stands closer to the heart of the people than in other countries it is owing to the fortunate circumstance that its great men of science have also been the teachers of the academic youth. At any rate the universities must wish the continuance of this relation. The secret of their power consists in attracting the leading minds and being able to hold them; as long as that power is preserved the universities will succeed in holding the position they have gained in the life of the nation.

Certain modifications may subsequently take place. The position. the universities held during the first half of our century was based upon the fact that the national life had no other center than science and literature. The fact that participation in political life was denied, activity in industrial life greatly hampered, and competition in the world's market checked by almost insurmountable obstacles, prompted

all higher activity to direct its attention to the inner life, and seek in the intellectual world compensation for the neglect it experienced in the outer world. Thus it happened that in the European community of nations the German people played the rôle of "a people of thinkers and dreamers;" there was no other rôle left it in the cast. Germany and France seemed to have exchanged parts, for during the Middle Ages it was said that Italy had the Papacy (Papstthum), Germany the Empire (Kaiserthum), and France Science (Studium).

Much of this has changed within the present generation. The German people, which had long been an object in European politics, has again become a subject. The unity of Germany now rests upon other foundations than its universities. This change has made itself felt in more than one direction. The universities can not in the new Empire remain what they were, in a certain sense, during the time of the Federal Congress, namely, the real center of national life (the attention this exalted body bestowed upon them gave testimony to the fact). At present other ways are opened for talent to reach prominent positions; in the national parliament, in the army, in administrative offices, in the industrial world, in the colonies-everywhere a talent that puts itself forward will find room for application, and a prospect of influence and gain; the prerogatives of birth have also vanished.

Yet under these changed social conditions the universities have maintained themselves in their prominent position among our national institutions. They still are important pillars of German unity. The customary exchange of teachers and students between the various universities and the most diverse tribes and provinces, taking place almost daily, contributes not a little toward keeping alive the consciousness of national unity among the component parts of the Empire that are clearly defined by state boundaries. It is to be expected that the German universities will preserve the well-earned fame of being the main support of German science. This fame will remain theirs as long as they preserve, like a precious inheritance of the past, a spirit of objectivity, a quiet joy in the subject of study, faithfulness to work, and love of truth that deprecates evil intentions and personal considerations.

At present the German universities may enjoy the appreciation offered them in foreign countries where attempts are made to imitate their institutions and forms. France has just begun to again collect its separated "facultés" to real universities, and in England it is attempted to raise the dissipated work of the colleges to real university instruction. In these attempts at carrying into effect the German idea of unity of scientific investigation and instruction, some of the most prominent American universities have been very successful.