24S 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



another, or falling amid its thorns, till the last is 

 surmounted which separates him from the Ger- 

 man's heaven. 



And what a change awaits him there ! The 

 cap of the student is to him the cap of liberty ; 

 his bonds are loosed, his chains struck off, he is 

 introduced into the Eden of freedom and knowl- 

 edge, " furnished with every tree that is pleasant 

 to the sight and good for food," and told that he 

 " may freely eat of all." The very same author- 

 ities, central and local, who have hitherto demand- 

 ed from him dumb and blind obedience, and con- 

 trolled his bodily and mental freedom in every 

 possible way, now loudly proclaim to him that his 

 chief duty, the chief principle and law of his be- 

 ing, is — to be free. The professors contend for 

 his applause and patronage, society allows him 

 the greatest latitude as suited to his age and pro- 

 fession; the very police, so terrible to other men, 

 looks indulgently on him, as a privileged being, 

 and mutters as it sees him kicking over the traces, 

 " Es ist ja ein Student." For three or four long 

 years no one has the right to dictate to him, or 

 to bind him by any tradition or any rule. He 

 must, of course, prepare for the inevitable exami- 

 nation at the end of his university career, but he 

 may do so how and when he pleases, and in the 

 mean time he can rest from the exhausting toils 

 of his school-life, and cultivate at leisure the 

 powers of which he is most conscious, and in the 

 exercise of which he most delights. He has sev- 

 eral universities from which to choose, and if one 

 professor does not please him he can generally 

 find another who is lecturing on the same subject ; 

 and he is by no means slow in recognizing which 

 are the rising and which the setting stars in the 

 academic firmament. 



When we come to compare the results of the 

 two systems, we find them such as we might ex- 

 pect. The Germans are the explorers in the 

 world of thought, and the first settlers in the 

 newly-discovered regions, who clear the ground 

 and make it tillable and habitable. At a later 

 period the English take possession, build solid 

 houses, and dwell there. The Germans send their 

 students out into the fields of knowledge, like 

 working-bees, to gather honey from every side. 

 The English lead their pupils into well-stored 

 hives to enjoy the labors of others. The German 

 student cares little for the accumulated learning 

 of the past, except as a vantage-ground from 

 which to reach some greater height. He has 

 little reverence for authority, and, if he does set 

 up an idol, he is very apt to throw it down again. 

 His chief delight is to form theories of his own, 



and he can build a very lofty structure on a very 

 insufficient foundation. As compared with the 

 " first-class " Oxford man or Cambridge wrangler 

 he has read but little, and would make a very 

 moderate show in a classical or mathematical 

 tripos examination; but he has the scientific 

 method ; he is thorough and independent master 

 of a smaller or larger region of thought; he 

 knows how to use his knowledge, and in the long- 

 run outstrips his English brothers. The English 

 system produces the accomplished scholar, "well 

 up in his books ; " the reverent and zealous dis- 

 ciple of some Gamaliel ; the brilliant essayist, 

 whose mind is filled with the great thoughts and 

 achievements of the past, who deals with ease and 

 grace with the rich stores he has gathered by 

 extensive reading; the ready debater, skilled in 

 supporting his arguments by reference to high 

 authority, and by apt quotations. But he is re- 

 ceptive rather than creative, his feathers, though 

 gay and glossy, are too often borrowed, and not 

 so well fitted for higher flights as if they were the 

 product of his own mental organism. In the lan- 

 guage of Faust, we might say of him — 



" Erquickung hast du nicht gewonnen, 

 Wenn sie dir nicht aus eigener Seele quillt." 



The German has read less, but he has thought 

 more, and is continually striving to add to the 

 sum of human knowledge. He is impatient and 

 restless while he stands on other men's ground, 

 or sojourns in other men's houses; directly he 

 has found materials of his own, whether they be 

 stones or only cards, he begins to build for him- 

 self, and would rather get over a difficulty by a 

 rickety plank of his own than by the safe iron 

 bridge of another. The same furor Teutonicus 

 (the tendency to drive everything to extremes), 

 which urges on the powerful intellect to great dis- 

 coveries in the regions of the hitherto unknown, 

 also goads the little mind to peer with fussy, fe- 

 verish restlessness into every chink, to stir every 

 puddle, " to dig with greedy hand for treasure." 



The Englishman, meanwhile, looks on, and 

 patiently waits until the new intellectual structure 

 has been well aired and lighted, and fitted up for 

 comfortable habitation. The German theologian 

 or philosopher is often astonished, and not a little 

 amused, to see some theory or system taken up 

 by English scholars, who have just learned Ger- 

 man, which has long become obsolete in the land 

 of its birth, and been disowned, perhaps, by its 

 very author. 



In contemplating the past history and present 

 state of the German universities, the question 



