Prussia and the German System of Education. 13 



the matriculation fee, a certain sum ($2 to $10) for each 

 course of lectures ; but the chief resource of the professors 

 is a fixed salary paid by the state, ranging from a few 

 hundred to several thousand dollars, according to age, 

 merit and reputation. 



The university is divided into four faculties. Each 

 faculty elects annually from itself, its own dean. At the 

 head of the whole academic body, stands the rector or 

 chancellor, likewise chosen annually from the regular 

 professors of each faculty in its turn. The legislative 

 power resides in the academic senate, composed of all the 

 ordinary professors or a delegated number. A university 

 is thus a complete republic of letters, highly independent of 

 church and state, although furnishing to both, all their 

 higher officers. This academic liberty, both intellectual 

 and moral, the utmost liberty to teach and to learn, is 

 cherished as one of the most precious privileges. 



The four faculties embrace all the sacred and the 

 secular sciences and make up the idea of a university ; a 

 term which was first applied to the body of teachers and 

 pupils (universitas scholarium), but is now understood 

 mainly of the totality of letters (universitas literarum), 

 and the completeness of the system of instruction. 



We now proceed to a separate notice of the four profes- 

 sional schools which form a German University : 



1st. The theological faculty still has the supremacy, 

 since, when most of the universities were founded theology 

 was emphatically the queen of sciences. The great insti- 

 tution at Paris was at first simply a theological and 

 philosophical school ; the philosophical studies served as a 

 preparation to scholastic divinity, and the philosophical 

 professors were all ecclesiatics. 



In the middle ages, theology was confined to the inter- 

 pretation of the Latiu Bible on the basis of the Catense- 

 Patrum and to scholastic dogmatics and ethics, under the 



