Prussia and the German System of Education. 19 



and produces that high scholarship and marvellous literary 

 fertility in which Protestant Germany surpasses all other 

 countries, and by which it furnishes to England and 

 America, directly or indirectly, most of their classical and 

 scientific text books. To the student, this system is gene- 

 rally the most impressive. When a science comes clothed 

 in flesh and blood from the mind and lips of the professor 

 like Minerva from the head of Jove, it inspires the hearer 

 with a consciousness of the creative power slumbering 

 within himself and fires it into action. And the habit of 

 writing, pursued by the student, accompanied by thought 

 is generally the best method of mental appropriation and 

 digestion. But on the other hand, it must be admitted 

 that the German universities promote an excessive indi- 

 viduality of intellect and fertility of opinions ;• an extreme 

 opposite to the stagnate steadiness, uniformity and tradition- 

 alism of Oxford and Cambridge. If the government allow 

 too little political liberty, the universities allow too great 

 intellectual and doctrinal liberty. With a vast amount of 

 invaluable learning and useful systems they have brought 

 forth also many fantastic, absurd and revolutionary 

 theories. 



They have been the hot houses of rationalism, skepticism 

 and pantheism, and all sorts of dangerous innovations. 



A model university, while affording the widest cultivation 

 of all sciences, should never lose the great aim of benefiting 

 society and of training the rising intellect for practical 

 usefulness in church and state. It should reconcile the 

 claims of authority and of freedom and guard the unity and 

 harmony of truth as well as the diversity and universality 

 of science. The lecture system can and should be 

 combined with the recitation system — thus ascertaining 

 the student's progress, explaining the subject fully and 

 supplying the peculiar needs of each young mind for its 

 future career in life. 



