1912] on thr Effects of the Thirtij Yfars Wur. ;;.s:i 



vival of that life must largely depend, has to be reckuiied amoiiir the 

 most disastrous etfects of the Great War. Here again, the shocks of 

 the AVar fell on ground ill prepared for offering lesistance. The 

 great impetus had nearly spent itself which had been given to the 

 foundation of universities in Germany l)y the great luiinanistic move- 

 ment of the 15th and IGth centuries : and, though it was not alto- 

 gether stopped in the 17th (the German University, that of Altdorf 

 in Bavaria, where Wallenstein, we remember, was as a student sub- 

 jected to detention in the career, was actually i-aised to that rank 

 after the actual outbreak of the AYar), it could only continue if the 

 spirit from which it rose were renewed. But the Lutheran Reforma- 

 tion, speaking l)roadly, had failed to develop in the atmosphere of 

 true academic freedom the growth of the seed which it had sown ; 

 and while, in the latter part of the 16th and earlier years of the 17th 

 century, the study of theology had overshadowed all others, it had 

 arrested that liberal expansion of the pursuit of letters and science to 

 which the age of Erasmus, and at one time at least Erasmus himself, 

 had looked forward. In the days of summse theolo//iae and of formulae 

 concordise, drawn up so as to leave no escape from the network of the 

 absolute, the German universities, whether Protestant or Catholic, 

 revived methods of study which seemed to bring to life again the 

 scholasticism which the Renascence had striven to cast out ; "and the 

 weight laid upon the intellectual aspirations of studious youth — 

 especially as it came to be drawn in increasing proportions from the 

 classes which count the enjoyment of life as part of their inheritance 

 — was greater than it could bear. AVhat wonder, then, that German 

 studentdom took its revenge in a licence which, as of its nature local 

 and temporary, was readily tolerated by authority, and of which in 

 most of the German uni\ ersities, even after it had been repressed, 

 the traces were not altogether extinguished. Professor Taubmann, 

 of Wittenberg, who lived almost to the outbreak of the "War. and 

 who doubled his office with that of court fool to the Elector of 

 Saxony, was on a visit to the palace at Dresden asked by the latter 

 what the students at AVittenberg were doing. AVhereupon the Pro- 

 fessor at once descended into the courtyard of the palace, and dig- 

 ging up some of the cobbles with his sword, proceeded to throw them 

 at the Elector's windows, shouting, "Down with you, you blackguard, 

 you pennal ! " The Elector was answered, so far as the great 

 Lutheran university was concerned, but it was very far from being 

 the worst offender. So widespread and palpable were the evils which 

 were produced by this period of academic licence, and so effectually 

 did it in many places during the AA^ar silence all but isolated endea- 

 vours at academic study, that the conclusion is justified that but for 

 the AVar it could not so long have reared its head. 



I do not know whether you are acquainted with the terms pennal 

 and pennalism, which in German universities acquired an historic 

 significance far beyond the intrinsic importance of the follies to 



