656 STUDY AND RESEARCH. 



ing Lis limbs aud acting iu au irresponsible, improvident way. We all 

 know the feeling, and are in the habit of treating this use of academic 

 liberty with " academic forbearance." But a limit must be set to for- 

 bearance; for, in reality, academic liberty according to our interpre- 

 tation and according to that of the state, is a very different aflair. 

 "Academic liberty" is not "liberty to do nothing," not "liberty in the 

 pursuit of pleasure or the indulgence of the passions," but "liberty of 

 study." This is true academic liberty, to jjractice which the university 

 is opened to students. 



Neither teachers nor students should forget that the aim of university 

 work is high: general scientific and ethical culture and full mastery of 

 some one branch of knowledge. At least once in his life, and that at 

 the end of his university course, the attainments of a cultured young 

 man ought to reach the tide mark of scientific research, particularly in 

 his specialty. If he fails to gain that point then, there is little hope 

 that he will ever take creditable rank with his scientific associates; he 

 has the prospect of never being anything but a bungler. Let none 

 deceive himself on this subject; only in exceptional cases does a period 

 of study occur later in life equal in freedom to that normally granted 

 the academic citizen. 



For the full exercise of this liberty of study the first condition is 

 love of study. Indisposition to study and liberty of study are contra- 

 dictory terms. The would-be university student is at once, on entering, 

 forced to decide what aud how he will study. He who lacks desire to 

 study will evade the issue. With such an one choice is not exercised as 

 to the manner of studying; it wavers between studying and not study- 

 ing. The university has no means of compelling study. The disci- 

 plinary and regulative measures at its command are barely stringent 

 enough to insure attendance at lectures; only the medical faculty pos- 

 sesses in its examinations an institution calculated to enforce a certain 

 degree of order in the sequence of lectures and exercises. But experi- 

 ence teaches that, in the absence of love of study, even this regulation 

 fails to x)roduce satisfactory results. How, then, can love of study be 

 awakened ? 



At a great university like ours the j)ersoual influence of the teacher 

 upon individual students is naturally very limited; only peculiar cir- 

 cumstances make it possible for the teacher to come into close contact 

 with a small circle of those he addresses or, in very exceptional cases, 

 Avith single individuals. His influence, therefore, is exerted in the main 

 upon the mass of his audience, and it is reserved for a late examination 

 to reveal to him how superficially it has touched single members of his 

 class. It is a pleasure to be able to state that the number of students 

 who follow the lectures with delight and success, even distinguished 

 success, is by no means small. But it were wrong to conceal the fact 

 that too often the complaint escapes from the teacher that his efl^orts 

 have been vain. Some, indeed, go a step further, aud maintain that 



