Xiv. PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 
the attendance of students till the numbers were so great 
as to demand special treatment. It is strange to read of 
the University of Paris, 700 years ago, having 20,000 
students—nearly half the population of the city. Truly 
there was a thirst for knowledge displayed then that does 
not at present show itself in Queensland. Unfortunately 
the Universities were not part of any general national 
system, but still their power for good was so enormous that 
in all the changes that have taken place in those last 700 
years, the old Universities still exist and live with greater 
vigor than ever. They marked the break away of the 
higher education from the government of religious or other 
control, and that too with the consent of the religious 
powers, for in the 12th Century, shortly after the growth 
of the episcopal school at Paris into a self-governing 
University, it received many privileges and gifts from the 
Pope. The Universities were also partly the outcome of 
the increasing power and wealth of the ordinary citizens, 
and the strong new life of the people fostered and was 
fostered by the Universities. The Universities naturally 
reacted on primary and secondary education, and they 
again on the Universities. With the Renaissance came 
another increase to the number of students, and also to 
the power of the Universities, and such a hold did the study 
of Latin and Greek then take, that a knowledge of one or 
both of these languages has been made compulsory in most 
Universities down to the present time for aspirants to 
degrees, even in subjects totally unconnected with any- 
thing mentioned in classical literature. 
In Teutonic countries the revival in the study of the 
classics took a peculiar bent. The study of the New 
Testament in Greek led to a change in religious belief of 
many of the leading scholars, who induced their pupils 
to study the Bible in the original, and this was one of the 
principal causes that gradually led up to the Reformation. 
Zwingli and Luther were not only reformers of religion— 
they each helped to establish national systems of educa- 
tion. In holding that every man is responsible for his 
own religious beliefs, they had naturally to hold that he 
ought to be able to read and study the Bible for himself so 
that he might know what to believe. We talk of nature 
