52 



NATURE 



[Afay 9, 1878 



dents who have passed highest in the examinations are authorised 

 to remain in the quality of Fellows in their college, where they 

 are lodged and boarded; they receive, besides, a pension of 

 200/., which assures to them the liberty of devoting all their 

 time to science. Oxford has 557 places of this kind, Cam- 

 bridge 531. The Fellows may act as tutors to the students, but 

 they are free not to use this privilege. They are not, moreover, 

 obliged to live in the university town ; they may spend their 

 pension where they please, and preserve it during an indefinite 

 period. Save in exceptional cases, they only lose it when they 

 marry, or when they accept some employment. They are the 

 legal successors of the old student corporations, by and for 

 whom the universities were founded and endowed. But beauti- 

 ful as the plan of the institution may be, fabulous as may be 

 the sums devoted to it, the services which it renders to science 

 are of the most mediocre in the judgment of all unprejudiced 

 Englishmen. This is probably owing to the fact that these 

 young persons, although they are the Mte of the students, and 

 find themselves in conditions exceptionally favourable to work, 

 have not been, during the course of their studies, sufficiently 

 profoundly penetrated by the vivifying spirit of science, to ex- 

 perience that enthusiasm and that passion which impels men to 

 make personal efforts. 



The English universities render, from certain points of view, 

 very important services. They make their students cultured 

 men, although little disposed to pass the political or religious 

 limits of their party, and, in fact, they do not go beyond these ; 

 the Tories dominate at Oxford, the Whigs at Cambridge. We 

 ought, above all, to seek to rival them in two things. In the 

 first place, they develop in a very high degree among their stu- 

 dents, at the same time a lively sense of the beauties and the 

 youthful freshness of antiquity, a taste for precision and elegance 

 of language ; this is seen in the fashion in which the students 

 manage their mother tongue. There is here, I fear, one of the 

 weakest sides in the education of youth in Germany. In the 

 second place, the English universities pay much more attention 

 than om-s to the physical well-being of their students. These 

 live and work in spacious, well-aired buildings, surrounded 

 with lawns and with masses of trees ; their pleasures consist 

 specially in games which, exciting a passionate emulation, favour 

 the development of the vigour and dexterity of the body much 

 more efficaciously than our military and gymnastic exercises. It 

 must not be forgotten that if we deprive young people of the 

 open air and of the opportunity of developing their vigour, 

 they are all the more led to seek unhealthy distractions in the 

 abuse of tobacco and strong drinks. We must admit, besides, 

 that the English universities accustom their students to serious 

 and energetic work, and make them preserve the habits of well- 

 bred people. As to the pioral leffect of a rigid surveillance, 

 it must be tolerably illusory. 



The Scotch universities, and some small English universities 

 of recent formation, as University College and King's College, 

 London, and Owens College, Manchester, approach more to 3ie 

 German and Dutch type. 



The French universities have followed a different, almost 

 absolutely opposite course. In consequence of the tendency of 

 the French to upset, in virtue of logical theories, all which is 

 the product of a historical development, their faculties have 

 become simple establishments of instruction, special schools 

 preparing for a career, and in which the programme of educa- 

 tion is subjected to fixed rules. They are completely distinct 

 from the institutions devoted to the progress of science, such as 

 the ..College de France, the Jardin des Plantes, I'Ecole des 

 Hautes Etudes. The faculties are absolutely separate from each 

 other, even when they are placed in the same town. The 

 course of study is determined with precision; numerous exami- 

 nations serve to control the results. French education is limited 

 to what is clearly and solidly established ; it gives an exposition 

 of this, well ordered, carefully elaborated, easily intelligible, 

 without entering upon doubtful questions and without going to 

 the bottom of things. The masters charged with distributing it 

 only need to have acquired much. Thus, in France, it is 

 almost a mistake on the part of a young man possessing a 

 talent full of promise, to consent to become professor in a 

 provincial faculty. The French system is well suited to give to 

 students of moderate capacity knowledge sufficient to follow the 

 routine of their profession. They have not to choose between 

 different professors, and, consequently, they swear in verba 

 magisiri; there results a propensity to doubt nothing and to be 

 self-satisfied. If the professor is good, that suffices for ordinary 



cases, where the student has only to imitate what he has seen 

 his master do. It is only in extraordinary cases that it may be 

 seen if he has really acquired penetration and judgment. For 

 the rest, the French nation is well endowed, lively and ambitious ; 

 this makes up for many of the faults of the system of education. 



In the French universities — and it is a characteristic feature 

 of their organisation — the situation of a professor is absolutely 

 independent of the assent of his pupils. The students belong- 

 ing to the faculty in which he is professor are bound to follow 

 his lessons ; the very high fees which are paid go to the 

 treasury of the Minister of Public Instruction, and serve to 

 cover the fixed salary of the body of professors ; the State 

 contributes to the expenses of the universities only to a very 

 small extent. If, then, the professor has not really the passion 

 for education, and if he has not the ambition of attracting 

 a large auditory, he may remain indifferent to the success 

 of his instruction and take it easy. Outside the lecture-rooms, 

 where they take their courses, French students live without 

 being subjected to any surveillance, without esprit de corps, 

 and without particular habits, confounded with young people 

 of the same age who follow other careers. 



The development of the German universities has followed a 

 course intermediate between these two opposite paths. They 

 were too poor in private resources not to accept e^erly the 

 help of the State in presence of the more and more costly demands 

 of education. Consequently at the epoch when modern states 

 tended to consolidation they were not in a position to defend 

 their ancient privileges, and they had to submit to the direct- 

 ing influence of the State. Consequently for all the important 

 affairs of the universities, the supreme decision was, in prin- 

 ciple, reserved by the State, and in times of political and 

 religious disturbance an inconsiderate use was often made of 

 this supremacy. In most cases, however, the universities were 

 favourably treated by the governments newly arrived at inde- 

 pendence. They required intelligent functionaries, and the 

 glory of their university threw upon them a certain iclat. The 

 administrative functionary came, for the most part, from the 

 universities and remained attached to them. Thus, in the midst 

 of the tumult of war and of political convulsions, in all these 

 states struggling with the tottering empire and occupied in con- 

 solidating their recent independence, while nearly all other 

 special privileges disappeared, the German universities succeeded 

 in retaining a much more considerable part of internal liberty 

 (and indeed the most precious elements of this liberty) than was 

 the case in conservative England and in that France which is 

 feverishly chasing after liberty. 



Among us the old conception of the student remainsthe same ; 

 he is always considered as a responsible young man who pursues 

 science of his own accord, and who is free to regulate as he pleases 

 the plan of his studies. If, for a small number of careers, it is 

 still necessary to follow certain courses, this obligation is not 

 imposed by the university as a university, but by the authority 

 which will at a later period admit the candidate to follow these 

 careers. Moreover, students have to-day, and had formerly, with 

 few exceptions, full liberty to choose among all the universities 

 of the German tongue, from Dorpat to Zurich, Vienna, and 

 Graz. They may choose, besides, in each faculty, among the 

 masters who teach the same subjects, without taking account of 

 the distinction between ordinary professors, extraordinary pro- 

 fessors, and privat-docenten. It is even allowable for them to 

 obtain their instruction from books to any extent they may 

 desire ; it is, in fact, very desirable that the works of the great 

 men of the past should constitute an essential part of study. 



Outside the universities no surveillance is exercised over the 

 conduct of the students, provided they do not come into collision 

 with the agents of public security. Except in this case, the 

 only control to which they are subject is that of their com- 

 rades, which prevents them from doing anything against the 

 honour of the body. The imiversities of the Middle Ages were 

 close corporations, exercising over their members a jurisdiction 

 which was extended to the right of life and death. As the 

 students found themselves for the most part on foreign soil, this 

 special jurisdiction was necessary, not only to \\ ithdraw them 

 from the judgment of the authorities of the country, but also to 

 be able to allay the conflicts which arose among themselves, and 

 to maintain in the corporation sufficient good order and good 

 breeding to insure the maintenance of the hospitality offered. 

 Under the influence of the modern political organisation, this 

 academic jurisdiction has gi-adually given way before the ordinary 

 jurisdiction ; the last vestiges will soon disappear, but the necessity 



