252 ON ACADEMIC FREEDOM IN GERMAN UNIVERSITIES. 



the rest of his life. Such intercourse is, moreover, the 

 most interesting that life can offer. 



You, my younger friends, have received in this 

 freedom of the German students a costly and valuable 

 inheritance of preceding generations. Keep it and 

 hand it on to coming races, purified and ennobled 

 if possible. You have to maintain it, by each, in his 

 place, taking care that the body of German students is 

 worthy of the confidence which has hitherto accorded 

 such a measure of freedom. But freedom necessarily 

 implies responsibility. It is as injurious a present for 

 weak, as it is valuable for strong characters. Do not 

 wonder if parents and statesmen sometimes urge that a 

 more rigid system of supervision and control, like that of 

 the English, shall be introduced even among us. There 

 is no doubt that, by such a system, many a one would 

 be saved who is ruined by freedom. But the State and 

 the Nation is best served by those who can bear free- 

 dom, and have shown that they know how to work and 

 to struggle, from their own force and insight and from 

 their own interest in science. 



My having previously dwelt on the influence of 

 mental intercourse with distinguished men, leads me 

 to discuss another point in which German Universities 

 are distinguished from the English and French ones. 

 It is that we start with the object of having instruc- 

 tion given, if possible, only by teachers who have proved 



