LEARN AND SEARCH. 443 



must be limits to this indulgence, for it is not really academical 

 freedom as we understand it and as the state should understand 

 it. " Academical freedom " does not mean " freedom in not-doing " 

 or " freedom in pleasure, or in the gratification of the passions," 

 but " freedom to learn." This is real academic freedom, and the 

 university has been opened to students for its exercise. 



Neither teachers nor scholars should forget that the object of 

 the university is a very high one, namely, general scientific and 

 ethical cultivation and full knowledge of the special branch pur- 

 sued. Once at least in his life, at the close of his university ca- 

 reer, the cultivated young man should be so far advanced that his 

 knowledge, especially in his own branch, should correspond with 

 the average condition of scientific research. If he does not suc- 

 ceed in that, there is little hope that he will ever become an hon- 

 ored specialist in the circle of his associates. He has every pros- 

 pect of continuing a bungler all his life. Let no one, therefore, be 

 deceived : only in exceptional cases does a period of freedom to 

 learn like that normally possessed by the academical citizen re- 

 turn in later life. 



To the exercise of this freedom the desire to learn is essential 

 before everything else. Whoever desires to learn at the univer- 

 sity will have to decide at once what and how he will learn. The 

 indifferent pupil shirks this decision. His choice does not really 

 concern the kind of learning ; it wavers principally between learn- 

 ing and not-learning. The university possesses no means of com- 

 pulsion to enforce learning. The means of discipline and regula- 

 tion at its command are not adequate to secure participation in 

 instruction; only the medical faculty has in its examinations 

 obligatory provisions which are adapted to secure a certain order 

 in the succession of lectures and exercises. Yet experience 

 teaches that complete success can not be reached without the de- 

 sire to learn. How can this desire be aroused ? 



In so large a university as ours the personal influence of the 

 teacher on individual students is naturally very limited; only 

 special conditions can enable him to form close relations with 

 a smaller circle of hearers, or exceptionally with single hearers. 

 His influence is, therefore, chiefly exercised upon the mass of 

 students, and he often first learns from a later examination how 

 little of this influence the individual has received. We can de- 

 clare with pleasure that the number of hearers who followed the 

 instruction with ardor and success, even with distinguished suc- 

 cess, is not small. But it would be a mistake to conceal the fact 

 that the complaint of the teacher very often is that his trouble 

 has been in vain. Many go further, and assert that a progressive 

 diminution in the work accomplished by the students may be 

 remarked. 



