184 EXAMINATIONS IV 



tion," in so many hours a week, in twenty different 

 branches of study. 



Perhaps the most injurious result of the system is 

 the degradation of the teacher. There is no nobler 

 vocation among men than that of the teacher ; there 

 is no more enviable position in the world than that of 

 the university professor as realised in Germany 

 honoured by the State, chosen from among his com- 

 peers to pursue his studies as a public servant and to 

 associate with himself in the making of new knowledge 

 the best youth of the Fatherland. For him there is no 

 intrusive board of examiners drawing away from him 

 the attention and respect of his pupils, or urging him 

 to put aside his own thought and experience, and to 

 teach the conventional and commonplace. The system 

 invented by Fichte maintains that perfect relation of 

 teacher and pupil which he sketched in his description 

 of the University to be founded at Berlin in the 

 beginning of this century. 1 The essence of that 

 relation is the absence of examiners the professor 

 himself is examiner and teacher in one. Another 

 important feature is that the professor is neither 

 dependent on fees, nor entirely independent of them. 

 He has a stipend which ensures him a certain freedom 

 of action, and his pupils pay him a small fee which 



1 Fichte says in so many words that a university is not a place 

 where instruction is given but an institution for the training of 

 experts in the art of making knowledge, and that this end is attained 

 by the association of the pupil with his professor in the inquiries 

 which the latter initiates and pursues. Such a university is what very 

 many Englishmen who have studied in Germany desire to see in 

 London, in Oxford, and in Cambridge. 



