Septembeb 20, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



365 



to the true advancement of knowledge and 

 to productive research; that spirit which 

 founded in the last three decades the fa- 

 mous graduate schools of Johns Hopkins 

 and Harvard, of Columbia and Yale and 

 Chicago, and which spread thence to all the 

 graduate departments of the large univer- 

 sities. But these model universities of 

 Germany are not and were never intended 

 to be colleges in the American sense, and 

 whoever, misled by the loose application 

 of the word university in this country, care- 

 lessly plays with the comparison needs only 

 to be reminded that the strong intellectual 

 life of Germany is satisfied with twenty 

 academic institutions, while the United 

 States has nearly six hundred. The king- 

 dom of Saxony has only one, the Univer- 

 sity of Leipzig; while the city of New 

 Orleans alone has four. It is evident, 

 therefore, that institutions are in question 

 which are not to be compared. The Ger- 

 man university is a system of professional 

 schools, conducted by the state for the intel- 

 lectual training of the future physicians 

 and lawyers, ministers, teachers and schol- 

 ars. They have been just that for nearly 

 six hundred years. Their unity lies in 

 their method; the teachers are productive 

 scholars who impart to their students not 

 information, but the critical attitude and 

 scholarly independence of judgment. But 

 this method presupposes intellectual ma- 

 turity and expansive knowledge. The en- 

 trance conditions presuppose, therefore, an 

 amount of information which about equals 

 that which the average junior of the better 

 American college is expected to acquire. 

 This goal is reached two years earlier than 

 in America through the stricter mental dis- 

 cipline in the schools, and it is reached en- 

 tirely by school methods. 



All this has necessary consequences. 

 There is no middle ground between the 

 school and the professional or graduate 



university department. The boy, who at 

 nineteen leaves the gymnasium in his native 

 town with aU its school discipline, enters 

 the freedom of the university only to study 

 law or medicine, science or divinity. The 

 freedom of academic life comes thus exclu- 

 sively to those who enter the so-caUed pro- 

 fessional careers. Those, on the other 

 hand, who want to go over into practical 

 life, perhaps into industry or commerce, 

 have no opportunity for contact with the 

 university. They are confined to the lim- 

 itations of the schoolroom, and, as they do 

 not aim at the entrance examinations to 

 the university, they are inclined to prefer 

 from the first schools with a simpler cur- 

 riculum. 



If we consider that this has been the 

 situation for centuries, it becomes evident 

 that the result must be a public situation 

 entirely different from that of the United 

 States. Here in America it was, of course, 

 also from the first necessary to have schools 

 for ministers and lawyers and so forth, but 

 they were considered as private affairs, and 

 every one had a right to enter practically 

 without any previous education. Public 

 opinion was thus imbued with the correct 

 idea that these professional studies did not 

 in themselves guarantee a high level of cul- 

 ture. The real culture, on the other hand, 

 the making of a gentleman, was left to the 

 college, which was taken over from Eng- 

 land. The coUegiate alumnus is thus the 

 cultural leader. He may be later a preach- 

 er or a banker, a physician or a railroad 

 man. Of course, the entrance condition 

 to the professions was slowly raised. The 

 highest professional schools to-day demand 

 the bachelor degree at their threshold. Yet 

 the old historical conviction has remained; 

 not the professional, but the collegiate 

 study gives to a man the stamp of the 

 highest education. How could it be other- 

 wise in a country which had to bend aU its 



