he spirit of the
institution. And, evidently, in order that it may be effective according
to this spirit, it needs an independent, appropriate body, that is to
say, autonomous, sheltered against the interference of the State, of
the Church, of the commune, of the province, and of all general or
local powers, provided with rules and regulations, made a legal, civil
personage, with the right to buy, sell and contract obligations, in
short proprietorship.

This is no chimerical plan, the work of a speculative, calculating
imagination, which appears well and remains on paper. All the
universities of the middle ages were organized according to this type.
It found life and activity everywhere and for a long time; the twenty-
two universities in France previous to the Revolution, although
disfigured, stunted and desiccated, preserved many of its features,
certain visible externals, and, in 1811,[6216] Cuvier, who had just
inspected the universities of lower Germany, describes it as he found
it, on the spot, confined to superior instruction, but finished and
complete, adapted to modern requirements, in full vigor and in full
bloom.

There is no room in the France to which Cuvier returns for institutions
of this stamp; they are excluded from it by the social system which has
prevailed.--First of all, public law, as the Revolution and Napoleon
comprehended it and enacted it, is hostile to them;[6217] for it sets
up the principle that in a State there must be no special corporations
permanent, under their own control, supported by mort main property,
acting in their own right and conducting a public service for their own
benefit, especially if this service is that of teaching; for the State
has taken this charge upon itself, reserved it for itself and assumed
the monopoly of it; hence, the unique and comprehensive university
founded by it, and which excludes free, local and numerous universities.
Thus, in its essence, it is the self-teaching State and not
self-teaching science; thus defined, the two types are contradictory;
not only are the two bodies different, but again the two spirits are
incompatible; each has an aim of its own, which is not the aim of the
other. In a special sense, the use to which the Emperor assigns his
university is contrary to the aim of the German universities; it is
founded for his own advantage, that he may possess "the means for
shaping moral and political opinions." With this object in view it
wou