e writings of some of our most eminent tutors supply a more than
sufficient refutation of his statements. Archbishops have no official
position whatsoever in English Universities, and their censure of an
Oxford tutor would be resented as impertinent by the whole University. Nor
does the University, as such, exercise any very strict control over the
tutors, even when they lecture not to their own College only. Each Master
of Arts at Oxford claims now the right to lecture (_venia docendi_), and I
doubt whether they would submit to those restrictions which, in Germany,
the Faculty imposes on every _Privat-docent_. _Privat-docents_ in German
Universities have been rejected by the Faculty for incompetence, and
silenced for insubordination. I know of no such cases at Oxford during my
residence of more than thirty years, nor can I think it likely that they
should ever occur.

As to the extreme conclusions of materialistic metaphysics, there are
Oxford tutors who have grappled with the systems of such giants as Hobbes,
Locke, or Hume, and who are not likely to be frightened by Buechner and
Vogt.

I know comparisons are odious, and I should be the last man to draw
comparisons between English and German Universities unfavorable to the
latter. But with regard to freedom of thought, of speech, and action,
Professor Helmholtz, if he would spend but a few weeks at Oxford, would
find that we enjoy it in fuller measure here than the Professors and
_Privat-docents_ in any Continental University. The publications of some
of our professors and tutors ought at least to have convinced him that if
there is less of brave words and turbulent talk in their writings, they
display throughout a determination to speak the truth, which may be
matched, but could not easily be excelled, by the leaders of thought in
France, Germany, or Italy.

The real difference between English and Continental Universities is that
the former govern themselves, the latter are governed. Self-government
entails responsibilities, sometimes restraints and reticences. I may here
be allowed to quote the words of another eminent Professor of the
University of Berlin, Du Bois Reymond, who, in addressing his colleagues,
ventured to tell them,(4) "We have still to learn from the English how the
greatest independence of the individual is compatible with willing
submission to salutary, though irksome, statutes." That is particularly
true when the statutes are self-imposed. In Ge