ience, has a
right to the free direction of his talents. The student has the right
to develop what there is in him without supervision or interference.
He is to make a man of himself by seeking diligently after the truth
in a manly, independent spirit. All that the professor can do for him
is to point out the road to the truth.

This view of the functions of a professor may appear obscure and
exaggerated to one who has not studied at a German university. But it
gives the clew to the entire German system of university education,
and accounts in great part for the high standard of scholarship. Only
in part, for the innate proneness of the German mind to research must
be credited with some share in the result. It is safe to say that
Germany, under any system, would be a land of erudition.

However pleasant it might be to go into the details of the
professional position and character in Germany, it will be more
profitable, and certainly more practical, to compare this fundamental
German idea, as already given, with the salient features of
professional life in America. The American professor, then, is a
teacher. Unless he is the fortunate occupant of an exceptionally
favored chair, his chief, and even his sole, function in the college
body is to teach, in the strictest sense of the term. He has to
prescribe textbooks, assign and hear lessons, grade recitations, mark
examination-papers, submit carefully prepared term and annual reports
to the faculty. When the question of conditioning or dismissing a
student on the ground of defective scholarship comes up for decision,
his opinion must be given and weighed in connection with that of
others, in order that the faculty may strike a fair general average.
The number of hours that he is compelled, by the college curriculum,
to pass per week in the recitation-room is seldom less than fifteen,
and may be as high as twenty. The classes themselves are ill-sorted
and often troublesome, and are usually unwieldy by reason of their
size. The professor's mind must be continually on the watch to prevent
disorder and enforce attention. Besides, as every one knows full well
who has tried it, there is nothing so exhausting as to supply "brains"
to those who either have not received their portion from Nature or
else have squandered it for a mess of pottage. Every professor-teacher
can bear witness to the truism that one hour in the recitation-room
is fully equal, in its drain upon the vital en