nd putting an end to the ignoble practice on
the part of the universities of lowering the standard for the purpose
of increasing the number of students. They abolished the last vestiges
of the scholastic system by raising the faculty of philosophy from its
position as a quasi-preparatory course to the others, and placing it
on a footing of perfect equality with law, theology and medicine.[3]
They removed all restrictions from the _Lehrfreiheit_, or professional
freedom of instruction, while at the same time they preserved the
right of the state to control indirectly the quality of university
instruction by means of state-examinations for pastors, teachers,
lawyers, physicians and officeholders. Ever since then the university
system of Germany has rested upon a secure and lasting basis.

[Footnote 3: The subordination of the philosophical faculty as a sort
of preparatory course to the others remained in force in Austria until
1850. It is not surprising, then, that Austria should have compared
so unfavorably with Germany in philology, history, philosophy and
literary criticism until within our own times.]

Is the course pursued by Prussia to be regarded as a mere incident in
history, or may it serve as an example and model for us? Prussia is a
monarchy, clothed with some constitutional forms but at bottom a
state where the personal will of the sovereign has always made,
and continues to make, itself felt in the final instance. We are
a republic, or rather a cluster of republics under an imperfectly
centralized national government. It is evident that the agencies and
mode of reform with us must differ from those that have been employed
in Prussia and in the rest of Germany. But it does not follow that
the reform itself is impossible. What has elsewhere sprung from the
autocratic will of a single man and his cabinet may be effected here
through that other force, equally great and perhaps more pervasive,
to which we give the vague name of "popular opinion." We know that
popular opinion in our country is irresistible. It makes everything
bend to it. It broke up the Tweed Ring, seemingly impregnable, in a
single campaign. But this popular opinion is not a natural product: it
is the work of a few men who devote themselves to awakening the sense
of right and wrong and guiding the understanding of their fellows.
But for popular leaders like Mr. O'Conor and Governor Tilden, the
late Tweed Ring might be in power at this day. Educa