The Privat-Docent may be raised directly to a seat in the faculty, but more generally he passes through the intermediate stage of Professor Extraordinarius.  The Professors Extraordinary receive no, or at most a very small, income from the State; they are merely titled lecturers, and nothing more; yet in their ranks, as well as among the more modest Privatim-Docentes, are often found men of the greatest learning, whose names are known abroad, whose contributions to science are universally acknowledged, whose lecture-rooms are thronged with students, while the halls of some of the regular professors may be left empty.  No vacancy may have occurred in their department,—­or, as is unfortunately oftener the case, some political reasons may be the occasion of their non-advancement.

We come to the regular faculty of the university, the Professores Ordinarii.  They enjoy the fullest privileges, are appointed for life, and receive beside the tuition-fees regular incomes.  They may be elected to the Academic Senate and to the Rectorship, the Rector or Chancellor not being appointed for life, but changing yearly,—­the various faculties being represented in turn.  He is styled Rector Magnificus.

The faculties are usually four in number.  In several universities, of late, a fifth has been created,—­the Staatswissenschaftliche, Cameralistic; so that in institutions where both Catholic and Protestant Theology are represented, there are in fact six faculties.  The Philosophical Department stretches over so wide a field, that, were it separated into its real divisions, as Philosophy proper, Philology, History, the Mathematical and Natural Sciences, the faculties would extend far beyond the present number.  In France, it is divided into a Faculte des Lettres and a Faculte des Sciences. The present comprehensive use of the term is but an extension of the Middle-Age division of the liberal arts into the Trivium,—­Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectics,—­and the Quadrivium,—­Arithmetic, Music, Geometry, and Astronomy,—­as expressed in the verse,—­

  “Lingus, tropus, ratio, numerus, tenor,
  angulus, astra.”

The term Magister Artium Liberalium, so often met with, refers to these.  Those pursuing these studies were denominated Artisti. As the number of studies increased, the name was changed, and the department now includes all branches not ranged under one of the heads of Theology, Law, or Medicine; so that every student, whatever his pursuits may be, if he does not confine himself exclusively to them, will wish to hear one or more courses of lectures in this faculty.