In other words, a German professor is a man who has devoted himself to special and original research—­to “science” as Von Sybel uses the term—­and whose discoveries and works give strength and increase of dignity to the university with which he is connected.  He is appointed upon his merits as a discoverer or an author.  The further consideration—­namely, whether he is what we Americans style a “good teacher”—­was not so much as an afterthought in the minds of those who gave him his call.  The explanation of this disregard of the personal element in the professorial character is obvious.  The professor is not called upon to teach.  It does not constitute any part of his vocation to spur up the sluggish, to keep the idle busy, to give each student enough to do, and make first principles perfectly clear to all.  So far from coming down to the level of the students, the professor expects that the students will make every possible exertion to rise to his level, while he himself can scarcely be said to lend a helping hand.  To the sentimentalist, then, he might appear a very selfish mortal.  But by going beneath the surface of the relation between professor and student, and examining into its essence, we shall find that it is an eminently healthful relation, because it is based upon the recognition of mutual rights and duties.  The professor, as a man of science, 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