The German university allows to the professor the free play of his individuality.  By this is meant that each professor has his specialty, which he teaches as a specialty and after his own fashion.  He has been appointed because of his specialty, and to the end that he may teach it.  His salary is paid to him, not so much for what he does as for what he is.  It is in a measure the reward for having made for himself a name.  His standing in the university is based, not so much upon the number of students that he may attract to his lectures as upon the quality of scholarship that he exhibits and his general repute in the world of letters.  He has the satisfaction of feeling that his researches, even the most abstruse, can be brought to bear directly upon his official intercourse with his students.  A discovery that he makes is usually communicated to them in the first instance, before it finds its way into print.  The neglect to take account of this element of originality in the lectures of a German professor has led to an unfair estimate of the lecture-system.  Americans and English are apt to regard it as merely the oral inculcation of established truths.  Were that the case, we might be right in questioning its superiority over our method of teaching by textbook.  But it is not the case.  The lecture is the vehicle for conveying the latest discoveries made either by the professor himself or gleaned by him from the labors of his colleagues.  So far from merely repeating established truths, it rather promulgates truths in process of establishment.  German university lectures, taken all in all, represent the most advanced stage of thought.  The instances are not infrequent where a professor refrains from publishing his lectures, lest he should lose his hearers, who are attracted to him by reports of his originality and thoroughness.

The evident tendency of such a system is to encourage productivity and the highest degree of accuracy.  A man who has to teach only one subject, and teach it to such students only as are ready and anxious to receive it, can afford to take the time for being thorough.  The tendency of the American system, on the other hand, is to beget a spirit of routine and to check productivity.  The professor falls into a way of contenting himself with meeting the requirements of the college curriculum.  The effects of this curriculum upon the professors are deeper and farther-reaching than is usually perceived.  It is in accordance with facts to call American professors, as a class, unproductive.  But it would be unjust and inconsiderate to ascribe this want of productivity to the disposition called laziness.  Laziness is not a national fault of Americans.  On the contrary, we are pushing, active, restless:  we yearn, Alexander-like, for something new to overcome.  Our professors are of the same stock as our business-men, our lawyers, our doctors, our politicians.  But the spirit of progress, if we choose to call it by that name, has