method of study
which he derives from it. He is no longer like an automaton, a
school-boy guided by his teacher and text-book, but is spoken to as an
independent thinker. Authorities are quoted, which he may consult at
his leisure. No subject is exhausted,--it is only touched upon. He learns
to teach himself.
Far different is the mental training thus acquired from that gained in the
same amount of time spent in mere reading. Thought is stimulated to a
far greater degree. The lecture-room becomes a laboratory, where the
mind of the hearer, in immediate contact with that of a man mature in
the ways of study, of one whose whole life seems to have prepared him
for the present hour, assimilates to itself more than knowledge. The
lecturer gives what no books can give, his own force to impel his own
words. His mind is ever active while he speaks. The hearer feels its
workings, and his own is stirred into action by the contact. It is not
given to all to enjoy the conversation and intercourse of the
master-minds of the age: in the lecture-room they speak to us
immediately; we feel the current of their life-blood; it pulsates through
all they say.
That seeming exceptions may occur, as in the case of professors who
year after year deliver the same written course, can have no weight
against the system. The tone and gesture, the very look, must animate
the whole;--and these very written lectures, read and delivered so often,
are no dead stalk, but a living stem, which puts forth new leaves and
blossoms every spring.
Nor is the hearer himself without his corresponding influence. His
attention and eager desire for knowledge stimulate new thought in the
speaker day by day, hour by hour; and many a German scholar must
have felt with Friedrich August Wolf, when he says,--"I am one who
has been long accustomed to the gentle charm which lies in the
momentaneous unfolding of thought in the presence of attentive hearers,
to that living reaction softly felt by the teacher, whereby a perennial
mental harmony is awakened in his soul, which far surpasses the labors
in the study, before blank walls and the feelingless paper."
THE STUDIES.
The first entrance into a German auditorium or _Hörsaal_, as the
lecture-rooms in the universities are called, will show much that is
characteristic. But little care is bestowed on the decoration of the
apartment. Whatever aesthetic culture the nation may have, it finds
little manifestation in the things of daily life, and elegance seems little
less than banished from the precincts of the learned world. The
academic halls present to the view nothing but dingy walls, rough
floors coated with the dust and mud of days or weeks, and, winter and
summer, the huge porcelain stove in one corner,--that immovable
article of cheerless German furniture, where wood is put in by the
pound, and no bright glow ever discloses the presence of that warmest
friend of man, a good fire. For the students there are coarse, long
wooden desks and benches, with places all numbered, cut up and
disfigured to an extent which will soon convince one that whittling is
not a trait of American destructiveness exclusively. Here are carved
names and intertwined lettering, arabesque masterpieces of
penknife-ingenuity, with a general preponderance of feminine
appellatives, bold incisures, at times, of some worthy professor in
profile,--the whole besmutched with ink, and dotted with countless
punctures, the result of the sharp spike with which every student's
ink-horn is armed, that he may steady it upon the slanting board. The
preceding lecture ended when the university-clock struck the hour; the
next should begin within ten or fifteen minutes. One by one the
students drop in and take their places,--high and low, rich and poor, all
on the same straight-backed pine benches. The days fire over, even in
title-loving Germany, though not long since, when the young counts
and barons sat foremost, on a privileged, raised, and cushioned seat,
and were addressed by their title.
As the hearers thus assemble, they present a motley appearance,--being,
in the larger cities especially, from all lands, all ranks of society, and of
every age. Side by side with the young freshman in his first semester,
the _Fat Fox_, as he is called, who has just made a leap from the strict
discipline of the gymnasium to the unbounded freedom of the
university, will be a gray-haired man, to whom the academic title of
Juvenis Studiosus will no longer apply. Here sits, with his gaudy
watch-guard, the colors of his corps, one of those students by
profession who have been inscribed year after year so long that they
have acquired the name of Bemossed Heads. Were his scientific
attainments measured by his capacities for beer-drinking and
Continue reading on your phone by scaning this QR Code
Tip: The current page has been bookmarked automatically. If you wish to continue reading later, just open the
Dertz Homepage, and click on the 'continue reading' link at the bottom of the page.