Schleiermacher and William von Humboldt, clear-headed, iron-willed
men, perceived what was needed, and bent all their energies to the
task. They emancipated the schools from the control of the clergy,
and established the principle that teaching is a distinct vocation,
requiring special training, over which the state has supervision;
furthermore, that the state should pronounce who is fit and who is
not fit for university education, thereby abolishing
entrance-examinations, and 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,