is own way, now passing from the branches to
the trunk and again from the trunk to the branches, now from a remote
bough to the principal branch and from that again back to the trunk.

And more than this, thanks to the co-ordination of lessons well
classified, there is, for each course of lectures, the means for
arriving at full details in all particulars; the young students can
talk amongst themselves and learn from each other, the student of moral
science from the student of the natural sciences, the latter from the
student of the chemical or physical sciences, and another from the
student of the mathematical sciences. Bearing still better fruit, the
student, in each of these four circumscriptions, derives information
from his co-disciples lodged right and left in the nearest compartments,
the jurist from the historian, from the economist, from the philologist,
and reciprocally, in such a way as to profit by their impressions and
suggestions, and enable them to profit by his. He must have no other
object in view for three years, no rank to obtain, no examination to
undergo, no competition for which to make preparations, no outward
pressure, no collateral preoccupation, no positive, urgent and personal
interest to interfere with, turn aside or stifle pure curiosity. He pays
something out of his own pocket for each course of lectures he attends;
for this reason, he makes the best choice he can, follows it up to the
end, takes notes, and comes there, not to seek phrases and distraction,
but actualities and instruction, and get full value for his money. It is
assumed that knowledge is an object of exchange, foodstuffs stockpiled
and delivered by the masters; the student who takes delivery is
concerned that it is of superior quality, genuine and nutritious;
the masters, undoubtedly, through amour-propre and conscience, try to
furnish it this; but it is up to the student himself to fetch it, just
what he wants, in this particular storehouse rather than in others, from
this or that lecture-stand, official or not. To impart and to acquire
knowledge for itself and for it alone, without subordinating this end
to another distinct and predominant end, to direct minds towards this
object and in this way, under the promptings and restraints of supply
and demand, to open up the largest field and the freest career to the
faculties, to labor, to the preferences of the thinking individual,
master or disciple,--such is (or ought to be) t