young scholar receives on seeing his idols so mercilessly broken
is salutary. It throws him back on his own resources; it makes him honest
to himself. If he thinks the criticism thus passed on Aristotle unfair, he
will begin to read his works with new eyes. He will not only construe his
words, but try to reconstruct in his own mind the thoughts so carefully
elaborated by that ancient philosopher. He will judge of their truth
without being swayed by the authority of a great name, and probably in the
end value what is valuable in Aristotle, or Plato, or any other great
philosopher far more highly and honestly than if he had never seen them
trodden under foot.

Do not suppose that I look upon the Universities as purely iconoclastic,
as chiefly intended to teach us how to break the idols of the schools. Far
from it! But I do look upon them as meant to supply a fresher atmosphere
than we breathed at school, and to shake our mind to its very roots, as a
storm shakes the young oaks, not to throw them down, but to make them
grasp all the more firmly the hard soil of fact and truth! "_Stand upright
on thy feet_" ought to be written over the gate of every college, if the
epidemic of uniformity and sequacity which Mill saw approaching from
China, and which since his time has made such rapid progress Westward, is
ever to be stayed.

Academic freedom is not without its dangers; but there are dangers which
it is safer to face than to avoid. In Germany--so far as my own experience
goes--students are often left too much to themselves, and it is only the
cleverest among them, or those who are personally recommended, who receive
from the professors that individual guidance and encouragement which
should and could be easily extended to all.

There is too much time spent in the German Universities in mere lecturing,
and often in simply retailing to a class what each student might read in
books in a far more perfect form. Lectures are useful if they teach us how
to teach ourselves; if they stimulate; if they excite sympathy and
curiosity; if they give advice that springs from personal experience; if
they warn against wrong roads; if, in fact, they have less the character
of a show-window than of a workshop. Half an hour's conversation with a
tutor or a professor often does more than a whole course of lectures in
giving the right direction and the right spirit to a young man's studies.
Here I may quote the words of Professor Helmholtz, in