le is the class system. Whether this
system is to be maintained as it is, or to be modified, or to be
abandoned for another more in accordance with the needs of the age,
are questions which must be kept in abeyance. The answer will
depend upon the view which we take of higher education in the main.
Meanwhile, let us consider the system in its operations during the
past and at the present day. Here, as so often before, Germany affords
us a warning example of the dangers consequent upon the recognition
of class distinctions. The comparatively harmless practice of
_Deposition_--a burlesque student-initiation which sprang up in the
sixteenth century and obtained a quasi sanction from no less a
person than Luther--degenerated in the seventeenth century into
_Pennalisimus_. Newly-matriculated students, called Pennalists (the
modern term is _Fuechse_), were maltreated by the elder ones, the
Schorists, and were pillaged and forced to perform menial services
"such as a sensible master would hesitate to exact of his servant[4]."
The Schorists considered themselves a licensed corporation. To give an
idea of their deportment, not merely toward the younger students, but
even toward the university itself, it will suffice to state that they
conducted their orgies at times in the public streets without fear
or shame. In 1660, during the student insurrection at Jena,
they assaulted and dispersed the Academic Senate in session. The
governmental rescripts of those days are taken up with accounts of the
evil and the means proposed for curing it. The matter was even brought
before the Imperial Diet. Pennalismus was not suppressed until the
close of the century, after the various governments had resorted to
the most stringent measures. Such excesses have, of course, never
been committed in America; yet we observe the same spirit of
insubordination to superiors and domination over inferiors betraying
itself in the New World. When we hear of "rushing," "hazing,"
"smoking-out" and the like, we must admit to ourselves that the animus
is the same, although the form be only ludicrous. And what shall we
say to performances such as the explosion of nitro-glycerine? Much may
be urged in extenuation of the offences of the German students in the
seventeenth century. Their sensibilities were blunted by the horrors
of a Thirty Years' War; they had been born and reared amid bloodshed
and rapine; some of them must have served in the campaigns of Baner,
Tor