He
too wanted a rank-list to set his name upon. His reform of the
system would have begun in the lecture-room at his own desk. He
would have seated a rival assistant professor opposite him, whose
business should be strictly limited to expressing opposite views.
Nothing short of this would ever interest either the professor or
the student; but of all university freaks, no irregularity
shocked the intellectual atmosphere so much as contradiction or
competition between teachers. In that respect the
thirteenth-century university system was worth the whole teaching
of the modern school.
All his pretty efforts to create conflicts of thought among his
students failed for want of system. None met the needs of
instruction. In spite of President Eliot's reforms and his
steady, generous, liberal support, the system remained costly,
clumsy and futile. The university -- as far as it was represented
by Henry Adams -- produced at great waste of time and money
results not worth reaching.
He made use of his lost two years of German schooling to
inflict their results on his students, and by a happy chance he
was in the full tide of fashion. The Germans were crowning their
new emperor at Versailles, and surrounding his head with a halo
of Pepins and Merwigs, Othos and Barbarossas. James Bryce had
even discovered the Holy Roman Empire.
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