Note 152 — Chapter XXI · FREETHOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

10. The movement of Biblical and other criticism in Germany has had a significant effect on the supply of students for the theological profession. The numbers of Protestant and Catholic theological students in all Germany have varied as follows:—Protestant: 1831, 4,147; 1851, 1,631; 1860, 2,520; 1876, 1,539; 1882–83, 3,168. Catholic: 1831, 1,801; 1840, 866; 1850, 1,393; 1860, 1,209; 1880, 619.152 Thus, under the reign of reaction which set in after 1848 there was a prolonged recovery; and again since 1876 the figures rise for Protestantism through financial stimulus. When, however, we take population into account, the main movement is clear. In an increasing proportion, the theological students come from the rural districts (69·4 in 1861–70), the towns furnishing ever fewer;153 so that the conservative measures do but outwardly and formally affect the course of thought; the clergy themselves showing less and less inclination to make clergymen of their sons.154 Even among the Catholic population, though that has increased from ten millions in 1830 to sixteen millions in 1880, the number of theological students has fallen from eleven to four per 100,000 inhabitants.155 Thus, after many “reactions” and much Bismarckism, the Zeit-Geist in Germany was still pronouncedly skeptical in all classes in 1881,156 when the church accommodation in Berlin provided only two per cent. of the population, and even that provision outwent the demand.157 And though there have been yet other alleged reactions since, and the imperial influence is zealously used for orthodoxy, a large proportion of the intelligent workers in the towns remain socialistic and freethinking; and the mass of the educated classes remain unorthodox in the teeth of the socialist menace. Reactionary professors can make an academic fashion: the majority of instructed men remain tacitly naturalistic.