In the course of the discussions in sub-committee, in Committee, as well as in plenary session, three currents appeared. Some wanted to suppress drastically all declarations of rights in the Constitution of the Reich; for they saw in these principles no stable system, but only a collection of “declarations and declamations,” to which were joined some legal maxims figuring already in other laws. Others wanted to retain the system embodied in the cabinet draft, adding to it, however, several provisions to assure the protection of the rights acquired for religious denominations. A third group, among whom principally was Frederick Naumann, held that the cabinet draft, even thus extended, was retrogression and did not correspond to the actual development of German culture. They demanded that there be substituted for it a declaration of fundamental rights which would constitute a recognition of the principal ideas that characterize the most recent development of this culture. The Constitutional Committee, and after it the National Assembly itself, adopted a middle course. The propositions by Naumann as a whole were rejected; and it was decided not to inscribe in the Constitution, in political sentences and aphorisms without any legal content, a complete and solemn recognition of the directing ideas of the present and of the future. Nevertheless there would be inserted in the Constitution a certain number of political maxims and of “programme thoughts.” This done, the Constituent Assembly wished, in the words of Düringer, to give a foundation to the existing legal culture, and to furnish a mirror to German juridical life, and at the same time afford a programme for future juridical development. In addition the principles voted, since they would figure in the text of the Constitution, would have to be placed under the express guarantee of the Constitution and thus become part of the fundamental law of the Reich. The Assembly hoped, finally, that these articles would exercise a certain educational function. They would constitute the basis of the civic and political education of the people. The fundamental rights would have to be not only “the keystone of the edifice, but must also become the substance whereby the Constitution would live.” This was a magnificent programme; unfortunately it was difficult to carry it out and the most severe criticisms were rightly, it seems, made against the manner in which it was carried out.