530 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



jects whatever it cannot bring into the cold light of reason, which would 

 divest history of its profound interest, and would even tear away the 

 veil which adds to the charms of Nature. As humanism rescued man 

 from the prison-house of scholastic theology, so let it enter the lists 

 once more to battle against the new enemy of harmonious culture. The 

 gods and heroes of antiquity, with their immortal fascinations ; the 

 myths and stories of the Mediterranean nations, in which, as we might 

 say, is enshrined all that is good and beautiful ; the spectacle of a civili- 

 zation which subsisted, it is true, without natural science, but out of 

 which prominent men rose to a mental greatness hardly ever attained 

 since it is from the action of such influences as these upon the mind 

 of youth that we can most confidently hope for victory in the struggle 

 with the neo-barbarism which, though as yet its hold upon us is loose, 

 is, from day to day, tightening its iron grasp. It is Hellenism that must 

 ward off from our intellectual frontier the onset of Americanism. 



But is it, then, possible to bring our youth into more intimate and 

 more stable contact with classic antiquity than heretofore ? In our 

 old and tried gymnasia have we not most careful provision made for 

 this very thing ? "What other country can boast of imparting so thor- 

 ough and so learned a classical education, and that to so large a pro- 

 portion of its youth, even of the less wealthy classes ? Other enlight- 

 ened countries of Europe have their eminent university professors, but 

 the profoundly-erudite, unassuming, and hard-working Oberlehrer is a 

 German type, of which the nation may well be proud. Thus not only 

 do we hold the foremost rank in gymnasial education, but we even, in 

 all probability, have reached the limits of the possible ; and were there 

 no other means of staying the decline of German idealism, save by in- 

 creased study of Latin and Greek in the gymnasia, we could have but 

 little hopes of checking the downward tendency. 



It will now seem paradoxical for me to assert that more Latin and 

 Greek certainly will not, but that perhaps a little less of them might, 

 insure this result. In fact, if our gymnasia are not to promote Ameri- 

 canization, instead of counteracting it, I hold that certain reforms of 

 the plan of study are imperatively necessary. 



The gymnasial education of the youth of Germany, like the consti- 

 tution of the army, exerts an enormous influence on German life. The 

 gymnasium has gradually come to possess a simply despotic power over 

 the family. For every educated citizen, therefore, who has himself 

 made the gymnasium course, or who has sons in the gymnasium, it be- 

 comes a right and a duty to concern himself about the organization of 

 those schools. Doubly is it his right to do this if, belonging to a learned 

 profession, he has had opportunities of observing the results of gymna- 

 sium education. This is the case with myself. As a professor in the 

 university, not only am I in constant relations with students in the early 

 semesters, and frequently, through my public lectures, with those who 

 are not studying medicine, but also, for upward of twenty-five years, as 



