CIVILIZATION AND SCIENCE. 531 



examiner for the state and for the Faculty, I have learned more or less 

 accurately the educational standing of some 3,000 young men who had 

 left the first class of the gymnasium from two to four years previously. 



But there is a special reason why I should express my views about 

 the organization of gymnasia. In 1869 the rectors and senates of the 

 Prussian universities were invited by the Government to report on the 

 question " whether and to what extent the pupils of the Realschulen 1 

 could be admitted, as well as those of the gymnasia, to the faculty 

 courses of the universities." As being at that time Rector of the Berlin 

 University, it fell to my lot to draw up the report of its senate. Not 

 merely as reporter of the senate, but also with the warmth of personal 

 conviction, I pronounced against the admission of the realschulen pupils, 

 and took all pains to inculcate the importance of classical studies, for 

 which nothing else could be substituted. In harmony with the senate, 

 however, I even then insisted that, in taking sides with the gymnasia 

 against the realschulen, one is not bound to look on the former as per- 

 fect i. e., as not susceptible of, or not requiring, reformation in one 

 point or another. 



If I had now again to make a report in the same sense, I should find 

 myself embarrassed. My opinion as to the advantages imparted by 

 classical training is unchanged. My objections to making the pupils 

 of the realschulen the peers of those of the gymnasia are as strong as 

 ever. But the conviction has ever been growing in me that our present 

 gymnasium education is no sufficient preparation for the study of medi- 

 cine, nay, that as viewed from a general standing-point, it does not quite 

 perform the task which it has proposed to itself. Hence I could no 

 longer justify the exclusion of the realschulen pupils, at least from the 

 medical classes, unless certain reforms were granted in the gymnasial 

 plan of studies. Inasmuch as formerly, when placed in prominent posi- 

 tion, I maintained a different opinion, I consider myself under a sort of 

 obligation publicly to state my change of views, and to give the reasons 

 therefor. Should that report come up for discussion in the course of 

 the debates upon the education act, which we suppose will soon be laid 

 before the Parliament, I, for my part, do not wish to be held answerable 

 for it any longer. For the rest, of course I abstain here from an ex- 

 haustive discussion of this subject, and purpose simply to indicate in 

 brief the direction in which I should like to see our gymnasial plan of 

 studies modified. 



I regret that, in the first place, I have to state an impression which 

 has been steadily growing on me, that the humanistic education of the 

 average medical student is, with us, sadly defective. Such is their un- 

 familiarity with Latin etymology, such the poverty of their Latin and 

 Greek vocabularies for instance, many of our medical students, a few 

 years after passing the maturity examination, are unable to trace to 

 their source Greek technical terms that we can only conclude that 



1 Industrial schools. 



