CIVILIZATION AND SCIENCE. 537 



seminary. Even with the best intentions, it is not easy to see how 

 " the reading of the Augustan Confession in connection with instruct- 

 ing in the differences between various symbols of faith " can form part 

 of the general culture which it is the object of the gymnasium to im- 

 part to its pupils. 



My second scheme for giving more room to mathematics and natural 

 science will probably seem more objectionable, at least to a larger circle 

 of people, than the first. I dare hardly express it, but I would restrict 

 the study of Greek grammatical forms. My enthusiasm for the beau- 

 ties of Grecian literature is assuredly not less than that of any German 

 schoolman. But, unless I am greatly mistaken, the proper aim of 

 studying Greek namely, acquaintance with Grecian myth, history, and 

 art, and beina- imbued with Greek ideas and Greek ideals can be at- 

 tained without the unspeakable labor mostly labor in vain which it 

 costs to acquire the power of putting together a couple of Greek 

 phrases. Surely neither Goethe when he wrote his " Iphigenie," nor 

 Thorwaldsen when he modeled "The Triumph of Alexander," could 

 write a Greek composition such as is written by the pupils in the lower 

 second class of our gymnasia. If there is one Greek author whom all 

 pupils read understandingly, and even with enthusiasm, and whom 

 many of them hold dear and commit to memory, it is old Homer. And 

 yet Homer's dialect is so different from that in which the extemporalia l 

 are written that the practice gained by such exercises is of no account 

 as far as his works are concerned. Hence without written exercises 

 one can acquire such mastery of a dead language as is needed in order 

 to read the authors who have written in it ; and, as Homer, so, too, 

 might the great Attic masters of style be read, the written exercises 

 being restricted to preparation and translation. On a former occasion 

 I gave utterance to the heretical opinion that our German style has been 

 impaired by too extensive a study of the Greek. For exercising the 

 intellectual faculties, and for awakening and developing a sense of the 

 fundamental properties of a good style namely, correctness, precision, 

 and brevity of expression there is no doubt that Latin with its limpid 

 clearness, its rigorous precision, and its absolute definiteness of mean- 

 ing, is a better object of study than Greek with its multitudinous forms 

 and particles, the import of which is matter rather of skilled conjecture 

 and artistic feeling than of logical analysis. Since the time when our 

 system of gymnasium education assumed its present shape, our knowl- 

 edge of the ancient world has undergone an almost entire transforma- 

 tion : barren philology has become the living science of that defunct 

 w r orld, and even daily our store of pictures of ancient life is enlarged 

 by successful excavations. To one not versed in the study of pedagogy 

 it would appear as though wonderful results might be attained here, 

 just as in natural science, by the demonstratio ad oculos. Such a one 

 is inclined to think the pupil would, by studying copies of antique 



1 Off-hand compositions. 



