THE CLASSICAL QUESTION IN GERMANY. 299 



Would not our professors complain, as does one in Berlin, that 

 they could not make so many references to Greece and Rome in their 

 lectures, since some of their bearers would not understand them ? 



Let us suppose further that the above proposition should be ac- 

 cepted, and that after eight years a committee of the opponents of the 

 measure should be called upon to express their opinions as to the re- 

 sults of the experiment. Could their report be considered as settling 

 anything between the two opposing parties — the defenders and oppo- 

 nents of classical culture ? Could the statement of these witnesses, 

 that the students who, under such conditions, came from the scientific 

 schools were not fully equal to those coming from the classicals chools, 

 be regarded as forever disposing of the claims of modern culture? 

 The answer to this question can hardly be doubtful. And yet those 

 who quote the Berlin report, as settling this much-vexed question, 

 must maintain that such a report as the imaginary one above de- 

 scribed would be satisfactory and conclusive. 



We have thus far proceeded upon the assumption that the Berlin 

 and similar reports were prepared by unprejudiced men, after a careful 

 and detailed examination of the records made by the graduates of 

 these two schools, and uninfluenced by extraneous considerations. We 

 are compelled to believe, however, after a somewhat detailed investi- 

 gation, that no one of these assumptions is true. 



The men who were asked for their opinions on this subject were 

 almost, if not absolutely, without exception graduates of the gym- 

 nasia. That lay, of course, in the nature of the case. Real-school 

 graduates could not enter the universities until the spring of 1871. 

 Allowing four years for the average length of time spent in the uni- 

 versities, the first real-school men were graduated in 1875, and in 1879 

 the first of these reports was prepared. As the candidates for admis- 

 sion to the university faculty must study one year more before enter- 

 ing the lowest grade of academic positions, and as promotions are very 

 slow in Prussia, it would be a very rare thing for a graduate of 1875 

 to have reached a professorial chair by 1879. Those who made these 

 reports were therefore men from rival schools, men imbued with preju- 

 dice in favor of the preparatory curriculum which they themselves 

 had completed, men entirely under the sway of the traditional feeling 

 in regard to the classics, and, of course, inclined to look with disfavor 

 upon real-school men as representing a movement which questions the 

 worth of classical culture. It is a well-known fact that there is usually 

 a strong tendency for a man to attribute his general success in life to 

 the particular things which he did, or left undone, and that it is an 

 easy thing to regard an incidental as an essential. The worthy Ger- 

 man professors are no exception to the rule. Many of them were so 

 strongly convinced of the superiority of classical to modern training 



antagonism will be introduced into our national life, and oui higher scholarship, that 

 fairest flower of our civilization, will perish from the earth ! " 



