24 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XVII. No. 414 



the university the so-caned University Hall, which is intended to 

 give students vrho have successfully gone through the college 

 course an opportunity for more advanced worli or for original re- 

 search. Connected with the university is a library, an observa- 

 tory, a botanical garden, a marine zoological station, and several 

 hospitals. Some of the university buildings are built of brick, 

 and heated by steam. The students live in frame dormitories, 

 which are lighted by electric lights There are a few other insti- 

 tutions which, in their highest classes, approach or equal the 

 standard of the Imperial University; as, for example, the German 

 Law School at Tokio, and the Doshisha, a school at Kioto, sup- 

 ported by American missionaries. Recently an attempt has been 

 made at conducting a private university with a limited number 

 of courses. 



The professors ia the vmiversity are either Japanese who have 

 been trained abroad, or foreigners (German, English, American, 

 French, and Chinese). The Japanese professors employ the Japan- 

 ese language; the foreigners, generally their own language, with 

 the exception of some of the German professors, who teach in 

 English. In the medical college the language used, in addition 

 to Japanese, is German ; in the engineering, science, and literature 

 colleges, English, with the exception of the special German litera- 

 ture course, in which German is spoken. In the law college there 

 are three divisions,— the English division for English law, the 

 French division for French law, and the German division for Ger- 

 man law. In the same manner the higher middle school in Tokio 

 is divided into special language departments. There is a German 

 division subdivided into tlie German law division and the German 

 medical division for those scholars who, when entering the uni- 

 versity, intend to study medicine or German law; there is an 

 English division with a, great many subdivisions for the future 

 students of the science, literature, or engineering colleges, and for 

 the students of English law and political economy ; and there is a 

 French division for the future students of French law. It is evi- 

 dent that the language in which these scholars are particularly 

 trained somewhat affects their spirit, and gives them a special 

 propensity in favor of some foreign nation. Thus we see the 

 young men who in the near future will constitute the intellectual 

 leaders of Japan brought up in three different camps. 



The higher middle school, which in the Japanese school system 

 immediately precedes the university, and is indeed its fitting- 

 school, is, according to the original conception, the continuation 

 of the ordinary middle school. For practical reasons it has estab- 

 lished preparatory classes of its own, also with several divisions, 

 according to languages. Before entering these preparatory classes, 

 the pupils generally lose much time in passing successively 

 through a number of private schools. There are a great many 

 of these private schools in Tokio, most of them without merit. 

 In some of the worst the system of so-called "tree students" 

 prevails; that is to say, any student who pays an extra fee 

 is at all times freed from the obligation of attending any of the 

 courses chosen. Some of the best private schools in Tokio are 

 conducted by teachers of the Tokio higher middle school. This 

 school, as we have seen, is the preparatory school for the special 

 university courses; so much so, that almost from tlie very begin- 

 ning it subdivides into special departments. 



This premature drill for some special branch is the outcome of 

 the peculiar circumstances of Japan, which, in order to render 

 possible and to fill the university, necessitated a too hasty mechani- 

 cal training for the special university courses. It frequently in- 

 volves the danger of preventing the pupils from acquiring a 

 sufficient amount of thorough general knowledge and the all- 

 round culture, which ought to precede the study of any special 

 branch of knowledge. Indeed, a truly scientific standard can 

 never be attained unless the spirit is strictly adhered tn, which 

 would found special attainments only on the basis of broad general 

 knowledge. Moreover, the acquisition of broad general knowledge 

 is particularly necessary for Japan in the present phase of her 

 political development. Before the end of this year the first Japan- 

 ese national parliament will have met. Will it be possible for the 

 government to secure a sufficient number of men with wide 

 knowledge and broad views to comprehend its enlightened and 

 far-reaching projects of reform ? A great deal of elementary 



work which, but for the hours taken by the special subjects, might 

 have been accomplished in the higher middle school, has to be 

 mixed up with more advanced studies. In the Japanese university 

 it is particularly the lack of acquaintance with a sufficient number 

 of the modern European languages which greatly interferes with 

 satisfactory progress in true university work. The Japanese higher 

 middle school system, with its premature special courses, leaves 

 no lime for entering into what is at the present time most essential 

 for Japan; viz., the very spirit of Western civilization. 



The difficulties which Japan, in introducing the AVestern learn- 

 ing into her middle schools, had to meet and to surmount were 

 enormous. Not only the subject-matter, but also the methods of 

 instruction, were entirely new. The greatest difficulty was to ob- 

 tain teachers for the new learning. The need being so great, men 

 who had often nothing but a glimpse of some single part of West- 

 ern learning had to be employed as teachers. The fact that the 

 new era demanded changes so numerous and so complete, that 

 the demand for Western learning sprang up so rapidly, so unex^ 

 pectedly. and so generally, had several drawbacks. The sudden 

 desire for an adoption of the Western civilization involved a 

 break with tradition. Tradition, being an important factor in 

 education and social life, has always to be handled with particular 

 delicacy and respect. The belief in a great many ideas which had 

 before been considered sacred and venerable began to be shaken. 

 Whereas, under the old regime, teachers embraced more or less 

 the whole range of Sinico- Japanese knowledge, the teachers of the 

 new era, as it has been impossible for them to acquire in the brief 

 space of time a thorough knowledge of Western learning, gener- 

 ally know only the one subject which they have to teach, better 

 than their pupils; while in the other subjects of Western learning 

 the pupils are generally far ahead of them. Petitions of a whole 

 body of pupils peremptorily asking the removal of such and such 

 a teacher from their school, and strikes of pupils organized to en- 

 force their will, are not unusual. Thus we see a great number of 

 the young generation of the better classes in Japan growing up 

 without true notions of authority and of submission. This, 

 indeed, is a most deplorable state of affairs, both from a social 

 and a political point of view. 



However deficient the knowledge of the present generation of 

 Japanese pupils in Western learning, there is, as has been pointed 

 out above, a decided and steady progress to be noticed. 



In a re-organized plan for the curriculum of a Japanese middle 

 school which I was asked to prepare, I have tried to initiate the 

 Japanese, as far as this can be done by school instruction, into the 

 true spirit of Western thought. A translation of a passage from 

 this plan may be here given : — 



•■ The course of instruction is intended to bring about an amal- 

 gamation of Japanese Chinese culture with the ideas of Western 

 civilization, and proposes to bridge the mental abyss which still 

 exists between Japanese and Europeans in their mode of feeling 

 and thinking. The aim is to solve the problem of leading the 

 pupils into the European range of thought, into the moral princi- 

 ples on which their law is based, and into the ethical views of life 

 entertained by them; in short, into the spirit of Western civiliza- 

 tion. 



•' The Western or European civilization is mainly a Romance- 

 Germanic civilization, which may be divided into three groups: 

 (o) the French branch of culture, (b) the German branch of cul- 

 t;ire, (e) the English branch of culture. 



"The best introduction into the true spirit of these three forms 

 of culture is by means of learning the respective languages. . . . 

 Each one of these three groups forming the Romance-Germanic 

 civilization comprises four elements : (a) the characteristic-popular 

 element, (/3) the Jewish-Oriental element, {y) the old classic- 

 (Greek-Roman) element, {6) the Christian element. 



" The principal object of the course of instruction is to lead the 

 pupil into the spirit of the first three of the above-named four 

 elements of French, German, and English culture, by the follow- 

 ing means: — 



"Partly by instruction in history, partly through the reading- 

 matter laid before the pupil in the study of the foreign languages., 

 and partly through lessons in universal literature, in the intro- 

 duction to the history of art, and in drawing. 



