Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 24.djvu/310

296 this particular series of reports, made in the manner in which they were, they have still more serious objections, which we shall notice later.

Turning aside now to another phase of the subject, let us see whether any influences have been at work which tend to give the gymnasia a better class of material to work with. If the boys who enter the gymnasia are decidedly superior in ability to those entering the real schools, we shall have a partial explanation of the better results achieved by the former.

The first point to be mentioned in this connection is that the traditions of Germany are classical. For decades and decades nearly every prominent man in law, medicine, theology, teaching, and (so far as nobility has not been accepted as a substitute for education) in the civil and military service of the country, has enjoyed the benefits of a classical education, if for no other reasons, simply because he was obliged to "enjoy" them as a condition of entering these careers. We all know how easily we associate two things which we always see together, in the relation of cause and effect. And so this eminence and culture which, owing largely to the artificial pressure we have mentioned, have for years and years in Germany been found in connection with a more or less complete knowledge of Latin and Greek, have come to be associated with the latter as effect from a cause. The sign has come to be largely accepted in place of the thing signified. It can not have escaped the observation of any reflective person who has ever lived in Germany, that there is a very wide social chasm in that country between the so-called liberally educated (die Studirten) and those who have not pursued such courses. There is, so to speak, an educational hierarchy, and the only path to it lies through the gymnasium. As in all hierarchies, so in this, there is an immense amount of Pharisaism, a touch-me-not and a come-not-near-with-unholy-hands kind of spirit which looks down on everything not of its type as something infinitely lower. The Studirter looks down, not only on the merchant or the artisan, but also upon the Volksschullehrer (common-school teacher) with a calm sense of superiority and a provoking self-conceit no matter how successful the career of the latter may have been. A small professor in a small university, of small ability and still less success, commiserates the most successful common-school teacher because he has not studied Latin and Greek; and we must add that the latter envies the former, taking the sign (Latin and Greek) for the thing signified (culture). No Studirter thinks of seriously discussing any question with a Non-studirter, but disposes of all difficult objections by the crushing answer that his opponent is an ungebildeter Mensch.

The artisan or merchant sees that no amount of culture derived from the study of modern subjects, or in the pursuit of his calling, or from the vigorous contact with active life, can secure for him a social recognition or equality with the Gelehrter; the common-school teacher sees