Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/97

Rh knows at least something very well, gives him an advantage over other students who know something of many things without being perfectly at home in any. At the same time he will be found to have suffered in health. Very likely his eye-sight has been injured. As a rule, he is deficient in vitality. Fortunately for him, the university system is extremely lax. At the university he can do pretty much as he likes, lie makes up for the time lost, sometimes in such a manner as to procure him from the authorities the consilium abeundi, the invitation to pursue his studies at some other institution. Then comes his year of military service, during which he passes the greater part of the day in admirable out-door exercise. It has been frequently remarked by educated Germans, and especially Prussians, that this year of military duty is the salvation of the manhood of the nation, at least for that portion of the young men that spent the best years of their youth in the close confinement of the learned schools.

Let those who insist so strongly on the necessity of imitating the German usage carefully reflect on this side of the question. But there is still another side. We have all along spoken of the Latin and Greek preparation as though it were absolutely true that the students who arrived at the university from the gymnasium have actually mastered these languages to which they have sacrificed so much of their time. They are expected to read Greek books understandingly. The medical faculty of Berlin expressly stated it as one reason why those who wish to enter the university should know Greek, that they must be able to read Galen in the original. If such a proficiency in Greek is expected of them in the department of medicine, it is, of course, also considered necessary in the department "of arts," and so in the other two departments of the university.

The facts tell a different story. Numerous proofs could be furnished to show how little even the gymnasium succeeds in making its students get such a hold of two ancient languages as will make it all but impossible for them to lose the knowledge so gained before they are through their university course. We will confine ourselves to the testimony of one of the most competent scholars of Germany, the late Eduard Lasker, who recently died in this country while on a visit, and who is considered by Julius Rodenburg. the distinguished author, and editor of the "Deutsche Rundschau," as no less pre-eminent a philologist in the domain of Latin and Greek studies in Germany than Gladstone is reputed to be in Great Britain.

According to Mr. Lasker's most positive experience, it is impossible for the gymnasium to keep up the teaching of the two ancient languages, because, in attempting to teach both, they succeed in giving the student a good knowledge of neither. He recommended that the attention now divided between the two be concentrated on the Latin alone, as there was, of course, no use trying to curtail the other branches. This view of so distinguished a scholar and thinker is of