Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/187

Rh formed in this century that of the gymnasial professoriate. Hitherto the teacher's office in the Latin schools had been filled entirely with theologians, and was a transition step to the priestly office. The new gymnasium demanded professionals. Its teachers are not candidates in theology with a general philosophical and philological training, but learned philologists, mathematicians, naturalists, and historians, with now professors of modern philology, geography, etc. The introduction of the examination pro facultate docendi in Prussia in June, 1870, marked the new demand. The special purpose of the philosophical faculty was from this time on to prepare specialists for teaching in the gymnasia. The philosophical faculty has now adapted its teaching to this new situation, and its purpose has been further so changed, in fact, that aside from the ultimate practical turning of its attendants into the teacher's office, it trains them to be merely learned scientific men. The instruction in the philological, historical, mathematical, and scientific branches is of a kind as if all who took part in it intended to devote themselves to scientific research as their only calling. Justification for this course has been sought in the consideration that recruits for scientific research are in fact found among the attendants; that gymnasium teachers have an important share in scientific work; and, finally, that the object of gymnasium teaching is really preparatory drill to scientific thought, and therefore a strict scientific training is the most important requisite of a German gymnasial teacher.

The priority, the historical course of which is sketched above, appertained to the philosophical faculty, but did not remain limited to it. The theological and juridical faculties had a part in it, and the medical faculty in particular, the course of which runs parallel with that of the philosophical, since it stands in close connection with it through the natural sciences, or as a science is strictly included in it. We are now no longer concerned with the transmission of an established doctrine, but with the search for natural or historical truth; and to approach a participation in this work is now regarded in all the faculties an essential part of the duty of an academical teacher.

When we regard the results of this development, there first appears an extraordinary prosperity of scientific investigation which proceeded in Germany chiefly from the universities. While our people in the seventeenth century stood away behind their western neighbors, they have gained, since the remodeling of the universities in the eighteenth century, a very eminent, in many instances the leading, place in all departments of scientific work. That this is due chiefly to the universities is attested by evidences both at home and abroad. Here scientific investigators have found favorable surroundings for quiet work, the necessary