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A P P E N D I X ON CLASSICAL STUDIES1 The spirit and purpose of our foundation is preparation for learned study, a preparation grounded on Greece and Rome. For more than a thousand years this has been the soil on which all civilization has stood, from which it has sprung, and with which - it has been in continuous connection. Just as the natural organisms, plants and animals, struggle to free themselves from gravitation without being able to renounce this element of their own nature, so the fine arts and the sciences have grown up on that soil, and, while they have attained a self-subsistence of their own, they have not yet emancipated themselves from the recollection of that older culture. As Antaeus renewed his energies by touching his motherearth , so every new impetus and invigoration of science and learning has emerged into the daylight from a return to antiquity. But, however important the preservation of this soil is, the modification of the relation between antiquity and modern times is no less essential. When once the insufficiency and the disadvantage of old principles and institutions is recognized together with the insufficiency of all former erudition and instruction based upon those principles, our mind first superficially reacts by demanding their complete rejection and abolition. But the wisdom of our govern1 . [Thc speech here tr~nslatedwas delivered by Hegel as rector of the Gymnasiu~n(i.e., a high school as distinct from a technical school) at Niiremberg on September 29, 1809, at the end of the school year. The opening and closing paragraphs, which dealt with matters of school organization and progress , have here been omitted. ?'he translation has been made from the text in the collected edition of Hegel's works published after his death, Vol. XVI, pp. 133 ff. Reference has also been made to the text published by J. Hoffmeister in Hegds Nurnberger Schrijten (Leipzig, 1938), pp. 303 ff. The partial translation by Millicent Mackenzie in her E-legel'r Educational Theory and Practice (London, 1909) has been helpful in certain passages.] E A R L Y T H E O L O G I C A L W R I T I N G S ment [In reorganizing education] has risen superior to such an easygoing method, and it has fulfilled the requirements of the time in the truest way by modifying the relation of the old principles to the new world; thus it preserves their essential features no less than it alters and rejuvenates them. I need only remind you in a few words of the well-known position which the learning of the Latin language formerly had. It was not regarded simply as one element in education but was rather its most essential part and the only means of higher education offered to a pupil who refused to be satisfied with the general rudimentary instruct~on.There were hardly any educational arrangements expressly for acquiring knowledge useful to practical life or worthy in itself. The pupil was given the opportunity of learning Latin, and on the whole it depended on his use of that opportunity whether he picked up any knowledge of a practical kind, and, if so, how much. This other knowledge was thought of as acquired by a special art, not as a general means of education, and for the most part it was hidden in the shell of Latin instruction. A unanimous objection was raised against that learning of Latin which had become obsolete. In particular, the feeling was produced that a nation cannot be deemed civilized if it cannot express all the treasures of science in its own language, if it cannot move frcely in that language whatever the topic discussed. The intimacy which characterizes the possession of our oun language is lacking in the knowledge which we possess in a foreign language only. Such a knowledge is separated from us by a barrier which prevents it from genuinely coming home to our minds. This new outlook, together with deficient methods which oftcn degenerated into a merely mechanical procedure, and the failure to acquire much important knowledge and many important intellectual accomplishments, has step by step destroyed the claim of Latin learning to be the citadel of all sciences. This learning has lost the dignity so long claimed for it, the dignity of being the universal and almost the sole foundation of education. It has ceased to be considered as an end in itself; and this mental discipline has...

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