practical learning what they now seek to acquire merely by means of a
detailed plan of study--a plan which, corresponding to the more advanced
knowledge of the age, has entirely changed.

Thus the inner purpose of philological teaching has been entirely
altered; it was at one time material teaching, a teaching that taught
how to live, but now it is merely formal.[2]


32

If it were the task of the philologist to impart formal education, it
would be necessary for him to teach walking, dancing, speaking, singing,
acting, or arguing · and the so-called formal teachers did impart their
instruction this way in the second and third centuries. But only the
training of a scientific man is taken into account, which results in
"formal" thinking and writing, and hardly any speaking at all.


33

If the gymnasium is to train young men for science, people now say there
can be no more preliminary preparation for any particular science, so
comprehensive have all the sciences become. As a consequence teachers
have to train their students generally, that is to say for all the
sciences--for scientificality in other words; and for that classical
studies are necessary! What a wonderful jump! a most despairing
justification! Whatever is, is right,[3] even when it is clearly seen
that the "right" on which it has been based has turned to wrong.