The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1889-09-28
Is There Too Much Learning
The Greatest IdteneSs n ta the anteiiee
tual Trades. not ta the Manuals.
From the London standard,


The alarming increase in the number Of
learned men forms the theme of statistical
work which has just been issued by Got
tingeu professor. DR. Lexis figures refer
more especially to Germany, though they
are not much less applicable TO many other
parts both Of Europe and America.
Taking the number of students entered
on the books of the twenty-one Teutonie
universities at %, 000-Berlin heading the
list with less than 5000, while Rostoek
brings up the rear with something over
30O-thc Professor shows that fully one
half OF these hopeful youths are doomed to
life Of poverty and disappointment The
vast majority Of these 29, 900 Burschel. are
looking forward to becoming lawyers, or
doctors. or pastors, or schoolmasters, or in
some other way, either in private life or as
servants Of the state, to earn their bread by
means of the education they are at present
50 laboriouSly acquiring.
This IS not the first time that a similar
alarm has been sounded No less per-
sonage than Prof Virchow recently advised
Young men 10 abandon all thought of finding
a career in medicine, and core than once,
both in America and in Great Britain,
figures have been published showing that
there are not patients for half the doctors,
or clients for half the lawyers, or churches
for fifth of the curates, who are every
year let loose upon the world.
The rush to the learned professions be-
gan, it is sometimes affirmed, after the de-
preston in agriculture, and the correspond
ing rebound from the commercial prosperity
of fifteen or twenty years ago. This may,
no doubt, be partially true. But, as the
same phenomenon has been noticed in every
other country, the explanation must be
sought little deeper The real cause will,
We venture to think, be found in the ever
increasing tendency on the part of parents
aud their sons to look to the ''gentlemanly
professions instead of the more lucrative
and more certain callings of less "genteel
description. In Germany and America
this trait is perhaps exhibited in its most
exaggerated form, simply because in those
countries professional training is cheap and
the preliminary education abundant or easy
to attain But we see it everywhere else.
Since the school boards brought the three
Rs within the reach of every child, it is
notorious that these youthful graduates
have displayed repugnance to the useful
lives in which they have been born. They
want to|'better themselves" by becoming
city clerks or nursery governesses. 1t Is
the first result produced by an unwonted
state of affairs. BY and by education will
get too common to be marketable 1t will
then be regarded simply as a preliminary
to any calling, and not as a necessary ante
cedent of what the Germans call "bread
studies. A carpenter, or blacksmith, or
machinist, or shopkeeper, will discover
that he is none the worse for being a good
scholar, and will even find that in the en-
HANGED esteem, the greater pleasure, and
the enlarged chances in life which it gives
him, he is quite as much benefited by his
education as if he had sought to earn his
living by means of it directly.
We like black eye and we like blue
one. but we have no use for one that is both
-. L md bl,o