48 Kant: A Biographythe student for the further study of theology at the university. The teachers
of the school were well suited for this task, since most of them were ad¬
vanced theology students at the University of Königsberg.
Emanuel did not find theology easy - or so it appears. At Easter 1735,
the beginning of his third year at the school, he was in third-year Latin and
third-year Greek, but only in his second year of arithmetic and religion.^84
Still, whether he wanted it or not, he received a solid preparation in the¬
ology before leaving the school. Since he had an extremely good memory
until his last years, we may assume that he never forgot the doctrines that
were drilled into him so early in his life.
The other classes were in the service of religious education as well. This
holds true especially of Hebrew and Greek. In Hebrew, which was taught
in three classes, students were expected to read the five books of Moses as
well as the historical books and the Psalms of David. The fourth and fifth
year of Greek were devoted not only to repetition in grammar, but also to
the reading of the New Testament. Only after they had read the entire Greek
New Testament were the students introduced to the classical Greek writers.
The book they used was Johann Matthias Gesner's Chrestomathia (first pub¬
lished in 1731). It contained selections from Aristotle, Sextus Empiricus,
Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Theophrastus, Plutarch, Lucian, and
Herodian. Students would also read some Homer, Pindar, and Hesiod.
While they would thus get some idea about classical antiquity, the main
emphasis was still theological.
The backbone of the education at the Collegium Fridericianum was
Latin.^85 Not only did the students spend the most time learning Latin, it
was also by far the most important discipline. There were six classes, last¬
ing up to eighteen hours per week in the lower grades, up to six in the
higher. Most of these hours were taken up by drills in vocabulary, conju¬
gation, declination, and the rules of grammar. By their third year, students
were expected to read Cornelius Nepos; the fourth year consisted of a
repetition of all of Nepos, some Cicero, and some poetry. In the fifth class
they read Caesar and more Cicero, and in the sixth year Cicero (De officüs,
among other selections), Muretus, Curtius, and Pliny. Great emphasis was
placed on speaking and writing in Latin. Indeed, in the two highest classes
students were instructed to talk to each other and their teachers in Latin
only.
Emanuel did well in Latin, and those who knew him then thought that
he would make classics his chosen field of studies. Ruhnken said that be¬
tween Easter 1739 and September 1740, he himself was most interested in