ABSTRACT
The Young Kant was given his first lessons in the elementary school attached to St. George's Hospital, an institution for the aged. This school, in which reading, writing, some arithmetic and 'Christianity' were taught, was presided over by a single teacher, who was also leader of the choir and organist. Kant was to spend only a few years there. Continually surprised by her boy's intellectual alertness, his mother decided that, as soon as it were possible, he should enjoy a better education. The opportunity was soon to present itself. The goal of the Protestant colleges of the time was, alongside instruction in Christianity, facility in the oral and written use of Latin, to which sixteen to twenty hours were devoted each week. The aim here was much more the inculcation of the externals of the language, than an introduction to the spirit of antiquity.
