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STUDY OF THE ANCIENT CLASSICS.
It is proposed in the present article (and a subsequent one) to
set forth, not in a controversial but in an explanatory way, the
value of the study of the ancient classics in a course of higher
education. By this is meant not merely the study of the Greek
and Latin tongues, but also of what they comprise, suggest, and
unfold.
Let us proceed on the supposition that the young man has the
time, means, and desire for a general education, as distinguished
from a merely special one. A great part of the community are
not thus favorably situated. They must content themselves with
what education they can get, limited in range, amount, and quality.
Very many are compelled to train themselves from the outset
for specialties, and though the fuller education would probably
raise them higher in their special sphere, and would certainly
broaden and deepen their intellectual character, power, and influence,
they must forego it. Let us suppose the student governed
by no such necessity. Let us also suppose these classical studies
pursued as they ought to be, and not in the crude and mechanical
way in which they are sometimes taught, and which has done so
much to bring them into discredit.
Before proceeding further, let us deal with one very common
and popular objection: What use does the man get of his Latin
and Greek in his after life? We will consider the practical results
in due time. Meanwhile we answer this question by asking some
others. How many students will, in their after life, make any
direct use of their algebra, their geometry, — plane and solid,
analytic and descriptive, their trigonometry and surveying, indeed
any mathematics beyond the ordinary processes of arithmetic? Will
one in twenty of them do so? How many will directly use, except for
the purpose of teaching, their mineralogy and geology? How many,
except specialists, their chemistry? To what economic use will
they put their metaphysics and ethics? their Anglo-Saxon, now
so strongly urged as a part of English study? What proportion
of the graduates from the colleges of New England will ever have
occasion to speak French or German, or be put to serious
inconvenience from the inability to read them? Even for important
literary or scientific purposes, these languages will be used by the
very small minority. It is obvious at once, therefore, that we
cannot rule out the classics by any such criterion, or we at the same
time rule out almost all that constitutes a high education and a
genuine culture. It would reduce us speedily to a narrow area
and a low plane, — little more than "the three Rs." We must
then find some higher meaning of an education than the practical
and tangible application of its several constituent parts in the very
form in which they are acquired. We are compelled to view it in
its adaptation to expand and elevate the whole man; to unfold on
every side his human capacities; to give him mental breadth, alertness,
discrimination, comprehension, and adaptation; to place him
in full relation to his environments and antecedents, and to his
race in the past and in the present; in a word, to make him
something more than a mechanism that works in a groove, namely, a
versatile man, cultured and accomplished, wide-reaching,
many-sided, much enjoying, and broadly influencing.
For such an end as this many of us, after long and careful
observation and reflection, do not believe that modern progress or
discovery can offer any line of study which shall supersede the
study of the ancient classics. No single consideration explains
their value. The reasons are manifold, and must be viewed in
their combined force. So various, indeed, are the influences they
exert, that it is difficult to set them forth as they deserve. I will
endeavor briefly to present the case as it lies in my mind, and
gather up these influences in several broad groups.
I. Classical studies furnish a high and varied discipline, because
they involve the study of language, and in its highest forms.
No intelligent man questions the importance of linguistic study.
Why? Because language, that marvellous thing, is the incarnation
of thought. The thought of a race lies embodied in its
speech. "Language," says Jewett, "is an aspect of man, of
nature, and of nations, the transfiguration of the world in thought,
. . . . and also the mirror in which they are reflected." An
American writer has called it "fossil poetry." Dean Trench, in
reaffirming the sentiment, adds that it is just as truly fossil ethics
and fossil history, and he quotes approvingly the statement of
another great English writer that "there are cases in which more
knowledge of more value may be conveyed by the history of a
word than by the history of a campaign." If any man questions
these statements, let him but follow Trench through his little work
on "The Study of Words," or, better, let him take the more
extensive discussions of such a writer as Max Müller, and see for
himself a great multitude of illustrations.
But this — the reconstruction of human history and human
thought as embodied in speech — is not the main point in view.
We have in mind the many continual and ever varying mental
processes through which the young student passes and repasses in
the wise and thorough acquisition of a language of high order.
It forms a complete system of both the lighter and the heavier
mental gymnastics, adapted alike to his earlier and his later
juvenile years. In this dealing with words he is accustomed easily,
and from the first, to the vital habit of generalization and abstraction,
and the tracing of divergent lines of thought in derivation.
It steadily trains him to exact discrimination. It accustoms him
in every sentence to the constant practice of analysis and synthesis,
from the simplest to the most difficult. As he not only
recognizes the nicely balanced grammatical relations, but decides which
among the various possible meanings of the terms is admissible
and suitable, and adjusts all the several and often complicated
connections of the sentence so as to seize and reproduce the very
thought of the author, the mind over and over goes through all
the processes of what is called moral or probable reasoning, that
balancing of probabilities which forms the sole kind of reasoning
on evidence and in common life. It is incessant induction — a
perpetual solution of linguistic puzzles. The mind thus habitually
passes through all its various modes of activity. It is the student's
own personal activity, his own work of discovery. And the effort
ranges, according to the circumstances, from the lowest to the
highest. It has trained and tasked how many of the acutest
intellects. It may be safely said that no other study or class of
studies carries the young mind habitually through so many
processes that form it to pliancy, accuracy, and power.
Nothing is to be said in disparagement of mathematics. Pure
mathematics, however, is never inductive, but always deductive.
Given this, and that follows. It is admirable to concentrate and
hold the attention, to train to certain modes of high abstraction,
and to what may be called a spatial imagination. Doubtless the
present tendency is to undervalue it even more than classic
studies, and to eliminate it too much from a course of required
study, to the disadvantage of the student. For though it has no
direct connection with the reasonings of common life, it has in its
far more limited sphere an admirable use in a robust education.
Nor are the sciences to be depreciated in the slightest degree.
As information, they are indispensable. And to the leaders in
science, they are fields of the broadest and often the most remarkable
inductive reasoning, as well as most careful observation. Useful
as they are to the learner, however, they do not present to
him such a range of spontaneous mental activity. They are
more largely matters of careful memorizing, with more or less of
observation and analysis, but under the immediate guidance of
another mind. Their reasonings, which consist largely in
classifications and generalizations, have been wrought out by a few
select thinkers, to be for the most part followed and accepted by
the learner. And it should be added, that, with noticeable and
honorable exceptions, the great and safe reasoners in the natural
sciences have been men of liberal education and classical training.
In enumerating the mental processes called into action by this
study of language, nothing has been said of its effect on the
memory, because it needs no remark. Nor need we pause to show
in detail how its habits of nice discrimination stand related to taste
and culture, besides the other modes in which classic studies
conduce to these ends.
Again: In the act of translation, especially from languages
copious in expression and in thought, all the resources of our own
language may and should be made to pass habitually in review,
and thus the student trained to the complete and accurate mastery
of his native tongue. No method could be more effectual; and if
this end be not in some good degree accomplished, as it must be
confessed it sometimes is not, it must be by reason of slovenliness
in the teacher or dulness in the scholar. The vast majority of
masters of English style have had more or less of classical education,
and the rare exceptions, such as Franklin and Lincoln, have
sometimes done their best to find a close substitute, — Franklin by
translating and retranslating the English of the classically taught
Addison, and Lincoln by long protracted efforts of shaping and
reshaping his sentences, over and over, till they exactly expressed
his thought in the clearest and tersest form. Dr. A. P. Peabody
has placed himself strongly on record on this point: " It is not
a matter of mere theory; it is perfectly easy to detect the absence
of classical training in a writer. There are undoubtedly exceptions,
but so few as not to disprove the rule. In many years'
experience as an editor [of the N. A. Review] we never failed to
detect a difference in favor of contributors who had received a
classical education, and in some cases, and with reference to
writers of superior ability and reputation, we discerned the
deficiency in that regard before we otherwise obtained knowledge of
the fact."1
The benefits of linguistic study, most of them, do not come
except in connection with the study of some foreign tongue, for
the obvious reason, among others, that we must have some means
of comparison; and in order fully to appreciate the native language
which envelopes us, and which we breathe as an atmosphere, we
must view it from some outside stand-point. It was Goethe who
said, perhaps too strongly, "He who is acquainted with no foreign
tongue, knows nothing of his own." The general principle is too
generally admitted to require further discussion here.
But why preëminently the classic tongues? Because they,
especially the Greek, although the Latin is largely akin to it, are the
most highly organized and best developed languages. Inasmuch
as a language embodies the life and thought of a race, it will be
high or low, broad or narrow, refined or crude, according to the
character and experience of that race. The original language of
the Sandwich Islands, and the dialects of the North American
Indians, rise no higher than the level of their lives, manners, and
modes of thinking, and, except as matters of curiosity or scientific
comparison, deserve no attention from us. But the Greek race
stands confessedly in the forefront of the nations for subtlety,
variety, and versatility of genius and achievement. "Hellas,"
says Felton truly, "as the boldest illustration of unity in the
largest variety, stands alone in the history of civilization." We
might almost say with Wilkinson, There never were any better
soldiers, never any better sailors, never any better colonists and
traders, never any better sculptors, painters, architects, never any
better orators, poets, historians, critics, rhetoricians, philosophers,
mathematicians, never any better leaders, statesmen, diplomatists,
never any better gymnasts, any better gentlemen, any better wits,
than you find among the ancient Greeks; and certainly, in
proportion to the number of the whole people, never so many eminent
in the various ways thus indicated."
Now this many-sidedness stands incarnated in the language
which, in the combined qualities of precision, subtlety, flexibility,
fulness, symmetry, suggestiveness, vivacity, and power, has
never been surpassed, if equalled. In the terse words of Dr.
Schaff, "It is the most beautiful, rich, and harmonious language
ever spoken or written." Hence its peculiar claims on the student;
hence its ineradicable hold on the admiration of men. Among
modern tongues perhaps the German approaches it nearest in
copiousness, flexibility, and a certain kind of precision, and in
force. In some other qualities it falls short, besides having
certain relative disadvantages which will presently appear. The
central faculty of the University of Berlin have pronounced it not
an equivalent. The Latin, if unequal to the Greek, is its near
congener and heir, and, in most of the qualities of a noble tongue
for the purposes of study, its usefulness is generally admitted, and
calls for no special argument.
Did the limits admit, much more might be said on this head, —
the study of language, and especially of the classic tongues, as a
means of intellectual training, the most varied kind of mental
gymnastics.
II. This study familiarizes the student with the most brilliant
literatures of the world. We suppose here some progress already
attained, and a wise, progressive teaching. Undoubtedly the
study of the ancient classics has been greatly prejudiced by
inadequate methods of instruction. While the language cannot be
mastered without the grammar, too often the grammar has been
made to master the language, and that, too, not always grammar
in its highest forms and functions. As there comes a time when,
except for the specialist, the mechanics of grammar, so to call
them, must give way for its principles, so there should come a
time when the grammatical drill should be considered mostly
outgrown, when grammar itself shall be subordinated to language
and its relations, and especially the language to its contents.
This view was too long lost sight of. Endless attention to a mass
of intricate rules, technicalities, exceptions, subordinate and
sometimes doubtful speculations, took the place of a living appreciation
of the world's great writings, in all the aroma of their beauty,
grace, and power.
There were bright exceptions. I have known a Greek professor
who so taught the Iliad to his classes that they emerged from
his instruction with the firm belief that there was scarcely such
another poet since the world began as Homer. On the other hand,
there was a more distinguished scholar, his contemporary, of whom
a prominent pupil in after life, on reading an excellent review of
Bryant's Homer written by him, said, "I was his pupil in Homer
at --- college, and for all that he taught me in the class I
should never have dreamed that he considered Homer's Iliad
anything but so much Greek, to be ground out very fine with
grammar and dictionary. As for its being literature and being
poetry, he never let me guess that he knew the Iliad in any such
relation. And here this noble review shows how fine and true his
literary appreciation of Homer was. I am indignant." He tells
the story well. In like manner I have been cognizant of the
teaching of the finest Greek poetry by a professor educated in
Germany, which was so absorbed in minute and unimportant
technicalities, in the mechanics of the verse, in pet derivations, often
improbable, in philological comparisons, more earnest in proportion
as they were doubtful, in baseless questionings of the genuineness
of certain portions of the text, and the like, as to pay almost
no attention to the qualities of the poetry itself. The subject
admits of more abundant illustrations than our space permits.
Now, as John Milton wrote to Master Samuel Hartlib, "Though
a linguist should pride himself to have all the tongues that Babel
was cleft into, yet if he have not studied the solid things in them
he is no learned man." And inasmuch as, in the words of another,
"there never has been anywhere else in the world so much
writing approaching so nearly to ideal perfection in form as
among the Greeks," and as the Romans caught largely of their
spirit, so should the modern student catch it also. In proportion
as he makes the requisite progress, he ought to know and appreciate
some of the masterpieces of literature and discern the qualities
of great writing. Why should he be so absorbed in the
details of grammar and the mechanism of language as to overlook
the graphic power of Homer? Why should he not be made
constantly to recognize his varied, abundant, and brilliant imagery?
Why not feel the beauty, and often the grandeur, of Virgil's
descriptions, and the fine qualities of his epic as a whole? And so,
throughout the whole range of classic study, why in any case
abandon the kernel for the shell?
When the Iliad is statedly read as a great epic poem, the
Prometheus Vinctus as a magnificent tragedy, the De Corona as a
masterpiece of oratory, the Peloponnesian war as a great history;
when the singular felicity of Horace, the artistic finish of Tacitus's
Agricola, and the condensed keenness and power of his histories,
are seen and felt, — then will the young student, in addition to the
gymnastics of the language, have gained a literary knowledge,
insight, and culture not to be surpassed, if equalled, in any other
sphere of study.
[TO BE CONCLUDED.]
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THE STUDY OF THE ANCIENT CLASSICS. — Concluded.
III. The study of the ancient classics brings the student in
contact with the great sources of literary and historic influences, and
places him at the central point of survey through the whole range
of highest human attainment and achievement.
I here leave out of account the early sacred literature, with its
divine basis, which has mingled so mightily in the movement of
later history, to speak of the purely human elements.
Unquestionably we find the chief human factors of modern civilization in
the old classic influences. There were, indeed, older agencies, —
Assyrian, Chaldean, Egyptian, — from which the Hellenic race
borrowed largely; but it borrowed not only to idealize and to
transfigure and to multiply, but to communicate, circulate, and
transmit. It put its own stamp on the product, and gave it
perpetual currency. We find here the type of all modern thought.
Here began modern poetry, — epic, lyric, dramatic. Here history
first took its form. The two great schools of philosophy were
first represented here. The geometry of to-day comes down two
thousand years from the Greeks. Art, in some of its forms,
reached its perfection and oratory its height, and political life
took on its occidental type. And through the Romans, in part,
all these, with some important accessions, were transmitted to us.
The history and achievements of these two classic nations thus
stand out before the world as do those of no other races. That
history and that literature have become the great unfailing source
of reference, allusion, and derivation, the one great inheritance of
modern civilization, the common bond of the commonwealth of
letters among all nations. The career of no other races, whether
German, English, or French, ever will or can stand in such
central and universal relations. To be conversant with these is therefore
to stand at the radiating point of modern development, to hold
the clue to the influences that have shaped its course, and to know
literature and history in their organic whole. It is the kind of
literary knowledge that belongs to a centrally and roundly
educated man, — a man of broad, coherent, and philosophic culture;
a kind of knowledge the lack of which is so often deeply felt by
the man who has it not, and so easily recognized by those who
have it.
The late George P. Marsh, while most earnestly asserting the
claims of our own language to profound study, as he well knew
how, yet asserts that "as a means of that encyclopædic
knowledge which is one of the most imperious demands of modern
society, an acquaintance with foreign, and especially classic, lit-
erature is indispensable." And a little later he interrupts his
argument for the English to say, — "I do but echo the universal
opinion of all persons competent to pronounce on the subject, in
expressing my own conviction that the language and literature of
ancient Greece constitute the most efficient instrument of mental
training ever enjoyed by man; and that a familiarity with that
wonderful speech, — its poetry, its philosophy, its eloquence, and
the history it embalms, — is incomparably the most valuable of
intellectual possessions."1 Such weighty words from such a source
hardly require to be supplemented. Passing therefore from this
aspect of the case, another of the concurrent considerations is
the fact that, —
IV. The classic tongues furnish the key to a vast range of
modern knowledge.
Four prominent languages of modern Europe, — French,
Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, are lineal descendants of the
Latin. In every sentence of them the eye catches the lineage of
the words. The student who knows the Latin has an immense
advantage in learning any or all of them at his pleasure. The
difference in ease of acquisition on the part of two classes of stu-
dents of equal capacity, one of which knows the parent tongue
and the other does not, is a matter of the commonest observation.
It might almost be said it — has been said by some — that he who
would master any two of them would save time by learning the
Latin first. Certainly, that previous knowledge becomes a great
saving of time and labor in their acquisition. Even in the
German, though not itself a descendant of the Latin or the Greek,
whoever pursues it for scholarly uses will find such an amount of
classic words subsumed into it as to form a perpetual stumbling-block,
and to require a special lexicon, without some knowledge
of those tongues.
Very striking and important is the well known relation of the
English to the classic tongues. The Greek element in its structure,
though less, is considerable; but the Latin element is large.
Estimates differ. Trench reckons that of a hundred parts of
English, sixty would be found to be Anglo-Saxon, thirty Latin (including
derivations through the French), and five Greek. Marsh finds
sixty-five per cent. of native origin in the Bible and in
Shakespeare, and in Milton's poetry only thirty-three per cent.
Anglo-Saxon. The man who is moderately familiar with the ancient
tongues has a great advantage in the knowledge of his own,
especially as it appears in such writings as Milton's, and is often
saved the necessity of referring to his dictionary; or when he
refers, he far more easily remembers.
But Greek is remarkably connected with all modern scientific
nomenclature. It is, has been, and apparently will continue to
be, the one great source from which are drawn in every direction
the terms of science. Geometry, physics, chemistry, botany, anatomy,
surgery, physiology, mechanics, mechanism, and manufactures,
even, steadily fall back upon the Greek. The knowledge of
it is a striking advantage to the scientific man, for it gives him the
mastery (as Dr. Peabody remarks) not only of the terms in his
own specific line, but a clue to the nomenclature through the
whole range of the sciences. Of course, he cannot definitely tell
in advance what is the exact application of the name, but let the
knowledge of that application be once given, and it is ever after
retained with the utmost ease. A young classical student once
listened to a course of lectures on anatomy with no preparatory or
collateral study; and a very able medical student, who made the
study a business but without the knowledge of the Greek, spoke
to him with strong emphasis of his far greater facility in retaining
and reproducing the anatomical designations. Without such help
such a task becomes a sheer, hard struggle of the memory with a
mass of isolated and unmanageable names.
These technical terms in the English language are numbered by
thousands, and even tens of thousands. In Dana's Geology one
can count more than two thousand of them of Greek or Latin
derivation; and they are increasing with every advance in invention
and discovery. The scientific man who has no knowledge of
these tongues must, as compared with one who has that knowledge,
labor through life under a great disadvantage, not alone in
his own particular province, but in reference to the ability to grasp
easily the phraseology and discussions in the wide circle of the
sciences.
It will thus appear, and will more distinctly appear in the
sequel, that the attempt to restrict the uses of classical study to
certain professions is a grave and unwarranted. mistake. The
benefits thus far enumerated overleap all professional lines, and
apply with almost equal force to all high education. The clergyman
has indeed an additional pressure to know the language in
which the New Testament was written; but even here the
discussions of our time on the New Testament text have passed
beyond the confines of the clergy.
It will also be observed that these benefits are not solitary, but
are conjoint and cumulative. They are here presented in their
direct and intrinsic value, and not by way of contrast to other
studies. Nothing is to be said in disparagement of the modern
languages. There can be no question of their utility. But it is
claimed that they cannot take the place and fulfil all the functions
of classical studies in a course of higher education. Which of
them can combine all the uses thus far indicated? Meanwhile,
enough of each for the purposes of a general education can be
acquired, especially by one who has the advantage of a classical
training, without detruding the classics. If he is really to master
any one of them, he will hardly do it at school, in connection with
other necessary studies. In order to use a modern language like
a native, he must either be put under a foreign governess in his
childhood, or in his youth or early manhood throw himself boldly
into a foreign residence. In the school or the college, as he can
but take a survey in outline of the circle of the sciences, so he can
make a good beginning and some proficiency in certain modern
languages; and when the need comes, he will haul them in hand
over hand. I have known a young classical student by himself to
take up Italian, and read through Tasso's Jerusalem and Aminta,
and enter upon Dante, all in the course of three months.
V. An education which includes classic studies tends to a far
wider range and a higher scale of success in life.
For the several reasons that have been indicated, it gives the
man a much more varied and versatile capacity of action and a
much broader scope. A wider field thus opens before him from
which to choose. What happens to the young graduate when, as
is so frequently the case, he goes out for a time to teach, is typical
of his life prospect. As a teacher he is not limited to one line or
one sphere, but he is, or can be, fitted for any branch that offers;
for he has learned how to learn, or to superintend the whole circle
of instruction. Just so he looks out on life, with his diversified
and rounded training, to run, not like some locomotive on its iron
track, but like a steamer on the ocean, and make his port at will.
Thus, other things being equal, his life chances are greatly en-
larged. His choice of calling ceases to be compulsory, and
becomes to a far greater degree optional. He will always have
more strings to his bow, and will find himself fitted for the
opportunity that shall offer.
The difference in mental calibre and equipment usually and
inevitably shows itself from the beginning to the close of the pre-
liminary education, alike in the ability to cope with the more
abstruse themes of study and in the graduating theses of the two
classes of students. And whoever has had occasion to attend in
close succession the graduation exercises of two institutions, one
of which includes the extended study of the classics and the other
excludes it, seldom fails to be struck with the marked difference
between the two in clearness, point, vigor, and range of thinking.
This last mentioned fact leads to the further consideration that
the classical training tends not only to a wider range, but to a
higher quality of success. If we have rightly described the influence
of these studies, this effect is a natural one, the result of a
more supple and forceful intellect, and of a larger circle of
intellectual vision and relationships. Other things being equal, it
should make the man a keener, more vigorous lawyer, a preacher
of much greater resources, a more intelligent and many-sided
physician, a more discerning and far-reaching statesman, a safer
scientific reasoner, a wiser, abler, and more fertile journalist, and
a business man, if not of greater business capacity, yet of higher
dignity, and of far more enjoyable, elegant, satisfactory, and
useful prosperity.
Now it certainly is not easy to isolate the cases so as always to
trace effects to causes, nor to say what might have been with the
same individual under other circumstances. It may also be said
that the other forms of education have not always enjoyed the
same opportunities, at least in the public schools. But there are
certain obvious facts, or classes of facts, that inevitably arrest the
attention. And though there are, we are glad to say, many
noble exceptions where native talent and untiring application have
overcome all obstacles, sometimes even the lack of any school
education, it remains undoubtedly true that a large majority of the
great lawyers, great statesmen, great preachers, great journalists,
great physicians, great educators, great leaders of thought in every
line, have been men of classic education. The same thing is true
of the mass of scientific men who have distinguished themselves as
men of wide and sound generalizations, and of ability to set forth,
defend, and propagate their principles. This difference of train-
ing not seldom marks the dividing line between broad reasoners
and men of narrow hobbies. After making every allowance for
the fact that the higher education in schools has taken so largely
the classical form, yet bearing in mind that it is the very small
minority they educate, and that so many other avenues are open
to enterprising youth in scientific institutions, in military and naval
schools of high order, in private schools and private teachers of
modern languages, it would seem to be no accident by which the
great intellectual leaders and broad thinkers, the men who have
left their mark on the course of human thought in every direction,
have fallen and continue to fall into this very small minority.
It would be a wearisome task to cite adequately from the history
of the past the multitude of instances in proof. They strike the
eye in like manner at present. We may look forth at random,
and the same general fact meets us. It is surely by no accident,
for example, that the three men in England who a few months
since stood at the head, respectively, of its statesmanship, its
judiciary, and its literary culture, — Gladstone, Lord Coleridge, and
Matthew Arnold, should all be both illustrations and vigorous
defenders of classical training; that nearly all the leading lawyers
of New England, and nearly, if not quite, all the judges of its
supreme courts, should be classically educated men; that most of
the professors in the best medical schools, even the specialists,
should be college graduates; that the leading geologists of America
now living (Dawson, Dana, LeConte, Hitchcock, Newberry,
Winchell), and even the chief English and American astronomers
and physicists of our time (Tait, Thompson, Clerk-Maxwell,
Lockyer, Proctor, Young) should be, like the second Herschel,
and, so far as he could, the first Herschel, men of liberal education.
It was by no accident that the government under which we
live should have been mainly shaped by men of classical training.
Richard Henry Lee, the mover of the vote for independence, was
so educated in England. George Wythe and John Adams, his
main supporters, were graduates of William and Mary and of
Harvard; Jefferson, who drafted the Declaration, a man of college
training; the eight debaters in the Constitutional Convention, who,
as Curtis says, "exercised the largest influence," all but Franklin
college men;2 and the three writers who successfully defended the
Constitution before the public in a doubtful time, college men.3
2
King, Randolph, C. C. Pinckney, Wilson, Morris, Madison, Hamilton. Of the thirteen other
names mentioned by Hildreth as taking part in that debate, eight were certainly college men, and the
ninth was the founder of Dickinson college.
3
Jay, Hamilton, Madison.
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It was no accident by which Mr. Huxley's own son was not
long since found at Cambridge, taking the highest honors in the
classics; that men of liberal education are found in such
disproportionate numbers teaching in specialist institutions; or that so
many far-seeing business men and men of wealth should be giving
their sons, even if designed for business, specialties, or political
life, a liberal education, that in all these spheres they may have
the power of thought and speech, and breadth and culture, whereby
to dignify and enjoy their wealth and success. It is an equally
significant fact, that when in a scientific periodical4 not long
since five great names were selected as "having, each of them,
bequeathed to posterity a new realm of knowledge," — namely,
Linnæus (or Linné), Darwin, Lyell, Lavoisier, Descartes, — it
should appear that Linnæus wrote treatises in Latin, Lavoisier
was a graduate of the College Mazarin, Descartes of the
College La Fléche, Lyell of Oxford, and Darwin of Cambridge.
Notwithstanding numerous exceptional cases, freely conceded,
such constantly recurring facts and classes of facts, turning up
everywhere at random, show the steady drift. They are significant.
4
The Popular Science Monthly.
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But perhaps the most effective testimony on this subject is found
in the statements made to the public a few years ago by the thirty-eight
professors of the Faculty of Philosophy in the University of
Berlin, "the central faculty," as has been truly said, "of the most
illustrious university of the best educated nation in the world."
Their decision was deliberate, founded on direct experiment and
wide inquiry, distinct, unhesitating, and with reasons rendered. The
question before them was the practicability of making good the
place of classical studies, and especially the Greek, by substituting
more of science, mathematics, and modern languages, still retain-
ing, however, one half the preparatory Latin of the Gymnasium.
For ten years (from 1870 to 1880) young men previously trained
on this plan for the same length of time with the classical students
were received at this great university. In 1880 the Faculty of
Philosophy, or central faculty, thirty-eight in number, including
all but the special professors of law, medicine, and theology,
reported for the university. They give both statements and
reasons, founded not so much on the views of the classicists as on the
testimony of the scientific, mathematical, and modern language
instructors; the professors of chemistry affirming that the classical
students, though starting in the university, of course, with less
knowledge of facts and experiments, soon outstrip, "almost
invariably carry off the honors," "are mentally better trained, and
have acquired a higher ability to understand and solve scientific
problems; " and the instructors in the descriptive natural sciences,
even in the higher mathematics, in the English language and in
the German language and literature, in metaphysics, in economics
and statics, severally giving similar opinions and similar reasons,
some of them asserting in very strong terms the superior capacity,
insight, and grasp of the classical students.
Not only did Professor Hofmann (professor of chemistry) in his
inaugural (in 1880) as rector of the university publicly declare in
its behalf, as a result not admitting "a moment's doubt that all
efforts to find a substitute for the classical languages, whether in
mathematics, in the modern languages, in the natural sciences,
have been hitherto unsuccessful; that after long and vain search
we must always come back finally to the result of centuries of
experience; that the surest instrument that can be used in training
the mind of youth is given us in the study of the languages, the
literature, and the works of classical antiquity,"5 but all the
members of this faculty placed on record their settled judgment
that any other kind of education, such as " is obtained in the
Realschulen of the first rank," is "inferior, not alone because
ignorance of the Greek and deficient knowledge of the Latin
interpose great obstacles to the pursuit of many branches of study
which are not by law closed to graduates of the Realschulen, but
also, and above all, because the ideality of the scientific sense,
interest in learning, not dependent upon nor limited by practical
aims, but ministering to the education of the mind as such, the
many-sided and widely extended exercise of the thinking power,
and an acquaintance with the classical basis of our science and
our civilization, can be satisfactorily cultivated only in our
institutions of classical learning."6
5
Report, p. 31.
6
Report, p. 52. Dr. Hofmann (Professor of Chemistry) speaks thus of his personal observation:
"I have never heard a student from a Gymnasium express a wish that he might have received his
training in a Realschule; how often, on the other hand, have I met with young men prepared in the
Realschule, who grievously regretted that they never had part in the training of the Gymnasium."
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From such a source, with such unanimity, and under such
circumstances, this is grave and powerful testimony. Attempts have
been made to weaken its force, but it stands before the world
unretracted and unrefuted.
In view of all these facts and considerations, we need have little
fear for the permanent decline of classical studies. Popular
attacks may create transient distrust. Many may be induced to
try the experiment of excluding them from a course of higher
education, but the experimenters will probably be the losers.
Others will adhere to the tried and approved method; and unless
past experience ceases to be a guide, they will, as a rule, in the
race of life, in all the situations that call for breadth, versatility,
keenness, and power, continue to be the winners.
S. C. Bartlett.
(1817-1898)
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