376 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



with a very benumbed consciousness, not realizing how little we are 

 understanding. A foreign language rouses our attention, and all the 

 more in proportion to its strangeness. The modern tongues are modern 

 and in part already ours; Greek and Latin, by their strangeness, more 

 pervadingly quicken the attention. 



And what becomes of the finger in the dictionary — a very different 

 thing from a glance into a glossarial index — if our language study be 

 English? Conceding that the same diligent attention might gain as 

 good results from the English dictionary, how are we to drive students 

 to give it such use? Driven they must be, for they think they know 

 already. The strangeness of Greek and Latin furnishes the spur, does 

 the driving for us. 



VII. Teaching Literature. 



Boys, whatever their career, must have some literary training, say the 

 apologists for the present system of teaching classics. This is my contention 

 also, but I advance it with still greater emphasis. The literary training obtained 

 whilst learning Latin and Greek is indirect, accidental. It is too serious a part 

 of education to be thus left to chance. 



What a problem Professor Hill broaches here, literary training ! 

 President Woodrow Wilson, on the other hand, thinks that literature 

 may be learned, but that it can not be taught : it certainly seems as if, 

 in Teutonic lands, there is no developed method for teaching literature 

 successfully. Nearly a score of years ago a despairing reviewer in The 

 Athenaeum wrote the striking phrase that courses in literature inevitably 

 dwindled into " chatter about Shelly and the Harriet problem." One 

 who like Professor Hill has admitted that " A man who has had a 

 classical education has a craftsman's feeling for literature: he regards 

 it as an artist regards a picture," has answered in advance his objection 

 that " The literary training obtained whilst learning Latin and Greek 

 is indirect, accidental." Granted, but what a splendid by-product — 

 and I believe it to be only a by-product — " a craftsman's feeling for 

 literature." 



VIII. On Practical Studies. 



There is the utmost haziness in the popular mind as to what studies 

 are " practical." Nine out of ten would put mathematics at the head 

 of the list. Only the simplest arithmetical processes are in general use, 

 however. Only an infinitesimal proportion of those who have studied 

 algebra, plane and analytic geometry, or calculus have ever made use of 

 them. Adding machines and computation tables keep the bulk of the 

 world's commerce straight. But nobody has studied Latin without 

 being or feeling himself surer of his control of a third of the words of 

 his daily speech. I have never thought the etymological a particularly 

 strong argument for studying Latin, but it has been given me by 

 students of my own whom I didn't think I had succeeded in getting to 

 learn Latin. That the close study of an English dictionary might do 



