404 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of treatment ; nor is it to be expected that every thing would drop 

 into its place neatly at once. It is not unnecessary to say this, for 

 every one connected with our universities knows the severe criticism 

 which new schemes have to undergo, when they do not do what it is 

 absolutely impossible that they should do namely, start at once in 

 as full perfection as systems that have been matured for many gener- 

 ations. 



It has been assumed, throughout this essay, that the best way of 

 introducing the study of modern literatures into the universities is to 

 establish them as a subject wholly distinct from the ancient literatures. 

 Some might think that the two courses might beneficially be amalga- 

 mated ; but on the whole it seems an unnecessary risk to endanger old 

 and well-established systems by an extensive a.nd violent intrusion of 

 unproved and untried material. 



In conclusion, as the course of instruction here advocated involves 

 a smaller amount of intellectual sharpening, and a larger and more 

 various acquisition of positive knowledge, than the generality of the 

 systems in use at the present day, it will not be beside the point to 

 observe that the tendency of modern education has for four centuries 

 been in this direction that is, rather to encourage wealth and variety 

 of mental possessions, than extreme acuteness in their employment. 

 Not that mental acuteness is not cultivated at the present day as 

 much as ever it was ; for putting a point on the mind, nothing can 

 excel the mathematical course at Cambridge. But the value assigned 

 to width of knowledge has increased in a much greater ratio, as will 

 be plain by looking back a little in European history. The School- 

 men were in modern times the earliest educationalists of Europe. 

 Their educational system was like their philosophy the most simply, 

 purely, and nakedly intellectual that the world has ever seen. They 

 paid no regard to the storing of the mind with material, to the prepa- 

 ration of it for efforts to which it was at present unequal, to the lay- 

 ing broad foundations of fact and experience, not for the sake of 

 immediate argument, but as food to be gradually appropriated and 

 assimilated in the insensible silent workings of the growing man. 

 They made men discuss. They were like a person who should expect 

 a plant to grow by its own intrinsic power, without the nutriment of 

 earth and water. They put the greatest strain on the intellect ; but 

 they did not bid the student to know. It was the revival of the clas- 

 sical literatures, and especially of Greek literature, that produced the 

 first step in advance from this state of things. With them a flood of 

 experience, novel, exciting, and illuminating, was poured upon the 

 world. Nor was it long afterward that the great discoveries in mathe- 

 matics and astronomy opened out a vast sphere of fresh knowledge in 

 another direction. So vigorous an outburst could not be gainsaid. 

 The intellect of the student was no longer left isolated ; it was brought 

 in contact with human action, the material world, and substantial 



