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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



side in the great educational contro- 

 versy between the rival claims of the 

 old classics and the new science. But, 

 to the surprise of nearly everybody, 

 Mr. Mill came out the ultra-defender 

 of the dead languages as against the 

 living languages and modern studies, 

 and went to the utmost extreme iD his 

 vindication of the traditional suprem- 

 acy of the ancient classics. 



It was recognized at the time that 

 this was an anomalous and not fully 

 explicable proceeding. We have it on 

 good authority that, when Mr. Mill was 

 inquired of as to his unexpected course, 

 he excused it by saying that the scien- 

 tific tendencies of the times are becom- 

 ing too strong, and require to be checked 

 an explanation that still needed to be 

 explained. Had Mr. Mill been himself 

 less of a classicist and more of a scien- 

 tist, less a devotee of the humanities 

 and more a student of nature, he would 

 have seen that these modern scientific 

 tendencies are the inevitable results of 

 a great evolutionary process of the hu- 

 man mind a movement in the direc- 

 tion of higher knowledge and no more 

 to be withstood than the unfolding 

 transformations of the natural world or 

 the progress of human society. 



But it was at that time too early to 

 get the full explanation of Mr. Mill's 

 position so as to understand his over- 

 whelming bias in favor of the ascend- 

 ency of dead languages and ancient lit- 

 erature in the collegiate preparation of 

 young men. Not until the appearance 

 of his " Autobiography " and the pub- 

 lication of the "Life of James Mill," 

 his father, by Mr. Bain, was the secret 

 of the situation fully revealed. It was 

 of course known that James Mill was a 

 man of great intellectual capacity and 

 force, and it was believed that the son 

 inherited from him these qualities in an 

 eminent degree. But James Mill was 

 a man who held very positive views on 

 the subject of education, believed pro- 

 foundly in its omnipotence, and resolved 

 to show, in the case of his son, what it 



is capable of doing. He was, besides, 

 an infatuated classicist, and a passionate 

 admirer of the Greek language. And 

 when we further remember that he 

 was an iron-willed tyrant, and would 

 not trust his son to other teachers, but 

 himself became his tutor from babyhood 

 to manhood, we can begin to appreciate 

 the kind of influence to which young 

 Mill was subjected. Crammed with 

 classics in his earliest childhood, think- 

 ing in Greek at seven years of age, 

 and overloaded with intellectual ac- 

 quisitions of the highest order by his 

 father's fanatical pedantry, the young 

 fellow's faculties were kept upon the 

 strain during the period of his bodily 

 growth, until he was brought to the 

 verge of insanity before he was yet of 

 age. His strong mental constitution 

 did not give way, but it was so warped 

 and subjugated by his one-sided disci- 

 pline that he was the last man living 

 from whom to expect an unprejudiced 

 judgment on the subject of mental cul- 

 tivation. 



When, therefore, Mr. Mill came to 

 lay down the broad requirements of 

 higher education, in his St. Andrew's 

 discourse, he reasoned from his own re- 

 markable experience, and insisted upon 

 the inexorable predominance of the 

 studies of which he had himself been 

 made the victim. He went in for the 

 ancient languages and the ancient lit- 

 erature as supreme, and relegated to a 

 secondary place all the great results of 

 modern thought. He ruled out from 

 his curriculum the studies of history, of 

 geography, of modern languages, and 

 modern literature. Admitting the im- 

 portance of science, he nevertheless as- 

 signed it a subordinate place in his 

 scheme of education. Taking little ac- 

 count in his imposing plan either of the 

 limitations of the human mind, the 

 varying grades of human capacity, or 

 the actual circumstances of human be- 

 ings, he drew a scheme of culture that 

 had but small application to the prac- 

 tical necessities of human life. His 



