EDITOR'S TABLE. 



73 



ideal university was, therefore, but a 

 cloud-land romance. Its course of stud- 

 ies, patterned on his own comprehen- 

 sive erudition, was little else than an 

 elaborate recipe for making John Stu- 

 art Mills. lie forgot that, whatever may 

 be a man's native intellectual power, 

 universality must be the eternal equiva- 

 lent of superficiality, and he was him- 

 self a striking illustration of this forgot- 

 ten truth. His acquaintance with sci- 

 ence was so superficial that he was 

 compelled to seek the aid of others in 

 getting even the scientific illustrations 

 needful for the exposition of his great 

 work on logic. "We do not go too far 

 in saying that he lost his hold upon the 

 age as a philosophic thinker by his 

 want of command of the great scientific 

 results of modern inquiry. He had been 

 so long and so thoroughly steeped in 

 the spirit of antiquity that he was dis- 

 qualified for appreciating the grand im- 

 port of modern ideas. He was a power- 

 ful student of human affairs, but from 

 the antiquated point of view. He was 

 in the Golden-Age, Paradise-Lost dis- 

 pensation of thought in which the no- 

 tions of the early perfection of mankind 

 and the superiority of the ancients were 

 contrasted with the degeneracy of the 

 moderns, and so completely was his in- 

 tellect possessed and perverted by this 

 view, that he was disabled from appre- 

 ciating the immense and epoch-making 

 influence of the modern doctrine of evo- 

 lution. 



Yet palpable as were its exaggera- 

 tions, and preposterous as were its es- 

 timates of the relative importance of 

 different kinds of knowledge, the St. 

 Andrew's address had an extensive and 

 a very injurious influence. It was a 

 godsend for the declining classical cause, 

 for, although Mr. Mill condemned un- 

 sparingly the existing teaching of clas- 

 sics, its partisans cared nothing for 

 that, so long as he conceded the pre- 

 dominance of classical claims. So his 

 authority became a new bulwark for 

 the defense of established abuses. It 



strengthened the hands of educational 

 obstructives, and the specious argu- 

 ments offered for the exaltation of an- 

 cient learning re-enforced all its arro- 

 gant and exclusive pretensions. The 

 commendations of science went for 

 nothing, as the magnitude of the classi- 

 cal claims left no room for them. Mr. 

 Mill labored to extend the already ex- 

 cessive influence of dead-language stud- 

 ies in the colleges, and the power of 

 his name was thus effectually arrayed 

 against the rising demands of modern 

 knowledge. 



"We have recalled this memorable 

 discourse of Mr. Mill at the present 

 time, because it is a landmark in the re- 

 cent history of the controversy, and be- 

 cause since its publication the subject 

 of dead languages in the colleges has 

 had no such vigorous shake-up as has 

 been given to it by Mr. Charles Francis 

 Adams, Jr., in his telling address deliv- 

 ered before the Harvard chapter of the 

 fraternity of the Phi Beta Kappa on June 

 28th. Mr. Adams is, of course, on the 

 side of modern studies as against the 

 classics. Into the argument as presented 

 by Mr. Mill he does not enter, nor does 

 he deny the transcendent benefits which 

 some allege they have derived from the 

 study of dead languages. But, not con- 

 cerned with its ideals, he deals with the 

 current classical education as a familiar 

 fact, and tests it by its actual fruits. 

 His point of view is that of common, 

 well-to-do neople, who demand the ad- 

 vantages of a higher education, but 

 whose time of study is limited, and who 

 must pass from the college to the labors 

 and struggles of every-day life. Appeal- 

 ing to experience, to hard practical re- 

 sults, he finds himself compelled to con- 

 demn the system as a failure, a defeat 

 of the true and highest purposes of edu- 

 cation, an outrageous wrong to youth, 

 and in its stubborn persistence against 

 all the dictates of common sense a scan- 

 dal to the intelligence of the age. Mr. 

 Adams, moreover, proves his case. "We 



