EDITOR'S TABLE. 



707 



of those preparatory schools is to get the boys 

 through their examinations, not as a means, 

 but as an end. They are therefore all organ- 

 ized on one plan. To that plan there is no 

 exception ; nor practically can there be any 

 exception. The requirements for admission 

 are such that the labor of preparation occu- 

 pies fully the boy's study-hours. He is not 

 overworked, perhaps, hut when his tasks are 

 done he has no more leisure than is good for 

 play ; and you can not take a healthy boy 

 the moment he leaves school and set him 

 down before tutors in German and French. 

 If you do, he will soon cease to be a healthy 

 boy ; and he will not learn German or French. 

 Over -education is a crime against youth. 

 But Harvard College says, " We require 

 such and such things for admission to our 

 course." First and most emphasized among 

 them are Latin and Greek. The academies 

 accordingly teach Latin and Greek ; and they 

 teach it in the way to secure admission to the 

 college. Hence, because of this action of the 

 college, the schools do not exist in this coun- 

 try in which my children can learn what my 

 experience tells me it is all-essential they 

 should know. They can not both be fitted 

 for college and taught the modern languages. 

 And, when I say " taught the modern lan- 

 guages," 1 mean taught them in the world's 

 sense of the word, and not in the college sense 

 of it, as practiced both in my time and now. 

 And, here let me not be misunderstood, and 

 confronted with examination papers. I am 

 talking of really knowing something. I do 

 not want my children to get a smattering 

 knowledge of French and of German, such a 

 knowledge as was and now is given to boys 

 of Latin and Greek ; but I do want them to 

 be taught to write and to speak those lan- 

 guages, as well as to read them in a word, 

 so to master them that they will thereafter 

 be tools always ready to the hand. This 

 requires labor. It is a thing which can not 

 be picked up by the wayside, except in the 

 countries where the languages are spoken. 

 If academies in America are to instruct in 

 this way, they must devote themselves to it. 

 But the college requires all that they can well 

 undertake to do. The college absolutely in- 

 sists on Latin and Greek. . . . 



But I now come to what in plain lan- 

 guage I can not but call the educational cant 

 of this8ubject. I am told that I ignore the 

 severe intellectual training I got in learning 

 the Greek grammar, and in subsequently ap- 

 plying its rules ; that my memory then re- 

 ceived an education which, turned since to 

 other matters, has proved invaluable to me ; 

 that accumulated experience shows that this 



training can be got equally well in no other 

 way ; that, beyond all this, even my slight 

 contact with the Greek masterpieces has left 

 with me a subtile but unmistakable residu- 

 um, impalpable perhaps, but still there, and 

 very precious ; that, in a word, I am what is 

 called an educated man, which, but for my 

 early contact with Greek, I would not be. 



It was Dr. Johnson, I believe, who once 

 said, " Let us free our minds from cant," and 

 all this, with not undue bluntness be it said, 

 is unadulterated nonsense. The fact that it 

 has been and will yet be a thousand times re- 

 peated can not make it anything else. In 

 the first place, I very confidently submit, 

 there is no more mental training in learning 

 the Greek grammar by heart than in learning 

 by heart any other equally difficult and, to a 

 boy, unintelligible book. As a mere work of 

 memorizing, Kant's " Critique of Pure Kea- 

 son" would be at least as good. In the next 

 place, unintelligent memorizing is at best a 

 most questionable educational method. For 

 one, I utterly disbelieve in it. It never did 

 me anything but harm ; and learning by 

 heart the Greek grammar did me harm a 

 great deal of harm. While I was doing it, 

 the observing and reflective powers lay dor- 

 mant ; indeed, they were systematically sup- 

 pressed. Their exercise was resented as a 

 sort of impertinence. We boys stood up and 

 repeated long rules, and yet longer lists of 

 exceptions to them, and it was drilled into us 

 that we were not there to reason, but to rattle 

 off something written on the blackboard of 

 our minds. The faculties we had in common 

 with the raven were thus cultivated at the ex- 

 pense of that apprehension and reason which, 

 Shakespeare tells us, make man like the an- 

 gels and God. I infer this memory-culture 

 is yet in vogue, for only yesterday, as I sat at 

 the commencement-table with one of the 

 younger and more active of the professors of 

 the college, he told me that he had no diffi- 

 culty with his students in making them com- 

 mit to memory; they were well trained in 

 that. But when he called on them to observe 

 and infer, then his troubles began. They 

 had never been led in such a path. It was 

 the old, old story a lamentation and an 

 ancient tale of wrong. There are very few 

 of us who were educated a generation ago 

 who can not now stand up and glibly recite 

 long extracts from the Greek grammar ; sorry 

 am I to say it, but these extracts are with 

 most of us all we have left pertaining to that 

 language. But, as not many of us followed 

 the stage as a calling, this power of rapidly 

 learning a part has proved but of question- 

 able value. It is true, the habit of correct 



