554 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



CLASSICS AND THE COLLEGE COURSE 



By Peofessoe JOHN J. STEVENSON 



NEW TOEK DNIVBBSITY 



TWO or three years ago, the acting president of a state university 

 praised the small college for exalting the humanities, for making 

 " study of the great classics compulsory but attractive. It has always 

 found more power for both head and heart in the noble lines of the 

 Iliad and in the majestic music of the iEneid than in study of the 

 nervous system of the frog or the life history of the Harpiphorus macu- 

 latus, interesting and important as those are." 



Somewhat later, a man of great eminence announced that " we have 

 turned away young men and some young women from the great classical 

 ideals of self-sacrifice in fields where they could do the most unselfish 

 work." 



Still later, laments have become more numerous and have increased 

 in pungency. It has been discovered that the study of Greek and Latin 

 no longer holds preeminence in colleges and universities, whereas in 

 women's colleges the " humanities are still honored." A distinguished 

 writer of elegant literature has remarked that " our women really have 

 some use for the education of a gentleman, but our men have none." 



The acting president, no doubt, pleased his hearers, but there must 

 have been among them some who were surprised to learn that com- 

 pulsory study of the great classics had been made attractive. The 

 speaker's remarks were elliptical or the compositor dropped the words 

 " to some," which ought to have completed the sentence. The excellent 

 results of this attractive study have not always been apparent. Even 

 fifty years ago, when Harvard and Yale had fewer students than are 

 claimed by some " small " colleges of this day, it was matter of common 

 report that few graduates could read their diplomas and that Latin 

 text-books had been thrust out of theological seminaries, because the 

 niceties of syntax and not the niceties of ancient heresies engrossed the 

 students' attention. If the noble lines of the Iliad and the majestic 

 music of the iEneid have exerted material influence upon the head and 

 heart of youths in American colleges during the last half century, they 

 must have done so through the " Bohn," that essential portion of the 

 average man's equipment. 



One, considering the claims made by defenders of classical courses, 

 might imagine that in Greece and Rome there existed the ideal condi- 

 tion, that social and political life were lofty, in contrast throughout 



