CLASSICS AND THE COLLEGE COURSE 555 



with conditions existing in modern times. He is led to suppose that 

 later periods offer nothing to compare with the Iliad and iEneid; with 

 the intellect of Aristotle; with the morals of Cicero, Seneca and Marcus 

 Aurelius ; with the philosophy or excellence of Socrates and Plato ; with 

 the daintiness of the Greek lyric poets; with the abandon of Horace; 

 or with the heroism of Marathon and Thermopyla3. He is led to sup- 

 pose that one must look to Greece and Rome for models of purity and 

 devotion; he is told that only by study of the classical writers can he 

 gain sure foundation in morals and true intellectual polish; that the 

 fulness of the Greek language was the outcome of God's desire to have 

 a fit vehicle for revelation. And finally he is left to gather that our 

 colleges by their teaching of Greek and Latin enable students to come 

 in close touch with all this nobility of thought and life. 



Yet no one need feel humiliation because he lives in an inferior age 

 or belongs to a deteriorated race. The sentences extolling the distant 

 past mean nothing ; they are but echoes from voices of the long-buriedi 

 Humanists, which by long reverberation have become polished in form, 

 musical in rhythm. No " literary function " would be complete unless 

 some modern Humanist had repeated them with the fervor of a 

 Thibetan priest. 



No one denies that the author of the Iliad had marvelous skill in 

 description, but not a few have regretted that a writer of such ability 

 had no better subject than the quarrels and combats of lustful savages, 

 whose exploits, so vividly pictured, are those of mere brutes. In point 

 of morals, the Homeric poems are not superior to the Kalevala, to 

 which they are inferior in imagery. Of course, this matter is one of 

 taste, but one may be pardoned for supposing that the Kalevala, less 

 extravagant in description than the Iliad, would have gained the 

 stronger hold on popular fame if it too had been translated by Alex-! 

 ander Pope. But neither the Iliad nor the ^Eneid is superior to 

 Paradise Lost or to the Inferno, which, produced by greater intellects, 

 are free from the grossness which characterizes the Homeric poems. 



Aristotle no more typified Greek intellect than Ajax typified Greek 

 physique, or than a building with forty-five stories typifies New York's 

 dwelling houses. He was a giant amid pygmies, a phenomenon in the 

 Greek intellectual sky as startling as was Donati's comet in our physical 

 sky, half a century ago. Like Leibnitz, Kant and Spencer, he broke 

 away from the trammels which bound his contemporaries and devoted 

 himself to the study of actual conditions in search of sure basis for 

 philosophy. Like Leibnitz, Kant and Spencer, he received the maledic- 

 tions of those who belonged to the prevailing schools. "Were he living 

 now he would be but one of many, possibly the chief. It is unjust to 

 compare him with Spencer, as some have done, for the latter lived in 

 an age of greater knowledge and greater advantages. Plato's reputa- 



