THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



JUNE, 1880. 



THE CLASSICS THAT EDUCATE US. 



By PAUL E. SHIPMAN. 



I HAVE great respect for the classics, and would do anything 

 within reason to spread the knowledge of them ; but a preliminary- 

 question must first be answered. What the classics are is not a matter 

 of dispute, all agreeing that they are literary masterpieces, the study 

 of which serves above all other studies to refine and liberalize the mind. 

 But where are they ? As to this, opinions differ. 



" The Greeks, madam," replied John Randolph, when Mrs. Jellyby 

 asked him to contribute aid to that suffering people " the Greeks are 

 at your door." And some people think the classics are in the same 

 vicinity ; dwelling, that is to say, in our mother-tongue in the sense in 

 which the needy are at hand not exclusively, but in such wise as to 

 deserve our first attention. The President of Harvard College is one 

 of these people. " I may avow," says President Eliot, " as the result 

 of my reading and observation in the matter of education, that I rec- 

 ognize but one mental acquisition as an essential part of the education 

 of a lady or a gentleman namely, an accurate and refined use of the 

 mother-tongue. Greek, Latin, French, German, mathematics, natural 

 and physical science, metaphysics, history, and aesthetics are all profit- 

 able and delightful, both as training and as acquisitions, to him who 

 studies them with intelligence and love, but not one of them has the 

 least claim to be called an acquisition essential to a liberal education, 

 or an essential part of a sound training." He adds : " The fruit of 

 liberal education is not learning, but the capacity and desire to learn ; 

 not knowledge but power." This is explicit enough. For my own 

 part, I agree to it. 



But some people do not affirming, contrariwise, that a knowledge 

 of Latin and Greek is essential to a liberal education. Among these 



VOL. XVII. 10; 



