146 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



people is Mr. W. T. Harris, a distinguished educator of St. Louis, and 

 one of the most acceptable of the lecturers, if not the most acceptable, 

 in Mr. Alcott's Summer School of Philosophy at Concord. " Mr. Har- 

 ris," writes one describing this New England reproduction of the 

 Academy of Plato, " is the star of the school, it would appear, since 

 every one agrees that he is extremely interesting to hear, though few 

 pretend to understand him, and those who do find their profession 

 treated with incredulity." I confess myself a little surprised to learn 

 that he proves unintelligible to any of the men and maidens of the 

 new Academy, especially the maidens, for it is an article of faith in the 

 " provinces " that the average maiden of New England, whatever may 

 be the limitations of her father and big brothers, can understand any- 

 thing, from the calculus of quaternions to the metaphysics of transcen- 

 dentalism. Rufus Choate, it is told, once met Jeremiah Mason, with 

 a daughter on each arm, returning from a lecture of Emerson's. 

 " Well, Mr. Mason," said Choate, " you have been to hear Mr. Emer- 

 son ! " " Yes ! " sighed the venerable jurist. " And did you under- 

 stand him ? " continued Choate. " No," he replied, arching his eye- 

 brows, and dropping a glance on either damsel, "but my daughters 

 did ! " I sincerely hope that the average maiden of New England has 

 suffered no decline in these latter days. And yet a horrible suspicion 

 intrudes itself. Can it be that much Greek has made her soft at last ? 

 However this may be, it can hardly excite surprise that Mr. Harris, 

 teaching in the grove of Alcott, as Plato taught in that of Academus, 

 and teaching, it would seem, with quite as many bees in his bonnet, if 

 not on his lips, differs with President Eliot as to the special where- 

 about of the classics, or, what comes to the same thing, the essential 

 part of a liberal education. It is not to be expected that one who 

 comes forward to revive the Academy would go back on the Greeks. 

 Yet he is none the less entitled to a fair hearing. 



" The settlement of this old dispute," Mr. Harris says in a recent 

 lecture, " lies involved in the question, What are insight-giving stud- 

 ies ? " And the general principle that determines what are insight- 

 giving studies, he insists, is this : " They must be of such a character 

 that they lead the individual out of his immediate and familiar sur- 

 roundings, and cause him to breathe the atmosphere and become famil- 

 iar with the accessory conditions of an earlier historical stage of the 

 people from whom he derives his culture and forms of civilization." 

 This general principle he afterward compresses into the following 

 paradox : " Self -alienation is necessary to self-knowledge." Under 

 this principle he in conclusion thus sums up his position concerning the 

 classics : " Not only for English-speaking nations, but for all modern 

 Europeans, for the reason that they have derived their culture from 

 Greece and Rome, the special culture-studies are Latin and Greek. 

 The embryology of modern civilization is to be found in the literature 

 and institutions of these wonderful peoples." " Mathematics," he de- 



