258 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



logical courses, for along those lines missionary work is pushed, and 

 the workers receive the reward which they regard more than they do 

 money. When shopwork and engineering come to be held in high 

 honor among missionaries, the technical schools connected with state 

 universities will have their share of men preparing for usefulness. 

 When that time arrives there will be no more insinuation that the 

 technical school lessens respect for principle and weakens fineness of 

 sentiment. At the same time, it may be remarked that labeling a man 

 as selfish or without the finer sentiments, simply because he is unwill- 

 ing to become a foreign missionary, seems to be a somewhat audacious 

 assumption of the Divine prerogative. 



But how does this question of the technical school concern the 

 observance or neglect of classical studies in the college course? Not 

 in any wise. Classical studies have not been thrust out of the tech- 

 nical school, for they never were in it; they have no proper place there 

 any more than in schools of law or medicine. Whether or not pro- 

 longed classical training is desirable for those who can afford the col- 

 lege course prior to beginning preparation for life's work is certainly 

 deserving of serious consideration; and there must be much to be said 

 on both sides — otherwise, the discussion would not be intense as at 

 present. It may be that classical training, as imparted in American 

 colleges, is the best or even the only means of turning the youthful 

 mind to high ideals — but the writer hesitates to accept the proposition. 

 He underwent a very severe course of classical training from his sixth 

 to his twenty-second year, yet his memory, by no means frail, does not 

 recall " the great classical ideals of self-sacrifice " with which, one must 

 suppose, modern ideals fade into insignificance. Nor has this concep- 

 tion of classical training been accepted always as axiomatic. The 

 writer remembers an earnest discussion by several professors of theology 

 at his father's table, about fifty-five years ago, in which those excellent 

 men lamented the degrading influence of the classical authors read in 

 college — the same, by the way, as those read now. And doubtless some 

 of those reading this article will remember the efforts made by good 

 men to counteract this evil influence by the preparation of works in 

 classical Latin, dealing with the life of George Washington and other 

 harmless topics. The writer, however, has never been able to share 

 those fears. His general impression respecting the classical authors, 

 which seemed to be that of his fellow students, was that those writers 

 prepared their works chiefly to provide sentences with which Zumpt 

 and Kiihner might illustrate the perplexities of syntax and prosody. 



