640 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



has been often said, into a residuum. Something also is to be said for 

 the greatness of the writers that have written in modern times. Sir 

 John Herschel remarked long ago that the human intellect can not 

 have degenerated, so long as we are able to quote Newton, Lagrange, 

 and Laplace, against Aristotle and Archimedes. I would not undertake 

 to say that any modern mind has equaled Aristotle in the range of his 

 intellectual powers ; but, in point of intensity of grasp in any one 

 subject, he has many rivals ; so that, to obtain his equal, we have only 

 to take two or three first-rate moderns. 



If a number of persons were to go on lauding to the skies the ex- 

 clusive and transcendent greatness of the classical writers, we should 

 probably be tempted to scrutinize their merits more severely than is 

 usual. Many things could be said against their sufficiency as instruc- 

 tors in matters of thought, and many more against the low and bar- 

 barous tone of their morale ; the inhumanity and brutality of both 

 their principles and their practice. All this might no doubt be very 

 easily overdone, and would certainly be so if undertaken in the style 

 of Professor Price's panegyric. 



The Professor's third branch of the argument comes to the real 

 point ; namely, what is there in Greek and Latin that there is not in 

 the modern tongues? For one thing, says the Professor, they are 

 dead, which, of course, we allow. Then, being dead, they must be 

 learned by book and by rule ; they can not be learned by ear. Here, 

 however, Professor Blackie would dissent, and would say that the great 

 improvement of teaching, on which the salvation of classical study 

 now hangs, is to make it a teaching by the ear. But, says Professor 

 Price, " a Greek or Latin sentence is a nut with a strong shell conceal- 

 ing the kernel a puzzle, demanding reflection, adaptation of means to 

 end, and labor for its solution, and the educational value resides in 

 the shell and in the puzzle." As this strain of remark is not new, 

 there is nothing new to be said in answer to it. Such jmzzling efforts 

 are certainly not the rule in learning Latin and Greek. Moreover, the 

 very same terms would describe what may happen equally often in 

 reading difficult authors in French, German, or Italian. Would not 

 the pupil find puzzles and difficulties in Dante or in Goethe ? And 

 are there not many puzzling exercises in deciphering English authors ? 

 Besides, what is the great objection to science, but that it is too puz- 

 ling for minds that are quite competent for the puzzles of Greek and 

 Latin. Once more, the teaching of any language must be very imper- 

 fect, if it brought about habitually such situations of difficulty as are 

 here described. 



The Professor relapses into a cooler and correcter strain when he 

 remarks that the pupil's mind is necessarily more delayed over the 

 expression of a thought in a foreign language (whether dead or alive 

 matters not), and therefore remembers the meaning better. Here, 

 however, the desiderated reform of teaching might come into play. 



