THE RIVALRY OF THE HIGHER SENSES. 765 



glance at the educational system at Athens to see the comparative 

 unimportance of eye education. In the training of Athenian 

 youth, next to gymnastics, music received the most attention, and 

 grammar the remaining one of the three elementary subjects 

 included learning as well as reading the poets. Music included 

 not only singing and playing upon the cithara and lyre, but also 

 the cultivation of poetry. Music and poetry, again, were not cul- 

 tivated as fine arts by the wealthy and leisurely classes merely, 

 but were a part of the very life of the people. They were com- 

 posed, too, upon the tongue, not upon paper, and they were appre- 

 hended and learned by the ear, not from a score or book. Even the 

 laws were taught in song at Athens. Law and tradition, music 

 and poetry, even arts and sciences, were transmitted orally from 

 one generation to the next, apprehended by the ear and stored in 

 the memory. In earlier times, when writing was not in general 

 use, codes of laws, Homeric poems, and Vedic hymns were trans- 

 mitted orally and accurately from generation to generation. In- 

 struction in those days did not come through the cold medium 

 of a book, but directly through the living words of parent and 

 teacher This constant use of memory and reliance upon it gave 

 it strength, and a man's learning, if limited, was at least in his 

 head at command and not in his library. Compare modern fic- 

 tion with that of other times. Then stories were told, not writ- 

 ten ; and listened to, not read. To say nothing of the training it 

 gave the memory, was there not something more humanistic in 

 the social company of story-tellers and eager listeners than in 

 the modern writing and reading of novels ? Now, the novelist 

 alone in his study tediously composing and the reader alone in 

 his room mentally devouring the printed page present phases of 

 life that are unsocial, if not unheal thful and unnatural. 



In the " good old times " men depended for their knowledge 

 upon what they had either learned for themselves or heard and 

 remembered. Now we depend, to a great extent, upon our libra- 

 ries and books of reference. We quote the writings now, not the 

 sayings, of great men, and do not come directly under their per- 

 sonal influence. In this respect there has been a great change 

 even within a century, as books have multiplied and students are 

 gathered less in the literary centers. As an example of our de- 

 pendence on written authorities, may be mentioned the popular 

 apotheosis of Webster's and Worcester's dictionaries. The old 

 worship of the Bible seems to have been weakly transferred to 

 the dictionary. In buying one of these books a person congratu- 

 lates himself if, by paying a trifle more, he gets a supplement 

 with a universal pronouncing biographical dictionary or gazet- 

 teer, forgetting that it is better to become acquainted with the 

 works of one great man than to know when five hundred great 



