PREPARATION FOR COLLEGE. 



21 



special cases for special purposes; and as between Latin and 

 Greek the least deserving should be dropped. Latin is the mother 

 tongue of so many modern European languages that it has its 

 proper place antecedent to those languages. 



3. Making Greek a sine qua non has debarred many from en- 

 tering college who, through inaptitude or inability to procure 

 good teaching, have been unable to pass their entrance examina- 

 tions in that subject. 



4. The time required for Greek has acted as a prohibition on 

 many other studies. 



5. Greek being a difficult language, not enough of it is learned 

 to be of much practical service to the student. Huxley says : " It 

 is only a very strong man who can appreciate the charms of a 

 landscape as he is toiling up a very steep hill along a very bad 

 road. The ordinary schoolboy is peculiarly in this case. He finds 

 Parnassus uncommonly steep, and there is no chance of his hav- 

 ing much time or inclination to look about him till he gets to the 

 top, and nine times out of ten he never gets to the top." As to 

 the disciplinary drill in Greek, it is by no means certain that it 

 possesses any advantages over many other studies pursued with 

 as much care and hard work. 



Says Grant Allen : " Do you think that a man can not learn 

 just as much about the Athens of Pericles from the Elgin mar- 

 bles as from a classical dictionary or a dog-eared Thucydides ? 

 Do you suppose that to have worked up the first six Iliads with a 

 Liddell and Scott brings you in the end very much nearer the 

 heart and soul of the primitive Achseans than to have studied 

 with loving care the vases in the British Museum, or even to 

 have followed with a sculptor's eye the exquisite imaginings of 

 divine John Flaxman ? Do you really suppose there is no under- 

 standing the many-sided, essentially artistic Greek idiosyncrasy 

 except through the medium of the twenty-four written signs from 

 alpha to omega ? " 



The old-fashioned classical education is an excellent and pos- 

 sibly necessary preparation for the legal, clerical, and pedagogic 

 professions. It furnishes a capital training in words ; it does not 

 reach the facts behind the words ; it is only plowing over again 

 the old ground ; it leaves each generation just where its prede- 

 cessor was. It does not furnish either the methods or the mate- 

 rial for originality. In the whole domain of science the classics 

 afford a convenient terminology. That they give any useful fun- 

 damental preparatory training can not be demonstrated, and their 

 study with this end in view is time wasted. 



Greek history, mythology, philosophy, and poetry all together 

 have less influence upon the civilization of to-day, less effect upon 

 the prosperity, happiness, and general welfare of mankind than 



