1 86 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



linguistic education was a plea for the study of Latin from the 

 narrowest utilitarian point of view. Briefly, the argument ran 

 thus : The engineer needs to learn the language of a gang of 

 foreign workers in order that he may control them and direct 

 their labours. Whilst their language may be wholly alien to 

 any he has studied, the necessary elements of language must 

 always be the same : the man who, by training, is alive to 

 this fact and on the watch for those elements has a great 

 advantage over another who learns at haphazard. Hypothesis 

 followed by conclusion (understood if not expressed) favourable 

 to a continuance of classical education, to the subordination of 

 literature and content to language study ! No one would be so 

 foolish as to deny the value of classics to the student of the 

 Romance languages but surely it is debatable whether the 

 most profound knowledge of Greek and Latin coupled with 

 the oratorical powers of a Gladstone would enable one to 

 acquire easily a knowledge of, let us say, " pidgin English." If 

 the author's premises and deductions are correct, we may ask 

 how it is that Russians and, to a lesser degree, many Orientals 

 have the reputation of being such excellent linguists; they are 

 not worried with " de bello Gallico et hoc genus omne " in their 

 schools! Again, "though it is perhaps not the business of the 

 engineer to make contracts, it is undoubtedly his business to 

 understand them and to give and receive orders accordingly." 

 Conclusion, presumably self-evident as before : waste thirteen 

 or fourteen hours a week for thirty-six or thirty-eight weeks 

 during six or seven years, in order to be able, with doubtful 

 success and many reservations, to understand the archaisms, 

 circumlocutions and elisions of the average legal document ! 

 Perhaps we may yield this point. Assuredly classical tradition 

 dies hard but it must be in the last ditch when its advocates 

 are forced to rely on the utilitarian argument backed by such 

 illustrations as these. Over and over again the statement has 

 been made— it was only recently emphasised by the Vice- 

 Principal of Brasenose, the Rev. F. W. Bussell, in a paper in 

 the Oxford and Cambridge Review— that the real force of the 

 special line of studies pursued and the classical prejudices 

 rampant in the ancient foundations lies in their freedom from 

 anything commercial and utilitarian. 



If then the primary claim which can be made for the study 

 of Latin be that it is " almost an inductive science " and if the 



