364 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



ought to be considered wasted by those whose studies lead thera in 

 this direction, if thereby a single serious obstacle can be removed 

 from the path of beginners. There is probably no department in 

 which attention to this duty is more needed, than it is in certain parts 

 of grammatical science which form the basis of a classical education. 

 There is no danger that Greek and Latin grammar will ever be so 

 freed from difficulties as to lose their value in mental discipline ; 

 discipline can be avoided only by avoiding the study of grammar as a 

 science altogether, by a process of climbing in at the cabin-windows of 

 classical learning, which never yet made a scholai", and never will. 

 But obscurities and inaccuracies are the greatest obstacles to mental 

 discipline ; they do not train the mind of youth, they simply discourage 

 and disgust. I believe most fii-mly that many a youth has been 

 driven in despair from the study of grammar, or has continued it 

 only under a constant mental protest, simply on account of the obsta- 

 cles that have been left in his way by those whose duty it was to 

 remove them. 



It is only by the separate investigation of special points, that we 

 can ever hope to settle definitely the many disputed questions in this 

 or any other science. A little more than half a century ago the rules 

 for the most common iambic metre, which are now printed in large 

 type in every Greek grammar, were the subject of an angry contro- 

 versy between Plermann and Person. The prejudices excited by this 

 controversy have hardly yet died away, but the questions ai'e at rest. 

 I propose in this paper to review the doctrines usually taught in our 

 schools on the subject of conditional sentences in Greek and Latin. 

 I take for my text the rules and remarks on this subject which are 

 found in the sixty-fourth edition of the Latin grammar most commonly 

 used in our schools. After defining the terms protasis and apodosis, 

 and giving (strangely enough at the beginning) a rule for the imper- 

 fect and pluperfect subjunctive, which would be correct if it gave any 

 intimation of the time denoted by those tenses, the author gives the 

 following rules for the primary tenses of the subjunctive and the in- 

 dicative in conditional sentences : — 



" 2. The present and perfect subjunctive are used in the protasis, when 

 the action or state supposed may, or may not, exist, or have existed ; as, 



" Omnia brevia tolerabilia esse debenl, etiamsi maxima smt, .... although 

 they may he very great. Cic. Etsi id fiujerit Isocrates, at non Thucydides ; 

 Although Isocrates may have avoided that Id. 



