574 



It is not then, by the study of the ancients, that any advance is to be 

 made in the natural sciences, or in the arts of production. The ancient 

 Languages would not furnish even the names of many of the princi- 

 ples, processes, implements and machinery now in daily use. A power 

 press, the mariner's compass, or the electric telegraph, would be incom- 

 prehensible to Pythagoras and to Cicero. Aristotle would take refuge 

 from such enigmas under his favorite syllogism. The most perfect ac- 

 quaintance with the Greek and Latin classics cannot contribute a single 

 idea, which can tend to ad\'ancement in any of the useful or material 

 sciences, or in any of the arts for supplying human wants. He who 

 looks to that source for any such ideas, looks in vain. As well might 

 the chemist seek to perfect himself in chemistry, or Fulton to have pro- 

 duced a steamboat, by playing pins or marbles with a lot of idle boys, 

 or by listening to the dreams of a love-sick swain. Doubtless, the in- 

 tellect was as vigorous in ancient, as in modern times ; the imagination 

 much more so ; for ignorance of facts, is necessary to the full play of a 

 fervid imagination. In poetry, they have never been equalled; in mo- 

 ral philosophy, perhaps seldom excelled ; for the great principles of 

 right and wrong, are generally sufficiently obvious, however constantly 

 violated. But they had not collected the materials for the construction 

 of material sciences, and their puerile ideas of theology are simply dis- 

 gtusting. 



I would not discountenance the acquisition of the Greek and Latin 

 languages by those who are to become professional men, or to devote 

 their lives to hterarj' pursuits. The Latin is a great help to the acqui- 

 sition of several modern languages, and even to a perfect understanding 

 of our own. But I would not permit the classics to usurp the place of 

 the natural sciences, or to consume the time which should be employed 

 in the acquisition of facts. This, I am satisfied, has been and still is 

 the case in most of our Universities. I am well satisfied that the pro- 

 gress of the human race has been greatly retarded by attaching an 

 undue importance to a knowledge of the classics — by giving more im- 

 portance to words than to ideas — ^by treating everything as the perfec- 

 tion of vs'isdom which happens to have been written in ancient times 

 and in a dead language, while much (I may say most) of it, if turned 

 into plain English would appear like the merest nonseast'. Why in it 

 any the less so when clothed in Latin or Greek ? 



