FARMERS' I:N"STITUTES. 213 



None of these. He found tlie science that was tlie most iidvanced of any, 

 the one that government supports at a great annual tax upon the peoj^le, and 

 nobody complains, — the science that had last year (187-4) an additional sum of 

 1150,000 from the iniblic treasury and the command of our navy ; ignoring 

 the struggling endeavors of agriculture to become a science, this farmer gave 

 his thousands to endow another workshop of astronomy. 



He is no sinner above the the rest of us. We arc willing to be fed by 

 agriculture, and clothed by practical machinery, but if these and kindred 

 industrial arts claim any place beside the Greek and Latin, mathematics and its 

 applications, especially astronomy, beside metaphysics, law, medicine, theology, 

 literature, they are frowned away because of their working-day clothes. 



SUPREMACY OF THE CLASSICS. 



A course of study made up mostly of Greek, Latin, and mathematics and its 

 applications, and philosophy, usually goes by the name of the classical course. 

 Until a recent period no course of study, however thorough and protracted, was 

 supposed to give that discipline of mind, that culture, that acquaintance with 

 what a scholar should know, that would entitle one to be called educated. This 

 term, educated, had a technical and limited, and as I believe far too narrow 

 an application. The prejudice is by no means gone by, but to a great degree 

 domineers over both the educated and the unlearned people of this day. But 

 the educational problem has broken out afresh, and this time it is the battle of 

 the classics and the sciences. 



STATEMENT OF THE CASE. 



While the sciences, other than the application of mathematics, have been 

 of immense importance in modern life, they have been slow in fighting their 

 way into modern courses of study. '"Ten years ago," says Nature, a London 

 weekly scientific journal of tlie highest authority, in its volume for 18G9, vol. 1, 

 J). 25: "Kugby was the only public school that taught science at all. No 

 school was assigned to it. It was an extra, and heavily weighted by extra pay- 

 ment." The great universities, rich in their rewards to those v/ho came from 

 the schools with high scholarship, ignored proificiency in sciences almost alto- 

 gether ; so the whole influence of social standing and great wealth were on the 

 side of the classics. This is still so, to a great, a very great, extent. Tlie 

 schools and universities, Ijacked by the customs of a long past and the preju- 

 dices of the day wait for a miracle to set things riglit. They say they wait for 

 each other. The schools say they must prepare scholars for what will take the 

 prizes ; the universities, that they must give their rewards to those Avho are prop- 

 erly qualified. The slow Avorkings of public opinion Avill in time, however, call 

 Cinderella from beside the ashes to her proper place, the equal of her sisters. 



American colleges copied the English, They were designed chiefly to educate 

 clergymen. I hold in my hand a Yale College catalogue for 1841-2. There 

 was then no scientific school at Yale. The catalogue speaks of certain limited 

 courses of lectures in the natural sciences, delivered to different classes, but if 

 we look to the one course of study which all stiidents were obliged to pursue, we 

 find in that no chemistry, no botany, no zoology, no geology, nor anatomy, 

 physiology, mineralogy, meteorology. It is all Greek, Latin, mathematics and 

 its applications, philosophy, logic, and the like. The man who graduated then, 

 however ignorant of his l)odily system, of the earth and its productions, was 

 educated. 



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