82 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



in English was then unknown. A young man, whose time had been 

 mainly given to Latin and Greek, might be expected to err in estimat- 

 ing the value of an undeveloped study. 



After many years of experience in teaching I have come to beheve 

 that one may be liberally educated without knowing even Shakespeare's 

 " little Latin and less Greek." Let us see what is claimed for classical 

 studies by their friends. Dr. Jacob, in a lecture before the London 

 College of Preceptors, after saying — what is most true — that it is " of 

 the greatest importance to accustom young boys or girls to exercise 

 such mental powers as attention, observatioji, exactness or clearness 

 of apprehension, the comparison of contrasts and similarities, general- 

 ization from, a number of particular instances, the facility in tracing 

 order in the midst of variety,'''' tells us that Latin "affords pecidiar 

 opportunities for promoting the exercise of the very faculties which 

 most need to be drawn out and trained in boys, if they are to have an 

 education which deserves the name." I think it will puzzle Dr. Jacob, 

 or any one else, to show wherein Latin affords peculiar opportunities 

 for promoting this training. Indeed, an advocate of science-teaching 

 may as well make a similar claim for the particular science which he 

 recommends. Certainly the botanist may accept this language as a 

 statement of his claim. These results can undoubtedly be deduced 

 from the study of English, and, in fact, from almost any real study. 



"We must, therefore, seek a higher ground for justifying the giving 

 of so much precious time to the study of Latin and Greek. Let us try 

 the real object of learning a language, to use it as a tool for receiving 

 and conveying thought. The utter uselessness of Latin and Greek for 

 this practical purpose, to almost every one who studies them, puts them 

 out of court at once. After all the j'ears spent in the study of these 

 languages, not one in a thousand of our college graduates even learns 

 to read them, and I doubt if there are ten teachers of them in America 

 who can read them. There are many who can translate a Latin or a 

 Greek book with the aid of a dictionary ; there are others who can 

 translate without the help of a dictionary ; but translating is not read- 

 ing. To read a book in a foreign language, you must thinh in its 

 language — you must catch the thovight at a glance without the inter- 

 vention of English words at all. Now, who is there before me who 

 can thus read an unfamiliar passage in Latin or Greek ? Although I 

 have sjoent many of the best years of my life in studying these lan- 

 guages, I am free to say I cannot do it. I have never known a man 

 who could do it. Hence we know no more about the thought, the life, 

 the philosophy, the poetry of the Greeks and the Romans, than we 

 could have learned far more readily from good translations — using the 

 correct translations of others in place of our own imperfect work. 



All this, I know, is unpardonable heresy. My sin is made worse by 

 the fact that I have fallen from grace. I was trained up in the good 

 orthodox creed that the study of Latin and Greek is the chief factor of 



