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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Mill in his celebrated St. Andrew's dis- 

 course ; ia both cases we are presented 

 with a grand picture of the intellectual 

 advantages derivable from the acquisi- 

 tion of many languages, and their com- 

 prehensive philosophical study. Against 

 this, as we have often said, there is, in 

 itself, nothing to urge. It is an entirely 

 proper thing for men of capacity, whose 

 tastes lead them in this direction, to 

 give their lives to linguistic philosophy, 

 and the acquirement of many languages. 

 But, for ordinary students in college, 

 this is simi^ly futile and impossible, and 

 we have here the perpetual fallacy of 

 the advocates of classical studies. Ex- 

 perience in the universities of all coun- 

 tries and for centuries, and everywhere 

 attested to-day, assures us that this 

 ideal classical accomplishment is not at- 

 tained, nor anything approaching it. 

 Mr. Freeman says : '' If Greek and Latin 

 study could never come to anything 

 more than that kind of scholarship 

 which in its highest form corrected the 

 text of a Greek play and made Greek 

 iambics and Latin elegiacs — which in 

 its lowest form turned out that fearful 

 form of bore which is ready at every 

 moment with a small scrap of Horace 

 or Virgil — if this is all that comes of 

 Greek and Latin study, we might be 

 tempted to say. Perish Greek and Latin 

 study!" But what else do we get, or 

 can we get, but that sort of scholarship 

 from the great mass of students in col- 

 leges ? He thinks that teaching can be 

 improved so as to yield better results, 

 but that has been the illusion of hun- 

 dreds of years. The failure and defeat 

 of classical studies has been the oppro- 

 brium of the universities for genera- 

 tions, and from the time of Milton to 

 the present there have been loud calls 

 for reform and improvement in the 

 modes of classical instruction ; but the 

 changes have not come, and the old re- 

 sults continue, nor is any such reform 

 possible. The vice of our system of 

 higher studies is the enormous dispro- 

 portion between the study of language 



and the period allowed for education, 

 or even the common length of life. 

 Mr. Freeman says : " I believe, then, that 

 if we can only learn all tongues in a 

 rational way, we may keep our Greek 

 and our Latin, and bring in our Ger- 

 man, our Fi-ench, our Italian, above all 

 our English, in their due places along- 

 side of them." Two results must ever 

 follow from the attempt to realize any 

 such ideas in practice : First, such a 

 predominance of lingual study must 

 effectually exclude all other most im- 

 portant subjects from the curriculum ; 

 and, second, the acquisition of the lan- 

 guages themselves will generally be so 

 miserably imperfect that the higher 

 ends aimed at will not be reached. At 

 the foundation this acquisition of lan- 

 guages is a problem of cerebral dynam- 

 ics. The learning of a language exhausts 

 a very considerable portion of the plas- 

 tic power of the brain. The acquisition 

 of six languages is, of course, a stiU 

 more enormous draft upon the cerebral 

 energy, and there must be very con- 

 siderable native capacity if so many 

 forms of speech are thoroughly acquired 

 so as to be brought into relations of 

 critical comparison for philological pur- 

 poses. Not one student in twenty, nor 

 indeed one in a hundred, will ever do 

 this, and the great mass of them wiU 

 fall so lamentably short of it that the 

 time given to the study is essentially 

 wasted. Let languages, ancient and 

 modern, living and dead, be pursued to 

 any extent by tliose who are drawn to 

 the study and propose to devote them- 

 selves to this line of scholarship. What 

 we protest against, and what the com- 

 mon sense of the age undoubtedly con- 

 demns, is this tenacious and self-de- 

 feating ascendancy of extinct languages 

 in the higher education of our youth at 

 large. 



"We say "extinct" languages, but 

 Mr. Freeman does not like this idea at 

 all. He objects to regarding Greek and 

 Latin as " dead, ancient, classical." He 

 would abolish the current distinction 



