704 



THE POPULAR SCIUJVCU MONTHLY. 



the Greek and Latin. He neither de- 

 nies the value or importance of the 

 ■classical languages, nor contemplates 

 their exclusion from the college curric- 

 ulum ; but he condemns the vicious 

 educational theories that have been put 

 forward to vindicate and maintain their 

 overshadowing supremacy. He is not 

 an enemy of the classical languages, who 

 opposes them as mere blindly venerated 

 superstitions; but he, on the contrary, 

 is their best friend, who would reduce 

 them from this injurious pre-eminence, 

 and leave them to stand on their merits 

 for wijat they are worth. As important 

 parts of learning to those who devote 

 themselves to scholarship, or as interest- 

 ing subjects to those who are attracted 

 by their tastes to pursue them, or as 

 badges of distinction in culture to those 

 who prize them for such a purpose, or 

 as bread-and-butter studies for the cleri- 

 cal profession, the dead languages have 

 their defensible uses ; but as a superior 

 means of traitiing the human mind, to 

 be forced on everybody who goes to 

 college and aspires to a liberal educa- 

 tion, and as, consequently, disparaging 

 other subjects, and standing in the way 

 of far more important knowledge, they 

 are to be resisted and reprobated as of 

 evil influence by every friend of sound 

 and rational education. 



In the progress of the modern classi- 

 cal controversy, the practical issue has 

 been most sharply made between the 

 Greek and the German, and this is the 

 issue to wliich Professor Newton's pa- 

 per is mainly devoted, although it takes 

 up various collateral points. He says : 



Almost without exception in this discus- 

 sion, the Greek has counted itself, and been 

 counted by its opponents, on the side of the 

 abstract, the disciplinary ; while the modern 

 languages have ranged themselves, or been 

 ranged by their opponents, upon the side of 

 the practical merely; grouped in with the 

 sciences as useful knowledge, hut lacking all, 

 or nearly all, disciplinary value. But there 

 arc not a few fallacies which place the modern 

 languages in opposition to the ancient, that 

 need to be exposed, in order that, in the scheme 



of a liberal modem education, they may secure 

 their proper time and place. It can easily be 

 shown that many of the arguments used in 

 favor of Greek as against German, both as to 

 discipline and culture, are as true of the Ger- 

 man as of the Greek. 



Professor Newton then takes up the 

 question of the alleged superiority of 

 the Greek over the German in cultivat- 

 ing the attention and training the mem- 

 ory, and thoroughly exposes the fallacy 

 of the claim. In regard to the processes 

 involved in the exercise of translation, 

 he says : 



I believe it can be shovni that the power 

 of analysis and the power of synthesis are as 

 much needed, and as much cultivated, by a 

 thorough mastery of the German as of the 

 Greek. For what is translation as a mental 

 process? It is necessaiy, in the first place, 

 that the mind grasp a thought expressed in 

 words whose relations are shown by termina- 

 tions, or by order of ari-angement, or by par- 

 ticles ; by any one, or by all three of these. 

 Then, in the second place, this thought must 

 be wrought over in the mind, fused, and 

 poured out again into the molds or forms of 

 the language into which one is translating, 

 in strict accordance with its vocabulary, its 

 idiom, and its spirit. And the same use of 

 the same faculties is required in every pos- 

 sible translation. But the facility acquired 

 by long practice in translating from one 

 language must not be compared with the 

 stumbling efforts of a beginner in translating 

 from another. Of course, the same proficien- 

 cy in translating can not be gained in three 

 terms of German as in twelve terms of Greek. 

 And it is not knowing German to be able to 

 work one's way through a foot-note, and just 

 miss the point from not knowing the force of 

 a modal auxiliary. 



For various cogent criticisms made 

 by Professor Newton on the alleged 

 superiority of Greek for general disci- 

 plinary effect we have no space to 

 speak, but must reproduce what he says 

 about the study of English : 



In all these later arguments in regard to 

 the disciplinary efficiency of the Greek there 

 is the insinuation, or the ex^plicit statement, 

 that all modern languages, the English espe- 

 cially, are worthless, or worse than worthless, 

 for purposes of discipline. A writer in the 

 "Atlantic Monthly" for January, 1884, has 



