EDITOR'S TABLE. 



413 



which seems to be the very type of un- 

 changeable method, he shows to have 

 undergone nothing less than a revolu- 

 tion, so that that form of it, which Dr. 

 Whewell defended as "a permanent 

 study," has disappeared, and been re- 

 placed by another mathematics of a 

 totally different sort. The modern ana- 

 lytical mathematics, " the only mathe- 

 matics now in common use in the Unit- 

 ed States," is thus characterized by the 

 Master of Trinity in contrast with the 

 earlier geometry. He says : " We must 

 hold also that the geometrical forms 

 of mathematics must be especially pre- 

 served and maintained as essentially 

 requisite for this office (the study by 

 which the reason of man is to be edu- 

 cated) ; that analytical mathematics can 

 in no way answer this purpose, and, if 

 the attempt be made so to employ it, 

 will not only be worthless, but highly 

 prejudicial to men's minds." 



In regard to another unalterable 

 element of the disciplinary curriculum, 

 President Eliot remarks: " It is obvious 

 that the spirit and method in which 

 Latin has been, for the most part, 

 studied during the present century, 

 are very different from the spirit and 

 method in which it was studied in the 

 preceding centuries. During this cen- 

 tury it has been taught as a dead lan- 

 guage (except, perhaps, in parts of Italy 

 and Hungary), whereas it used to be 

 taught as a living language, the com- 

 mon speech of all scholars, both lay 

 and clerical. Those advocates of clas- 

 sical learning who maintain that a dead 

 language must have more disciplinary 

 virtue than a living one would hardly 

 have been satisfied with the prevailing 

 modes of teaching and learning Latin 

 in any century before our own." Even 

 Greek, so lauded as " an instrument for 

 the perpetual training of the mind of 

 the later generations," has not always 

 been a constituent of the accepted 

 scheme of liberal education. '• It took 

 two hundred years for the Greek lan- 

 guage and literature gradually to dis- 



place, in great part, the scholastic 

 metaphysics, which, with scholastic 

 theology, had been for generations re- 

 garded as the main staple of liberal 

 education; and this displacement was 

 accomplished only after the same sort 

 of tedious struggle by which the new 

 knowledges of the eighteenth and nine- 

 teenth centuries are now winning their 

 way to academic recognition. The 

 revived classical literature was vigor- 

 ously and sincerely opposed as frivo- 

 lous, heterodox, and useless for disci- 

 pline ; just as natural history, chemistry, 

 physics, and modern literatures are now 

 opposed. The conservatives of that 

 day used precisely the same arguments 

 which the conservatives of to-day bring 

 forward, only they were used against 

 classical literature then, while now they 

 are used in its support." 



The sticklers for traditional immu- 

 tability being thus disarmed, by show- 

 ing that "new learning has repeatedly 

 forced its way in times past to full 

 academic standing, in spite of the oppo- 

 sition of the conservative, and of the 

 keener resistance of established teach- 

 ers and learned bodies, whose standing 

 is always supposed to be threatened by 

 the rise of new sciences," President 

 Eliot proceeds to point out the impera- 

 tive necessity of still further important 

 changes that shall bring university and 

 college studies into completer harmony 

 with the present state of knowledge 

 and the demands of modern life. The 

 ground taken is thus broadly stated: 

 " To the list of studies which the six- 

 teenth century called liberal, I would 

 therefore add as studies of equal rank, 

 English, French, German, history, po- 

 litical economy, and natural science, 

 not one of which can be said to have 

 existed in mature form when the defi- 

 nition of liberal education, which is 

 still in force, was laid down. The 

 claims of these studies are taken up 

 separately; it is shown how widely 

 and grossly they are neglected, and 

 their right to coequal recognition 



