FURTHER REMARKS ON THE GREEK QUESTION, -ji^ 



faculties. These men are the dunces of the classical department, they 

 add nothing to its strength, and in every classical school are a hin- 

 drance to the better students ; but some of them may become able 

 and useful men, if their interest can be aroused in objective realities. 

 Of our present students, it is only this class that the proposed changes 

 would really affect. Those who have tastes and aptitudes for linguistic 

 studies would continue to come through the old channels, and of such 

 only can classical scholars be made. 



I know very well it is said that, although the classical department 

 would be glad to be rid of this undesirable element, yet the change 

 could not be made without endangering the continuance of the study 

 of Greek in many of our classical schools. But can the university be 

 justified in continuing a requisition which is recognized to be opposed 

 to the best interests of an important class of its patrons ? And certainly 

 it is not necessary to protect the study of Greek in this country by 

 any such questionable means. I have a great deal more faith myself 

 in the value of classical scholarship than many of my classical col- 

 leagues appear to possess. Never has one word of disparagement 

 been heard from me. I honor true classical scholarship as much as I 

 despise the counterfeit. To maintain that the class of classical dunces, 

 to whom I have referred, appreciate the beauties of classical literature 

 or derive any real advantage from the study is, in my opinion, to main- 

 tain a manifest absurdity. Fully as much do the convicts in a tread- 

 mill enjoy the beauties of the legal code under which they are com- 

 pelled to work ; and if, as Chief-Justice Coleridge has recently main- 

 tained, in his speech at New Haven, classical scholarship is the best 

 preparation for the highest distinctions in church and state, certain- 

 ly its continuance does not depend on the minimum requisition in 

 Greek of this university.* The "new culture," although a much 

 " younger industry," does not ask for any such artificial protection. 

 It only asks for an opportunity to show what it can accomplish, and 

 this opportunity it has never yet had. Even if the largest liberty were 

 granted, those who seek to promote a genuine education, based on natu- 

 ral science, would labor under the greatest disadvantages. Not only 

 is the apparatus required for the new culture far more expensive than 

 that of an ordinary classical school, but also more personal attention 

 must be given to each scholar, and the ordinary labor-saving methods 

 of the class-room are wholly inapplicable. In the face of such obsta- 

 cles as these conditions present, the new culture can advance only 

 very gradually ; and, amid the rivalry of the old system, it can only 

 succeed by maintaining a very high degree of efficiency. The new way 

 will certainly not offer any easier mode of admission to college than the 

 old ; and when it is remembered that the classical system has tlie con- 

 trol of all the endowed secondary schools, the prestige of past success, 



* This article Tvas written and read to the Faculty of Harvard College shortly after 

 Lord Coleridge's visit to the United States, in the autumn of 1883. 



