FURTHER REMARKS ON THE GREEK QUESTION, jjj 



a scholar, whatever may be his natural talents, is as cruel as the Chi- 

 nese practice of cramping the feet of women in order to conform to a 

 ti'aditional ideal of beauty. Indeed, an instructor in natural science 

 has very much the same difficulty in training classical scholars to ob- 

 serve that a dancing-master would have in teaching a class of Chinese 

 girls to waltz. 



Again, it has been said that while the opportunities for scientific 

 culture in college are ample, no one will oppose such a modification of 

 the requisitions for admission as the conditions of this culture demand, 

 provided only we label the product of such culture with a descrij^tive 

 name. Call the product of your scientific culture Bachelors of Science, 

 we have been told, and you may arrange the requisites of admission 

 to your own courses as you choose. I am forced to say that this argu- 

 ment, however specious, is neither ingenuous nor charitable. If you 

 will label the product of a purely linguistic culture with an equally 

 descriptive name ; if, following the French usage, you will call such 

 graduates Bachelors of Letters, we shall not object to the tenn Bach- 

 elors of Science ; or, without making so great an innovation, I, for 

 one, should have no objection to a distinction between Bachelors of 

 Arts in Letters and Bachelors of Arts in Science. But it is perfectly 

 Avell understood that in this community the degree of Bachelor of 

 Arts is for most men the one essential condition of admission to the 

 noble fraternity of scholars, to what has been called the " Guild of the 

 Learned." To refuse this degree to a certain class of our graduates 

 is to exclude them from such associations and from the privileges 

 which they afford ; and this is just what is intended. Hence I say 

 that the argument is not ingenuous, and it is not charitable because it 

 implies that a class of men who profess to love the truth as their lives 

 are seeking to appear under false colors. To cite examples from my 

 own profession only I have always maintained that such men as Davy, 

 Dalton, and Faraday were as truly learned, as highly cultivated, and as 

 capable of expressing their thoughts in appropriate language, as the 

 most eminent of their literary compeers, and I shall continue to main- 

 tain this projiosition before our American community, and I have no 

 question that sooner or later my claim will be allowed, and the doors 

 of the " Guild of the Learned " will be opened to all scholars who 

 have acquired by cultivation the same power which these great men 

 held in such a pre-eminent degi'ee by gift of Nature. 



Lastly, I am persuaded that in a large body politic like this it is 

 unwise, and in the long run futile, to attempt to protect any special 

 form of culture at the expense of another. If one member suffers, all 

 the members suffer with it ; and what is for the interest of the whole 

 is in the long run always for the interest of every part. I would wel- 

 come every form of culture which has vindicated its efficiency and its 

 value, and in so doing I feel that I should best promote the interests 

 of the special department which I have in charge. 



