844 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



says: "To them it appears strange, and 

 almost monstrous, that the dead lan- 

 guages should hold the place they do in 

 general education; and it can hardly 

 be denied that their supremacy is the 

 result of routine rather than of argu- 

 ment." After declaring his doubts 

 whether an exclusively scientific train- 

 ing would be satisfactory, he adds; 

 "But it is useless to discuss the ques- 

 tion upon the supposition that the ma- 

 jority of boys attain, either to a knowl- 

 edge of the languages (Latin and Greek) 

 or to an appreciation of the writings of 

 the ancient authors. The contrary is 

 notoriously the truth." This is a broad 

 indorsement of the assertion that the 

 study of the dead languages is generally, 

 as a matter of fact, a failure. He fur- 

 ther observes: "I believe that French 

 and German, if properly taught, which 

 I admit they rarely are at present, 

 would go far to replace Latin and Greek 

 from a disciplinary point of view, while 

 the actual value of the acquisition 

 would, in the majority of cases, be in- 

 comparably greater. In half the time 

 usually devoted, without success, to the 

 classical languages, most boys could 

 acquire a really serviceable knowledge 

 of French and German. History and 

 the serious study of the English litera- 

 ture, now shamefully neglected, would 

 also find a place in such a scheme." 



We put these unsolicited and re- 

 sponsible declarations of an English 

 university man, who has had both a 

 classical and a scientific trainiug, against 

 the one-sided expressions drawn by the 

 classical party from Lord Coleridge and 

 Matthew Arnold while in this country. 



But it is not this aspect of the mat- 

 ter — a mere question of conflicting 

 authorities — that chiefly concerns us 

 here. Lord Rayleigh had previously 

 made an incidental observation which 

 strikes deeper into this subject than 

 anything he said in his formal reference 

 to it. He was speaking of the charac- 

 ter of his celebrated instructor, the late 

 Professor Clerk-Maxwell, of whom he 



said, "As a teacher and examiner he 

 was well acquainted with the almost 

 universal tendency of uninstructed 

 minds to elevate phrases above things." 

 This goes to the root of the antagonism 

 between literary and scientific educa- 

 tion, considered as means of mental 

 cultivation. 



Literary education is carried on in 

 the world of words; scientific educa- 

 tion, truly such, goes on in the world 

 of things^ in which words, though in- 

 dispensable, are subordinate, and not 

 the substantive objects with which the 

 mind is engaged. Literature, as a 

 method, stops with the words, makes 

 the things for which they stand of little 

 account, and is occupied with the arts 

 of expression. In science, things are 

 uppermost, they are what the mind 

 really has to deal with, and their verbal 

 representatives are merely matters of 

 convenience in dealing with them. 

 But the literary mind exalts the sym- 

 bols to the higher place, and makes 

 education consist in loading the mind 

 with languages, with but little con- 

 ception of those higher ends to which 

 all language should be made tributary. 

 Of course, it is easier and more pleasant 

 to become interested in words and pay 

 little attention to things, and, where the 

 object is only light intellectual gratifi- 

 cation, literature answers the end. 



But we have here to do with the 

 subject of education, with the true and 

 best mode of developing the powers of 

 the mind, and for this purpose the dif- 

 ference between words and things is 

 wide and fundamental. Both are im- 

 portant, but the question is, which is to 

 be held supreme? Science as a new force 

 in education relegates words to the sub- 

 ordinate place, and it clinches the case by 

 afiirming that knowledge of things is the 

 true test of intelligence, and that the 

 mere knowledge of words is but highly 

 respectable ignorance. Unless there has 

 been a grapple with some subject in its 

 actual facts, elements, and relations, and 

 some considerable degree of mental dis- 



