OF DENISON UNIVERSITY 77 



training endeavors to make the mind stronger, broader, more sym- 

 metrical, and, at last, finer, that the character may have at first 

 strength, then beauty. Success in the effort is not always certain, for 

 the mental treasure is in earthen vessels, very frail, too often of poor 

 material, very porous and without much glaze ; but Ave have the ideal 

 — how may we attain at least partial success, the most possible? 



Two schools answer this question ; but they have little in common 

 beyond the belief that there is a human mind which is in sore need of 

 cultivation. 



The old school finds the best means in the study of abstractions ; 

 it holds that the study of languages, especially of the classical tongues, 

 affords the best basal training ; it would place a child in earliest youth 

 at this study to sharpen the intellect by dwelling on niceties of expres- 

 sion and on the recognition of delicate distinctions, so producing exact- 

 ness of thought and precision of statement while strengthening the 

 verbal memory ; with this study, though subordinate, is to be associ- 

 ated that of mathematics, with excursions in other directions ; but em- 

 phasis is laid on the classical work because of its humanizing effect ; 

 the lad is preparing to read ancient authors in the original, to become 

 acquainted with the philosophy and to partake of the refinement found 

 only in writers of antiquity when the influence of the shop and the love 

 of money were not reflected throughout literature. 



The other school in bitterness of spirit speaks scoffingly of these 

 claims and denies that the classical languages are taught in our schools 

 and colleges ; its advocates challenge the defenders of the older system 

 to produce the graduates of the ordinary college courses who can read 

 ancient philosophers in the original ; they assert that, of college gradu- 

 ates who have spent from eight to ten years in the study of Greek and 

 Latin, only a small percentage can take a work previously unread and 

 read it with any degree of ease ; they assert that two thirds of the col- 

 lege graduates are unable to read their diplomas ; they refer unpleas- 

 antly to the statement that in theological seminaries, text-books in 

 scholastic Latin were abandoned not so much because the theology was 

 antiquated as because the students were found to be studying Latin in- 

 stead of learning the theology : they prove that while the great works 

 of antiquity, unless in the Bohn library, are sealed books to the ordin- 

 ary classical student, the w^orks of French, German and Spanish auth- 

 ors are not sealed books even to those who have spent very much less 

 time in the study of those languages — and this too in spite of the com- 



