230 SCIENCE SKETCHES. 



With the revival of learning came the advent 

 of the study of Latin as a language having a litera- 

 ture, and later the study of Greek ; both Latin and 

 Greek, as literary studies, being considered ex- 

 tremely dangerous as well as heretical at the time of 

 their introduction into the curriculum. Both were 

 then resisted by the full force of the conservative 

 party of the day. After the revival of learning came 

 about with time the English college curriculum, 

 with its Xripos, or three pedestals of Greek, Latin, 

 and Mathematics. Of this the American curricu- 

 lum has been a lineal descendant. 



The American college curriculum at the time 

 when most of us became acquainted with it was a 

 very definite thing, time-honored, and commanding 

 a certain respect from its correspondence with the 

 theory on which it is based. Its fundamental idea 

 was discipline of the mind. Its mode of effecting 

 this was, in large part, by shutting the student's 

 eyes to the distracting and inconsequential present, 

 and fixing his gaze on that which was great and 

 good and hard to understand in the past. The 

 main work of the course consisted of drill in gram- 

 mar and mathematics, and the results of this train- 

 ing were bound together by a final exposition at 

 the hands of the President of such of the specula- 

 tions of philosophers as seemed to him safe and 

 substantial. This work lasted — for reasons so 

 old as to be long since forgotten — just four years, 

 and it was preceded by a certain very definite 

 amount of drill, of much the same kind which was 

 regarded as a necessary preliminary to the other 

 work. 



