PROCEEDINGS OF THE POLYTECHNIC ASSOCIATION. 947 



having a value at least appreciable ? And is not the immense dis- 

 proportion between labor expended and results obtained, itself 

 the best evidence that this labor has not been expended most 

 wisely for the accomplishment of its own avowed end ? For 

 surely there cannot be any language, dead or living, in the known 

 world, which any intelligent person ought not to be able to acquire, 

 so as at least to read it, in a course of ten years' study.* 



I know that we are continually informed, when we complain of 

 the meagerness of the actual results reached in the classical teach- 

 ing of our colleges, that it is not after all so much on account of 

 the knowledge acquired that these studies are usefid — it is because 

 of the admirable intellectual discipline which they furnish, and 

 which it is claimed for, them that they only can furnish so well. 

 This question we will waive for the moment ; but in the meantime 

 we may take occasion to note that the educationist who falls back 

 upon this ground, admits in so doing, that the other is untenable, and 

 that the value of these lauiyuaires which has been so much insisted 

 on, in opening up to the student all the choicest literary treasures 

 of the world of antiquity, is for the majority of our graduates 

 practically zero. And the admission may as well be made, though 

 in making it we shall reduce to the form of empty pretense, and 

 rate as no better than so much idle wind, a vast proportion of 

 what has been written in eulogy of the educational uses of the 

 classics. We may as well admit it, I say, because it is true ; and 

 until we recognize the truth in regard to the condition of our 

 educational instrumentalities or methods, we can never proceed 

 intelligently to make them better. Nor will it render the truth 

 I insist on any the less positive, or the admission any the less 

 necessar}'', that there may be here and there exceptions to the 

 general rule, that now and then there may be found a student 

 whose eight or ten years' study of the ancient languages may have 

 really enabled him to read them. No one who claims this can 

 claim that such cases are anything but exceptions. Even in the 

 British Universities, where the preference given to classical study 

 is greatly more decided than with us, and where its prosecution is 



* It need hardly be said that there is no intention in these remarks, to question the fact 

 of the existence among us of accomplished and thorough classical scholars. That we have 

 such, and not a few of them, I am proud to believe. But how many of them became so in 

 school or in college ? That is the question immediately before us. Our scholars, as a rule, 

 are self made. Their scholarship is the growth of their maturer life. The observations 

 of the text are to be understood of American students at their graduation as Bachelors of 

 Arts — not later. 



