PROCEEDINGS OF THE POLYTECHNIC ASSOCIATION. 949 



distinctions between the dative and pblative case, the probability 

 is that no comparison or discrimination will be exercised at all, 

 and that the only faculty which will come into play will be the 

 memory. I say the probability is, but I might better say the cer- 

 tainty ; and if personal experience is Morth anything in the case, 

 I may add that in one instance, at least, this certainty has been to 

 me matter of knowledge. 



Valuable then as is the study of language for its educational 

 uses, it does not follow that it is so for the earliest stages of edu- 

 cation. Still less, at that early period, will that language be 

 found useful, of which the structure is the most complicated, the 

 inflections the most numerous, the syntax the most artificial and 

 the order of words and clauses in a sentence the most widely con- 

 trasted with that which prevails in the learner's own vernacular. 

 And yet such a language possesses in tlie highest degree the pro- 

 perties which make of language a useful educational instrument- 

 ality, provided the proper place be assigned to it in the educa- 

 tional course. 



There is a professor of physical training in New York who 

 promises a wonderful development of the muscles of the arms and 

 chest, to such as choose to practice under his direction for a few 

 months in wielding certain ponderous clubs — thirty pounds, more 

 or less, I believe, in weight. He can point to some striking living 

 examples of the success which has attended his method ; but I 

 have never heard that he had placed his clubs in the hands of 

 boys of ten years old. And so, when we impose on the intellects 

 of boys at the same tender age, a burthen like that of the gram- 

 mar of the Latin or the Greek language, Ave overtask them as much 

 as we should overtask their body strength by requiring them to 

 go through a gymnastic exercise with a club of thirty pounds 

 weight. They can lift the Ijurthen no more in tlie one case than 

 in the other. They do not lift it, though we may persuade our- 

 selves that they do, because we tie them to it and leave them 

 there. And by this I mean to say that the study of Latin and 

 Greek, between the ages of eight and twelve (I have heard of 

 cases in which the study began at six), does not really serve the 

 educational purpose that it is supposed to do ; does not really 

 occupy the reflective and reasoning powers of the mind, but exer- 

 cises almost exclusively the memory. But then, if it does not do 

 this, it does something worse. It blinds us to the fact that the 

 educational process is not going on at all, at the very most import- 



