950 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



ant and critical time in the j^outhfiil learner's life. It prevents us 

 from perceiving that the mind which we are endeavoring to train, 

 refusing a task to which it is unequal, remains inactive, except in 

 the very humblest of its faculties. It conceals from us the 

 unhappy trutli that the perceptive powers remain dormant or 

 sluggish; that the powers of comparison, analysis, judgment and 

 reasoning, are never called into action ; and that the period of 

 life, when habits of careful observation are most easily formed, 

 when in fact they must be formed, or never formed at all, is pass- 

 ins^ away unimproved. 



To me, therefore, it seems to be an error of very serious gravity 

 to suppose that the study of the ancient languages at a very early 

 period of life is a means of valualile and wholesome mental disci- 

 pline. That study seems to me rather, at that time, to act as a 

 sedative, repressing the activity of the higher mental powers, than 

 as a stimulant awakening them to exertion. And no stronger cor- 

 roboration of the justice of this view could be presented than is 

 to be found in the very moderate amount of attainment which 

 appears in the end to ])e acquired, as the result of all this labor. 

 The object of education, considered as a formative process, is not 

 indeed directly the increase of knowledge. It is to form and not 

 to inform the mind. But there is no process of formation which 

 does not imply information. There is no species of mental exer- 

 cise in which the understanding is not employed in the acquisition 

 of new truths, or in forming new combinations of familiar truths, 

 in such a manner as to enlarge the scope of our ideas. And in so 

 far as the processes we call educational ftiil to increase knowledge, 

 although not planned with that express intent, in precisely so far 

 they fail to accomplish their proper end. There is then no impro- 

 priety in judging of the educational value of any study by con- 

 sideriuo- how much it has contributed to the learner's stock of 

 positive knowledge, and what proportion this addition bears to 

 the time which has been devoted to securing it. Now, imperfect 

 as is the acquaintance of our college graduates with the languages 

 which occupy so largely their attention throughout their whole 

 educational course, there is no doubt that the greater part of what 

 they know of them is acquired after^they become members of col- 

 lege. And yet, considering the exclusiveness with which, in the 

 preparatoiy schools, they are confined to these subjects of study, 

 there is as little doubt that the time they expend on them in those 

 schools exceeds in most cases, and ver}^ much exceeds in many, 



