SCIENTIFIC TEACHING 501 



useful not merely in this or that occupation, but in bestowing 

 general intellectual power. Knowledge, and skill in using it, are 

 useful only when they link up with the experiences of the sub- 

 sequent career ; that is, when they are actually useful in themselves, 

 or when they serve as a ladder towards the acquirement of a more 

 extended and directly useful knowledge and skill. It would be 

 folly, for example, to teach even elementary mathematics to one 

 who, were it possible, could never be helped by it in any way. 

 Therefore, since environments vary, the same instruction is not 

 always equally valuable. Thus an acquaintance with Latin and 

 Greek is not as useful to-day as it was four centuries ago, when the 

 former was a * bread-and-butter ' subject and the only path to know- 

 ledge, and the latter the sole means of reaching the higher planes 

 of thought. At present three principal systems of mental training 

 are advocated, the so-called classical, the so-called scientific, and 

 the scientific. 



817. The first is classical in name only. It consists mainly in 

 a formal teaching of the words and the relations between the words 

 of two foreign languages which are no longer spoken ; a method of 

 acquiring a language so unnatural, and therefore uninteresting and 

 ineffective, that a decade of toil confers on the pupil less than was 

 acquired without labour by a Greek or Roman infant of two. The 

 Greek children and young adults studied no foreign language, and 

 the Romans only Greek, and that only when their greatness was 

 beginning to wane. It may be doubted whether the classical 

 system of verbal signs contributed appreciably to the quality of 

 the thoughts of which they were the means of expression. On the 

 contrary, it is probable that good thinking needed, and therefore 

 invented, good means of verbal expression. Classical literature can 

 teach modern man nothing about the universe his mind constructs 

 except some valuable human history. Its beauty is very great, and, 

 considering the limited knowledge of the ancients, the thinking it 

 reveals quite the most skilful known to us. But, judging from 

 results, such instruction in Greek and Latin as is given to boys, and 

 even to older pupils, does not very commonly awaken a very keen 

 appreciation of the beauty or bestow great skill in thinking. More- 

 over, the thoughts have all been expressed in English by scholars 

 with at least as much precision as is possible to the learner. Doubt- 

 less, since English is in part derived from Latin, a knowledge of the 

 latter helps us somewhat to an understanding of the former ; but 

 the benefit is hardly so marked as to justify years of labour ; and 

 just as it was anciently possible to speak and write good Greek 



