THE STl DY OF I lOKTK TLTrHE IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 119 



message should prove not exactly litted to the needs of the mem- 

 bers of this Society, the defect must be attributed to his want of 

 technical knowledge. He then read his lecture, as follows : 



The demands so earnestly and widely made for revision of 

 courses of study, from the lowest class in the primary school to 

 the university, is not a freak. These demands are to be met, they 

 nuist be calml}' considered, and reasonable claims must be 

 granted. There can be no fixed course of study best for all 

 persons and in all times. Revisions are compelled by changes in 

 the circumstances of the individual, by new demands which new 

 times make upon the citizen, by discoveries in science and the 

 arts, by new social and civil conditions ; and educational systems 

 must be judged, not by their fitness to meet conditions which have 

 passed awaj^, but by their adjustment to the demands of their own 

 time. 



If the tremendous inertia of whatever has become institutional 

 be borne in mind, there need be little apprehension of wide-spread 

 disaster from too rapid or too radical changes in courses of study, 

 though such apprehension is not unnatural to those whose field of 

 view is limited. The realized dreams of the wildest visionary 

 could hardly effect so great a change in the schools of the present 

 day as has been effected in passing to the great University of 

 1891, from the Harvard College of the middle of the seventeenth 

 century, where it was prescribed that "when any scholar is able 

 to read Tulh'^ or any like classical Latin author ex temjwre, and 

 make and speak true Latin in verse and prose, and decline 

 perfectly the paradigms of nouns and verbs in the Greek tongue, 

 then may he be admitted to the college, nor shall any claim 

 admission before such qualification;" when the conversational 

 use of Latin was obligatory upon all within the limits of the 

 college, in place of the mother tongue, which was " to be used under 

 no pretext whatever, unless required in public exercises;" when it 

 was ordered that "ever}' scholar that on proof is found able to read 

 the originals of the Old and New Testaments into the Latin 

 tongue, and to resolve them logically, withal being of godly life 

 and conversation, and at any public act hath the approbation of 

 the overseers and master of the college, is fit to be dignified with 

 his first degree." 



The immense changes that have been effected in the higher 

 education since the year 1800, are well known to those now living. 



