''THE GREEK QUESTION » 3 



should be intrusted with the training of those who are to follow them 

 in the same work. 



Now, such is the artificial condition of our schools, and so com- 

 pletely are they ruled by prescription, that, when we attempt to lay 

 out a proper course of training for the scientific professions, we are 

 met at the very outset by the Greek question. Greek is a requisition 

 for admission to college, and the only schools in which a scientific 

 training can be had do not teach Greek, and, what is more, can not be 

 expected to teach it. 



This brings us to the root of the whole difiiculty with which the 

 teachers of natural science have been contending, and which is the 

 cause of the present movement. We can not obtain any proper scien- 

 tific training from the classical schools, and the present requisitions for 

 admission to college practically exclude students prepared at any 

 others. At Cambridge we have vainly tried to secure some small 

 measure of scientific training in the classical schools : first, by establish- 

 ing summer courses in practical science especially designed for train- 

 ing teachers, and chiefly resorted to by such persons ; and, secondly, 

 by introducing some science requisitions into the admission examina- 

 tions. But the attempt has been an utter failure. The science requi- 

 sitions have been simply " crammed," and the result has been worse 

 than useless ; because, instead of securing any training in the methods 

 of science, it has in most cases given a distaste for the whole subject. 

 True science-teaching is so utterly foreign to all their methods that 

 the requisitions have merely hampered the classical schools, and the 

 sooner they are abandoned the better. Both the methods and the 

 spirit of literary and scientific culture are so completely at variance 

 that we can not expect them to be successfully united in the same pre- 

 paratory school. 



"We look, therefore, to entirely different schools for the two kinds 

 of preparation for the university which modem society demands — 

 schools which, for the want of better distinctive names, we may call 

 classical and scientific schools. In the classical school the aim should 

 be, as it has always been, literary culture, and the end should be that 

 power of clothing thought in words which awakens thought. Of 

 course, the results of natural science must to a certain extent be taught ; 

 for even literary men can not afford to be wholly ignorant of the great 

 powers that move the world. But the natural sciences should be 

 studied as useful knowledge, not as a discipline, and such teaching 

 should not be permitted in the least degree to interfere with the se- 

 rious business of the place. In the scientific school, on the other hand, 

 while language must be taught, it should be taught as a means, not as 

 an end. The educated man of science must command at least French 

 and German — and for the present a limited amount of Latin — as well 

 as his mother-tongue, because science is cosmopolitan. But these 

 languages should be acquired as tools, and studied no further than they 



