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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Dictionaries, grammars, literary models 

 abound, and experienced teachers su- 

 perabound. And yet, with all these 

 facilities, the study of dead languages 

 has been the one pre-eminent and his- 

 toric failure of the so-called liberal edu- 

 cation. There is more repulsiveness in 

 it and more hatred of it than any other 

 kind of study— mathematics not ex- 

 cepted. There have been more flogging, 

 bullying, and bribery resorted to as in- 

 centives to classical study than to all 

 other studies whatever. Both in Eng- 

 land and in Germany the system has 

 long maintained an exclusive ascenden- 

 cy by a barbaric discipline on the one 

 hand, and on the other by all kinds of 

 prizes, honors, and emoluments that 

 could stimulate selSsh ambition, and 

 which have been jealously withheld 

 from modern studies. With all these 

 factitious stimulants to classical study, 

 its failure has been so notorious that we 

 can not attribute it to any accidental 

 defects in the modes of its teaching. 

 Nor can these defects be so readily re- 

 paired, for no possible reform in the 

 modes of studying the dead languages 

 can alter their relations to modern 

 thought. It is here that we find the 

 open secret of their failure. 



Professor Cooke struck the key- 

 note of this discussion when he re- 

 marked, in his article on *' The Greek 

 Question," in the last " Monthly " : " A 

 half-century has wholly changed the 

 relations of human knowledge," and 

 " the natural sciences have become the 

 chief factors of our modern civiliza- 

 tion." This change in the relations of 

 knowledge, by which the sciences have 

 become the great intellectual factors 

 of civilization, has necessarily brought 

 with it a corresponding revolution in 

 education. For the new knowledge did 

 not originate by the old methods of 

 study ; it came by new exercises of the 

 mind, as much contrasted with previous 

 habits as the greatness of its results is 

 contrasted with the barrenness of the 

 traditional scholarship. Th e old method 



occupied itself mainly with the study 

 of language ; the new method passed 

 beyond language to the study of the 

 actual phenomena of nature. The old 

 method has for its end lingual accom- 

 plishments ; the new method, a real 

 knowledge of the characters and rela- 

 tions of natural things. The old method 

 trains the verbal memory, and the rea- 

 son, so far as it is exercised in transpos- 

 ing thought from one form of expres- 

 sion to another. The new method cul- 

 tivates the powers of observation and 

 the faculty of reasoning upon the objects 

 of experience so as to educate the judg- 

 ment in dealing with the problems of 

 life. The old method left uncultivated 

 whole tracts of the mind that are of 

 supreme importance in gaining a knowl- 

 edge of the actual properties and prin- 

 ciples of things which are fundament- 

 al in our progressive civilization; the 

 new method begins with the systematic 

 cultivation of these neglected mental 

 powers. The old method has yielded to 

 the world long ago all that it is capable 

 of giving ; the new method has already 

 accomplished much, but it has as yet 

 yielded but comparatively little of what 

 it is capable of giving when it becomes 

 organized into a perfected system of edu- 

 cation. It is this new scientific method, 

 based in nature, fortified in the noblest 

 conquests of the human mind, and 

 full of promise in its future develop- 

 ment that has become the rival in these 

 days of the old system of dead-language 

 studies. They have failed because they 

 cannot hold their ground against the 

 new competitor. 



The classics are constantly defended 

 because of their boasted discipline, yet 

 they have declined because of the grow- 

 ing sense of the weakness and inferiority 

 of the mental cultivation they impart. 

 They are accomplishments for show, 

 rather than solid acquisitions for use. 

 The study of words, the chief scholarly 

 occupation, is mentally debilitating, be- 

 cause it leaves unexercised, or exercises 

 but very imperfectly, the most impor- 



