29© THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



other. "We find the " classicists " agreeing that the study of modem 

 languages may also be made valuable ; that modern literature is adorned 

 with names which rival in luster the greatest of the Greek or Roman. 

 They give up slowly more and more of that valuable time formerly 

 spent in conning Greek and Latin grammars, or in learning to write 

 Greek and Latin verses, or to talk a jargon which they dignify by the 

 name of classical Latin, to the study of French, Italian, Spanish, Ger- 

 man, and English. They allow the elements of the natural sciences 

 one after another, to creep in, and even grant some hours a week to 

 modern history. They still devote the most of their attention, how- 

 ever, to Latin and Greek, and justify their course by the claim that the 

 shortest road to modern literature is through Athens and Rome ; that 

 modern languages are so intimately connected with the classics that, 

 after mastering the latter, the acquisition of French, English, Italian, 

 and Spanish, is a matter for leisure hours, a mere after-dinner amuse- 

 . ment ; that the nomenclature of the modern sciences is so largely 

 Greek that time would be saved in learning them by first mastering 

 Homer, Xenophon, and Plato ; that modern history is only the second 

 chapter of the world's history, and can be rightly understood only 

 after learning what goes before. 



Their most thoughtful opponents have also given up many of the 

 claims advanced by their prototypes. They allow that there is a vast 

 difference between knowledge and power ; that a mass of undigested 

 facts in the memory is as depressing for the mind as a mass of undi- 

 gested food in the 'stomach is for the brain. They, or al least the 

 most advanced among them, allow that the old humanists followed 

 sound pedagogical principles in selecting but few subjects, and in 

 lingering over them long enough to secure that mental power and 

 grasp which come from the detailed and long-continued study of 

 any great branch of human knowledge. They grant that the second- 

 ary schools should give a liberal education, in the sense of an education 

 which shall prepare the students, not for the particular calling which 

 they may afterward take up, but for right and intelligent living, in 

 any sphere to which circumstances may call them. They maintain, 

 however, that for the purposes of such an education modern subjects 

 are as good as or better than ancient ; that French and English, if 

 properly taught, can afford, so far as is desirable, the same kind of 

 mental discipline as that obtained from Latin and Greek ; that mod- 

 ern literature embraces classics as worthy of detailed and continuous 

 study as ancient literature ; that the proper study of the modem sci- 

 ences develops certain faculties with a completeness of which no other 

 instrument is capable ; that modern history offers subjects as worthy 

 of labor, as fruitful in results, as anything which ancient times can 

 afford. 



The objective points of the contest have also changed in the course 

 of time. The old philanthropinists demanded the total abolition of all 



