520 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 



undoubtedly best for the student to begin at the beginning, and the beginning 

 of European thought is to be found in the pages of .^schylus, Sophocles, and 

 Euripides, of Plato and Aristotle, of Herodotus and Thucydides. But the 

 study of these gix^at literatures with their attendant history is largely ruined 

 by two facts. One is that far more boys are driven into this study than will 

 ever seriously profit by it, and for this Universities are on the whole to blame, 

 though it is to be remembered that nearly all professional examinations make 

 a fetish of elementary Latin, requiring not enough of it to be any kind of 

 use, but quite enough to waste a great deal of the student's time. And the 

 other ruinous fact is that we have continued a system appropriate to a time 

 when there were few subjects to supply the place of mental gymnastics, and 

 therefore use the history of two great peoples, and two noble literatures, for 

 this menial office. 



I should like to suggest that certain authors should be altogether excluded 

 from the curriculum of schools. In the choice of authors for school reading 

 it is always what a writer says, not how he says it, that should be considered. 

 ;My list of condemned authors would certainly include Cicero and Demosthenes. 

 Further, I would suggest that either some special part of the term, or some 

 special author studied through the term, should be selected for close and 

 grammatical study in classical forms, but that beyond this there should be a 

 large amount of reading, for the preparation of which the use of a translation 

 should not only be permitted but obligatory. Perhaps Cicero and Demosthenes 

 might come in under the former heading as museums of idioms and grammatical 

 constructions. Moreover, and to this I attach the utmost importance, composi- 

 tion should be entirely given up except at the very elementary stage where 

 ' sentences.' are nec-essarv for the mastering of even elementary constructions ; 

 and again at the most advanced stage, where the pupils have reached a point 

 at which it is clear that they can with advantage be carried forw^ard some 

 distance in pure scholarship. The amount of time that is wasted over Latin 

 and Greek prose seems to me something entirely deplorable. To gain the 

 whole of this time for reading or for history would be an incalculable boon. 

 T know this is a heresy, and so I emphasise it. No doubt any mental grind 

 In-ings some benefit. But I believe the time given to Latin and Greek prose 

 is as near wasted as any time of tolerably hard work can be. The climax of 

 horror is reached when boys are made to read a dull author because it will 

 be good for their prose, or are not allowed to read a quite interesting author 

 because it would be bad for their prose. 



But, after all, the chief point that I wish to urge is that the classics are not 

 the only available form of humane study. I should like to see an experiment 

 conducted on the following lines. The staple of the school curriculum to be 

 European history and English literature. At the bottom of the school there 

 should be elementary Latin, which undoubtedly provides good mental 

 gymnastics, and of course elementary mathematics and natural science. Per- 

 haps also French, though of this I am more doubtful. Those boys who 

 showed real facility in Latin should, if they so desired, begin to study Greek 

 at about the age of sixteen or sixteen and a half. They should then have one 

 term in which they would do very little except Greek. Experiments suggest that 

 in forms consisting only of boys who have already shown some aptitude for a 

 classical language, one term's concentrated study will bring them to the point 

 reached by efforts of several years according to our present methods, and the 

 devotion of a single term to this would not seriously interrupt the general 

 course. There would not be a classical side and a modern side, for the staple 

 study of the whole school would be history; but there would be. above the point 

 indicated, divisions for Latin and Greek as there now are in clnssical schools 

 for mathematics. These would have allotted to them all the hours on the 

 time-table that were not required for the history and literature, for it is of no 

 use, broadly speaking, to read classics after that time unless they are given 

 almost the whole of the student's attention. The study of ancient civilisation, 

 which ie what the study of the classics ought to be, is itself something far too 

 rich to come mider any condemnation of specialism. Boys who do not take 

 this classical course would take mathematics, science, and at least one modern 

 language, the mathematics and the science being as far as possible combined ; 



