Report on a Course of Liberal Education. 347 



retentive ; his recollection quick, and his power of critical 

 discrimination more accmate. Beginning with language in 

 its primitive simplicity and tracing its progress to its present 

 state, the student can hardly fail to improve his taste and to 

 enlarge his capacity to think, and to communicate thought. 



The acquaintance with the elements of language and the 

 mythology, as well as the chronology and geography of the 

 ancients, which he derives from their classics, naturally ex- 

 cites in the mind of the student, an ardent desire of knowl- 

 edge, while his imagination is fired by their poetry and elo- 

 quence. The heroic exploits they celebrate may indeed 

 arouse his ambition, but the wisdom of their precepts will 

 enlighten and guide his judgment, and temper his ardor, di- 

 recting him to the fields of science, with the hope of obtain- 

 ing valued, but bloodless trophies, in the conflicts of mind. 

 Having access to the depositories of the earliest and most 

 splendid results of mental labors, he seizes the refined treas- 

 ures of antiquity, and pursuing the operations of gifted in- 

 tellects, in later times, his mind becomes well stored with 

 knowledge, and he is fitted not only for intercourse with the 

 learned throughout the world, but for general usefulness. 



It is urged that the dead languages are not necessary nor 

 used in the intercourse and business of life even by the 

 scholar, and that the time spent in acquiring them is, as to 

 all practical results, lost. But the committee do not con- 

 sider this objection well founded. Who would consent to 

 part with tlie mental discipline the study of algebra imposes, 

 or direct the student to lay aside Euclid because the perfect 

 arrangement of the signs of the one, or the problems and 

 demonstrations of the other, may not be directly and prac- 

 tically useful to men of business ? These exercises give vigor 

 to the mind, generate a habit of close and connected thought, 

 and prepare the student for the successful use of the materi- 

 als he may have derived from miscellaneous learning. But the 

 reasons for dispensing with the study of classical literature 

 are not more cogent, resting as they do, on the inadmissible 

 postulate, that the student should be confined to merely 

 practical learning. 



The study of Greek as a branch of elementary education, 

 not only discloses the degree of perfection to which lan- 

 guage was early carried and its susceptibility of almost math- 

 ematical precision, as a mean of communication, but, at the 

 same time, brings the student to the contemplations and to 



