July 22, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



99 



new forms and expressed their wonder and 

 admiration at the beauty they found in it. 

 But as a rule they made no effort to im- 

 prove upon it, to discover new truths or to 

 impress their own thoughts upon the world. 

 The student who receives all his knowl- 

 edge in a foreign tongue, different from 

 the language of his every-day life and 

 thought will seldom add to that knowl- 

 edge. Truth reveals itself to him who 

 diligently seeks it at all times and places, 

 whose every thought is given to the search 

 and whose mind is open to receive it even 

 when engaged in the most commonplace 

 affairs of life. A man living in his na- 

 tive country thinks in his own tongue; if 

 there are no words in that tongue to ex- 

 press the ideas which come to hifti, they 

 are apt to pass unheeded. 



The dawn of the renaissance brought new 

 factors into the intellectual life of Europe. 

 The several languages settled into fixed 

 forms and became more refined. Reading, 

 writing and arithmetic were taught in the 

 mother tongue and so education spread 

 among the common people. Scholasticism 

 gave pl^ce to classic culture and the study 

 of history, philosophy and mathematics be- 

 came more common in the universities. 

 Latin was still the language of learning and 

 the classic authors the chief source of cul- 

 ture. During the centuries which have fol- 

 lowed, the changes in methods and sub- 

 jects have been slow. In the past the 

 teacher has been the most conservative of 

 men. He has taught that which he himself 

 learned and has followed the methods of 

 his teachers. Education has been a rigid 

 mold, a cast-iron form into which all were 

 pressed and came out exactly alike. All 

 culture and the greater part of learning 

 were embalmed in the classic tongues and 

 these mummified forms were thought to be 

 eternal and unique. But the spirit of sci- 

 entific enquiry has shattered the mold and 

 one subject after another has been added 



to the curriculum of the university. Men 

 have come to see that language is a means 

 and not an end; that the true subject for 

 study is not grammar, but the universe. 

 It has taken many centuries to show that 

 education is many-sided and of many 

 forms. Until within a few years the cur- 

 lieulum at each college has been fixed — so 

 much language, so much mathematics, so 

 much philosophy, so much or rather so 

 little science. The student who had no 

 taste for mathematics was forced to do 

 as much as the one whose taste was for 

 formulas and numbers; he who disliked 

 language must cram Latin and Greek for 

 years or he could not be called an educated 

 man. But new ideas and new methods 

 have come within the last half century. 

 It has come to be recognized, the advocates 

 of the new method say, that all men are not 

 alike, that what is suitable to develop the 

 mind of one will not answer for another. 

 Individual tastes and capacities have been 

 at last respected and no student is now 

 forced to try to become a linguist or a 

 mathematician or a philosopher or a sci- 

 entist or a weak combination of them all 

 against his wishes. The educational 

 pendulum has swung from the conservative 

 to the radical side and now the student 

 may decide to specialize in chemistry, or 

 logic or Anglo-Saxon before he knows what 

 these terms mean. In some respects we 

 have reverted to the methods of the 

 mediseval universities, for now as then a 

 student may graduate without much knowl- 

 edge of his mother tongue. 



Which of the methods so hastily men- 

 tioned has produced true education and 

 which results shall we use to settle the 

 question under discussion? Is the true 

 method that of the Chinese which taught 

 a worship of ancestors and a reverence for 

 antiquity; or that of Pei'sia and Sparta 

 which prepared men for war; or that of 

 Athens, which in the words of Milton 



