May 25, 1900.] 



scmiJCE. 



803 



not to render them useful. Educated men 

 could not touch commerce — that was degra- 

 dation. But education now is for all, for 

 the poor as for the rich, for the merchant as 

 for the professional man ; we recognize that 

 the professional man ranks no higher intel- 

 lectually than does the financier, whether 

 the latter deal in money or in goods. This 

 absolute reversal of conditions cannot be 

 ignored in the discussion. 



When men threw off the bonds of the 

 medijeval church, the study of things re- 

 placed that of words ; men discovered 

 themselves and the great world about them. 

 As knowledge increased, respect for the 

 dicta of ancient writers decreased ; Latin 

 and Greek fell into disuse and at length 

 necessity for acquaintance with them dis- 

 appeared. But the curricula had become 

 hoary with age ; change meant revolution ; 

 the universities were controlled by men 

 who knew no other training and the promi- 

 nent instructors in almost all branches be- 

 longed to the clerical profession. Those 

 investigating material things were spoken 

 of disdainfully ; even those studying the 

 phj^sical portion of man received little 

 respect from those who studied his mental 

 and spiritual portion — their work was re- 

 ferred to patronizingly as requiring less 

 intellectual power than that of their critics 

 — a reflection not wholly unknown in our 

 time, for there are still those who appear 

 to think that familiarity with material 

 things unfits a man for taking the higher 

 flights of philosophical reasoning. There 

 may be something in this reflection, for a 

 knowledge of facts cannot fail to fetter the 

 wings of a philosopher of the old type. 



When classical study ceased to be neces- 

 sary from the utilitarian standpoint, those 

 entrusted with educational work discovered 

 that it was still necessary from an educa- 

 tional standpoint. Verily necessity is the 

 mother of invention. Necessity increased 

 with years and for the last half century 



men have been seeking excuses for reten- 

 tion of compulsory classical study. They 

 have succeeded in convincing those who 

 know little about either classics or science 

 that without such a smattering of the clas- 

 sics as the college man usually receives, no 

 one can be regarded as educated. 



The change in purpose brought about a 

 change in the teaching, so that classical in- 

 struction, as commonly conducted in secon- 

 dary schools, leads a youth along an in- 

 vestigation of grammatical principles. The 

 great majority of young men, who enter 

 college after four to six years of prepara- 

 tion, find themselves so burdened by lexi- 

 con work that too many of them seek relief 

 in the convenient ' Bohn.' Acquisition of 

 the vocabulary seems to be less important 

 than mastery of nice points in syntax. An 

 eminent instructor in Latin told the writer 

 that in marking students he laid little 

 stress on translation, as a ' Bohn ' is always 

 available ; his grading was based on pro- 

 ficiency in prose and quantity which had 

 to be studied. That a large proportion of 

 Bachelors, after ten years of studj', cannot 

 read their diplomas without resort to a 

 lexicon causes no surprise to them or to 

 their instructors. They had not been at- 

 tempting to acquire either Latin or Greek, 

 but they had been utilizing classical words 

 and idioms in studying the principles of 

 grammar. True it is, that this statement 

 is not of universal application ; there are 

 exceptions among both instructors and stu- 

 dents and, owing to the demand that there 

 be something tangible to show for the labor 

 of years, the number is inci-easing ; but the 

 fact remains that the conditions as described 

 are those- which prevail ; and they have 

 much to do with the notion that the study 

 of classical languages is much more diflS- 

 cult than that of other languages. 



But one asks, suppose that the young 

 man has acquired an accurate knowledge 

 of, let us say, Latin, that he can read, write 



