804 



^SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XI. No. 282. 



and speak it, has be gained nothing ? He 

 has gained much, he has learned accuracy 

 in expression ; a certain discrimination in 

 the use of terms ; he has cultivated his 

 memory ; he has become acquainted with 

 the tongue in which men of Rome expressed 

 their thoughts ; in which many theologians 

 of the early centuries expressed their con- 

 ceptions of what Christianity ought to be ; 

 in which theologians of later centuries ex- 

 pressed their conceptions and misconcep- 

 tions of what the Fathers wrote ; the lan- 

 guage of educated men until a little more 

 than one hundred years ago. Thus he has 

 acquired, first, a sharpening of certain fac- 

 ulties and, secondly, the means which give 

 direct access to a great literature represent- 

 ing in time more than two milleniums pre- 

 ceding our century. 



This much he has acquired and it cer- 

 tainly is a great deal. Those who defend 

 the necessity for classical training assert 

 that he has acquired much more if he be an 

 English-speaking student. It is said that 

 one has a better understanding of his own 

 tongue if he have a good knowledge of the 

 classics, since so much of our language is 

 derived from the Greek and Latin. Shakes- 

 peare, we are told, enriched our vocabulary 

 by the addition of not less than three thous- 

 and words. 



Much is made of this, but one may doubt 

 the importance of the reasoning. Words 

 are available when they become identified 

 •with things either material or abstract, so 

 that one's ability to use them with precision 

 depends upon the exactness of the identifi- 

 cation. The question of their origin does 

 not enter into the matter. Indeed, one too 

 fully imbued with the signification of par- 

 ent-words may employ derived words in 

 senses at vai-iance with accepted significa- 

 tions. If there be any force in the argu- 

 ment, it would apply rather to a course in 

 Anglo- Saxon or in the language of the Au- 

 thorized Version, if the object be to culti- 



vate a direct style. That Shakespeare's 

 works enriched the English vocabulary ad- 

 mits of no doubt ; but if Shakespeare wrote 

 his plays, the argument gains little strength 

 by reference to him, for, according to Ben 

 Jonson, he knew ' little Latin and less 

 Greek.' In any event, however, this is a 

 matter of no importance. The suggestion 

 that our language is in urgent need of fur- 

 ther enrichment can hardly commend itself 

 as wise in view of the fact that the lexi- 

 cons already boast of approximately three 

 hundred thousand words, while the vocab- 

 ulary of the metropolitan newspaper does 

 not exceed three thousand and that of great 

 writers rarely equals ten thousand. 



But conceding all that has been conceded 

 so willingly because true, the query persist- 

 ently comes : Is the profit in due propor- 

 tion to the expenditure in time and labor ? 

 Might not the mental discipline be acquired 

 equally well by the use of other languages, 

 which would open a wider field of knowl- 

 edge and render the man more useful to 

 himself and to his fellows ? 



The modernized courses pay too little at- 

 tention to instruction in the use of lan- 

 guage. The literary courses are better 

 than the older types in that they do not ex- 

 clude the English language and proper 

 training in that direction is not far away ; 

 but the defect is still too conspicuous, espe- 

 cially in the scientific courses. Laboratory 

 work leads to exactness in method ; field- 

 work gives precision in observation and 

 comparison ; scientific training, in general, 

 strengthens the logical powers and gives 

 precision in thinking ; but none of them 

 gives precision in expression. As in theo- 

 logical seminaries, too often, preparation 

 for preaching is neglected on the principle 

 that if a man has anything to say he will 

 find no difficulty in saying it, so the study 

 of language as a means of expressing one's 

 thoughts has been neglected in scientific 

 training. Nevertheless, one cannot fail to 



