806 



SCIENCE. 



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



ascertained from a translation, the work 

 must be read in the original — which is 

 equivalent to saying that, to most of us, 

 works in a foreign language, especially 

 those in a dead language, must remain 

 sealed books. No man can acquire a 

 knowledge of a dead language, so exact as 

 to enable him to think in it, without ex- 

 pending so much labor as to leave time for 

 little else, so that to most of us a concep- 

 tion of what the writers meant must come 

 through translation. 



But we may dismiss this last argument, 

 for it is purely academic and has no refer- 

 ence to the actual condition. It is not pre- 

 tended that the ordinary college graduate 

 knows enough to make the reading of Latin 

 or Greek authors a delight in hours of re- 

 laxation from the burdens of everyday life. 

 Long ago, Latin text-books were abandoned 

 in theological seminaries, not so much be- 

 cause the theology was antiquated as be- 

 cause the students were so burdened by 

 translation that neither time nor energy 

 remained for study of the matter. 



But granting all that is claimed, the 

 question still recurs, is the game worth the 

 candle? Is access to classical authors in 

 the original or even in translation a matter 

 of such importance to the average man as 

 to justify the expenditure of the most im- 

 portant years of his life? One cannot 

 avoid expressing some doubts respecting 

 this. Unquestionably, the men of classical 

 Greece and Eome were, in some instances, 

 men of towering intellect ; those who wor- 

 ship at the classical shrine demand that we 

 point out in modern times the equals of 

 Aristotle, Homer, Thucydides, Plato, Sen- 

 eca, Vergil, Tacitus, Horace, Quintilian 

 and half a score of others. Where in mod- 

 ern literature, we are asked, can one find 

 such elevating sentiments, such ennobling 

 philosophy, such brilliant rhetoric? One 

 may reply that perspective has much to do 

 with this type of ancestor worship, that a 



score or even two scores of names gathered 

 from more than a millenium of antiquity 

 could easily be matched by a score of names 

 gathered from the five centuries preceding 

 our own. Even our nineteenth century, 

 whose materialism grieves so many hearts, 

 does not pale in comparison with the golden 

 period of either Greece or Eome. Men do 

 not stand out pre-eminently now as they 

 did centuries ago, for the field of knowledge 

 is so wide and the laborers so numerous 

 that one may gain eminence only with great 

 difiSeulty in even a very contracted portion. 

 Pre- eminent in his own area, he may be 

 utterly unknown to workers elsewhere. 

 It is probable that the ablest astronomer 

 in America cannot name the most eminent 

 ten chemists in the world and, in like man- 

 ner, that the ablest chemist cannot name 

 the most eminent ten astronomers. It is 

 equally probable that no eminent philoso- 

 pher or historian in this country can name 

 the ten Americans who have been pre- 

 eminent in the several branches of science 

 during the last fifty years. If Aristotle 

 were living now, he would be an eminent 

 professor of philosophy in some university, 

 much respected by philosophers elsewhere, 

 but unknown outside of his immediate cir- 

 cle, unless, like Herbert Spencer, he should 

 undertake problems of broad type, in which 

 case, no doubt, he would be as little read 

 and as much misrepresented as Spencer 

 himself. 



Of course, one risks much in venturing 

 to question the over-towering grandeur of 

 the ancient writers, for their names have 

 been enshrined so long that doubts respect- 

 ing their superiority appear as sacrilegious 

 as were Galileo's doubts respecting the 

 Ptolemaic sj'stem. But the fact remains, 

 that the commonly accepted verdict in 

 favor of the ancient writers is not that of 

 our day — it was pronounced at the revival 

 of learning amid the shadows of the reced- 

 ing dark ages and it has become a tradition 



