June 15, 1900 ] 



SCIENCE 



953 



DISCUSSION AND COBBESPONDENCE. 



THE STUDY OF GREEK AND LATIN VS. MODERN 

 LANGUAGES. 



In his discussion in Science of May 25th, of 

 the question : ' Should Greek and Latin be 

 required for the degree of Bachelor of Arts,' 

 Professor Stevenson seems to me to slight some 

 points that bear essentially upon the merits of 

 the question, at least so long as the methods 

 and subjects utilized in teaching the modern 

 languages are not materially changed. As 

 matters now stand, I think it may fairly be 

 claimed that, as a matter of fact, the bulk of 

 graduates omitting Latin and Greek from their 

 curriculum, are usually found sensibly deficient 

 in broadness of general culture, when placed 

 alongside of graduates from a ' classical ' course. 

 As one who has had special occasion to make 

 the comparison, I should rarely choose, outside 

 of scientific discussion, the social companion- 

 ship of those educated only in the lines of sci- 

 ences and modern languages, as now commonly 

 carried out. 



That as broad an education can be given 

 through the modern languages as through the 

 ancient ones, I fully agree, even though I can- 

 not but think that the more complete grammar 

 of the latter imparts a kind of mental training 

 not easily duplicated by the study of German 

 and French ; while the deficiencies of the Eng- 

 lish language in grammatical forms, however, 

 conducive to its adaptation as a world-language, 

 leaves one who knows it alone, peculiarly ig- 

 norant of language -structure in general, and 

 hardly capable of a critical understanding of 

 even English literature. 



But even admitting that translations of the 

 ancient classics into the. chief literary modern 

 languages afford satisfactory access to the writ- 

 ings of the ancient authors through which the 

 civilizations that have so largely shaped our 

 own have been transmitted to us, the fact is 

 that these translations are practically never 

 used in the ' new ' education. Wilhelm Tell 

 and Maria Stuart, with a few of the easier prose 

 writings of Goethe, Lessing and others, form 

 the standard works the student sees after he 

 ' absolves ' the German readers ; in French, 

 Telemaque constitutes, as a rule, the sole book 

 read that has any reference to classic antiquity. 



It is true that the student can subsequently 

 read the translations of the classics ; but not 

 one in a hundred does so. The result is that 

 not only bachelors of arts, but even masters of 

 the same, and, sad to say, even some modern 

 doctors of philosophy, are found to be blissfully 

 ignorant of the fact that the Greeks and Ro- 

 mans ever did anything which an enlightened 

 modern scientist is bound to respect. With 

 the bare smattering of history brought from 

 the high school, dimmed by a crowded four- 

 years curriculum, the bachelor too commonly 

 emerges with the impression, if not conviction, 

 that modern time and its brilliant scientific and 

 industrial achievements, is really all that is 

 worth considering. Frequently even the his- 

 tory of his own special science is wholly un- 

 familiar to him, as may be but too frequently 

 observed in the case of those who have gradu- 

 ated on the basis of ' organic ' chemistry, and 

 pride themselves upon their ability to produce 

 new compounds by the score, with the exact 

 structure- formulae in black-and-white, but who 

 barely remember, in a general way, such names 

 as Lavoisier, Davy, and Berzelius, much less 

 what their science owes to these men. 



Certainly such ignorance of the history of 

 man, political, philosophical and scientific, as 

 we already so commonly find in the modern 

 college graduate, is a most serious evil ; con- 

 ducing as it does to a one-sided view of life, 

 and especially to that overweening self-esteem 

 which is not only socially offensive, but vitiates 

 effective scientific work, by the failure to co-or- 

 dinate it with that of those who have preceded 

 in similar lines of study. To avoid this nar- 

 rowness, then, it would be necessary to revise 

 materially the kind and scope of reading done 

 by bachelors of arts in the modern languages. 



Freedom of election of studies is a very se- 

 ductive watchword ; but freedom without cor- 

 responding intelligence to make beneficial use 

 of it is a delusion and a snare, in education as 

 well as politically — as this nation has abundant 

 reason to know. One of its not altogether 

 happy results is the proverbial American youth, 

 of both sexes, whose precocity and brightness 

 is but too generally associated with a lack of 

 reverence ('veneration,' phrenologice) between 

 which, and the extreme repression of youthful 



