174 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. IX.. No. 311 



study of Greek is not going to retain its place be- 

 cause some celebrated mediaeval and modern in- 

 tellects were trained in it. It must rest its claim 

 upon the higher grovind of its humanizing influ- 

 ence and its unexcelled literary culture. Greek 

 also appeals to us as having no inconsiderable 

 share in the formation of our own language as we 

 know and use it to-day, especially in the nomen- 

 clature and terminology of philosophy and the 

 sciences. The value of the study on this ground 

 is not referred to often enough, and we have never 

 seen it more simply and deftly emphasized than 

 in Dr. Goodell's little book entitled ' The Greek in 

 English.'^ As the author puts it in his preface, 

 " The object of this book is to enable pupils to gain 

 some real and living knowledge of that part 

 of English which came from Greek, ... It 

 merely attempts to teach that minimum which 

 even those who wish to banish the study of 

 Greek from our schools would admit can least 

 easily be s^jared ; and it is written in the belief 

 that that portion is absolutely essential to a ready 

 command of a full English vocabulary." And 

 this is the kernel of the book. It is written to 

 help students to an understanding of English, in 

 so far as English is derived mediately or immedi- 

 ately from Greek. 



The work is arranged about a grammatical out- 

 line somewhat like that, usually found in Greek 

 primers of the old-fashioned sort, because the 

 author believes that to be the simplest and quick- 

 est way of learning what he has to teach. The 

 vocabulary is rather representative than complete, 

 but it is reasonably full. We are quite ready to 

 believe that Dr. GcodeU's book will commend it- 

 self to many preparatory teachers as giving, not 

 all that the beginner who has a college course in 

 view wants to know, but that minimum of Greek 

 that is a necessary part of the equipment of every 

 well-educated man. 



Dr. Goodell makes a curious slip — unless, in- 

 deed, he holds the not impossible but improbable 

 opinion advanced by Clement of Alexandria, that 

 ' metaphysics ' is equivalent to supranatural — when 

 he instances ' metaphysics ' as one of the words 

 into which a deeper insight is given us by a knowl- 

 edge of Greek ; for the prevailing opinion is that 

 the w^ord ' metaphysics ' is a conglomerate used by 

 Andronicus of Rhodes to denote that portion of 

 Aristotle's writings which came after the treatise 

 on physics in his arrangement {to, (ieto. ra (j>vaLKa). 

 Therefore the fact that metaphysics means ontol- 

 ogy, the science of being, is purely accidental ; it 

 might just as well have come to mean ethics or psy- 

 chology ; and a knowledge of Greek, while it ex- 



1 The Greek in English. By THOMAS D. GOODELL, Ph.D. 

 New York, Holt. 16°. 



plains the genesis of the word, can hardly be said 

 to give us a ' lively sense of its exact meaning.' 



ROSENKRANZ'S PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCA- 

 TION. 



The influence of Professor Rosenkranz on the 

 educational thought of Germany has been very 

 great. Born early in the century, he was a uni- 

 versity student at a period of great philosophical 

 and pedagogical activity. Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, 

 and Schleiermacher were then the great leaders of 

 German thought, and Rosenkranz came under the 

 personal influence of the two latter. While yet a 

 very young man, — he was twenty-eight years of 

 age at the time, — he entered upon his long tenure 

 of the chair of philosophy at Konigsberg in suc- 

 cession to Kant and Herbart. The work of which 

 the book before us is a translation was published 

 in 1848, under the title ' Paedagogik als system.' 

 It may be said to have raised pedagogical discus- 

 sion in Germany from the petty details of kinder- 

 garten and administration to the high plane of 

 philosophy. The work has also had a wide circu- 

 lation, considering its character, in this country, 

 for it was originally translated, some fifteen years 

 ago, for the Journal of speculative philosophy, 

 and, in adition to its circulation in that form, two 

 thousand copies of a reprint failed to meet the de- 

 mand for it. For the present and second edition, 

 which Dr. William T. Harris publishes as the first 

 volume in the International education series, edited 

 by him, the translation has been revised and 

 popularized, and accompanied with a full com- 

 mentary and analysis, prepared by Dr. Harris him- 

 self. These latter are so elaborate that they un- 

 questionably veil to a certain extent Rosenkranz's 

 own work, but just as unquestionably do they add 

 to the value of the book for teachers. 



The translation of the title by ' philosophy of 

 education ' is a happy one, for it sets the book be- 

 fore American readers in its true light. It tells 

 them in a word that there is a science of educa- 

 tion, and that that science claims a place in the 

 philosophical encyclopaedia in the closest connec- 

 tion with psychology and ethics. For pedogogics 

 may be best described as psychology and ethics 

 applied. The title indicates, also, the stand-point 

 and method of the book, for, as Dr. Harris says in 

 his preface, to earn this title, "a work must not 

 only be systematic, but it must bring all its details 

 to the test of the highest principle of philosophy," 



It must be premised that Rosenkranzjs philoso- 

 phy, and hence this theory of education, is 



The philosophy of education. By Johann Kael Friedbich 

 Rosenkranz. Translated by Anna C. Brackett. New 

 York, Appleton. 12°. 



