274 



SCIEJSrCE. 



[Vol. IX., No. 215 



ASPECTS OF EDUCATION. 

 Humanism. — II. 

 Humanism, in the hands of Sturm and his fol- 

 lowers, was at least intelligible and masculine. 

 Although it was founded upon a narrow basis, its 

 aims were clear and honest. In the next two 

 hundred years, humanistic teaching was to un- 

 dergo an influence of a very different character, 

 which, maintaining the outward show, changed 

 the substance and turned what was a modified 

 blessing into a decided curse. The Jesuit schools 

 founded in the sixteenth century obtained so much 

 vogue in the seventeenth and eigliteenth, that 

 they influenced the whole of European education, 

 Protestant as well as Cathohc. They had one 

 title to respect, and one only. They were the 

 first to bring the individual teacher face to face 

 with the individual pupil. Whatever their ob- 

 jects may have been, and whatever were the ends 

 for which they intended to use their influence, 

 there can be no doubt that they did from the first 

 what they still do, — attempt to study the work- 

 ings of each individual mind and the beat of each 

 single heart. Here their merit ends. They de- 

 su-ed that the hearts of their pupils should be de- 

 voted to them, and not to humanity, and that 

 their minds should never move out of the limits 

 which they themselves should fix. Humanism 

 lay ready to their hand. Here was a subject on 

 which infinite ingenuity might be expended and 

 endless time wasted. To become a complete mas- 

 ter of the style of Cicero, Horace, or Ovid, might 

 take a lifetime ; yet the result was showy : few 

 could understand its merit or the processes by 

 which it was reached. To declaim on speech-day a 

 long alcaic ode on the immaculate Virgin, or to 

 turn the Song of Solomon into the language of 

 Ovid's ' Art of love,' was an achievement which all 

 might admire. The Jesuits were the inventors of 

 that bane of humanistic education, the exaggerated 

 reverence paid to Latin verse composition. What 

 can be a worse training for the human mind ? A 

 mind is called well trained in language when it 

 can conceive accurately the idea which it wishes 

 to express, and can express that idea in language 

 which no one can misunderstand. The whole 

 theory of original Latin verse composition is op- 

 posed to this. The pupil is set to write a copy of 

 verses on a set subject, be it spring or winter, 

 autumn or summer. His notion of what he should 

 say is very hazy, but under pressure he will write 

 down twenty so-called ideas for twenty lines of 

 Latin verse. To expand these he will have re- 

 source to his gradus, a book which the Jesuits 

 have the credit of inventing. He will there find 

 so-called synonymes of the Latin words he has 

 chosen, which cannot really express the same 



sense, for in any language very few pairs of words 

 are to be found with precisely the same meaning. 

 If his synonymes are insufficient for the purpose, 

 he will fill up the line with epithets chosen from 

 the gradus, not because they are just, or appro- 

 priate, or needful, but because they scan. If 

 these are not enough, his handbook will furnish 

 him with phrases of greater length, bearing more 

 or less upon the subject, and even with entire 

 verses which he may introduce, so far as he can 

 do so without fear of detection. To spend much 

 time on this process is to play and juggle with 

 the human mind, to make pretence at thought 

 when there is no thought at all, to mark time 

 instead of marching, to work a treadmill that 

 grinds no corn, to weave a web which must be 

 perpetually unravelled ; yet in the latter half of 

 the eighteenth century we see original Latin 

 verses the chosen task of school-boys and a too 

 frequent pastime for statesmen. 



Let us not condemn all composition in dead 

 languages. To turn the masterpieces of modern 

 poetry into an exact Greek or Latin equivalent 

 may be the worthy occupation of the best trained 

 scholars. It has more than once happened that 

 the copy has been more poetical, more musical, 

 more worthy, than the original itself. Nor is im- 

 itation of any literature which we are studying to 

 be despised. The Italian sonnets of Arthur Hal- 

 lam, the French lyrics of Swinburne, if not genu- 

 ine poetry, are at least precious fruits of the poet- 

 ical mind. But if these fruits are to be produced 

 at all, it is necessary that they should be produced 

 without compulsion. Train your scholar in the 

 best examples of Greek and Latin, let him study 

 Virgil, Homer, and the Greek tragedians night 

 and day, show him all the poetry they contain, let 

 him compare them with the best productions of 

 his native tongue, and the probability is, that, if 

 he has any creative faculty, he will begin to im- 

 itate and will write Gi*eek and Latin verses with- 

 out coercion. But set him down on a form with 

 fifty other boys, and bid him write poetry on a 

 subject for which he does not care, in a language 

 which he does not understand and which is often 

 unfitted to the thoughts which he has to express, 

 guide him by mechanical rules, and assist him 

 with mechanical handbooks : you will then find 

 that what ought to have been a pleasure has been 

 a barren toil, and that his mind is dulled by the 

 effort. Even at the present day, after all that has 

 been written against Latin verses by those who 

 are most fit to judge, they hold an inordinate 

 place in English classical education, and give us 

 good reason to pass the strongest condemnation 

 on the sect which introduced them. 



The falseness of Jesuit principles of education 



