4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



University of Cambridge : " I conclude, then," says Mr. W. G. Clark 

 "that the first subject of study must be the same for all, and that it is 

 no valid objection to any subject to affirm that it is dry and distaste- 

 ful, but, on the contrary, a strong recommendation. It cannot be de- 

 nied that this condition is amply satisfied by the Latin accidence, as 

 exhibited in our time-honored and much-abused text-books. . . . The 

 question arises where, besides the Latin grammar, we can find any other 

 subject equally dry, and by consequence as powerfully tonic to the 

 juvenile mind, which recommends itself as deserving in lieu thereof 

 to form the basis of education by its general applicability and greater 

 fertility of after-results. Except the Greek language, which, from its 

 intimate connection with the Latin in structure and literature, is a 

 necessary complement to it, and not a possible substitute for it, I know 

 of none." 



Here we have the very essence of what I have denominated the 

 grindstone-theory. I think that a truer philosophy has exploded 

 these fallacies, and wellnigh obliterated that artificial line of dis- 

 tinction between studies for use and studies for discipline. True 

 education remains and must remain forever a discipline ; but juster 

 views in regard to the nature of the youthful mind are beginning to 

 show us that that discipline is of the nature of a nutritive rather 

 than a curative process, and that the disgust felt by the recipient for 

 the means employed is no measure of their disciplinary value. We 

 are discovering that the idea of discipline inheres not in the nature 

 of certain particular subjects, distinguishing them from all others 

 which are non-disciplinary and merely utilitarian, but in the right 

 method of teaching all subjects ; and the question, whether at any 

 particular period or stage of progress a subject is to be used for 

 purposes of mental discipline, depends not at all upon the question 

 whether it belongs to one or the other of two imaginary classes, the 

 disciplinary and the non-disciplinary, but upon the quite different 

 questions whether the study is valuable in itself, and whether it is 

 suited to that particular stage of the pupil's mental progress. If so, 

 and if rightly taught, it will then be sure to be the right discipline. 



This change in our education-philosophy has brought with it a cor- 

 responding change in our scale and estimate of the relative value of 

 various studies as the instruments and materials of education ; and, I 

 think, we have almost heard the last of the doctrine that abstract 

 grammar and abstract mathematics are the divinely-appointed whet- 

 stones and sharpeners of the youthful mind, and hence of the system 

 which makes a compulsory study of the Greek and Latin languages 

 the only gate of admission to the privileges of the higher education. 

 In place of that very simple but most unphilosophical doctrine, I trust 

 that a truer psychology is providing us with a course of liberal study, 

 based upon corrector notions in regard to the laws of mental develop- 



1 " Cambridge Essays," for 1855. 



