LIBERAL EDUCATION. 3 



liminary sharpening process, and that, as the instruments for it, there 

 were certain almost divinely-appointed studies exclusively set apart, to 

 wit, the grammars of two dead languages, and the elementary por- 

 tions of abstract mathematics. It was not and could not be main- 

 tained that these studies would ever be the natural choice of the 

 youthful mind in the beginning of its scholastic career ; rather, it was 

 thought to be a prime recommendation that they were as remote as 

 possible from any thing the youthful mind would of itself appropriate 

 as intellectual nutriment. Like medicine, the value of such disciplinary 

 studies was supposed to be in direct proportion to their disgustfulness ; 

 for they were not food to nourish the mind withal, but tonics, where- 

 with artificially to strengthen it. They were rods for the spiritual part, 

 the counterparts of those material ones which the strong right arm of 

 the ancient pedagogue wielded with such efficiency on the bodies of 

 his youthful charge, and the benefit of both alike was not utilitarian, 

 but disciplinary. 



That I may not be suspected of caricaturing, I will make two quo- 

 tations, the first from a lecture by Prof. Sellar, Professor of Greek in 

 the University of Edinburgh : " The one extreme theory," he says, 1 " is 

 that education is purely a discipline of the understanding ; that the 

 form of the subject is every thing, the content little or nothing. A 

 severe study, such as classics or mathematics, is the thing wanted to 

 train or brace the faculties ; it does not matter whether it is in itself 

 interesting or not. The student will find sufficient interest in the 

 sense of power which he has to put forth in training for the great race 

 withhis competitors. 'It is not knowledge,' they say, 'but the exer- 

 cise you are forced to incur in acquiring knowledge that we care about. 

 Read and learn the classics simply for the discipline they afford to the 

 understanding. You may, if it comes in your way and does not inter- 

 fere with your training, combine a literary pleasure with this mode of 

 study, but this is no part of your education. As teachers, we do not 

 care to encourage it ; we do not care to interpret for you the thought 

 or feeling of your author. All such teaching is weak and rhetorical : 

 we do not profess to examine into your capacity of receiving pleasure. 

 Accurate and accomplished translation,' effective composition in the 

 style of the ancient authors, thorough grammatical and philological 

 knowledge — these are our requirements. The training in exactness, in 

 concentration, in logical habits, and in discernment of the niceties of 

 expression, is the one thing with which we start you in life. Whether 

 you have thought at all, or care to think about the questions which 

 occupy and move the highest minds, is no affair of ours.' 



" This theory is, I think, a purely English theory of education. It 

 has grown up within the last half-century, and it is in the University 

 of Cambridge that it has been, and still is, most fully realized." 



My other extract shall be from an essay by the Public Orator of the 



1 " Theories of Classical Teaching : A Lecture," p. 10. 



