EDUCATION : A SURVEY OF RECENT EDUCATIONAL THEORY. 173 



classicists and the scientists.* There is no doubt that the 

 employment of Latin as the basis of education rests upon tradition 

 from a time wherein Europe had a literary language, which 

 served for diplomacy, for religion and law, science, philosophy 

 and history. The employment of Greek as another basis appears 

 to be an indirect heritage from the early Roman Empire, when 

 little importance was attached to any statement on history, 

 philosophy or science, which had not Greek support. It has 

 been observed with justice that it is so much easier to repeat the 

 teaching of the day before, that old studies and teaching habits have 

 a peculiar sense of fitness ; and rather than discard them after their 

 utility has gone out of them, because the conditimis in which they 

 f unctioned have quite changed, we tal-e the course of least resistance 

 and develop a bad philosophy to justify the inaction which retains 

 them ;t and since it can no longer be maintained that a reasonable 

 proportion of those who spend many hours a week for years in 

 acquiring the arts of reading and writing the classical languages, 

 have occasion afterwards to make use of those arts, the retention 

 of these studies has to be defended by some other consideration : 

 such as the unrivalled excellence of their literature, or the dis- 

 ciplinary value of their grammar, or the fact that they constitute 

 the background of modern European civilization. J Dr. Mercier 

 has dealt with these pleas or their like in a manner which appears 

 to be unanswerable, and though no one should (or perhaps would) 

 deny that Greek and Latin are valuable accomplishments, the 

 fact that they can apparently be acquired late in life more easily 

 and no less accurately than in tender years makes it reasonable 

 that they should be displaced by subjects of more general utility 

 which can best be mastered or can only be mastered in the time 

 of youth. If the educational value of the classical literature be as 

 high as some assert, the chief masterpieces might well be studied 

 in translations, as indeed Dean Inge suggests.§ Of accurate 

 and elegant translations there is assuredly no lack.|| 



It should be conceded that the development of taste in litera- 

 ture is only one of the purposes of schooling, which should 



* C. A. Mercier, The Principles of Rational Education, p. 6. 

 t Moore, op. cit, p. 187. 



j The notion that the practice of Latin composition helps the student 

 to write English was refuted by Buckle, History of Civilizalion, ii, 307. 

 § Cambridge Essays on Education^ p. 28. 



II The best defence of Latin as a school subject appears to be that by 

 E. L. Kemp, Methods for Elementary and Secondary Schools, pp. 150-152. 



