554 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 
CLASSICS AND THE COLLEGE COURSE 
By Prorgssor JOHN J. STEVENSON 
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY 
WO or three years ago, the acting president of a state university 
praised the small college for exalting the humanities, for making 
“study of the great classics compulsory but attractive. It has always 
found more power for both head and heart in the noble lines of the 
Iliad and in the majestic music of the Aineid than in study of the 
nervous system of the frog or the life history of the Harpiphorus macu- 
latus, interesting and important as those are.” 
Somewhat later, a man of great eminence announced that “we have 
turned away young men and some young women from the great classical 
ideals of self-sacrifice in fields where they could do the most unselfish 
work.” 
Still later, laments have become more numerous and have increased 
in pungency. It has been discovered that the study of Greek and Latin 
no longer holds preeminence in colleges and universities, whereas in 
women’s colleges the “ humanities are still honored.” A distinguished 
writer of elegant literature has remarked that “our women really have 
some use for the education of a gentleman, but our men have none.” 
The acting president, no doubt, pleased his hearers, but there must 
have been among them some who were surprised to learn that com- 
pulsory study of the great classics had been made attractive. The 
speaker’s remarks were elliptical or the compositor dropped the words 
“+o some,” which ought to have completed the sentence. The excellent 
results of this attractive study have not always been apparent. ven 
fifty years ago, when Harvard and Yale had fewer students than are 
claimed by some “ small” colleges of this day, it was matter of common 
report that few graduates could read their diplomas and that Latin 
text-books had been thrust out of theological seminaries, because the 
niceties of syntax and not the niceties of ancient heresies engrossed the 
students’ attention. If the noble lines of the Iliad and the majestic 
music of the Aineid have exerted material influence upon the head and 
heart of youths in American colleges during the last half century, they 
must have done so through the “ Bohn,” that essential portion of the 
average man’s equipment. 
One, considering the claims made by defenders of classical courses, 
might imagine that in Greece and Rome there existed the ideal condi- 
tion, that social and political life were lofty, in contrast throughout 
