The Basis of Our Educational System

OUR present system of education is founded upon the study of the classics. It is an inheritance from the past, when a man of learning meant a man who was at home with the literature of Greece and Rome. Now the knowledge of the world has increased so much, and the openings for an educated man are so much more numerous than they were, that the number of subjects with which a well-informed man must be acquainted has grown proportionately. In response to this demand, the old courses of study have been added to and added to, while the foundation has remained the same. The classics still stand in their old position, while a mass of science and other new branches of study has been piled in on top. The natural result of this has been to increase the age at which pupils are ready to enter college, and thus the age at which young professional men can start as lawyers and doctors. Men who felt that a working people like us could not afford to spend our lives until twenty-eight or thirty in mere preparation for work began an agitation against the classics, because they are farthest away from our daily lives, and to a casual observer seem of little use, even when he is willing to acknowledge their ornamental value. But in attacking the very basis of a whole system it becomes necessary to go deeper into the question than it would be necessary to go if the attack were made upon a mere accessory to it. The question is not the surface one, “ Had we better drop the study of Latin and Greek ? ” but is this, “ Is our present system of education, which is from historical reasons classical, suited to present needs?” It is impossible to answer this question without first finding out what sort of an individual is most to be desired as the product of our system here and now in America.

The absence of artificial class distinctions in America makes each man anxious to become influential, and to win for himself the consideration and respect of the community in which he lives, as these, under democratic conditions, are not secured to him by right of inheritance. The first necessity for an educated man is, therefore, that he should be able to win this respect and influence most easily. The ability to reason clearly and go at once to the root of a matter, and to see its proper relations to other matters, is the most important factor in gaining a commanding position among one’s fellows, in whatever calling one may choose. Combined with this there must be in the mind a large amount of substantive knowledge, to furnish material which the reasoning power can use in making comparisons, and which will provide firm ground for arguments and conclusions to rest upon. This mental power and substantive knowledge will prevent a narrow judgment, which from its very narrowness is likely to be unsound. Just as the man who has had a wide experience of men and things can, from his broader horizon, see more truly the bearing of a question on all sides, and ceases to be provincial. so the educated man, with mental power and knowledge, widens his experience and horizon, and sees more truly the due proportions of things.

Yet a nation composed only of hard thinkers, whose minds were filled with facts, would be anything but agreeable or desirable if they did not also possess cultivation. By this much-abused term I mean an elusive something which is easily recognized when present in any given individual, and missed at once when absent, yet a thing which it is almost impossible to define. It may be characterized as sympathy and appreciation for all forms of human thought, whether expressed in literature or art or human endeavor, just as philanthropy is sympathy and appreciation for all forms of human suffering and human action. It means a training of tastes and feelings, so that what is great in thought, whether expressed in painting or literature or music, may be readily understood and enjoyed. It means sympathy with the beautiful as presented to the eye or ear. But more than all, it means an interest in the intellectual and spiritual side of things as opposed to the purely practical. It does not mean a specific attainment in any one or more branches of human knowledge. A man may be unfamiliar with the details of this or that branch of science or art ; he may be neither a musician nor a painter, and yet be a cultivated man. But if he fail to appreciate this or that branch of thought, or fail to see what the world gains from painting and music when their fruits are brought to his notice, he can in no sense claim to be a cultivated man. A powerful factor in this sympathy is a vivid imagination. A poem, a picture, and a symphony become but so many strokes of the pen, the brush, and the bow to one whose imagination is untrained. To such an one the critical notes in Percy’s Reliques are far more interesting than the ballad of Chevy Chace itself, the mechanism of a piano than a Chopin nocturne, the price of a Corot than its coloring.

As this cultivation is of no direct pecuniary value except to the relatively small number of individuals whose pursuits in life are connected with art or literature, and is of enormous value in increasing the sum of human enjoyment and happiness, it is a corrective, indeed almost a necessary one, to a sordid and utilitarian view of life. It must be accompanied by the two first-mentioned results of education, mental power and knowledge, if we would not have it degenerate into dilettanteism or an æsthetic craze. Thus accompanied and limited by reason and knowledge, no one can deny that it is a fitting ob ject to be attained by education, particularly in a country like ours, of busy, practical people. Any system of education which is to be certified to by the degree of Bachelor of Arts should, from its beginning to its end, tend to train the imagination and the taste by bringing each mind in contact with the great achievements of literature and art.

The ideal result of our system should be a clear-thinking man of affairs, with a mind well stored with useful knowledge, but at the same time trained to appreciate the beautiful and æsthetic side of life. In order to approach this ideal, we must train the mind for clear thinking, the memory for retaining knowledge, and the imagination for æsthetic enjoyment. If the first object be neglected, we have a Bunthorne and his silly crew. If it receive undue attention at the expense of the others, we have the unpoetic, unlovely Gradgrind. If knowledge be made too prominent, we have the Antiquary with his useless lore. The main danger to be avoided in the present age, which is distinctly one of material prosperity, and hence of mercenary ideals and standards, is the disregard of cultivation. For this is opposed to such standards, although entirely in sympathy with practical effort, provided it be not made the end and aim of all things. Indeed, it is dependent upon material prosperity for its existence and its beneficent results. Another danger which seems to threaten our system at present is the failure to train the memory. This seems strange in an era of scientific investigation and exactness, but good memories are becoming rarer and rarer among us. Observation and reasoning have crowded out the memory, either because teachers do not train it, in their hurry to make the pupil show an increase of reasoning power, or because a natural disgust at the useless facts which children were formerly obliged to commit to memory without understanding them has made teachers abandon all such work without substituting anything else. There are facts, and also quantities of prose and poetry, which it is good to know. Let children learn these by heart, so that they may not lose the one advantage which came from learning by rote all the rules and exceptions of Andrews and Stoddard’s Latin Grammar, or lists of all the rivers and capes of North America. The facts so acquired were practically useless, but the process trained good memories. Having some idea now of the ideal for which we must strive, let us look at our present system to see how well suited it is to produce this ideal under changed modern conditions.

It is perfectly true that the demands made upon the mind of a man increase every year. Knowledge and appreciation of literature and art are no longer enough to stamp an educated man. He must be scientific. He must be familiar with magnetism as well as mythology, with evolution as well as elegiacs, with geology as well as genesis. He must add psychology to his philosophy, realism to his literature, and impressionism to his art. If then we are overburdened, we must modify the old to meet the new. If the old idea of the educational value of the classics is wrong, and the same or better results can be obtained from the study only of modern languages and science ; if the study of such subjects will produce a man of keen perception, accurate knowledge, and broad culture, let us face the question squarely, by all means ; let us take out the classics from our system, and spend our time in teaching only those subjects which are up to date, and which possess an additional value in that they can be used directly to bring pecuniary return. But we must see what the study of the classics does for the mind, and also what other subjects, if any, can be substituted for them.

The fact that the study of the classics contributes to the cultivation of the student, even if the study is pursued only a short distance, needs no arguments to support it. Every educated person knows what all literature owes to the works which have come down to us from Greece and Rome. Every person also knows that the merest superficial study of the classics brings one into an atmosphere of art such as treatises on art must labor long to produce. But English literature rightly studied, masterly translations of the classic authors thoughtfully read, can do all this for the student in a better, quicker, and more interesting way than the classics can. For these effects alone upon the mind, we cannot afford to keep the classics as the basis of our system.

In addition to this, the classics train the memory, because new words and new facts must be constantly remembered, and these words and facts are useful. The vehicles of thought are words, and an increase in vocabulary increases the understanding and the power to make others understand. The nomenclature of the sciences is drawn almost exclusively from Greek and Latin. As human development goes on, new words are needed to express new conceptions, and these new words come from the old languages. The civilizations of Greece and Rome have influenced the growth of all the ages since they flourished, and the more one knows about them from the original sources, the better one is equipped to understand his own civilization. So for the attainment of substantive knowledge the study of the classics is again valuable. But even for these two objects of education, cultivation and knowledge, the value of classical study is not enough to require that it be retained ; it must be shown that it contributes also to the gain of mental power. This gain is in the direction of philosophical reasoning, and deserves careful consideration.

Mathematics is a study which is acknowledged by all to train the reasoning powers. Geometry in its purest form is nothing but exact reasoning. If a certain fact A is true, and another fact B is true, then that a third fact C must be true is the essence of geometry. Algebraic reasoning carries this process of analysis further, and gives a different and higher kind of mental power and a greater abstraction. The reasoning is as logical as that of geometry, but the whole process is more complicated. In order to see this difference it is necessary to solve a problem by algebra. Take, for example, one which always terrifies the pupil, and may be remembered by the reader as a bugbear in his youth : —

What is the price of eggs a dozen, when two more in a shilling’s worth lower the price a penny a dozen ?

Here is implied, but not expressed directly in words, a comparison between the cost of eggs under two conditions. the price of one dozen eggs under the first conditions equals the price under the new conditions plus 1/12 of a shilling. One egg will cost a fraction of a shilling, found by dividing one shilling by the number which can be bought. If we represent the number which can be bought by x, the price of one egg is 1/x, and one dozen would cost 12/x. The price of a dozen eggs in the second case is as the number in this case is two more. Our statement was, The old price of a dozen eggs = new price of a dozen + 1/12 • If these words are replaced by their equivalents in algebraic symbols which we have obtained above, we reach this algebraic equation : 12/x 12/x+2+1/12. This equation can be solved by ordinary algebraic methods which need not concern us, and the problem is finished.

A moment’s careful study of this bit of analysis will show how different it is from the reasoning of pure geometry. The geometrician reasons from a form which he sees, and about which he knows certain facts, to other new conclusions or facts. In applying algebraic reasoning to the problem above, facts which were expressed in words have been examined, separated, and from them new facts have been deduced, which were only implied. Then these facts have been stated in their due relation in a new language, of which the nouns are x’s and y’s. and the verbs = and +. Instead of reasoning with observed facts, as in geometry, thoughts expressed in words have been analyzed and reasoned about and put together again in a new medium. This process is one of analysis and synthesis of thought, and the pupil finds the problem difficult because of this very thing.

Another difficulty for the pupil is that it requires a power of abstraction, because he is carrying on a process of thought with an unknown quantity, x, instead of a concrete number. The process of thought required to find the cost of an egg if ten cost one shilling is very much simpler than that required to find the cost of one if x cost a shilling. In the latter case it is necessary to think with a quantity which is incompletely grasped. Certain relations which it bears to other quantities are known, while other relations are vague and unknown. It is necessary to hold in the mind and deal with a concept sharply defined on certain sides, but indistinct on others until more of its limitations are determined. No picture or image of it can be formed until the limitations all become distinct. The whole operation is analogous to that required in reading and comprehending a written or printed sentence which contains a qualifyingclause. The sentence “ The lane is long ” presents to the mind at once a picture which is clear and distinct so far as is required to grasp the meaning; but in the proverb “ It is a long lane which has no turning,” when the eye has reached the end of the first statement no clear concept is possible. The mind must retain and think of a vague, long lane, until the concept is made clearer and sharper by the last clause. But even then, as in the problem, the meaning of it must be sought by further thought. The concept of a long lane without a turning must be followed by the idea of the impossibility of this in actual existence, and the obvious application of this figurative statement to the affairs of real life, that “ no set of circumstances can exist long without a change.”

Analysis and synthesis of ideas are the essence of all thinking, and the power to do these clearly is as necessary to the man of affairs as to the philosopher. Education, in order to fulfill its object, must furnish as much practice in the process as possible. Just as the translation of ideas expressed in words into algebraic symbols, in the solution of problems, furnishes this practice, so the translation of ideas expressed in a foreign language into English will furnish the same practice. Such a translation, if it be accurate, requires the same analysis to get the meaning of the foreign tongue, the same synthesis to express that meaning anew in English, while the abstraction required is much greater than that used in solving algebraic problems. As the field of human thought is practically unlimited, there is no limit to the amount of practice which can be given by translation, in this analysis and synthesis of thought.

In a very simple Latin sentence, it is easy to see how complicated and exhaustive an analysis must be made to read it intelligently. “ Ad hæc: Cæsar respondit se, id quod in Nerviis fecisset, facturum.” (De Bello Gallico, Book II. Chap. 32.) Ad hœc, to these things, some things previously mentioned and known to the leader; but as he does not know what relation they bear to the rest, he cannot form any clear picture yet. Chester respondit, Cæsar answered. Now the idea is carried further. The reader knows that Cæsar answered to these previous remarks ; but what? Se, himself, probably did or would do something, but the idea is still incomplete. Id quod, the thing which ; in Nerviis, among the Nervii ; fecisset, he had done. Obviously, what he had done among the Nervii. The reader still has nothing to connect the se with. Facturum, to be about to do. So far as analyzed, the ideas are as follows: To these things Cæsar replied himself what among the Nervii he had done to be about to do. Now the meaning is understood, and only needs to he expressed in English : Cæsar replied to these things that he would do what he had done in the case of the Nervii.

It will be clear to any one who compares the processes of thought required for this translation and for the algebraic problem that the two are essentially the same, except that the translation demands more abstract and more difficult reasoning than the problem. The exact translation of an idea from one language to another requires this kind of thinking. Even the attempt to express a thought which is given in one form of words, in a new form of words which are not synonyms of the first, needs it. The study of French or German gives training in this important mental power, but the thoughts and the form in which they are presented are so near to English that the process is easier, and the gain is proportionately less, than in studying the classics. Our problem would have been easier if it had been stated more nearly in the form of the equation ultimately obtained, and the solution of it would have been a less useful mental exercise. In Greek and Latin the ideas are so different in themselves, and are presented in such a different form, that the analysis is extremely difficult, and the mind profits in proportion.

If, as all science teachers contend, laboratory work is indispensable for teaching science ; if, beside being told a fact, the pupil must see it for himself in order to remember it, — if it is necessary for a student to make himself master of the truths of science, which are only a part of his mental equipment, how much more essential is laboratory work in language, which is a tool he can never lay aside ! As the student of science must begin by experimenting with the simplest phenomena in order to clear away, even at the expense of much time and trouble, unnecessary complications which would only confuse him, and perhaps vitiate his results, so should the student of language begin with such languages as belong to an early civilization and therefore use words more simply and directly, even if the work be troublesome and tedious. Every modern language has a loose and inaccurate style which complicates and obscures the thought, whereas both Greek and Latin are periodic. The thought in a sentence, or even in a whole paragraph or chapter, is carried consistently through with balanced contrasts, and sharp contrasting words are put here and there like guideposts to mark its way. The investigations of students in a laboratory are required, because they bring a familiarity with the phenomena of nature which can come only through personal contact. To the knowledge of a scientist trained in this way we bow as Silas Wegg did to the doctor, “ as to a gentleman whose acquaintance with his inside he begged respectfully to acknowledge.” So the world has bowed for centuries to those who, having obtained their knowledge of the use of language in the laboratory of Demosthenes and Cicero, have written their thoughts in forms to last forever. We surely cannot run the risk of training a set of men whose power of expressing thought, or even of thinking, is limited by an ignorance of language only to be compared with the ignorance of textbook students of science, who know about language, as they would about science, only what they have been told as lore, but have never seen. As the student of physics and chemistry must begin by studying the phenomena of air and gravity, since these will affect all the other phenomena which he observes, because he must experiment on the earth and in the air, so every educated man should study those languages which have had the greatest influence on the words and forms which he must use for every thought which he thinks or utters while he lives. These languages are Greek and Latin, and a man can no more get away from their effect than he can eliminate gravity or the air.

A further advantage to be gained from classical study in the direction of increased mental power comes from the practice involved in grasping word meanings which are vague and abstract. The quantities with which any mathematical or scientific study deals are exact and limited. The x of our problem, although unknown, and therefore abstract, is yet absolutely definite and exact, because it represents a number. Every word, however, which we use to denote an abstraction, whether noun or verb, does not stand for any exact quantity, but for a vague concept or group of concepts, dependent upon each individual’s personal experience and knowledge. Even names of concrete things have around them this same vague penumbra of connotations dependent upon experience and knowledge. The word miles in Latin is commonly translated by the word soldier, but we cannot say miles = soldier. To us to-day in America the word soldier suggests a blue-uniformed man who loafs in barracks or guards United States property. To an Englishman it suggests a red-coated individual with a fondness for nursemaids and an unlimited devotion to the “ widdy,” as he facetiously calls her Majesty the Queen. In England and America he may belong to either infantry or cavalry. But to Cæsar the word miles meant a man in leather shirt and short leather breeches, with a metal breastplate and helmet, armed with a spear and shield, and belonging to the infantry. The only thing in common between these concepts is that each designates a man fighter trained to obey orders and paid for his services. Our equation, in order to be true, must be amended somewhat as follows : we must subtract from miles all its distinguishing characteristics represented by x, and from soldier everything which makes it a vivid picture to the mind. Remembering that these outlines are different from the distinguishing marks of miles, and that they vary for each individual who hears the word, we can represent them by y, and we have miles — x= paid trained fighter = soldier—y. In an abstract quality the concepts are more vague even than this. The Latin word virtus, for example, expressed to the Roman originally qualities belonging to vir, a man. To a people whose chief occupation and interest was conquest, the most important manly quality was bravery, so that virtus was gradually limited to this main idea. In the course of centuries this quality has faded in importance, and we now use this same word, as our English virtue, to indicate the more abstract idea of moral goodness ; and to him who uses it and to him who hears it, its meaning varies with his own opinion of moral qualities. It has grown more and more abstract, and wandered so far from its original meaning that it implies womanly rather than manly qualities.

All thinking must be done largely with words, and the concept behind each word varies, as we have seen, with each individual’s experience. It is impossible to translate from Latin and Greek into English without reasoning constantly with the vague symbols called words, and without weighing their meanings. This practice leads to a careful and accurate use of words, as it increases the knowledge and experience from which we form our concepts, which will make a man reason carefully and express his reasoning clearly about any subject, whether he is thinking out a problem in medicine or law, science or theology, commerce or finance, art or philosophy. No mind can be equipped to do so which has not had some training of this kind. The more careful and prolonged the training has been, the better equipped the mind will be.

The reading of any foreign tongue can give much practice in this necessary use of the mind, and the study of the classics has done so for centuries. Other branches of study could give it, but unfortunately they are not fitted for use in early education. Philosophy is one of these, and is perhaps the best; but a boy of fifteen can hardly grasp the ideas of Epicurus or of the Stoics, although his virtues are those of both schools. Dogmatic theology is another ; but free wall and infant baptism could hardly interest us in our teens. Strangely enough, these two subjects have taken the place of linguistics at two periods in history when, from the force of circumstances, a people were excluded from the study of any other language than their own.

The Greeks and Romans were naturally cut off from any language but their own, although the Romans did study Greek as a polite accomplishment. In the place of the study of any ancient language, we find that both nations studied, talked, and discussed philosophy, and made it the basis of their education. In the early days of New England our fathers landed in a wilderness, shut off almost entirely from the classical education to be had in the mother country, except in the largest towns. Most of them were from a middle class more noted for its sturdy honesty than for its learning, and they had very few books. Yet these same people brought forth a progeny with brilliant minds, who were ready in debate and all forms of intellectual activity, and have left in our literature a sufficient monument to their power of mind and grasp of intellect. Where did they get this power of mind when cut off from the study of languages and literature ? Turn back to any record of their life and times, and we find an answer to this question. Dogmatic theology was the one intellectual topic of absorbing interest. They listened to sermons, dry if you will, but full of intellectual nuts to crack. They constantly talked them over and analyzed the thoughts contained in them, and approved or disapproved of the views of him whom “ they sat under.” They split hairs in Biblical interpretation. They were narrow with a narrowness which meant firm conviction after hard thought, by which their minds were trained to the point of being able to form a new and great nation.

If the classics can give that training in analysis and synthesis of thought which contributes so strongly to the first of the objects of education, namely, increase of mental power ; if they can give this training to a greater degree than the study of modern languages ; and if besides there is a substantial gain in cultivation and knowledge, then the classics should be retained as a satisfactory basis of our system of study, unless some other branch of study can contribute as largely to all three objects of education, and is at the same time suitable for the instruction of the young; but such a branch of study, I think, cannot be found.

If we cannot afford to sacrifice the classics, and we must add the newer branches of human thought, we are indeed very badly off. The bulk of our cargo is too great, and yet we cannot throw any of it away. The true solution of this difficulty must come, however, in improved methods of teaching the classics, which will bring out more forcibly their value for training the reasoning powers, and will save time by discarding much useless lore that was formerly taught.

The old methods of classical teaching were bad, because they did not serve to the best advantage the acquisition of mental power. With the Latin or Greek grammar in our hands, the meaning of an author was extracted from a sentence, not by what he wrote and must mean, but by what, from the English point of view, he ought to mean. In English, the subject of the sentence generally comes first, then the verb, and then the object; so the pupil was told to pick them out in that order from life Latin or Greek sentence, to put them together, and then to fill in the distorted skeleton with such other words as happened to be in the sentence, in accordance with the glimmering of an English idea which had been got from this skeleton. To seek the real meaning of the author by this method is as absurd as it would be for a physician to say, “ This patient is flushed ; he probably has scarlet fever,” and then to force all other symptoms to fit this preconceived idea, instead of reading the symptoms to determine the disease. Only so often as the student happened to get the real meaning of a sentence by this method, or was told what that meaning was, did he gain in mental power, while he spent a great deal of time in study which was practically wasted for training the mind. There was, however, a great gain in knowledge and cultivation. Every pupil learned his translation so well that he was very familiar with the subject matter of his author, and could quote from him with a freedom which the modern methods of teaching have as yet been unable to induce. He never learned to read Latin or Greek except by such long study that, in spite of a bad method, he absorbed a feeling of the language, and really did follow the thought.

Now, the misused term “ reading at sight ” should mark a change for the better in methods of study, but the habits inculcated in many schools are even more objectionable than those of the old system. Many teachers, in entire misunderstanding of the term, have abandoned the old methods of study, and, cutting loose from all study of grammar, urge the pupil to guess at the meaning of words and sentences, without any accurate knowledge of the forms and inflections of the language. Instead of following the thought as it is written, he learns to get a general drift of the passage, and then to express it in any way which comes into his head. Such a training as this not only does not teach the pupil to transfer a thought from one language to another, and so gain mental power, but does not make him familiar with the subject matter and the literature, since the object seems to be to bring as much new material under his eyes as possible. This method is even more absurd than the other, as here the physician says, “ The patient is flushed ; he must have scarlet fever,” and does not look for any other symptoms. Time is wasted here by the necessity of reading an immense amount in order that the pupil may guess with some degree of accuracy by guessing frequently about the same kind of words and constructions.

Real “ reading at sight ” requires a knowledge of the meanings of words ; and by this I mean a concept in the pupil’s mind of each word which approaches as nearly as possible to that held by the author in using it. There must be also an absolutely accurate knowledge of the inflections of the language, not in a paradigm necessarily, but so that each one will be recognized at a glance in reading. This accurate knowledge can be retained most easily by association with the jingle of sound, so it is best to learn the forms by rote in a paradigm. But the use of them is to indicate the ideas of the sentence, and they will occur singly on the printed page, and not in a paradigm ; so that parrotlike repetition of them is not enough. The point to be insisted upon is that the inflected ending is as important, in considering the meaning of a word, as the mental picture suggested by its stem. Besides this, there must be familiarity with syntax, because constructions express the thought. This familiarity can be obtained only by reading. Each construction, as it occurs, must be explained as a way to express some idea, not as belonging to a scientific classification made by a grammarian. In every sentence the student must be taught to follow the thought, to obtain the meaning from what the author wrote. He must be made to analyze it as he would the broken English of a foreigner who is trying to convey an idea. As soon as the meaning has been thus obtained, he must express it in correct forms of his own language. This process of analysis can be effected only by following the order of the words, because otherwise the student will be constantly led astray by his own English ideas ; just as, when traveling a strange road, a person is almost sure to get lost if he attempts a detour, instead of following the road before him. His constant attitude must be, “What does my author mean ? ” The teacher’s question in elementary work must be, “ Your author here uses a subjunctive ; what does he mean to express ? ” He should never ask, as a grammarian would, “ To which arbitrary rule and classification does this subjunctive belong?” This classification is important and necessary to teacher and professor, but neither essential nor desirable for the person whose only aim is to read the language, in order, by transferring a thought from another language to his own, to exercise his brain and gain mental power in the process, and not to criticise and compare, as in the science of language. To attempt to make a pupil classify Greek and Latin syntax early in his study is as difficult as to teach a child the exact position of the elephant among mammalia the first time he sees the animal, and is engaged in photographing a new image on his brain. After he has added enough specimens to his mental menagerie, it will be his own wish to classify and arrange them, and time so spent will not be wasted. In the same way, systematic study of syntax will be advantageous for advanced students of the classics.

If he is taught in the way I have here outlined, the pupil will learn to read and express accurately in English the thought of his author. He will save the time which was spent over the syntax and the science of grammar under the old system of instruction. He will not lose the cultivation which was obtained under the old system, because if he can really read his Latin and Greek, he will do so for the literature ; and when in college a student reads the poetry of Horace or the plays of Sophocles, his cultivated instructor can lead him to see their beauty and pathos, instead of being obliged to teach him to read them or to dwell upon syntax. He will be gaining constantly in thinking power with every sentence he reads. If, as seems right, the classics should be retained as a basis of our ideal system of education, we must teach with the definite object of training the mind in transferring Latin and Greek ideas into English, and not, as in the past, waste time in teaching linguistic science, which for mental training is no better than the study of other branches of science, without the advantage that these others possess of being useful and practical. We cannot afford to change our basis, but should so modify methods of teaching that it will not absorb the time needed for other essential topics of study, and will most surely produce a -well-informed, clear-thinking, cultivated man.

Janies Jay Greenough.