surrendering the study of them in the case of those that cannot profit
by them. He believes that with a free alternative, such as the thorough
bifurcation into two sides would give, they would still hold their
ground, and bear all their present fruits. His classical brethren,
however, do not in general share this conviction. They seem to think
that if they can no longer compel every University graduate to pass
beneath the double yoke of Rome and Greece, these two illustrious
nationalities will be in danger of passing out of the popular mind
altogether. For my own part, I do not share their fears, nor do I think
that, even on the voluntary footing, the study of the two languages will
decline with any great rapidity. As I have said, the belief in Latin is
wide and deep. Whatever may be urged as to the extraordinary stringency
of the intellectual discipline now said to be given by means of Latin
and Greek, I am satisfied that the feeling with both teachers and
scholars is, that the process of acquisition is not toilsome to either
party; less so perhaps than anything that would come in their place.
Of the hundreds of hours spent over them, a very large number are
associated with listless idleness. Carlyle describes Scott's novels as
a "beatific lubber land"; with the exception of the "beatific," we might
say nearly the same of classics. To all which must be added the immense
endowments of classical teaching; not only of old date but of recent
acquisition. It will be a very long time before these endowments can be
diverted, even although the study decline steadily in estimation.
The thing that stands to reason is to place the modern and the ancient
studies on exactly the same footing; to accord a fair field and no
favour. The public will decide for themselves in the long run. If the
classical advocates are afraid of this test, they have no faith in the
merits of their own case.
* * * * *
The arguments _pro_ and _con_ on the question have been almost
exhausted. Nothing is left except to vary the expression and
illustration. Still, so long as the monopoly exists, it will be argued
and counter-argued; and, if there are no new reasons, the old will have
to be iterated.
[EXAMPLE FROM THE GREEKS THEMSELVES]
Perhaps the most hackneyed of all the answers to the case for the
classics is the one that has been most rarely replied to. I mean the
fact that the Greeks were not acquainted with any language but their
own. I have never known an attempt to parry this thrust. Yet, besides
the fact itself, there are strong presumptions in favour of the position
that to know a language well, you should devote your time and strength
to it alone, and not attempt to learn three or four. Of course, the
Greeks were in possession of the most perfect language, and were not
likely to be gainers by studying the languages of their contemporaries.
So, we too are in possession of a very admirable language, although put
together in a nondescript fashion; and it is not impossible that if
Plato had his Dialogues to compose among us, he would give his whole
strength to working up our own resources, and not trouble himself with
Greek. The popular dictum--_multum non multa_, doing one thing well--may
be plausibly adduced in behalf of parsimony in the study of languages.
The recent agitation in Cambridge, in Oxford, and indeed, all over the
country, for remitting the study of Greek as an essential of the Arts'
Degree, has led to a reproduction of the usual defences of things as
they are. The articles in the March number of the _Contemporary Review,
1879_, by Professors Blackie and Bonamy Price, may claim to be the
_derniers mots_.
Professor Blackie's article is a warning to the teachers of classics, to
the effect that they must change their front; that, whereas the value of
the classics as a key to thought has diminished, and is diminishing,
they must by all means in the first place improve their drill. In fact,
unless something can be done to lessen the labour of the acquisition by
better teaching, and to secure the much-vaunted intellectual discipline
of the languages, the battle will soon be lost. Accordingly, the
professor goes minutely into what he conceives the best methods of
teaching. It is not my purpose to follow him in this sufficiently
interesting discussion. I simply remark that he is staking the case, for
the continuance of Latin and Greek in the schools, on the possibility of
something like an entire revolution in the teaching art. Revolution is
not too strong a word for what is proposed. The weak part of the new
position is that the value of the languages _as languages_ has declined,
and has to be made up by the incident of their value as _drill_. This
is, to say the least, a paradoxical position for a language teacher. If
it is mere drill that is wanted, a very small corner of one language
would suffice. The teacher and the pupil alike are placed between the
two stools--interpretation and drill. A new generation of teachers must
arise to attain the dexterity requisite for the task.
Professor Blackie's concession is of no small importance in the actual
situation. "No one is to receive a full degree without showing a fair
proficiency in two foreign languages, one ancient and one modern, with
free option." This would almost satisfy the present demand everywhere,
and for some time to come.
[ARGUMENT FROM RESULTS.]
The article of Professor Bonamy Price is conceived in even a higher
strain than the other. There is so far a method of argumentation in it
that the case is laid out under four distinct heads, but there is no
decisive separation of reasons; many of the things said under one head
might easily be transferred without the sense of dislocation to any
other head. The writer indulges in high-flown rhetorical assertions
rather than in specific facts and arguments. The first merit of classics
is that "they are languages; not particular sciences, nor definite
branches of knowledge, but literatures". Under this head we have such
glowing sentences as these: "Think of the many elements of thought a boy
comes in contact with when he reads Caesar and Tacitus in succession,
Herodotus and Homer, Thucydides and Aristotle". "See what is implied in
having read Homer intelligently through, or Thucydides or Demosthenes;
what light will have been shed on the essence and laws of human
existence, on political society, on the relations of man to man, on
human nature itself." There are various conceivable ways of
counter-arguing these assertions, but the shortest is to call for the
facts--the results upon the many thousands that have passed through
their ten years of classical drill. Professor Campbell of St. Andrews,
once remarked, with reference to the value of Greek in particular, that
the question would have to be ultimately decided by the inner
consciousness of those that have undergone the study. To this we are
entitled to add, their powers as manifested to the world, of which
powers spectators can be the judges. When, with a few brilliant
exceptions, we discover nothing at all remarkable in the men that have
been subjected to the classical training, we may consider it as almost
a waste of time to analyse the grandiloquent assertions of Mr. Bonamy
Price. But if we were to analyse them, we should find that _boys_ never
read Caesar and Tacitus through in succession; still less Thucydides
Demosthenes, and Aristotle; that very few _men_ read and understand
these writers; that the shortest way to come into contact with Aristotle
is to avoid his Greek altogether, and take his expositors and
translators in the modern languages.
The professor is not insensible to the reproach that the vaunted
classical education has been a failure, as compared with these splendid
promises. He says, however, that though many have failed to become
classical scholars in the full sense of the word, "it does not follow
that they have gained nothing from their study of Greek and Latin; just
the contrary is the truth". The "contrary" must mean that they have
gained something; which something is stated to be "the extent to which
the faculties of the boy have been developed, the quantity of impalpable
but not less real attainments he has achieved, and his general readiness
for life, and for action as a man". But it is becoming more and more
difficult to induce people to spend a long course of youthful years upon
a confessedly _impalpable_ result. We might give up a few months to a
speculative and doubtful good, but we need palpable consequences to show
for our years spent on classics. Next comes the admission that the
teaching is often bad. But why should the teaching be so bad, and what
is the hope of making it better? Then we are told that science by itself
leaves the largest and most important portion of the youths' nature
absolutely undeveloped. But, in the first place, it is not proposed to
reduce the school and college curriculum to science alone; and, in the
next place, who can say what are the "impalpable" results of science?
[WORTH OF THE CLASSICAL WRITERS.]
The second branch of the argument relates to the greatness of the
classical writers. Undoubtedly the Greek and Roman worlds produced some
very great writers, and a good many not great. But the greatness of
Herodotus, Thucydides, Demosthenes, Plato, and Aristotle can be
exhibited in a modern rendering; while no small portion of the poetical
excellence of Homer and the Dramatists can be made apparent without
toiling at the original tongues. The value of the languages then
resolves itself, as has been often remarked, into a _residuum_.
Something also is to be said for the greatness of the writers that have
written in modern times. Sir John Herschel remarked long ago that the
human intellect cannot have degenerated, so long as we are able to quote
Newton, Lagrange and Laplace, against Aristotle and Archimedes. I would
not undertake to say that any modern mind has equalled Aristotle in the
_range_ of his intellectual powers; but in point of intensity of grasp
in any one subject, he has many rivals; so that to obtain his equal, we
have only to take two or three first-rate moderns.
If a few fanatics are to go on lauding to the skies the exclusive and
transcendent greatness of the classical writers, we shall probably be
tempted to scrutinize their merits more severely than is usual. Many
things could be said against their sufficiency as instructors in matters
of thought; and many more against the low and barbarous tone of their
_morale_--the inhumanity and brutality of both their principles and
their practice. All this might no doubt be very easily overdone, and
would certainly be so, if undertaken in the style of Professor Price's
panegyric.
The professor's third branch of the argument comes to the real point;
namely, what is there in Greek and Latin that there is not in the modern
tongues? For one thing, says the professor, they are dead; which of
course we allow. Then, being dead, they must be learnt by book and by
rule; they cannot be learnt by ear. Here, however, Professor Blackie
would dissent, and would say that the great improvement of teaching, on
which the salvation of classical study now hangs, is to make it a
teaching by the ear. But, says Professor Price: "A Greek or Latin
sentence is a nut with a strong shell concealing the kernel--a puzzle,
demanding reflection, adaptation of means to end, and labour for its
solution, and the educational value resides in the shell and in the
puzzle". As this strain of remark is not new, there is nothing new to be
said in answer to it. Such puzzling efforts are certainly not the rule
in learning Latin and Greek. Moreover, the very same terms would
describe what may happen equally often in reading difficult authors in
French, German, or Italian. Would not the pupil find puzzles and
difficulties in Dante, or in Goethe? And are there not many puzzling
exercises in deciphering English authors? Besides, what is the great
objection to science, but that it is too puzzling for minds that are
quite competent for the puzzles of Greek and Latin? Once more, the
_teaching_ of any language must be very imperfect, if it brings about
habitually such situations of difficulty as are here described.
[ARGUMENTS FOR CLASSICS.]
The professor relapses into a cooler and correcter strain when he
remarks that the pupil's mind is necessarily more delayed over the
expression of a thought in a foreign language (whether dead or alive
matters not), and therefore remembers the meaning better. Here, however,
the desiderated reform of teaching might come into play. Granted that
the boy left to himself would go more rapidly through Burke than through
Thucydides, might not his pace be retarded by a well-directed
cross-examination; with this advantage, that the length of attention
might be graduated according to the importance of the subject, and not
according to the accidental difficulty of the language?
The professor boldly grapples with the alleged waste of time in
classics, and urges that "the gain may be measured by the time
expended," which is very like begging the question.
One advantage adduced under this head deserves notice. The languages
being dead, as well as all the societies and interests that they
represent, they do not excite the prejudices and passions of modern
life. This, however, may need some qualification. Grote wrote his
history of Greece to counterwork the party bias of Mitford. The battles
of despotism, oligarchy, and democracy are to this hour fought over the
dead bodies of Greece and Rome. If the professor meant to insinuate,
that those that have gone through the classical training are less
violent as partisans, more dispassionate in political judgments, than
the rest of mankind, we can only say that we should not have known this
from our actual experience. The discovery of some sweet, oblivious,
antidote to party feeling seems, as far as we can judge, to be still in
the future. If we want studies that will, while they last, thoroughly
divert the mind from the prejudices of party, science is even better
than ancient history; there are no party cries connected with the
Binomial Theorem.
The professor's last branch of argument, I am obliged, with all
deference, to say, contains no argument at all. It is that, in classical
education, a close contact is established between the mind of the boy
and the mind of the master. He does not even attempt to show how the
effect is peculiar to classical teaching. The whole of this part of the
paper is, in fact, addressed, by way of remonstrance, to the writer's
own friends, the classical teachers. He reproaches them for their
inefficiency, for their not being Arnolds. It is not my business to
interfere between him and them in this matter. So much stress does he
lay upon the teacher's part in the work, that I almost expected the
admission--that a good teacher in English, German, natural history,
political economy, might even be preferable to a bad teacher of Latin
and Greek.
* * * * *
[CANON LIDDON'S ARGUMENT.]
The recent Oxford contest has brought out the eminent oratorical powers
of Canon Liddon; and we have some curiosity in noting his contributions
to the classical side. I refer to his letters in the _Times_. The gist
of his advocacy of Greek is contained in the following allegations.
First, the present system enables a man to recur with profit and
advantage to Greek literature. To this, it has been often replied, that
by far the greater number are too little familiarized with the classical
languages, and especially Greek, to make the literature easy reading.
But farther, the recurring to the study of ancient authors by busy
professional men in the present day, is an event of such extreme rarity
that it cannot be taken into account in any question of public policy.
The second remark is, that the half-knowledge of the ordinary graduate
is a link between the total blank of the outer world, and the thorough
knowledge of the accomplished classic. I am not much struck by the force
of this argument. I think that the classical scholar, might, by
expositions, commentaries, and translations, address the outer world
equally well, without the intervening mass of imperfect scholars.
Lastly, the Canon puts in a claim for his own cloth. The knowledge of
Greek paves the way for serious men to enter the ministry in middle
life. Argument would be thrown away upon any one that could for a moment
entertain this as a sufficient reason for compelling every graduate in
Arts to study Greek. The observation that I would make upon it has a
wider bearing. Middle life is not too late for learning any language
that we suddenly discover to be a want; the stimulus of necessity or of
strong interest, and the wider compass of general knowledge, compensate
for the diminution of verbal memory.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 7: CONTEMPORARY REVIEW, August, 1879. A few months previously,
there were printed, in the Review, papers on the Classical question, by
Professors Blackie and Bonamy Price; both of which are here alluded to
and quoted, so far as either is controverted or concurred with.]
[Footnote 8: "The academical establishments of some parts of Europe are
not without their use to the historian of the human mind. Immovably
moored to the same station by the strength of their cables and the
weight of their anchors, they enable him to measure the rapidity of the
current by which the rest of the world is borne along."]
[Footnote 9: If the two Literatures were studied, as they might be, by
means of expositions and translations, the Greek would be first as a
tiling of course. Historians of the Latin authors are obliged to trace
their subject, in every department, to the corresponding authors in
Greece.]
[Footnote 10: No doubt the classical languages would have been required,
to some extent, in matriculating to enter college. This arrangement,
however, as regarded the students that chose the modern languages, would
have been found too burdensome by our Irish friends, and, on their
expressing themselves to that effect, would have been soon dispensed
with.]
[Footnote 11: One possible consequence of a Natural Science Degree might
have been, that the public would have turned to it with favour, while
the old one sank into discredit.]
* * * * *
V.
METAPHYSICS AND DEBATING SOCIETIES.[12]
By "Metaphysical Study," or "Metaphysics," I here mean--what seems
intended by the designation in its current employment at present--the
circle of the mental or subjective sciences. The central department of
the field is PSYCHOLOGY, and the adjunct to psychology is LOGIC, which
has its foundations partly in psychology, but still more in the sciences
altogether, whose procedure it gathers up and formulates. The outlying
and dependent branches are: the narrower metaphysics or Ontology,
Ethics, Sociology, together with Art or Aesthetics. There are other
applied sciences of the department, as Education and Philology.
The branches most usually looked upon as the cognate or allied studies
of the subjective department of human knowledge are, Psychology, Logic,
Ontology, Ethics. The debates in a society like the present will
generally be found to revolve in the orbit thus chalked out. It is the
sphere of the most animated controversies, and the widest discordance of
view. The additional branch most nearly connected with the group is
Sociology, which under that name, and under the older title, the
Philosophy of History, has opened up a new series of problems, of the
kind to divide opinions and provoke debate. A quieter interest attaches
to Aesthetics, although the subject is a not unfruitful application and
test of psychological laws.
My remarks will embrace, first, the aims, real and factitious, in the
study of this group of sciences; and next, the polemic conduct of such
study, or the utility and management of debating societies, instituted
in connection therewith.
* * * * *
[PSYCHOLOGY AND LOGIC FUNDAMENTAL.]
The two sciences--PSYCHOLOGY and LOGIC--I consider the fundamental and
knowledge-giving departments. The others are the applications of these
to the more stirring questions of human life. Now, the successful
cultivation of the field requires you to give at least as much attention
to the root sciences as you give to the branch sciences. That is to say,
psychology, in its pure and proper character, and logic, in its
systematic array, should be kept before the view, concurrently with
ontology, ethics, and sociology. Essays and debates tending to clear up
and expound systematic psychology and systematic logic should make a
full half of the society's work.
Does any one feel a doubt upon the point, as so stated? If so, it will
be upon him to show that Psychology, in its methodical pursuit, is a
needless and superfluous employment of strength; that the problems of
ethics, ontology, &c., can be solved without it--a hard task indeed, so
long as they are unsolved in any way. I have no space for indulging in
a dissertation on the value of methodical study and arrangement in the
extension of our knowledge, as opposed to the promiscuous mingling of
different kinds of facts, which is often required in practice, but
repugnant to the increase of knowledge. If you want to improve our
acquaintance with the sense of touch, you accumulate and methodize all
the experiences relating to touch; you compare them, see whether they
are consistent or inconsistent, select the good, reject the bad, improve
the statement of one by light borrowed from the others; you mark
desiderata, experiments to be tried, or observations to be sought.
All that time, you refrain from wandering into other spheres of mental
phenomena. You make use of comparison with the rest of the senses, it
may be, but you keep strictly to the points of analogy, where mutual
lights are to be had. This is the culture of knowledge as such, and is
the best, the essential, preparation for practical questions involving
the particular subject along with others.
To take an example from the question of the Will. I do not object: to
the detaching and isolating of the problem of free-will, as a matter for
discussion and debate; but I think that it can be handled to equal, if
not greater advantage, in the systematic psychology of voluntary power.
Those that have never tried it in this last form have not obtained the
best vantage-ground for overcoming the inevitable subtleties that invest
it.
The great problem of External Perception has a psychological place,
where its difficulties are very much attenuated, to say the least of it;
and, however convenient it may be to treat it as a detached problem, we
should carry with us into the discussion all the lights that we obtain
while regarding it as it stands among the intellectual powers.
It is in systematic Psychology that we are most free to attend to the
defining of terms (without which a professed science is mere moonshine),
to the formulating of axioms and generalities, to the concatenating and
taking stock of all the existing knowledge, and to the appraising of it
at its real value. If these things are neglected, there is nothing that
I see to constitute a psychology at all.
* * * * *
[DISCUSSIONS IN LOGIC PROPER.]
As to the other fundamental science, LOGIC, the same remarks may be
repeated. Of debated questions, a certain number pertain properly to
logic; yet most of these relate to logic at its points of contact with
psychology. Since we have got out of the narrow round of the
Aristotelian syllogism, we have agreed to call logic _ars artium_, or,
better still, _scientia scientiarum_, the science that deals with the
sciences altogether--both object sciences and subject sciences. Now this
I take to be a study quite apart from psychology in particular,
although, as I have said, touching it at several points. It reviews all
science and all knowledge, as to its structure, method, arrangement,
classification, probation, enlargement. It deals in generalities the
most general of any. By taking up what belongs to all knowledge, it
seems to rise above the matter of knowledge to the region of pure form;
it demands, therefore, a peculiar subtlety of handling, and may easily
land us, as we are all aware, in knotty questions and quagmires.