The question whether the college faculty ought to continue to insist on
a limited study of the ancient Greek language, as an essential
prerequisite of receiving the A. B. degree, has been under consideration
at Cambridge for a long time; and, since the opinions of those with whom
I naturally sympathize have been so greatly misrepresented in the
desultory discussion which has followed Mr. Adams's Phi Beta Kappa
oration, I am glad of the opportunity to say a few words on the "Greek
question."
[N] Remarks made at the dinner of the Harvard Club of Rhode
Island, Newport, August 25, 1883.
This question is by no means a new one. For the last ten years it has
been under discussion at most, if not at all, of the great universities
of the world; and, among others, the University of Berlin, which stands
in the very front rank, has already conceded to what we may call the new
culture all that can reasonably be asked.
Let me begin by asserting that the responsible advocates of an expansion
of the old academic system do not wish in the least degree to diminish
the study of the Greek language, the Greek literature, or the Greek art.
On the contrary, they wish to encourage such studies by every legitimate
means. For myself I believe that the old classical culture is the best
culture yet known for the literary professions; and among the literary
professions I include both law and divinity. Fifty years ago I should
have said that it was the only culture worthy of the recognition of a
university. But we live in the present, not in the past, and a
half-century has wholly changed the relations of human knowledge. Regard
the change with favor or disfavor, as you please, the fact remains that
the natural sciences have become the chief factors of our modern
civilization; and--which is the important point in this connection--they
have given rise to new professions that more and more every year are
opening occupations to our educated men. The professions of the chemist,
of the mining engineer, and of the electrician, which have entirely
grown up during the lifetime of many here present, are just as "learned"
as the older professions, and are recognized as such by every
university. Moreover, the old profession of medicine, which, when, as
formerly, wholly ruled by authority or traditions, might have been
classed with the literary professions, has come to rest on a purely
scientific basis.
In a word, the distinction between the literary and the scientific
professions has become definite and wide, and can no longer be ignored
in our systems of education. Now, while they would accord to their
classical associates the right to decide what is the best culture for a
literary calling, the scientific experts claim an equal right to decide
what is the best culture for a scientific calling. Ever since the
revival of Greek learning in Europe the literary scholars have been
working out an admirable system of education. In this system most of us
have been trained. I would pay it all honor, and I would here bear my
testimony to the acknowledged facts that in no departments of our own
university have the methods of teaching been so much improved during the
last few years as in the classical. I should resist as firmly as my
classical colleagues any attempt to emasculate the well-tried methods of
literary culture, and I have no sympathy whatever with the opinion that
the study of the modern languages as polite accomplishments can in any
degree take the place of the critical study of the great languages of
antiquity. To compare German literature with the Greek, or, what is
worse, French literature with the Latin, as means of culture, implies,
as it seems to me, a forgetfulness of the true spirit of literary
culture.
But literature and science are very different things, and "what is one
man's meat may be another man's poison," and the scientific teachers
claim the right to direct the training of their own men. It is not their
aim to educate men to clothe thought in beautiful and suggestive
language, to weave argument into correct and persuasive forms, or to
kindle enthusiasm by eloquence. But it is their object to prepare men to
unravel the mysteries of the universe, to probe the secrets of disease,
to direct the forces of nature, and to develop the resources of this
earth. These last aims may be less spiritual, lower on your arbitrary
intellectual scale, if you please, than the first; but they are none the
less legitimate aims which society demands of educated men: and all we
claim is that the astronomers, the physicists, the chemists, the
biologists, the physicians, and the engineers, who have shown that they
are able to answer these demands of society, should be intrusted with
the training of those who are to follow them in the same work.
Now, such is the artificial condition of our schools, and so completely
are they ruled by prescription, that, when we attempt to lay out a
proper course of training for the scientific professions, we are met at
the very outset by the Greek question. Greek is a requisition for
admission to college, and the only schools in which a scientific
training can be had do not teach Greek, and, what is more, can not be
expected to teach it.
This brings us to the root of the whole difficulty with which the
teachers of natural science have been contending, and which is the cause
of the present movement. We can not obtain any proper scientific
training from the classical schools, and the present requisitions for
admission to college practically exclude students prepared at any
others. At Cambridge we have vainly tried to secure some small measure
of scientific training in the classical schools: first, by establishing
summer courses in practical science especially designed for training
teachers, and chiefly resorted to by such persons; and, secondly, by
introducing some science requisitions into the admission examinations.
But the attempt has been an utter failure. The science requisitions have
been simply "crammed," and the result has been worse than useless;
because, instead of securing any training in the methods of science, it
has in most cases given a distaste for the whole subject. True
science-teaching is so utterly foreign to all their methods that the
requisitions have merely hampered the classical schools, and the sooner
they are abandoned the better. Both the methods and the spirit of
literary and scientific culture are so completely at variance that we
can not expect them to be successfully united in the same preparatory
school.
We look, therefore, to entirely different schools for the two kinds of
preparation for the university which modern society demands--schools,
which for the want of better distinctive names, we may call classical
and scientific schools. In the classical school the aim should be, as it
has always been, literary culture, and the end should be that power of
clothing thought in words which awakens thought. Of course, the results
of natural science must to a certain extent be taught; for even literary
men can not afford to be wholly ignorant of the great powers that move
the world. But the natural sciences should be studied as useful
knowledge, not as a discipline, and such teaching should not be
permitted in the least degree to interfere with the serious business of
the place. In the scientific school, on the other hand, while language
must be taught, it should be taught as a means, not as an end. The
educated man of science must command at least French and German--and for
the present a limited amount of Latin--as well as his mother-tongue,
because science is cosmopolitan. But these languages should be acquired
as tools, and studied no further than they are essential to the one
great end in view, that knowledge which is the essential condition of
the power of observing, interpreting, and ruling natural phenomena.
In such a course as this it is obvious that the study of Greek would
have no place, even if there were time to devote to it, and we can not
alter the appointed span of human life, even out of respect to this most
honored and worthy representative of the highest literary culture. Of
course, no one will question that the scholar who can command both the
literary and scientific culture will be thereby so much the stronger and
more useful man; and certainly let us give every opportunity to the
"double firsts" to cultivate all their abilities, and so the more
efficiently to benefit the world. But such powers are rare, and the
great body of the scientific professions must be made up of men who can
only do well the special class of work in which they have been trained;
and, if you make certain formal and arbitrary requisitions, like a small
amount of Greek, obstacles in the way of their advancement, or of that
social recognition to which they feel themselves entitled as educated
men, those requisitions must necessarily be slighted, and your policy
will give rise to that cry of "fetich" of which recently we have heard
so much.
Now, all the schools which prepare students for Harvard College are
classical schools. We do not wish to alter these schools in any respect,
unless to make them more thorough in their special work. As I have
already said, the small amount of study of natural science which we have
forced upon them has proved to be a wretched failure, and the sooner
this hindrance is got out of their way the better. We do not wish to
alter the studies of such schools as the Boston and Roxbury Latin
Schools, the Exeter and Andover Academies, the St. Paul's and the St.
Mark's Schools, and the other great feeders of the college. No--not in
the least degree! We do not ask for any change which in our opinion will
diminish the number of those coming to the college with a classical
preparation by a single man. We look for our scientific recruits to
wholly different and entirely new sources. For, although we think that
there are many students now coming to us through the classical schools
who would run a better chance of becoming useful men if they were
trained from the beginning in a different way, yet such is the social
prestige of the old classical schools and of the old classical culture
that, whatever new relations might be established, the class of students
which alone we now have would, I am confident, all continue to come
through the old channels.
This is not a mere opinion; for only a very few men avail themselves
of the limited option which we now permit at the entrance
examinations--nine, at least, out of ten, offering what is called
maximum in classics.
We look, then, for no change in the classical schools. Our only
expectation is to affiliate the college with a wholly different class of
schools, which will send us a wholly different class of students, with
wholly different aims, and trained according to a wholly different
method. At the outset we shall look to the best of our New England
high-schools for a limited supply of scientific students, and hope by
constant pressure to improve the methods of teaching in these schools,
as our literary colleagues have within ten years vastly improved the
methods in the classical schools. In time we hope to bring about the
establishment of special academies which will do for science-culture
what Exeter and St. Paul's are doing for classical culture. We expect to
establish a set of requisitions just as difficult as the classical
requisitions--only they will be requisitions which have a different
motive, a different spirit, and a different aim; and all we ask is, that
they should be regarded as the equivalents of the classical requisitions
so far as college standing is concerned. We do not at once expect to
draw many students through these new channels. To improve methods of
teaching and build up new schools is a work of years. But we have the
greatest confidence that in time we shall thus be able to increase very
greatly both the clientage and the usefulness of the university.
Is this heresy? Is this revolution? Is it not rather the scientific
method seeking to work out the best results in education as elsewhere by
careful observation and cautious experimenting, unterrified by authority
or superstition? Certainly, the philologist must respect our method; for
of all the conquests of natural science none is more remarkable than its
conquest of the philologists themselves. They have adopted the
scientific methods as well as the scientific spirit of investigation;
but, while thus widening and classifying their knowledge, they have
rendered the critical study of language more abstruse and more
difficult; and this is the chief reason why the time of preparation for
our college has been so greatly extended during the last twenty-five
years. Nominally, the classical schools cover no more ground than
formerly, but they cultivate that ground in a vastly more thorough and
scientific way.
These increased requirements of modern literary culture suggest another
consideration, which we can barely mention on this occasion. How long
will the condition of our new country permit its youths to remain in
pupilage until the age of twenty-three or twenty-four; on an average at
least three years later than in any of the older countries of the
civilized world? It is all very well that every educated man should have
a certain acquaintance with what have been called the "humanities." But
when your system comes to its present results, and demands of the
physician, the chemist, and the engineer--whose birthright is a certain
social status, which by accident you temporarily control--that he shall
pass fully four years of the training period of his life upon
technicalities, which, however important to a literary man, are
worthless in his future calling, is it not plain that your conservatism
has become an artificial barrier which the progress of society must
sooner or later sweep away? Is it not the part of wisdom, however much
pain it may cost, to sacrifice your traditional preferences gracefully
when you can direct the impending change, and not to wait until the rush
of the stream can not be controlled?