ART. V. THE PLACE OF THE STUDY OF LATIN AND GREEK IN MODERN EDUCATION.

BY W. T. HARRIS, LL. D., ST. LOUIS, MO.

WE are prone to believe that to-day is, in some peculiar sense, the crisis of our lives. The present year is likewise regarded by our people as making an epoch in our national history. We cannot very well help this inordinate estimate of what is present, immediately before us; for we are particular individuals, living, each of us, in a now and here. Each one of us, finds himself a focus of the entire world, so far as he is concerned. So, too, the people of this nation are all living on this particular day of all the days of the history of the United States, and at this particular hour and minute of this particular day, and in this part of the western continent; standing thus in relation to the other nations of the continent and to the nations of the Old World.

But while we are thus living, each his particular life here and now, we are conscious that the present moment stands in relation to all the past. It has grown out of the past; and as that which grows contains in some form the seeds or germs or undeveloped possibilities of what is to grow from it, so we must regard the past as having contained the present-at least its possibility.

It would seem, therefore, that the present is the ripest growth of the tree of human history, the completest realization of the possibilities that were contained in the times gone before us. But inasmuch as all nature exhibits to us a cycle of birth, growth, and decay, and time swallows up many forms that it evolves, we are left in doubt as to which existences around us are permanent and which are transient. If the present is indeed the product of the past, it is likewise only the undeveloped germ of the future.

Thus man, as an individual, finds himself in the passing phase of a vast process descending from eternity and moving on to eternity. This process itself is a revelation of infinite existence; for each moment of it is a revelation of the nature of the process. All that has been realized in the past is measured now by the standard of the absolute ideal of history. What is found wanting and incomplete by this standard must change. Something that it has must be outgrown and must pass away in order that the ideal may be realized. But nothing passes away except to realize more perfectly the ideal which is the active cause of the process The change which has produced the transient existence before us was therefore a manifestation of the cause of world-history, acting upon some previous transient existence and destroying it or removing it, so that its place might be filled by another existence. This new existence is the joint product of the ideal the ever-active cause of all historyand of the realized result of the past: hence the new existence, in the nature of the case, must be a more concrete realization of the ideal of history; it is a new realization by the action of that ideal upon what had already been realized.

Hence, our doubts are partially removed as to our whereabouts in this vast sea of change and active process.

and

Every now, every present is produced from the past by the activity of the cause of all causes, the absolute ideal, and is a new revelation of this absolute cause upon the field of time space. That which is transient and passes away, manifests, in thus passing away, the great ideal of all history. Just as we can tell the direction of a river by watching the displacement of its particles, just as we can tell the goal of vegetation by watching the succession of its forms, so we can find in the movement of history, as a whole process, a revelation of its goal; and by observation of its minutest phase of manifestation, we may, after we have learned the law of history, likewise discover that the absolute ideal is revealed in each and every

moment.

Just as Cuvier, after he had learned the laws of comparative

anatomy, could draw with some accuracy the whole skeleton of the animal from a single bone of it, and could tell something of its habits, food, climate, and surroundings; just as Agassiz could describe the fish from one of its scales; or Lyell could write the history of a newly discovered bowlder, and map out its track from a distant mountain range under the glaciers of the Drift Period; or again, as an ethnologist is able, from a glance at the weapons used in battle by an extinct people, to tell approximately their degree of civilization, and their achievements in the arts and sciences, and their form of government; or still further, as a philologist could tell the stage of civilization of a people from an inspection of its vocabulary of words and the conjugation of its verbs; or as a psychologist could tell much more than these things by studying the highest thought of a people as involved in its conception of God,-so it happens, when one has habituated himself to the observation of the workings of Providence on a grand scale, that he can more and more discern the same purpose in minute affairs. Plato, Aristotle, Leibnitz, St. Augustine, Dante, Bossuet, Shakespeare, Bacon, Kant,—such men seem to have this gift of discerning the whole in the part, and are therefore seers or prophets. Availing ourselves of their insight into the world of nature and of human history, we may lift ourselves above the doubts caused by our discovery that we are finite particular existences here and now, and involved in change. By this we may more and more discover the permanent under what seems transient, and recognize the eternally true, recording its nature both in creating and in destroying the existences which seem to perish.

This view of the attitude of the individual in a world of change finds its illustration also in each special vocation of man, and consequently in the vocation of the teacher or "educator." The "educator" finds his vocation subject to changes, both internal and external. If he arrives no further, in the process of reflection upon his experience, than to discover the existence of this change, without discovering its law, then he

will be exposed to distressing doubts, which may paralyze his activity or render it nugatory by wrong tendencies and mistaken efforts. He who does not see the law of the movement may fly off in a tangent at every turn.

The teacher is still more annoyed by the interference of those who have to do with the direction of the educational system, the school as an institution,—but who are not acquainted with education as a vocation, knowing but little of theory and practice, and still less of historical tendencies and growth. There is great difficulty in preventing them from shooting the system of education first on this tangent and then on that, as the caprice of the moment may dictate.

Progressive growth is a great thing, no doubt; but increase in numbers is only quantitative progress, and not a qualitative advance towards ideal perfection. Change in the course of study, in the methods of instruction, in the organization of the school, may be only change and no progress, or it may even be retrogression.

We have this consolation when we see a movement in a wrong direction its result will be the experience that that road is not to be taken. Those who survive the results of the experiment will return to the king's highway of rational progress, and set up some sort of pillar with the inscription, "This way leads to Doubting Castle, which is kept by Giant Despair, who despiseth the King and his celestial country, and seeks to destroy his holy pilgrims." Although many are destroyed by wandering from the path, there is gain of experience by the race. The loss to the individual is just as great, however. Rational insight can save all this vicarious sacrifice, by which the individuals perish on wrong roads, dying with the only positive result that the rest of mankind profit by the experience gained through their adventures.

In so far as by theoretical investigation and discussion we can discover the true path and publish it to the world, we shall save the waste attendant on experiment.

Scientific investigation involves (as already intimated) the

study of a thing in its history: what it is now, what it was, how it originated, how it came to change to what it is now through its relations to surrounding things, how it is changing now by reason of necessary changes in the function which it has to fulfil. Such scientific investigation yields insight valuable for the direction and management of affairs.

In the system of education there offer for scientific investigation two great fields or provinces: First, that of organization and management; second, that of the course of study. To the former belong all matters relating to school-building, assignment of teachers, regulations of hours of study and recitation, discipline, and classification. To the latter belong all matters appertaining to the selection and arrangement of the branches of study.

Passing by, for the present consideration, the important questions included under Organization, let us devote our attention for a brief space to the rational basis for the selection of a course of study, and trace in some detail the grounds for those studies upon which there is most doubt expressed.

It is generally agreed that instruction in our schools should include only such rudiments as are common to all provinces of education. Since man's world is a twofold one,-a world of nature and a world of human institution,-it is necessary that the branches of the course of study should include those which afford insight into these two realms.

First, therefore, there are the branches which give insight into the phenomena and laws of nature, and the relation thereof to man's necessities, and the mode of reducing them to his service.

The most fundamental science of nature is mathematics. What is common to all nature as the logical condition of its existence and functions, is mathematical law. Mathematics formulates the nature of time and space. It is obvious that man's control of nature is conditioned upon a knowledge of mathematics, and that a knowledge of mathematics is useful to every human being. Human society gets free from material