Part 13

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?

X.

FURTHER REMARKS ON THE GREEK QUESTION.

In a former essay I endeavored to make prominent the essential difference between a system of education based on scientific culture and the generally prevailing system which is based on linguistic training. I maintained that there is not only a difference of subject-matter, but a difference of method, a difference of spirit, and a difference of aim; and I argued that, as the conditions of success under the two modes of culture are so unlike, there was no danger, even with the amplest freedom, that the study of the physical sciences would supplant or seriously interfere with linguistic studies. But, although the drift of my argument was plain, this essay has been quoted in order to show that not only Greek, but also all linguistic study, would be neglected by the students of natural science as soon as it ceased to be useful in their profession; and my attempt to point out a basis of agreement and co-operation has been made the occasion of reiterating the extreme doctrine that there can be no liberal education not based on the study of language. It has been thus assumed that scientific culture can not supply such a basis, and in this whole discussion the value of the study of Nature in education, except in so far as this study may yield a fund of useful knowledge, has been entirely ignored by the advocates of the old system. Not only has there been no recognition of the value of the study of material forms and physical phenomena as a mode of liberal culture, but it has been assumed throughout that--to use the now familiar form of words--"no sense for conduct" and "no sense for beauty" can be acquired except through that special type of linguistic training that has so long limited elementary education. Those who demand a place for science-culture certainly have not shown the same contemptuous spirit; and I venture to suggest that, if classical students were as familiar with the methods of natural science as are the students of Nature with philological and archæological study, they would be more charitable to those who differ with them on this subject.

There are, of course, two distinct elements in a liberal education: the one the acquisition of useful knowledge, the other a training or culture of the intellectual faculties. The first should be made as broad as possible, the second, in the present state of knowledge, must unfortunately be greatly restricted. While in the passage referred to I have claimed that, in a system of education based upon science, languages should be studied simply as tools, Mr. Matthew Arnold, in a lecture which he has recently repeatedly delivered in this country, and whose constant refrain was the phrases I have already quoted, has claimed that, although scholars must use the results of science as so much literary material, they need have nothing to do with its methods. In my view, both positions are essentially sound. It has been said that the Greek departments in our colleges could do without the scientific students much better than scientific scholars could do without Greek, and this remark admits of an evident rejoinder. Certainly in this age no professional man can afford to be ignorant of the results of science, and he will constantly be led into error if he does not know something of its methods. It is perfectly well known that very few of the investigators, who have coined the scientific terms derived from the Greek, so often referred to, could read a page of Herodotus or Homer in the original; and it is equally true that Mr. Matthew Arnold, and his compeer, Lord Tennyson, who have shown such large knowledge of the results of science, could not interpret the complex relations in which the simplest phenomena of Nature are presented to the observer. The greater number of the students of Nature can only know the beauties of Greek literature as they are feebly presented in translations, and so the greater number of literary students can only know of the wonders of Nature as they are inadequately described in popular works on science. If it requires years of study to enable a student to master the meaning of a Greek sentence, can we expect that in less time a student shall be able to unravel the intricacies of natural phenomena? It has been said that no Greek scholarship is possible for a student who begins the study of that language in college. Is it supposed that scientific scholarship is any more possible under such conditions?

In order to teach successfully the _results_ of science to college students, I have no desire that they should have any preliminary preparation. It has been my duty for more than thirty years to present the elements of chemistry to the youngest class in one of our colleges, and I have never had any reason to complain of their want of interest in the subject. Indeed, I regard it as a great privilege to be the first to point out to enthusiastic young men the wonderful vistas which modern science has opened to our view. So far as their temporary interest is concerned, I should greatly prefer that they had never studied the subject before coming to college. But even enthusiastic interest in popular lectures is not scientific culture. A few men in every class always have been, and will continue to be, so far interested as to make the cultivation of science the business of their lives. But such men always labor under the disadvantages resulting from a want of early training, and these obstacles repel a large number whose natural tastes and abilities would otherwise have fitted them for a scientific calling. The change from one system of culture to another, at the age of eighteen, has all the disadvantages of changing a profession late in life. Nevertheless, the college will always continue to educate a number of men of science in this way. Most of these men become teachers, and no one questions that their previous linguistic training makes them all the more forcible expositors of scientific truth. It is not for such persons that I desire any change. I am, however, most anxious that the university should do its part in educating that important class of men who are to direct the industries and develop the material resources of our country. Such men can be led to appreciate, and will give time to acquire, an elegant use of language, but they will not devote four or five years of their lives to purely linguistic training, and, if we do not open our doors to them, they will be forced to content themselves with such education as high-schools, or, at best, technical schools, can offer. But, while they will thus lose the broader knowledge and larger scope which a university education affords, the university will also lose their sympathy and powerful support. Such students are now wholly repelled from the university, and, under a more liberal policy, they would form an important and clear addition to our numbers, and--as I have said in another place--without diminishing by a single man the number of those who come to college through the classical schools.

But there is another class of young men with whom a system of education based on the study of Nature would, as I am convinced, be more successful than the prevailing system of linguistic culture: I refer to those who now come to college, some of them through the influence of family tradition, some of them through the expectation of social advantage, and a still larger number on account of the attractions of college-life. Many of these are men who, with poor verbal memories, or want of aptitude for recognizing abstract relations, can never become classical scholars with any exertion that they can be expected to make, but who can often be educated with success through their perceptive faculties. These men are the dunces of the classical department, they add nothing to its strength, and in every classical school are a hindrance to the better students; but some of them may become able and useful men, if their interest can be aroused in objective realities. Of our present students, it is only this class that the proposed changes would really affect. Those who have tastes and aptitudes for linguistic studies would continue to come through the old channels, and of such only can classical scholars be made.

I know very well it is said that, although the classical department would be glad to be rid of this undesirable element, yet the change could not be made without endangering the continuance of the study of Greek in many of our classical schools. But can the university be justified in continuing a requisition which is recognized to be opposed to the best interests of an important class of its patrons? And certainly it is not necessary to protect the study of Greek in this country by any such questionable means. I have a great deal more faith myself in the value of classical scholarship than many of my classical colleagues appear to possess. Never has one word of disparagement been heard from me. I honor true classical scholarship as much as I despise the counterfeit. To maintain that the class of classical dunces, to whom I have referred, appreciate the beauties of classical literature or derive any real advantage from the study is, in my opinion, to maintain a manifest absurdity. Fully as much do the convicts in a tread-mill enjoy the beauties of the legal code under which they are compelled to work; and if, as Chief-Justice Coleridge has recently maintained, in his speech at New Haven, classical scholarship is the best preparation for the highest distinctions in church and state, certainly its continuance does not depend on the minimum requisition in Greek of this university.[O] The "new culture," although a much "younger industry," does not ask for any such artificial protection. It only asks for an opportunity to show what it can accomplish, and this opportunity it has never yet had. Even if the largest liberty were granted, those who seek to promote a genuine education, based on natural science, would labor under the greatest disadvantages. Not only is the apparatus required for the new culture far more expensive than that of an ordinary classical school, but also more personal attention must be given to each scholar, and the ordinary labor-saving methods of the class-room are wholly inapplicable. In the face of such obstacles as these conditions present, the new culture can advance only very gradually; and, amid the rivalry of the old system, it can only succeed by maintaining a very high degree of efficiency. The new way will certainly not offer any easier mode of admission to college than the old; and when it is remembered that the classical system has the control of all the endowed secondary schools, the prestige of past success, and the support of the most powerful social influence, it is difficult to understand on what the opposition to the free development of the "new education" is based. Are not gentlemen, who have been talking of a revolution in education, taking counsel of their fears rather than of their better judgment; and are they not forgetting that the teachers of natural science have the same interest in upholding the principles of sound education as have their classical colleagues? Certainly there can be no question that, in the future as in the past, they will ever seek to maintain the integrity of all the great departments of the university unimpaired. It has happened before this that the judgment, even of intelligent men, has been warped by their class relations or supposed interests; but as, in this country, the learned class has no control of government patronage, we may at least hope that the discussion of the Greek question will never assume with us the great bitterness that a similar controversy has aroused in Germany.

[O] This article was written and read to the Faculty of Harvard College shortly after Lord Coleridge's visit to the United States, in the autumn of 1883.

There has been a great deal said in this discussion about the "humanities," and it has been assumed that, while the analysis of the Greek verb is "humanizing," the analysis of the phenomena of Nature is "materializing." I can discover nothing humanizing in the one or the other, except through the spirit with which they are studied, and I know by experience that the spirit with which the study of the Latin and Greek grammars is often enforced is most demoralizing. Those who have been born with a facility for language may laugh at this statement; but a boy who has been held up to ridicule for the want of a good verbal memory, denied him by his Creator, long remembers the depressing effect produced, if not the malignity aroused, by the cruelty. Many are the men, now eminent in literature as well as science, who have experienced the tyranny of a classical school, so graphically described in the Autobiography of Anthony Trollope; and many are the boys who might have been highly educated if their perceptive faculties had been cultivated, whose career as scholars has been cut short by the same tyranny.

Again, a great deal has been said about specialization at an early age, as if the study of Nature were specializing while the study of Latin metres and Greek accents was liberalizing. But how could specialization be more strikingly illustrated than by a system which limits a boy's attention between the ages of twelve and twenty to linguistic studies to the almost entire exclusion of a knowledge of that universe in which his life is to be passed, and which so limits his intellectual training that his powers of observation are left undeveloped, his judgments in respect to material relations unformed, and even his natural conceptions of truth distorted? Now, although a special culture which has such mischievous results as these may be necessary in order to command that power over language which marks the highest literary excellence, and although a university should foster this culture by all legitimate means, yet to enforce it upon every boy who aspires to be a scholar, whatever may be his natural talents, is as cruel as the Chinese practice of cramping the feet of women in order to conform to a traditional ideal of beauty. Indeed, an instructor in natural science has very much the same difficulty in training classical scholars to observe that a dancing-master would have in teaching a class of Chinese girls to waltz.