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Page 46
Here, whatever else may be lacking, is discipline. The sheer difficulty of
Latin and Greek, the highly organized structure of these languages, the
need of scrupulous search to find the nearest equivalents for words that
differ widely in their scope of meaning from their derivatives in any
modern vocabulary, the effort of lifting one's self out of the familiar
rut of ideas into so foreign a world, all these things act as a tonic
exercise to the brain. And it is a demonstrable fact that students of the
classics do actually surpass their unclassical rivals in any field where a
fair test can be made. At Princeton, for instance, Professor West has
shown this superiority by tables of achievements and grades, which he
published in the _Educational Review_ for March, 1913; and a number of
letters from various parts of the country, printed in the _Nation_, tell
the same story in striking fashion. Thus, a letter from Wesleyan
(September 7, 1911) gives statistics to prove that the classical students
in that university outstrip the others in obtaining all sorts of honors,
commonly even honors in the sciences. Another letter (May 8, 1913) shows
that in the first semester in English at the University of Nebraska the
percentage of delinquents among those who entered with four years of Latin
was below 7; among those who had three years of Latin and one or two of a
modern language the percentage rose to 15; two years of Latin and two
years of a modern language, 30 per cent.; one year or less of Latin and
from two to four years of a modern language, 35 per cent. And in the
_Nation_ of April 23, 1914, Prof. Arthur Gordon Webster, the eminent
physicist of Clark University, after speaking of the late B.O. Peirce's
early drill and life-long interest in Greek and Latin, adds these
significant words: "Many of us still believe that such a training makes
the best possible foundation for a scientist." There is reason to think
that this opinion is daily gaining ground among those who are zealous that
the prestige of science should be maintained by men of the best calibre.
The disagreement in this matter would no doubt be less, were it not for an
ambiguity in the meaning of the word "efficient" itself. There is a kind
of efficiency in managing men, and there also is an intellectual
efficiency, properly speaking, which is quite a different faculty. The
former is more likely to be found in the successful engineer or business
man than in the scholar of secluded habits, and because often such men of
affairs received no discipline at college in the classics, the argument
runs that utilitarian studies are as disciplinary as the humanistic. But
efficiency of this kind is not an academic product at all, and is commonly
developed, and should be developed, in the school of the world. It comes
from dealing with men in matters of large physical moment, and may exist
with a mind utterly undisciplined in the stricter sense of the word. We
have had more than one illustrious example in recent years of men capable
of dominating their fellows, let us say in financial transactions, who
yet, in the grasp of first principles and in the analysis of consequences,
have shown themselves to be as inefficient as children.
Probably, however, few men who have had experience in education will deny
the value of discipline to the classics, even though they hold that other
studies, less costly from the utilitarian point of view, are equally
educative in this respect. But it is further of prime importance, even if
such an equality, or approach to equality, were granted, that we should
select one group of studies, and unite in making it the core of the
curriculum for the great mass of undergraduates. It is true in education
as in other matters that strength comes from union, and weakness from
division, and if educated men are to work together for a common end, they
must have a common range of ideas, with a certain solidarity in their way
of looking at things. As matters actually are, the educated man feels
terribly his isolation under the scattering of intellectual pursuits, yet
too often lacks the courage to deny the strange popular fallacy that there
is virtue in sheer variety, and that somehow well-being is to be struck
out from the clashing of miscellaneous interests rather than from
concentration. In one of his annual reports some years ago President
Eliot, of Harvard, observed from the figures of registration that the
majority of students still at that time believed the best form of
education for them was in the old humanistic courses, and _therefore_, he
argued, the other courses should be fostered. There was never perhaps a
more extraordinary syllogism since the _argal_ of Shakespeare's
gravedigger. I quote from memory, and may slightly misrepresent the actual
statement of the influential "educationalist," but the spirit of his
words, as indeed of his practice, is surely as I give it. And the working
of this spirit is one of the main causes of the curious fact that scarcely
any other class of men in social intercourse feel themselves, in their
deeper concerns, more severed one from another than those very college
professors who ought to be united in the battle for educational
leadership. This estrangement is sometimes carried to an extreme almost
ludicrous. I remember once, in a small but advanced college, the
consternation that was awakened when an instructor in philosophy went to a
colleague--both of them now associates in a large university--for
information in a question of biology. "What business has he with such
matters," said the irate biologist; "let him stick to his last, and teach
philosophy--if he can!" That was a polite jest, you will say. Perhaps; but
not entirely. Philosophy is indeed taught in one lecture hall, and biology
in another, but of conscious effort to make of education an harmonious
driving force there is next to nothing. And as the teachers, so are the
taught.
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