THE CASE FOR THE CLASSICS IN AMERICA.• IN view alike
of its source, and the range and character of its testimony, this is by far the most impressive defence of the classics that we have yet seen. The movement in favour of the further restriction of classical studies in the Secondary Schools, Colleges, and Universities in the United States has developed concurrently with, though on somewhat different lines from, that on this side of the Atlantic. In America the aim of the would-be reformers is primarily to reduce the already limited facilities for the study of Latin, and to a less extent of mathematics, and in the interests of national efficiency to establish national education on a utilitarian basis which shall secure the predominance of science, modem languages, and economics. This volume is the outcome of a Conference on Classical Studies in Liberal Education held at Princeton in June, 1917. It contains a record of the addresses delivered at the Con- ference, with an Introduction by Mr. West, Dean of the Graduate School at Princeton, a collection of statements of " nearly 300 competent observers representing the leading interests in modem life," and tables of statistics. To avoid the suspicion of pro- fessional bias, classical teachers have been excluded except where they happen to be heads or authorized representatives of institutions. But no one can gainsay the contention of the editors that the testimony thus collected, " with very occasional variation in its degree of conviction or of emphasis on one or another factor, con- verges steadily to one main oonclusion, namely, that classical studies are of essential value in the best type of liberal education, and that wherever the classics are well taught the results are satisfactory." The tables of statistics reveal " the general and decided superiority of classical over non-classical students in the chief school and college studies." Thus the book is " a fresh con- tribution of original value for all who wish to know on what sort of evidence the case for the classics rests," because it is drawn not only from the records of schools and colleges but from the deliberate judgment of men of many minds in various fields of human endeavour. " It is not the evidence of mere tradition but of newly proved success." Otherwise one might discount the testimony of witnesses themselves brought up under a regime in which the curriculum was more severely restricted to classics and mathematics. But this is no academic or literary counterblast. It rests on a far broader basis than the eloquent and brilliant plea for the retention and extension of classical studies put for- ward by America's most distinguished essayist, Mr. Paul Elmer More, in his Aristocracy and Justice (reviewed in these columns in the issue of May 20th, 1916). At the same time it powerfully reinforces his argument that humanistic studies more than any other are needed to foster and develop that intellectual aristocracy of which America is in peculiar need at the moment. The editors do not claim that the volume represents a unanimous consensus of all
• Value of the Classics. Princeton : at the University Press. London Humphrey Milord, [Si. net.1 leading Americans. The honoured name of President Eliot of Harvard is absent from the list of witnesses, and regretful mention is more than once made of his championship of the modern curri- culum at the expense of Greek. The utilitarians have doubtless issued their manifestoes and statements, though it is greatly to be doubted whether they have put forth anything ,so weighty, so well " documented," or even so convincing on the practical side as this volume. Nowhere have we seen better materials for an answer to parents and guardians who complain of waste of time on studies which did them no good. Here we have the testimony of men who have succeeded in the most go-ahead country in the world. Again and again we meet the statement that a knowledge of the clasraca will give a man a larger chance of success in life than he could otherwise have.
Of the addresses delivered at the Conference, the most brilliant and suggestive is that of Senator Lodge. It is inspired throughout by the spirit of the quotation with which it ends : " where there is no vision the people perish." He is no enemy of science, but he insists that applied science has in our times ministered to physical comfort and leaves the soul of man untouched. And in pleading for a stay of judgment before we consign the literature of Greece. and Rome to the sorapheap he is chiefly moved by contemplating " the performances of the most diversely and thoroughly educated people in the world from whom we have so largely borrowed in the way of education " :-
" When I have seen that people develop to the highest point the science of destroying human lives, as perhaps was to have been expected ; when I have seen them produce an organized barbarism far surpassing in its savage efficiency any that has ever afflicted the world • when I have witnessed the deeds wrought by the products of the most modem and improved methods of education which surpass in wanton destruction, lit equally wanton cruelty, in sheer naked horror, anything which history can show ; when I have beheld all this I have seriously doubted whether the most modern education has been quite such a complete success as its advocates assert."
There are many other remarkable passages in this address. We must confine ourselves to the one in which Senator Lodge justifies the assertion that " in the literature of the past were uncovered the foundations of the very sciences which would now consign the classics to oblivion "—a point also dwelt on with great force by Dr. Osborn, the President of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The President of the American Chemical Sooiety is at one with the Professor of Geology at Princeton in asserting that the men who do best are those who have had a broad, thorough training in Latin and Greek. Equally remarkable is the testimony of great engineers and railwaymen to the value of humanistic studies in developing leadership—notably in the address of Mr. Johnson, President of the Baldwin Locomotive Works, Philadelphia, and the message of Mr. Fairfax Harrison, President of the Southern Railway and Chairman of the Committee on National Defence of the American Railway Association. Mr. Johnson's words are worth quoting :- "More than anything else the world needs those able to think, and by reason of independent thinking able to assume leadership. Business and financial leaders may be evolved from the discipline which is essential to suooess in business and finance. Political leadership may be evolved from the game of politics. The leader- ship of mind and spirit, is nurtured,on the discipline which is found in liberal studies, in knowledge of the faots of history, in com- munion with the great minds of the past, in the cultivation of the powers of concentration and reasoning which experience has shown is best derived from the study of the classics, by the toil of mathe- matics and the mastery of philosophy."
The " statements " are headed by the testimony of four Presidents, Wilson, Taft, Roosevelt, and Cleveland—all strong supporters of the continuance of the classics in academic education, and the first and last unwavering believers in their indispensable value. The present Secretary of State, Mr. Lansing, supports their ex, tension, and two of his predecessors, Mr. Root and Mr. Foster, advocate their maintenance in undiminished force. Mr. Foster, we may note, declares against the elective system. Mr. Hoover, the Food Administrator ; the Governors of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania ; Mr. Champ Clark, the Speaker of the House of Representatives ; ex-Senator Hoar; and Senator Saulsbury sub- stantially share these views. We pass over the long procession of Presidents of Universities, Colleges, and heads of leading schools, but may Gall attention to the statement of fifty Professors, or one- time Professors, of Mathematics, Mechanical, Civil, and Electrical Engineering, Economics, Botany, Zoology, Psychology, Modem Languages, and Philosophy, in Cornell University : " We should prefer as students of our respective subjects those who have included both Greek and Latin among their preparatory studies rather than those who have neglected those studies in favour of modern languages or of our own respective subjects." Even more remark- able is the unanimity with which leading railwaymen, bankers, and heads of the great Trust and Insurance Companies insist on the disciplinary value of classical study, and its practical serVice in developing character, resourcefulness, and the art of handling men. The statements of the representatives of the Ministry, few in number, but carefully chosen among leading theologians, and
those of the members of the legal profession are equally pronounced in favour of the classics; and Mr. Gregory, a former President of the American Bar Association, utters perhaps the strongest of the many protests to be found in the whole book against the utilitarian view of education. " Nothing in my judgment is more demoralizing than to put constantly before the ingenuous youth of the nation the question whether or not the study of this, that, or the other subject will enable them the better to earn a living or to make money. You might just as well discuss with them whether it pays to be patriotic, self-sacrificing, and heroic." The evidence of doctors and professors of medicine is almost as strong. One of them reminds us that in Dunglison's medical dictionary there are approximately forty-one thousand words, of which twenty thousand are derived from the Greek and twenty-one thousand from the Latin, French, Saxon, and English languages. We have already spoken of the Engineers, but may call attention to the striking state- ments of Mr. Corthell, President of the American Institute of Consulting Engineers in 1915, and the Professors of Engineering in the University of Michigan. There remains the most impressive testimony of all—that of some thirty leading representatives of the Physical and Natural Sciences, including the Directors of the Yerkes and Mount Wilson Observatories, two ex-Presidents of the American Physical Society ; the President and two ex-Presidents of the American Chemical Society ; the President of the Geological Association of America in 1918, the Chief Hydrographer, and the Director of the Carnegie Institute. The strongest testimony is that of the Chairman of the Department of Chemistry at Princeton, but there is a general consensus that the ablest men in science are those who have had a classical training. Mr. McCay adds that " our assistants and instructors [in chemistry] who have had Greek in addition to Latin, our A. B. graduates, have turned out to be the most brilliant of all." Journalism is represented by the editors of the Sun, New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, Scribner's, Outlook, Philadelphia Ledger, and the Nation. The statements of professors of modern languages, English, history, political science, philosophy, sociology, and Oriental studies tell the same tale, and the repre- sentatives of the fine arts are to a man strongly pro-humanist. Architects, painters, and sculptors are agreed that no education is real which leaves the classics out.
In many of these statements there is a strongly expressed opinion that while classical studies are indispensable, or at the lowest of equal value with science, there is room for considerable improvement in the methods of teaching. Quite as general is the opposition to the elective system. The view that the American boy is in danger of becoming soft, and " the soft boy of the present day needs hard things," is shared by schoolmasters and men of business. As one of the Trust Presidents puts it, " the sulimtitution of things that are easy and that come naturally to a boy, and permitting him to do only the things he likes, are failing to educate him as he should be educated." We have been much impressed by the contrast between this book and the tone adopted by many writers in the Cambridge Essays on Education recently reviewed in these columns. Here there is no surrender of the maxims xaXercl rh icaXS or res severa est verism gaudium. To sum up, this is no half-hearted apologia for the classics ; it carries the war into the enemy's country. It is quite as much an assault on applied science as a defence of humanism.
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