The arguments pro and con on the question have been almost exhausted. Nothing is left except to vary the expression and illustration. Still, so long as the monopoly exists, it will be argued and counter-argued; and, if there are no new reasons, the old will have to be iterated.
[EXAMPLE FROM THE GREEKS THEMSELVES]
Perhaps the most hackneyed of all the answers to the case for the classics is the one that has been most rarely replied to. I mean the fact that the Greeks were not acquainted with any language but their own. I have never known an attempt to parry this thrust. Yet, besides the fact itself, there are strong presumptions in favour of the position that to know a language well, you should devote your time and strength to it alone, and not attempt to learn three or four. Of course, the Greeks were in possession of the most perfect language, and were not likely to be gainers by studying the languages of their contemporaries. So, we too are in possession of a very admirable language, although put together in a nondescript fashion; and it is not impossible that if Plato had his Dialogues to compose among us, he would give his whole strength to working up our own resources, and not trouble himself with Greek. The popular dictum—multum non multa, doing one thing well—may be plausibly adduced in behalf of parsimony in the study of languages.
The recent agitation in Cambridge, in Oxford, and indeed, all over the country, for remitting the study of Greek as an essential of the Arts' Degree, has led to a reproduction of the usual defences of things as they are. The articles in the March number of the Contemporary Review, 1879, by Professors Blackie and Bonamy Price, may claim to be the derniers mots.
Professor Blackie's article is a warning to the teachers of classics, to the effect that they must change their front; that, whereas the value of the classics as a key to thought has diminished, and is diminishing, they must by all means in the first place improve their drill. In fact, unless something can be done to lessen the labour of the acquisition by better teaching, and to secure the much-vaunted intellectual discipline of the languages, the battle will soon be lost. Accordingly, the professor goes minutely into what he conceives the best methods of teaching. It is not my purpose to follow him in this sufficiently interesting discussion. I simply remark that he is staking the case, for the continuance of Latin and Greek in the schools, on the possibility of something like an entire revolution in the teaching art. Revolution is not too strong a word for what is proposed. The weak part of the new position is that the value of the languages as languages has declined, and has to be made up by the incident of their value as drill. This is, to say the least, a paradoxical position for a language teacher. If it is mere drill that is wanted, a very small corner of one language would suffice. The teacher and the pupil alike are placed between the two stools—interpretation and drill. A new generation of teachers must arise to attain the dexterity requisite for the task.
Professor Blackie's concession is of no small importance in the actual situation. "No one is to receive a full degree without showing a fair proficiency in two foreign languages, one ancient and one modern, with free option." This would almost satisfy the present demand everywhere, and for some time to come.
[ARGUMENT FROM RESULTS.]
The article of Professor Bonamy Price is conceived in even a higher strain than the other. There is so far a method of argumentation in it that the case is laid out under four distinct heads, but there is no decisive separation of reasons; many of the things said under one head might easily be transferred without the sense of dislocation to any other head. The writer indulges in high-flown rhetorical assertions rather than in specific facts and arguments. The first merit of classics is that "they are languages; not particular sciences, nor definite branches of knowledge, but literatures". Under this head we have such glowing sentences as these: "Think of the many elements of thought a boy comes in contact with when he reads Caesar and Tacitus in succession, Herodotus and Homer, Thucydides and Aristotle". "See what is implied in having read Homer intelligently through, or Thucydides or Demosthenes; what light will have been shed on the essence and laws of human existence, on political society, on the relations of man to man, on human nature itself." There are various conceivable ways of counter-arguing these assertions, but the shortest is to call for the facts—the results upon the many thousands that have passed through their ten years of classical drill. Professor Campbell of St. Andrews, once remarked, with reference to the value of Greek in particular, that the question would have to be ultimately decided by the inner consciousness of those that have undergone the study. To this we are entitled to add, their powers as manifested to the world, of which powers spectators can be the judges. When, with a few brilliant exceptions, we discover nothing at all remarkable in the men that have been subjected to the classical training, we may consider it as almost a waste of time to analyse the grandiloquent assertions of Mr. Bonamy Price. But if we were to analyse them, we should find that boys never read Caesar and Tacitus through in succession; still less Thucydides Demosthenes, and Aristotle; that very few men read and understand these writers; that the shortest way to come into contact with Aristotle is to avoid his Greek altogether, and take his expositors and translators in the modern languages.
The professor is not insensible to the reproach that the vaunted classical education has been a failure, as compared with these splendid promises. He says, however, that though many have failed to become classical scholars in the full sense of the word, "it does not follow that they have gained nothing from their study of Greek and Latin; just the contrary is the truth". The "contrary" must mean that they have gained something; which something is stated to be "the extent to which the faculties of the boy have been developed, the quantity of impalpable but not less real attainments he has achieved, and his general readiness for life, and for action as a man". But it is becoming more and more difficult to induce people to spend a long course of youthful years upon a confessedly impalpable result. We might give up a few months to a speculative and doubtful good, but we need palpable consequences to show for our years spent on classics. Next comes the admission that the teaching is often bad. But why should the teaching be so bad, and what is the hope of making it better? Then we are told that science by itself leaves the largest and most important portion of the youths' nature absolutely undeveloped. But, in the first place, it is not proposed to reduce the school and college curriculum to science alone; and, in the next place, who can say what are the "impalpable" results of science?