Mayne Reid: A Memoir of his Life - Elizabeth Hyde Reid

“Nevertheless is there still some truth in it in its original form, dependent on the kind of knowledge, whether it be useful or merely ornamental. To the latter belong most of that taught at our universities and public schools—especially what are called the ‘dead languages’—all but useless as regards the needs and realities of after life, and but of little value even for its adornments. Lore more valueless, and time worse spent than in acquiring it, are scarce possible to be conceived. It barely finds its parallel in the Chinese mnemonics. When one reflects on the hours spent on this study, days—with nights as well—weeks, months, and years, and then in after life looks back how little good he has got from it—unless, indeed, he be himself a school teacher or college professor to perpetuate the folly—his reflections cannot be of a satisfactory kind. What might he have done—what could he not have done—had he been instructed in science, instead of his mind made a storehouse of lumber, the cast-off clothing of nations who were never properly clad, with coffins containing their language dead as themselves?

“‘But,’ say the advocates of so-called classical education, ‘what better way is there of training the youthful mind—giving it shape, scope, and direction—what other?’ It seems hardly worth while to answer such a question; the wonder is that any one should ask it. Training the mind by the declination of ‘hic haec hoc,’ or that most absurd of all absurd excessing, scansion, is the veriest mockery of mental discipline. Science even in its humblest branches does infinitely better, and along with the lesson gives something as valuable as the training itself, or more so.

“‘Ah! that may be true,’ admit the admirers of defunct tongues, ‘but then think of the soldiers, the statesmen, the poets, the heroes and notables of every speciality, who have lived, and whose deeds are alone recorded in the languages called dead. Think of their customs and ways of life, their virtues and their vices, their gods and their devils, and how are you to get knowledge of them without acquaintance with their language?’ Possibly better if we had never got knowledge of them, since their ways of life were not always such as they ought to be, while their vices and devils had a far more powerful influence over them than their virtues and gods.

“But admitting the knowledge worth attaining, it is the sheerest nonsense to say that it is not attainable without the study of their languages. The best classical scholar—and this in its truest sense—the writer ever came in contact with was a man who knew not even the letters of either Latin or Greek alphabet. There are no arcana there. Everything has been translated worth translating, and for the acquisition of classical knowledge a year spent in reading these translations is worth ten in the slow uncertain process of extracting it from the originals. To say that in translations the literature of the ancients is not obtainable in its purity, is, like many other sayings, either a falsehood or misconception. And often more, since all the translations are an actual improvement on the original.”

The End.