This remark is prophetic of the enormous increase of instruction in the sciences since Herbart’s day, yet Latin has also enjoyed a phenomenal increase in popularity in American schools. According to the Report of the National Commissioner of Education the increase of enrollment in high schools for the years between 1890 and 1898 was 84 per cent, while the increase in the number of students pursuing Latin was 174 per cent.[37] This surprising growth in the number pursuing an ancient language can hardly be accounted for by increased stringency in college entrance requirements in Latin, but must rather be ascribed to a growing conviction among the people that the study is indispensable in secondary education. That this must be the case is seen by the attendant circumstances. In the first place, Latin has become an elective in nearly all high schools; in the next place, many rich equivalents are offered, both in science and in modern languages; and finally our system of universal elementary education has sent large classes of persons into the secondary schools that have never previously been there. Yet the number of students electing this study grows by leaps and bounds.

Note.—(1) The assertion is often heard that the ancient languages supply a permanent standard by which to judge of the progress and the decay of modern languages; also that the ancient classics must be regarded as furnishing the models for purity and beauty in style. These and similar contentions are undeniably correct, and carry the greatest weight, but they are unpedagogical. They embody the absolute requirement, but not that which younger pupils need for their culture; and the large majority of those who are fitting themselves for official positions cannot afford to make themselves guardians of language and style. They must take language as it is, and acquire the manner of expression which is adapted to the world of affairs. Those higher cares belong to authors, but no one is educated for authorship.

(2) It is a familiar notion that the difficulty would diminish if the ancient languages were begun later, that then the ability to learn would prove greater. On the contrary, the older the pupil the stronger the tendency of his thought-mass toward exclusion. Memory work must be introduced early, especially where its usefulness depends wholly on the acquisition of facility. It is essential to begin early in order to make it possible to proceed slowly and to avoid unpedagogical pressure. Four hours a week of Latin do not hurt a healthy, bright boy, provided his other tasks are arranged with pedagogical correctness. To put modern languages first would be to put the cart before the horse. Useful enough, however, are single French and English expressions relating to everyday life. They will be of service in acquiring the pronunciation; but a few phrases do not constitute the teaching of a language.

[37] Bennett and Bristol, “The Teaching of Latin and Greek,” Longmans, Green & Co., New York, 1900.

[279.] The manner of teaching the ancient languages, where they are regarded as a matter of necessity or conventionality, no account being taken of pedagogical considerations, need not be discussed here. It must rather be admitted at once that no pedagogical means whatever exist, whereby those who live with their interests strictly confined to the present could be brought to acquire, with genuine sympathy, the content of the works of antiquity.

American teachers in estimating the value of Latin for the high school student lay more stress upon training in the mastery of the mother-tongue than upon the literary contents of the classical writings. Professor Bennett in his treatment of “The Teaching of Latin in the Secondary School,”[38] places in strong light the splendid linguistic training a youth undergoes when taught by a good teacher of this subject. In Germany, since Herbart’s time, Professor Russell tells us that the teaching of Latin has fluctuated between two aims—“between that view which makes the classics a purely formal discipline, and that other view which bases the worth of such a study on the acquisition of humanistic culture, in contact with ‘the best thoughts of the best men of antiquity.’ In the one case it is considered of equal value as a means of preparation for all trades and professions dependent on intellectual acumen; in the other case it is of worth only for those who can practically apply the technical knowledge thereby acquired, or may have sufficient leisure to enjoy its æsthetic qualities. It is a question of making the ancient literature a means to an end or an end in itself.”[39]

The dogma of formal discipline as a leading aim in education has nowhere been more discredited than among Herbartian writers. A judicious estimate of its truth and error is made by Professor Hinsdale.[40] His main conclusions are as follows:—

  1. The degree to which power generated by education is general depends upon the extent to which it energizes the mind, and particularly the extent to which it overflows into congruent channels.
  2. Such power is far more special than general; it is only in a limited sense that we can be said to have a store of mobilized mental power.
  3. No one kind of mental exercise—no few kinds—can develop the whole mind.
  4. No study, no single group of studies, contains within itself the possibilities of a whole education.

On the other hand, American students rarely study classics long enough to acquire much facility in mastering the literary contents of the ancient writers. If, to considerable extent, the idea of formal discipline is a delusive one, and the idea of a broad, humanistic culture is an illusion of the American schoolmaster, we must justify the study of Latin upon other grounds. The linguistic advantages arising from it are obvious and decided. Among these stands first the mastery of the mother-tongue, first through the comparative study rendered necessary by translation, then by study of the roots of a large part of the English vocabulary, and more remotely by the light thrown by Latin upon history and institutional life.

There is an advantage in Latin of great, though usually unmentioned, importance, and that is its peculiar usefulness as an educational instrument, in that it presents to the pupil a graduated scale of surmountable difficulties. In this respect it is surpassed only by mathematics. The difference between a good and a poor educational instrument lies in this: a study offering few surmountable obstacles is a poor educational instrument, for the pupil can find no fulcrum upon which to use his mental powers. Thus he may stare at a natural object when directed to observe its characteristics, but he finds it hard to think when no thought problem is presented to him. But a study that involves thought problems of a definite and solvable kind is a good educational instrument, for the pupil finds something to move and a fulcrum upon which he may exert his power. Translation from an ancient language exercises the working powers of a student up to their highest efficiency, for the translation of ten sentences may easily provide the hardest kind of work for an hour; if ten lines do not, then more lines will. When a foreign language ceases to offer such surmountable difficulties, we leave it for something else that does offer them.