[[81]] For example, at Harvard one course includes Plato, Lysias, Lyric Poetry, and Euripides, with lectures on the history of Greek literature; another Livy, Terence, Horace and other Latin Poets.
[[82]] See above, page 407 f.
[[83]] For a fuller list of institutions where classical courses not requiring a knowledge of the ancient languages are given see above, [page 407].
[[84]] "Die höchste Aufgabe bei der Lektüre des griechischen Dramas sei das Stück Leben, das uns der Dichter vor Augen führt, in seinem vollen Inhalt miterleben zu lassen." C. Wunderer, in Blätter für das Gymnasial-Schulwesen, Vol. LII (1916), 1.
XXI
THE TEACHING OF THE ROMANCE LANGUAGES
The college course must emphasize power, not facts
It is well at times to emphasize old truths, mainly because they are old and are consecrated by experience. One of these, frequently combated nowadays, is that any college course—worthy of the name—has other than utilitarian ends. I therefore declare my belief that the student does not go to college primarily to acquire facts. These he can learn from books or from private instruction. Me judice—he goes to college primarily to learn how to interpret facts, and to arrive through this experience at their practical as well as their theoretic value: as respects himself, as respects others, and in an ever widening circle as regards humanity in general. The first object, thus, of a college course is to humanize the individual, to emancipate him intellectually and emotionally from his prejudices and conventions by giving him a wider horizon, a sounder judgment, a firmer and yet a more tolerant point of view. "Our proclivity to details," said Emerson, "cannot quite degrade our life and divest it of poetry." The college seizes upon the liberating instinct of youth and utilizes it for all it is worth. We summarize by saying that the college prepares not merely for "life" but for "living"; so that the society whom the individual serves will be served by him loyally, intelligently, and broad-mindedly, with an increasing understanding of its aims and purposes.