TO THE PRINCIPAL OF A FRENCH COLLEGE.
Loss of time to acquire an ancient language too imperfectly for it to be useful—Dr. Arnold—Mature life leaves little time for culture—Modern indifference to ancient thinking—Larger experience of the moderns—The moderns older than the ancients—The Author’s regret that Latin has ceased to be a living language—The shortest way to learn to read a language—The recent interest in modern languages—A French student of Hebrew.
I was happy to learn your opinion of the reform so recently introduced by the Minister of Public Instruction, and the more so that I was glad to find the views of so inexperienced a person as myself confirmed by your wider knowledge. You went even farther than M. Jules Simon, for you openly expressed a desire for the complete withdrawal of Greek from the ordinary school curriculum. Not that you undervalue Greek,—no one of your scholarship would be likely to undervalue a great literature,—but you thought it a loss of time to acquire a language so imperfectly that the literature still remained practically closed whilst thousands of valuable hours had been wasted on the details of grammar. The truth is, that although the principle of beginning many things in school education with the idea that the pupil will in maturer life pursue them to fuller accomplishment may in some instances be justified by the prolonged studies of men who have a natural taste for erudition, it is idle to shut one’s eyes to the fact that most men have no inclination for school-work after they have left school, and if they had the inclination they have not the time. Our own Dr. Arnold, the model English schoolmaster, said, “It is so hard to begin anything in after-life, and so comparatively easy to continue what has been begun, that I think we are bound to break ground, as it were, into several of the mines of knowledge with our pupils; that the first difficulties may be overcome by them whilst there is yet a power from without to aid their own faltering resolution, and that so they may be enabled, if they will, to go on with the study hereafter.” The principle here expressed is no doubt one of the important principles of all early education, and yet I think that it cannot be safely followed without taking account of human nature, such as it is. Everything hangs on that little parenthesis “if they will.” And if they will not, how then? The time spent in breaking the ground has been wasted, except so far as the exercise of breaking the ground may have been useful in mental gymnastics.
Mature life brings so many professional or social duties that it leaves scant time for culture; and those who care for culture most earnestly and sincerely, are the very persons who will economize time to the utmost. Now, to read a language that has been very imperfectly mastered is felt to be a bad economy of time. Suppose the case of a man occupied in business who has studied Greek rather assiduously in youth and yet not enough to read it with facility. Suppose that this man wants to get at the mind of Plato. He can read the original, but he reads it so slowly that it would cost him more hours than he can spare, and this is why he has recourse to a translation. In this case there is no indifference to Greek culture; on the contrary, the reader desires to assimilate what he can of it, but the very earnestness of his wish to have free access to ancient thought makes him prefer it in modern language.
This is the most favorable instance that can be imagined, except, of course, those exceedingly rare cases where a man has leisure enough, and enthusiasm enough, to become a Hellenist. The great majority of our contemporaries do not care for ancient thought at all, it is so remote from them, it belongs to conditions of civilization so different from their own, it is encumbered with so many lengthy discussions of questions which have been settled by the subsequent experience of the world, that the modern mind prefers to occupy itself with its own anxieties and its own speculations. It is a great error to suppose that indifference to ancient thinking is peculiar to the spirit of Philistinism; for the most cultivated contemporary intellects seek light from each other rather than from the ancients. One of the most distinguished of modern thinkers, a scholar of the rarest classical attainments, said to me in reference to some scheme of mine for renewing my classical studies, that they would be of no more use to me than numismatics. It is this feeling, the feeling that Greek speculation is of less consequence to the modern world than German and French speculation, which causes so many of us, rightly or wrongly, to regard it as a palæontological curiosity, interesting for those who are curious as to the past of the human mind, but not likely to be influential upon its future.
This estimate of ancient thinking is not often expressed quite so openly as I have just expressed it, and yet it is very generally prevalent even amongst the most thoughtful people, especially if modern science has had any conspicuous influence in the formation of their minds. Tho truth is, as Sydney Smith observed many years ago, that there is a confusion of language in the use of the word “ancient.” We say “the ancients,” as if they were older and more experienced men than we are, whereas the age and experience are entirely on our side. They were the clever children, “and we only are the white-bearded, silver-headed ancients, who have treasured up, and are prepared to profit by, all the experience which human life can supply.” The sense of our larger experience, as it grows in us and becomes more distinctly conscious, produces a corresponding decline in our feelings of reverence for classic times. The past has bequeathed to us its results, and we have incorporated them into our own edifice, but we have used them rather as materials than as models.
In your practical desire to retain in education only what is likely to be used, you are willing to preserve Latin. M. Jules Simon says that Latin ought to be studied only to be read. On this point permit me to offer an observation. The one thing I regret about Latin is that we have ceased to speak it. The natural method, and by far the most rapid and sure method of learning a language, is to begin by acquiring words in order to use them to ask for what we want; after that we acquire other words for narration and the expression of our sentiments. By far the shortest way to learn to read a language is to begin by speaking it. The colloquial tongue is the basis of the literary tongue. This is so true that with all the pains and trouble you give to the Latin education of your pupils, you cannot teach them as much Latin, for reading only, in the course of ten years, as a living foreigner will give them of his own language in ten months. I seriously believe that if your object is to make boys read Latin easily, you begin at the wrong end. It is deplorable that the learned should ever have allowed Latin to become a dead language, since in permitting this they have enormously increased the difficulty of acquiring it, even for the purposes of scholarship.
No foreigner who knows the French people will disapprove of the novel desire to know the modern languages, which has been one of the most unexpected consequences of the war. Their extreme ignorance of the literature of other nations has been the cause of enormous evils. Notwithstanding her central position, France has been a very isolated country intellectually, much more isolated than England, more isolated even than Transylvania, where foreign literatures are familiar to the cultivated classes. This isolation has produced very lamentable effects, not only on the national culture but most especially on the national character. No modern nation, however important, can safely remain in ignorance of its contemporaries. The Frenchman was like a gentleman shut up within his own park-wall, having no intercourse with his neighbors, and reading nothing but the history of his own ancestors—for the Romans were your ancestors, intellectually. It is only by the study of living languages, and their continual use, that we can learn our true place in the world. A Frenchman was studying Hebrew; I ventured to suggest that German might possibly be more useful. To this he answered, that there was no literature in German. “Vous avez Goethe, vous avez Schiller, et vous avez Lessing, mais en dehors de ces trois noms il n’y a rien.” This meant simply that my student of Hebrew measured German literature by his own knowledge of it. Three names had reached him, only names, and only three of them. As to the men who were unknown to him he had decided that they did not exist. Certainly if there are many Frenchmen in this condition, it is time that they learned a little German.