“And I maintain quite the reverse, don’t you see,” replied the doctor.
“Think of their universities, their schools, their royal academies of painting and music, their royal societies for the advancement of science, their extensive libraries, their galleries of art, and the wonderful degree of perfection they attained in mechanics,” said the professor.
“As for their universities,” observed Tourniquet, “they distinguished themselves most by their bigoted attachment to prejudices that had long been exploded in every other part of the community. They wasted a vast deal of time and intellect in teaching all such knowledge as was most unprofitable; and this was what they called a classical education. It consisted in making the student devote the best portion of his life in learning one or two languages which were never spoken by the living, and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred could not be of the slightest advantage to the learner. A facility in the making of Latin verses, which had no pretension to the name of poetry, was looked upon as evidence of great merit; and he who could put together a few sentences in Greek, unmarked by one original idea, was regarded as a genius which his college ought to be proud of.”
“Do you mean to affirm that the dead languages are not worthy of study?” inquired Fortyfolios.
“I affirm nothing of the kind, don’t you see,” replied the doctor. “I only maintain that the time devoted to their acquisition in the system of education pursued by the ancients might have been more advantageously employed. Both the teachers and the taught enslaved their minds with the same shackles. What loads of paper have been spoiled by the labours of some learned blockhead on the Greek particle, or by the annotations and interpretations of some laborious trifles attempting to elucidate the meaning of some obscure Latin writer. But there is a greater mischief in this than the mere worthlessness of what it produces. The exclusive attention which is required to gain a mastery over a dead language stifles the affections and narrows the intellect. It makes men egotists and bigots; ignorant, prejudiced, proud, and quarrelsome. What was Bentley? what was Parr? what was Johnson? what was Porson? What were all who distinguished themselves by such great talents in small things? Were they temperate, or modest, or amiable? moderate in their enjoyments, or inoffensive in their behaviour? Were they not the very reverse of these?”
“They were great scholars,” observed the professor.
“They were great fools, don’t you see,” said the other sharply. “A man who offends against decency, who is quarrelsome and imperious, knows not the respect he owes himself or the courtesies which are due to society; and his actions, if they are not crimes, must certainly be follies. As for his wisdom—as for the wisdom of the grammarian, or the mere number of books comparatively useless, his is the knowledge of a man who has lived all his life in the narrow circuit of a little village; he may know every brick in every house, and may be familiar with the exact state and quantity of every dunghill there to be met with: but take him out into the open world, and he knows nothing but the prejudices of the place from which he came.”
“That does not prove that the learning of the ancients is unworthy of study,” remarked Fortyfolios.
“Who are the ancients?” inquired Tourniquet. “The English are our ancients, the Romans were their ancients, the Greeks were the ancients of the Romans, and the Egyptians were the ancients of the Greeks: the Hindoos, or the Chinese, were the ancients of the Egyptians; and if we could look to a more remote period, we should be sure to find a people who also had their ancients. It is a very strange idea of the world to expect to progress by always looking back, don’t you see. The learning of our predecessors may always be worthy of study if it be superior to the learning in existence; but it has been the system of universities and public schools to concentrate the attention of the studious upon the learning of the ancients, to the neglect of a knowledge more available and of far more practical utility.”
“It is strange, then, that the public schools and universities of the English should have produced so many illustrious men!” said the professor.