D -R E K S iS a.








CLASSICAL LEARIiVXYG AS AZ EELE, E[T OF ~ODJERN SCHOLARSHIP.
AN
ADDRESS
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
EROSOPHIAN SOCIETY,
OF
LOMBARD UNIVERSITY,
ON
TUESDAY, JUNE lSth, 1867,
BY
AUSTIN ADAMS.
_, =o.  --
PUBJISHED BY REQUEST.
BARNES & RYAN, PRINTERS, TIMES BOOK AND JOB PRINTING HOUSE.
1867.








1ADD IR Eo SS.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: The occasion which has called
us together marks the close of another Academic year of
this University.  To its friends and patrons here assembled, I take the liberty, in the name of the Erosophian
Society, which has selected me as its orator, to extend a
greeting. To the members of the society, and to the students of the university in general, I may say in behalf
of the friends and visitors, of whom the speaker is one, it
affords us pleasure to meet you. Released for a day from
the cares of business, we have gathered in this classic retreat,-some to renew old college friendships, and others
to manifest their respect for the young men and women
whose term of study is now completed. These literary
reunions furnished by our college and university commencements, are oases in the barren plains of our dusty,
over-wrought, business lives.  It is well to return occasionally to refresh our spirits in the scholarly associations
of our earlier manhood.  Yet the main object of this
occasion is not recreation. We should sadly misappropriate it, if some word were not said, and some thought
suggested, in the interest of that higher learning which
this university was founded to promote.




4
The magnificent endowment of one hundred thousand
dollars recently secured has impressed me with the idea
that something should be said upon the completeness of
that education that will be commensurate with the foundation upon which this university is about to be placed.
There is a growing tendency among the students of our
American colleges and universities to adopt what is called
a partial course of study, and that course, it will be found,
is mainly scientific. The importance of what is deemed
practical is unduly exalted. To this idea all symmetry
of education is necessarily sacrificed. The term liberal, as
applied to learning, is fast losing its significance.  All
education, it is thought, must have a sort of special or
professional character. It must look towards business.
Special aptitudes must be cultivated. Idiosyncracies must
be nursed and developed.  If a young man or woman
lacks mental balance, it is made the business of the schools
to see to it that mental balance is placed beyond recovery.
So the beauty and harmony of life is sacrificed, and the
world is being filled with unbalanced men;-with brilliant
pettifoggers, demagogues, quacks and charlatans.
Regretting this tendency to depart from the good old
college course of study that rounded out the lives of our
fathers into such beauty and symmetry, however moderate
their attainments, and believing that the antidote demanded by the over-practical tendency of modern civilization, is to be found in the cultivation of the taste, the sentiments and emotions, and above all in communion with
the classic spirit which contrasts so finely with our own, I
beg leave to invite your attention to the subject of Classical Learning as an Element of Modern Scholarship.
The oldest colleges in this country were founded by
men who were educated in Europe. They consequently
became animated, in a great measure, by the same spirit




5
which prevailed in the colleges of Europe. A complete
course of study was insisted on. That patience and thoroughness which characterize everything in the old world,
were manifested in nothing American so much as in
American colleges.
No young man went to college without having first
counted upon, and provided for, the cost of a complete
course of study. Nothing but sickness or death, or some
unforeseen event of controlling importance, cut him short
in his course. Of whatever size might be a class when it
entered, of that size —with two, three or four deducted
for sickness and death-it graduated. The students pursued the same studies and received the same degree. But
those old world ideas of thoroughness and completeness
were not quite in harmony with that impatience, haste
and superficiality of ours, which are distinctively American. Not readily however did the old world spirit in our
colleges yield to the American. But colleges in this country became numerous, and were not well endowed or patronized. They sprang up on every side, not so much in
obedience to the demands of liberal learning as the offspring of sectarian zeal or of local ambition. Soon they
were tempted to lower their standard by providing a partial course. The temptation came in the form of a whole
army of short-sighted, impatient students, with cheap,
American ideas, demanding that such provision should be
made. This demand was backed largely by the newspaper press of the country, and by men who had achieved
wealth and influence with a limited education. The first,
or among the first, to yield, strange to say, was Brown
University, notwithstanding its wealth and age, and its
proud and glorious record. Others followed in quick succession, and now, I suppose, more than half of our colleges have provided a partial course. And so well pleased




6
are the American people with this state of things, it is of
no use now to discuss its expediency. But while we accept the situation, it becomes the advocates of liberal
learning to make greater efforts to save our students from
the seductive influence of the times, and to keep them up
out of the partial course, towards which they gravitate so
strongly. The age is ultilitarian, and in the West this
characteristic is intensified. Nor is it difficult to discover
the reason. Will a Chicago man, for instance, stop to analyze Greek verbs, or even to recreate himself in the
pleasures of the immortal Iliad, when in ten years, if he
but seize the golden opportunity, he may acquire a fortune
that will build him a house on Michigan Avenue, and give
him a controlling interest in the First, Second or Third
National Bank?  Should we expect an Iowa farmer to
linger over the pages of Horace or the Bucolics of Virgil,
when wheat is worth two dollars a bushel, and the garden
of the world is spread before him waiting to be tilled? We
are utilitarian on account of the rapid development of our
physical resources, and the opportunity for the sudden
acquisition of wealth. And so strong is this drift of the
times, it can neither be controlled or checked by anything
that can be said by commencement orators, or college Presidents or Professors. Nevertheless, conceding to the age
that the main thing in life is to get rich, and that everybody can do it, there is one thing that should not be said
without a protest, and that is that liberal culture as the
result of early classical study is not valuable. As that
has been said, we come here to utter our protest. If men
resolve that they will build their marble fronts, though at
the cost of somewhat of the completeness of their manhood, it becomes us to consider here, upon this day, which
is consecrated not to bank stocks, nor railroads, nor
houses, what that cost is.




-7
Before proceeding however to speak of the value of a
classical education, we will consider for a moment two
causes which have contributed to impair its value in the
popular estimation.  The first is the developement and
achievements of modern science, and the second is the
richness of modern literature.
It is not too much to say that to modern science we are
indebted principally for the valuable characteristics of
modern civilization. Even those things seemingly remote,
liberal principles in government and a liberal, progressive
theology, have resulted, in a measure, from the amelioration of the physical condition of men, to say nothing of
the more direct influence which scientific inquiries have
had upon liberal thought.  When we rise up and when
we lie down, modern science administers to our comfort.
It has strengthened human hands and feet and eyes ten
thousand fold. By removing our physical limitations, it
has given equal freedom to the soul.
It is not my purpose to dwell on the importance or bril.,
liancy of recent scientific discoveries. This subject has
afforded the material with which innumerable discourses
have been pointed and embellished, and I cheerfully concede all that the devotees of science have claimed. But
there is one fact in this connection not sufficiently considered.  Scientific discoveries and the  study of known
science are not the same. Let the boundaries of science
be enlarged.  Let Nature be compelled to give up her
secrets, for in this direction lies the grand march of human
progress.  But the discoveries once made, it is not equally
important that every student should follow them out in
all their ramifications. It is, to be sure, important to any
person to know the principle upon which the steam engine acts, but the great thing was done when it was substituted for the puny muscles of men and animals in the




gigantic pursuits of modern commerce and manufactures.
Let me not be misunderstood. I merely say that the
value of scientific discoveries and the value of the study
of known science as a study, cannot be estimated by any
common standard. To estimate the value of a study as
a study, entirely different elements enter into the calculation. For this purpose, we consider to what extent it furnishes valuable information; to what extent it disciplines
the reason, the memory, the imagination; to what extent
it improves the taste, and to what extent it awakens and
refines the emotional in man. Nor is this all: we must go
still farther, and consider the peculiar kind of discipline it
gives the reason, memory and imagination; the peculiar
kind of improvement it affords the taste, and the peculiar
manner in which it awakens and refines the emotional.
Having determined all this, another question of equal importance arises: what place shall a given study occupy
in a programme of study, so as to secure the most complete, harmonious, and symmetrical development and
genial culture of all the faculties? To determine this,
requires a knowledge of mind, the order in which the different faculties are properly developed, and the peculiar
effect of each study in the programme. Scientific studies
therefore instead of being so important that they should
be allowed to crowd out other studies, are simply a part of
the disciplinary means by which a liberal education is
secured. They are an absolutely necessary part to be
sure, but they are counterparts of entirely different studies
to be used in the disciplinary process. The question of
their rank, therefore, is of no importance. Rank does not
properly apply to the different studies necessary for liberal
culture, any more than it applies to the different parts of a
watch.  There is an important question of relative position, but that is not a question of rank.




9
Some one may ask here; Has a perfect system of educacation been framed? Probably not. The human mind
is too complicated and delicate a piece of mechanism to be
perfectly comprehended. Yet upon this very point have
the thoughts of the most intellectual men of the world
been concentrated for more than two thousand years. A
result has been obtained.  That result is embodied substantially in the complete curriculum of study of Lombard University, differing in no material respect from the
curriculum of study in the other colleges and universities
of the world. Students sometimes think that this course
of study is the result of accident or fancy, and that they
should be permitted to interrupt it and tear it to pieces
whenever and wherever they please, but no greater mistake was ever committed.  Let the sciences therefore
receive their due share of attention, but let no one suppose that the study of science makes a full grown scholar
or properly educated man.
The second thing that has caused classical studies to be
underrated, is the richness of modern literature. Why,
it is asked, should we go back to follow with Homer the
varying fortunes of Troy or the wanderings of Ulysses,
while we have upon our shelves such a poem as the Paradise Lost?  Why should we hang over the romantic and
not altogether credible narrative of Livy, while we have
such histories as those of Merivale and Motley and Draper
and Froude, and the profound philosophy and sweeping
generalizations of the erudite Buckle? I am not uncon.
scious of the force of these questions. I see men before
me who would find it difficult to construe a page of
Tacitus, but who know a thousand times more about Germany than the very author of the Germania himself. I
see before me men who, I suppose, cannot read a word of
Plato or Aristotle, but to whom the valuable thoughts of




10
Plato and Aristotle, and what is more, the valuable
thoughts of Descartes and Leibnitz and Spinoza and Schelling, and Hegel, and Cousin, and Locke, and Hamilton are
as familiar as the street that leads to market or the names
of their children. But these are rare men. They transcend all ordinary rules. Colleges and Universities were
not founded for such men, but for the average intellect of
such young men as are gathered from year to year within
their walls. The superior richness of modern literature,
as compared with the ancient, is fully conceded. But the
most valuable treasures of modern literature are slightly
recondite. Those shelves in our popular libraries upon
which the most valuable works stand are generally the
least frequented. To appreciate and enjoy them requires
not only some little reach of thought but refinement of
feeling, and enthusiasm  in the pursuit of truth. Now
how is a young man or woman of average intellect and
ordinary culture to be educated into a taste, not to say
passion or enthusiasm, for such authors as Coleridge and
DeQuincy and Mill and Spencer and Draper and Emerson?  In no way, we think, more effectually than by a
course of early classical study. These very men to whom
modern literature is so much indebted, have generally been
classical scholars. Their taste and style have been formed
upon classic models. Those readers whose tastes have
been similarly cultivated, and who have drank at the same
fountains of inspiration, will necessarily read with a more
genial sympathy and appreciation.
The - argument urged for the exclusion of classical
studies from our schools is that we should thereby get
more time for what is called a practical education. Now
it is a little remarkable that the advocates of classical
studies have never sought to exclude any study which has
generally been deemed important as a part of a college




11
course. They alone are in favor of a "liberal education"
in the proper sense of those words. But suppose the test
of' practicalness to be applied as that word is generally
understood, —not as disciplinary but as furnishing that
information and skill that are useful in the conduct of the
practical affairs of life.
Connected with Chicago University is the most powerful
telescope of its kind in the world. The devotion to
science manifested by those noble men who secured that
instrument, has done more to render Chicago illustrious
than any other thing that could be mentioned. In that
observatory, toward which the eyes of scientific men on
both sides of the Atlantic are now turned, presides one of
the geniuses of the age. And what is he doing?  He is
cultivating Practical Astronomy. Now go and examine a
page of Prof. Safford's calculations and explain to me,
if you can, the connection between that practical work of
his and the affairs of Lake street.  Tell me, if you can,
how far it concerns the gigantic interests of the great city
that lies beneath the eye of that observatory whether the
parallax of Sirius is one second or somewhat less.  To
the business interests of that city the displacement of a
railroad switch is of far more importance than the parallax of the stars. I do not mean of course that corxmerce
is not indebted to Astronomy. Destroy the sextant and
take away our ability to determine a ship's position at sea
by an observation on the sun or stars, and nine-tenths of
our shipping would be rotting at our wharfs. Astronomy!
it has its seat in the heavens, but it touches this daily
mortal life of ours in a thousand ways. What I mean to
say is, that these higher matters of so-called practical
astronomy with which Prof. Safford and the Chicago telescope are concerned to-day, have nothing whatever to do
with the practical conduct of the ordinary affairs of life.




12
The same might be said of the higher Mathematics.
They are involved in some practical matters to be sure,
but they are not studied by most students for their practical utility. In after life they more readily slip from the
memory and are less seldom recurred to than the classics.
How many graduates, ten years out of college and actively
engaged in business, can demonstrate the problem of the
parabola or of the ellipse? Yet these are beautiful problems,-only moderately difficult, and as well calculated as
any part of Analytical Geometry to make an impression
upon the memory. Not one student in a hundred leaves.
college for either of the professions or for commerce or
the trades who has a thought of ever recurring to his Analytical Geometry or Calculus, unless it may be after
many years, as a matter of curiosity, to see how little he
knows of that over which he once bent and plodded so
many toilsome hours, or to revive the recollections of his
struggles for college honors. I would not be understood
as maintaining that because this is so these studies are
not important. It is no small thing that the mind has
once in a life time comprehended the Calculus with its
subtle discussions and shadowy principles.  The very intangibility and slipperiness of the matters with which it
deals, unlike anything with which the mind copes before
or afterwards, constitute the chief merit of the study as a
gymnastic mental exercise. But the supposed importance
of the higher Mathematics on account of their supposed
practical utility, has very little foundation in fact. This
idea is entertained mostly by persons who do not know
what the higher Mathematics are. With Prof. Safford,
Algebra, Trigonometry and the Calculus are practical matters. They are involved in his business of enlarging the
boundaries of Astronomical Science. For the ordinary
professional and business man they are a discipline and




O13
nothing more. But that after all is the highest end of
education.
I now proceed to show, as best I can, that the classics
are both practical and disciplinary. First practical. There
is not, it is true, much classical literature that is important
to the general reader by reason of the simple facts which
it recites; but there is one book that might be denominated a classic which is of transcendent importance, and
that is the Greek Testament. There is no reason why.
every scholar should not be a theologian. Indeed theology
so pervades all science and all the highest productions of
literature, no true scholar can fail to regard theology as
the science of sciences, the grand focus where all other
truth should shed some light. Now while we admit that
we have great theologians who cannot read the New Testament in the Greek language, such ability is nevertheless a
valuable attainment, and especially of late, since attention
has been turned so much to the early history of Christianity.
Again, the Greek language is the language of science.
Three-fourths of our scientific terms, I suppose, are derived
from the Greek. The Latin language is the language of
the civil law, and no reader of law books is quite at home
who does not read Latin.. Both Greek and Latin enter
largely into the composition of the English language as
they do into nearly all the modern languages of Europe.
The basis of the English, to be sure, is the Saxon, but
it has been enriched by the Greek and Latin, and no one is
prepared to study the English advantageously who has
not laid the foundation for such study by a critical knowledge of the classics. The Greek and Latin languages are
models of their kind. The ancients studied little else but
language. Hence the wonderful perfection of their respective languages. Their adaptation to the expression of




14
nice shades of thought is marvelous. So the power and
beauty of the English language has been greatly increased
by the introduction of words from the Greek and Latin.
Many of these words of classical derivation have a latent
signification and beauty which none but a classical scholar
readily detects.
Again, the classical scholar becomes critical by comparing his own language with the classic models. It is
difficult to become a good judge of any thing without
comparing it with other things of the same kind. By
comparing we acquire a taste for critical observing, and
this is one of the principal requisitions in the study of
language.
Few men ever studied the English language more
thoroughly from the stand point of a purely English student than Henry Clay. For seventy years, undistracted
by that wider range of study that makes a scholar, he
studied American politics and the power of expression in
his native tongue. He became, it is conceded, the greatest
American orator; but strange to say, as if to mock all attempts at literary, scholarly or rhetorical excellence not
founded upon early classical attainments, there is little left
to-day of Henry Clay as an orator, except the tradition of
his silvery voice, of his majestic presence and of the
power of his personal magnetism. The speeches of Webster and Everett, carefully preserved, are conned by every
school boy, and will be handed down to the generations
that shall come after us a thousand years hence as a
portion-as a sacred portion of American classics. If
there be anything practical it is the power of expression,
-not simply the power to move the hearts of men by
oral speech, wherein much is attributable to the magic
influence of the human voice; but that greater power
which embodies in the written word the best thought of




15
the age, and so clothes that word with universal beauty
that it becomes classic, and passes on through the ages, surviving the wreck of empires, and what is more, the rise
and fall of whole systems of philosophy, binding together
by the living beauty of thought and form the successive generations of men. Practical! What is the world's
great treasure but the world's great thought? And
what would be the value of that thought but for the
vehicle in which it is carried forward and made immortal
while the thinkers die?
It was a great thing to build the Chicago tunnel. By
it many millions of men and women will yet be blessed.
All honor to the science that achieved that result. But
it was a greater thing to write Ecce Homo; —to so marry
beauty of thought and form as to make a classic upon that
most important of all subjects whereby it is hoped that
many a thirsty spirit may yet be drawn to the fountains
of eternal life.
But the study of the classics is practical not only because it facilitates the study of the English, but because
it facilitates the study of the modern languages of Europe generally. There is a disposition at present in many
institutions of learning to substitute the modern languages
for the ancient. But it would be better to add the modern languages and lengthen the course. The study of the classics is such an excellent preparation for the study of the
modern languages, it seems proper to begin with the clas.
sics but a pity to stop there. The classical scholar holds
the key to untold treasures. Why should he, for the sake
of gaining a year or two for commerce or the professions
omit to walk in and take possession?
But some one may ask, is there not danger that this
refining and re-refining of the taste and feelings,-this
profound culture and scholarly enthusiasm, which a pro



16
longed period of study, if well directed, is calculated to
secure, will give a disrelish for the dry details and drudgery of business?  Is the highest cultivation of the
aesthetic and the ideal consistent with the devotion to
the practical and real, necessary to secure success in life?
This certainly is a grave question, and it cannot be disposed of with a single flourish of the pen. To thoughtful
minds it recurs again and again, bringing with it a series of
questions, exposing the shallowness of our philosophy, and
reaching down into the unfathomable depths of that greatest of all mysteries, the human spirit.  How to reconcile
the real and the ideal, —how to reconcile the finite and the
infinite,-how to bask in God's sunlight of eternal truth
and beauty, and sport in the actual liberty of heaven,
while the limitations of earth yet hang upon the fettered
spirit; —that is the difficulty. But not to put too fine a
point on this matter and miss any practical reflection that
might be made, we may observe that this antagonism may
after all be more apparent than real. The limitations of
our earthly lot should be accepted,-freely and joyously
accepted. They are doubtless a part of the disciplinary
process through which the finite travels towards that state
of exaltation and freedom which cannot be fully realized
this side of the bounds of time and space.
It is possible to lead two distinct lives side by side, the
practical earthly life, and the life of sentiment and emotion.
We do in fact, all of us lead such lives, however dwarfed and
feeble one or both of them may be, and these lives supplement
each other. And if they be so accepted and cultivated,
and developed into rounded fullness and beauty, the antagonism will largely disappear and they will so blend and
harmonize as to afford a dim prophecy of that life wherein
all things will be blended in one grand and harmonious
unity.  The men who have most challenged our admira



17
tion have been men who have combined ability for practical
affairs with scholarly culture and attainments. Cicero was
a statesman, and a man of letters and an orator. Julius
Caesar was the greatest soldier of his age. But while he
was pushing the conquering eagles of Rome to the pillars
of Hercules on the west, and the highlands of Caledonia on
the north, he was writing those immortal Commentaries
wherein fifteen centuries after the Roman power is swept
from the countries which he conquered, the scholar traces
with ever new and undiminished delight the history of
CGesar's brilliant campaigns. Edmund Burke was an illustrious example of a man, the luster of whose fame shines
with a, double light. Parliamentary speeches are usually
the dullest of reading after the occasion is passed which
inspired them, and the circumstances are partially forgotten.
But that orator is never dull who speaks in the double
capacity of statesman and  philosopher.  Our own late
lamented Everett was honored with nearly all the most
important of offices within the gift of the people or the appointment of the government. He was successively Representative in Congress, Governor of Massachusetts, Minister
to the Court of St. James, Secretary of State and U. S. Sen.ator. At the same time he was recognized as one of the ripest
and most accomplished of American scholars. These men,
quite as much as any men that have lived, bore upon their
shoulders the weight of the world's great business, but
they turned aside ever and anon to refresh their wearied
spirits in the pursuits of philosophy and letters, carrying
back with them the ideal into the real, and thus elevating,
beautifying and idealizing everything that touches human
interests. Compared with such men the scholarly monk of'
the middle ages becomes almost contemptible. He would indeed be quite so, but for the service which he rendered in preserving the very literature whose claims we are advocating,




18
— a literature which, when dragged from the monkish cell
and studied by the men of the world, gave the world that
impulse which has resulted in our modern civilization with
all its wealth of science, literature and art. Nothing could
be more unfortunate than that scholarly culture and attainments should again be divorced from the discipline and experience of pra.ctical life. If the day shall come when the
interests of letters shall be re-committed to men devoted exclusively to scholarly pursuits, from that day we shall begin to travel back towards the civilization of medieval
Europe. There is not only no proper antagonism between
culture and the executive ability which administers the
practical affairs of the world, but they aid each other as
has been demonstrated by every year of the world's history
since Constantinople was taken by the Turks, and the
scholars of the east were dispersed with their manuscripts
through western Europe, introducing the polished learning
of the east to the modern practical European mind.
That young men should usually graduate from college
with a lack of worldly prudence and a distaste for business
should be expected.  And that the world should move
right on just as if the young men aforesaid had not graduated at all, should also be expected. It is a stern old
world, with a touch of conservatism, and does not ordinarily
yield its highest prizes to school boys. It will not even
stop, my young friend, to look at your diploma. It does
not care for it. You might about as well leave it behind
you. It will soon become lumber. But no true young
man will be p3rm'mnentlydisheartened.  Those of you who
have completed the entire course of study pursued in this
institution instead of taking a partial course as you might
have done, have evinced a certain constitutional thoroughness which gives hope of success. It may also be said
that the force of will called. into exercise in keeping your



19
selves up to the standard  of scholarship Necessary to
enable you to pass the requisite examinations has generated
force of character, which again is reinforced by a habit of
steady persistent effort, constituting altogether the surest
possible guaranty of success. You have attempted one
important thing in life and have accomplished it. You go
into the world with that courage and stability which a well
earned and complete victory gives an inexperienced soldier.
No one who has taken a partial course can have quite the
same feeling. You who have been through the complete
course have laid the foundation of your education deep
and strong. You have come to dislike cheap and unsubstantial things. They do not consist with those mental
habits and tastes which you have formed during the years
of study and thorough discipline which you have passed
through. Among all your learning you have learned one
thing perhaps more important than all else-no student
goes through an entire college course without learning itand that is, that while you may be credited occasionally
for what is a matter of luck, it is unreliable through a period of time, and that there is no permanent success that
is not earned. You have also discovered that the correlate of the proposition is equally true:-that no well directed, persistent effort will finally fail of its reward.
These ideas, the most valuable with which a young man can
enter life, a thorough course of classical study cannot fail
to inculcate. A thoroughly educated young man does not
aim at a meteoric reputation. But he is found among those
who are gradually and noiselessly feeling their way to
permanent professional or commercial success.  He has
acquired a taste for the gradual, the noiseless and the permanent.
These are some of the more obvious advantages which
a liberally educated man enjoys. They are the advantages




20
that have a p: actical bearing, and upon which he may preSb
icate his hopes of material success.  But there are other
advantages that are to be measured by a different standard.
A pitiful object is a human being who can see no value
in anything that cannot be measured by dollars and cents.
Yet the world is full of such men. They regard a life as
a comparative failure that has not been blessed with
worldly thrift. They have no maxims of conduct for
young men, except such as relate to economy, industry and
business success. Worldly prudence constitutes the religion of these men. It presides over all the affairs of their
households. It constitutes the atmosphere in which their
children are raised. In its name the school houses are
built and in its name, I had almost said, the very altar of
God is erected. Now what makes these men unlovely?
They are not destitute of positive merits.  They constitute
the back bone of American society. They own the rail
roads and the banks and the elevators, and they built the
identical churches to which you and I proudly point as the
result and sign of our christian civilization. But they
lack sentiment and emotion. They lack the ideal which
raises man from the thraldom of the actual, and exalts him
to the realm of the possible. It would benefit them some
to read a good novel if they could be affected by it, for
their emotional nature is a waste. They go to church to
be sure, and but for the fact that they go there for the express purpose of setting a good example before their clerks
and children, and of getting religion as a matter of prudence, they might sometimes be moved by the presentation of spiritual truth, and be induced, for the moment at
least, to accept religion for religion's sake,-for its own
blessed immediate reality. But they have cultivated only
the outlooking, the observing faculties.  The reflective
and introspective faculties are dormant; the emotions are




21
awakened only by the sensuous; and the spiritual nature
is a waste. It is with difficulty that they can see any
other than the outward, material world.'1 hey are inclined
to think that the literal body will be raised, that heaven
is a place, and that the joys of heaven are not inappropiately set forth under the imagery of golden crowns and
golden streets. This is the penalty doubtless which God
inflicts on men who through the period of a lifetime cultivate
only the outlooking faculties and violate the eternal laws
of the spirit. To observe, to strengthen the power of observing and to know the material world in all its relations
and aptitudes is the present tendency of the American
mind. And what is the drift of American scholarship?
That too is in the same direction. It is sciencewar(l.
And even the more abstract and disciplinary sciences,
the Mathematics, Astronomy and Mechanical Philosophy,
are beginning to give way to those that afford more scope
for the observing faculties, and bring the scholar into more
intimate acquaintance with the material world. The great
thing now is to search out and be able to know all the
flowers and plants and reptiles and birds and insects on the
face of the earth, and to call them by their names. That
is modern scholarship.
Far be it from me to disparage the study of Natural History. It has its place in every complete education. But
Natural History is a child's study. In children the observing powers are active, and the reflective are not. Nature
dictates that the observing powers of children should have
full scope. It would be difficult perhaps to over educate
a child in that direction. The knowledge gathered is not
only what the young mind craves, but the process of the
education if properly conducted takes the child abroad
into the open air and sunshine, where in sympathy with
Nature and all her genial influences he may grow up
naturally as a child should grow.




22
Who of us have not been touched with that beautiful
little poem of Longfellow's in which Agassiz is represented as the child of Nature.
And Nature the dear old nurse, took
The child upon her knee
Saying, "' Here is a story book
Thy father has written for thee.
Come, wander with me," she said,
" Into regions yet untrod,
And read what is still unread
In the manuscripts of God."
And he wandered away and away,
With Nature, the dear old nurse,
Who sang to him night and day
The rhymes of the universe.
But the time comes when we should listen to other
rhymes and read other manuscripts than those of the
physical creation.  The introspective faculties must be
developed, and that is done by the study of mental and
moral philosophy, logic, art, criticism and philology. If
we stop short of these studies mental balance is lost; the
noblest part of our nature lies dormant, and we fall inevitably into the deplorable drift and tendency of the American mind. What. we want is a corrective of our over
cultivated observing powers, and over practical, materialistic tendency. If there be any element of scholarship that
can serve as such corrective, that is the element upon
which emphasis is to be placed. We believe such element
is to be found in the study of the ancient classics.
That study brings the mind directly back upon itself. The
material world is lost sight of. We deal with thought. Whatever beauties charm us are the beauties of thought. That
thought is given us in a foreign word. Often there is no




23
English word that expresses it. In such case we swing
aloof from thp foreign word and holding the thought directly before the mind unsupported by any word we go in
search of an English expression, and while searching we
weigh, balance and discriminate. We call into exercise the
reason, the imagination, the judgment, the taste and the
memory; the exercise constituting altogether the finest
mental discipline that could be devised.  The study of
Mathematics to be sure calls into exercise the reasoning
powers.  So chaste and severe are the demonstrations, it
is invaluable as a discipline.  It can do for the mind
what the study of the classics cannot, but it is equally true
that the study of the classics can do what the study of
Mathematics cannot. Both discipline the reasoning powers,
but how different the kinds of reasoning. The one concerns only numbers and quantity. The other embraces
the whole field of human thought, motives and passions.
The classical student has no unbending formula upon which
he can rely to conduct him to absolute truth. The quantities with which he deals are too variable even for the application of the Calculus.  He cannot translate a page
without the exercise of his reasoning powers, but the factors
which enter into his calculations are grammatical dependence, logical sequence, historic truth, poetic beauty, and all
the accumulated treasures of Geography, Ethnography
and Archaeology. What possible exercise of the reasoning powers can be comparable to that, whereby the student
in a foreign and strangely constructed language gropes his
way amid the glorious monuments of the world's past
achievements in thought and deed? The disciplinary effect
of classical studies is strictly and properly culture. Where
the reason shades off into taste, where the reason shades
off into judgment, where the reason underlies the imagination, affording it its surest support and control, there the




24
disciplinary effect of classical studies is realized, and that
constitutes culture.
Then there is the classic spirit of the ancient Greeks
and Romans that has charmed the world for so many ages.
Says Dr. Temple in his clebrated essay of the " Essays
and Reviews," speaking of the ancient Greeks and Romans;
"It is not their genius only which makes them attractive,
it is the classic life of the people of that day.  It is the
image there only to be seen of our highest matured powers
in their freshest vigor; it is the unattainable grace of the
prime of manhood; it is the pervading sense of youthful
beauty. The common workmen of those times breathed
the air of the Gods. To combine the highest powers of
the intellect with the freshness of youth, was possible
only once, and that is the glory of the classic nations.
J he inspiration which is drawn by man from the memory
of those whom he loved and admired in the spring time of
life is drawn by the world now from the study of Greece
and Ptome."
The same spirit which pervaded their literature pervaded
their art. Bayard Taylor, speaking of the yet unshaken
columns of the Parthenon, says:  "In their perfect symmetry was solved the enigma of that harmony which is
the very being of God and the operation of his laws.
Those blocks of sunny marble were piled upon each other
to the chorus of the same song which the seasons sing in
their ordered round, and the planets in their balanced orbits. But the rythmic pulsations of that jubilant religion
have died away and earth' will never see another Parthenon."  For the same reason we may say; earth will never
see another Iliad. To us the spirit of that art and that
literature is especially important. De Tocqueville says:
"' o literature places those fine qualities in which the
writers of democracies are naturally deficient, in bolder




25
relief than that of the ancients; no literature therefore,"
he says, " ought to be more studied in democratic times."
That is, the idea, I may observe, in conclusion, which
fifty years ago took so strong a hold of the mind of the
great apostle of American democracy, the sage of Monticello. Having devoted his life to combatting the political
ideas of the old world; warring upon caste and privilege;
breaking down the administration of Adams because it
exhibited, as he thought, too much of the spirit which
animated the governing classes of England; recognizing in
every fellow citizen an American sovereign; not satisfied
with having endowed him with the ballot to be counted,
but anxious to so elevate him as to give him a potential
voice in the affairs of the nation; we find him in those last
halcyon days of his retirement-his political battles all
fought and won, enshrined in a nation's heart, the din of
party strife reverberating in the distance —we find him no
longer thinking of politics, but of the classical education
needed by his democratic countrymen, and engaged in accomplishing what he deemed the crowning achievement of
his life, the founding of the University of Virginia. There
are men still living who saw the aged patriarch as he was
accustomed to sit in the portico of his elevated country
seat, overlooking the institution which his brain had
conceived and his munificence had aided to endow, his
heart still warm, and beating as ever responsive to the
great heart of the American people, with a clearness of
mental vision that made him almost prophetic as he cast
the horoscope of the future of America, and foresaw that
the highest style of American democracy would necessarily
include the wisdom and culture of the schools.  Such was
the vision of the venerable seer after all other objects of
earthly interest had faded from his view.
While, therefore, the American people shall cherish the




26
political principles of Jefferson, let them not forget the
connection which he thought he saw between the full fruiition of democratic ideas, and the liberality and polish and
culture which result from an acquaintance with the art and
literature of the polished nations of antiquity.