CLASSICAL STUDIES. 
 
 I AM not sure that Education is a legitimate topic for investigation 
 and discussion by this Academy. And yet it is both a science and an 
 art ; a science of definite principles, well-organized methods, and de- 
 monstrable results ; and an art of measureless practical importance. 
 But however this may be, the question is no longer an open one, but 
 has been decided for us by the authority of our venerable ex-Presi- 
 dent, who, at one of our recent meetings, read an elaborate essay, 
 which he has since published, on " Classical and Utilitarian Studies." 
 That Essay, learned, witty, and ingenious, as everything is which 
 comes from his pen, is further remarkable because it is written by an 
 excellent classical scholar, and it contains a sweeping condemnation 
 of Classical Studies, especially when used as an organon of education. 
 As Dr. Bigelow has forgotten more Greek than I ever learned, he 
 will pardon me for saying that he has indirectly and unconsciously 
 refuted himself, since his paper, as appears from the very face of it, 
 could not have been written except by a proficient in the very studies 
 which it condemns. And this Essay has gone forth to the world, not 
 only with all the weight of authority which belongs to its authorship, 
 but with the implied sanction of this Academy, if some voice, how- 
 ever feeble, be not here raised to controvert the doctrine which it 
 teaches. 
 
 And what is this doctrine ? Speaking briefly, it is, that this bus- 
 tling and practical age in which we live, — this age of steam-engines, 
 railroads, gas-lights, and Atlantic telegraphs, when the physical sci- 
 ences are growing with a rapidity that takes away one's breath, and 
 startling us with new wonders every day, — has no time or thought to 
 waste on dead languages, obsolete sciences, or works of literature and 
 art which served well enough to amuse the world when it was in its 
 
4 
 
 CLASSICAL STUDIES. 
 
 infancy. The time has come for the navigator to take a new depart- 
 ure. Efface the record of all that was said or done before the year 
 1500, or thereabouts. Throw the Greek and Latin classics overboard ; 
 abandon even " the intellectual pursuits " of those who wrote them ; 
 stick to " utilitarian science and studies, connected with practical, ma- 
 terial, tangible, and useful things." "For more than five thousand 
 years, — from the beginning of history, until about three centuries 
 ago, — the human race had made little progress in anything which we 
 now regard as constituting material welfare, or growth in power, 
 knowledge, and means of happiness." " A few of the last generations 
 have not only excelled, but greatly distanced, the collective perform- 
 ances of all those who have preceded them." Abandon, then, " the 
 barren studies " of the olden time ; learn " the new philosophy," which 
 dates only from the age of Bacon, and is illustrated by the marvels of 
 modern discovery and invention. A lifetime is too short to acquire 
 an adequate comprehension of what the utilitarian sciences of our own 
 day have accomplished for the world's welfare. Let the dead past 
 bury its dead. And this advice is given not only for the distribution 
 of time and effort by men of mature years, but with especial reference 
 to the education of the young. 
 
 This brief summary, given mostly in his own words, shows that Dr. 
 Bigelow's quarrel is not only with the languages, but with " the intel- 
 lectual pursuits," of the ancients, — with all the sciences and arts in 
 which they peculiarly excelled. His censure strikes not merely their 
 forms of speech, but their literature, their habits of thought, their arts, 
 
 • their logic, and philosophy. It is little that he denies the educational 
 value of these things ; the present generation, he thinks, can profitably 
 discard them altogether. The world, we are told, has outgrown the 
 Greeks and Romans in all respects. The Essayist traverses the two 
 thousand years of history which immediately preceded the age of 
 Bacon, and finds that all is barren. To him, physical science is every- 
 thing ; the moral sciences are a mere wilderness of words and waste 
 
 * of labor. And even physical science deserves cultivation only so far 
 as it leads to definite and tangible results, and conduces to the mate- 
 rial welfare of mankind, — only so far as it facilitates the invention 
 of such things as locomotives, spinning-jennies, and Parrott guns. 
 The Essay might bear as its motto the maxim of Sardanapalus : 
 " Eat, drink, and obtain the maximum of physical ease and enjoyment ; 
 the rest is not worth a fillip." Not Dr. Bigelow's original intention 
 surely, but the necessities of his argument, drove him to these sweep- 
 
CLASSICAL STUDIES. 
 
 5 
 
 ing iconoclastic doctrines. He finds it impossible to decry the study 
 of the ancient languages except upon those low utilitarian principles 
 which preclude our finding merit in anything that does not promote 
 physical comfort, or gratify ambition by enslaving outward nature to 
 our material uses. I am glad that it is so. The extravagance of the 
 conclusions is a complete reductio ad absurdum of the premises. 
 
 The Essayist has overlooked one point, a due estimation of which is 
 essential to any full consideration of the subject. Harvard College has 
 less than four hundred and fifty undergraduates ; add those at Williams, 
 Amherst, Tufts, and one or two smaller institutions, and we have, in 
 this State, a total of about one thousand students in College. It might 
 seem that there are about one thousand others in schools and acade- 
 mies, who are pursuing preparatory Classical Studies ; but, as less 
 than half of the undergraduate period is devoted to these studies, and 
 not more than two years are spent in acquiring Latin and Greek 
 enough for admission to college, — the remainder of the time being 
 given to mathematics and physical or moral science, — it follows that 
 there are not, at any one time, more than about one thousand or twelve 
 hundred young men in Massachusetts who are studying what are 
 called the dead languages. Our population is over twelve hundred 
 thousand, of whom about one sixth, or two hundred thousand, are, or 
 ought to be, receiving a school education ; in other words, one out of 
 every two hundred pupils is, at any one time, studying the Classics. 
 This proportion is probably larger in Massachusetts than in any other 
 State in the Union, and I believe it is quite as large as in any country 
 in Europe, with the possible exception of Germany, where the direct 
 patronage of government fosters these studies to a somewhat unnatural 
 extent. 
 
 Then, if asked whether our industrious and inventive contemporaries 
 would do well to intermit their mechanical pursuits in order to study 
 the ancient languages and sciences, the answer is, Certainly not ; no 
 sane advocate of Classical Studies expects or wishes the thousandth 
 part of the whole community to do any such thing. But what then ? 
 Because not one man out of a hundred thousand needs to become a 
 practical astronomer, we do not therefore break our telescopes and 
 pull down our observatories. The function of the select few is not 
 to be construed into a universal obligation. The real question is, 
 whether those few, — about the two hundredth part of the whole edu- 
 cable number, — who have the time, means, and wish to obtain a lib' 
 era/ education, — that is, to give themselves, up to about twenty-one 
 
6 
 
 CLASSICAL STUDIES. 
 
 years of age, to general studies, before undertaking the special studies 
 of some particular profession, — should be encouraged to devote one 
 fourth or one third part of this training-time to the ancient languages 
 and sciences ; and this, not more for their own sake, than for that of 
 the whole community who are hereafter to profit by their scholastic 
 attainments. The Classics have no place in our Primary or Grammar 
 schools ; we would not even make the study of them imperative in our 
 Scientific Schools or Technological Institutes, though, for reasons soon 
 to be given, the pupils in the two last would unquestionably be better 
 fitted for their work by the acquisition of a little Latin and Greek. 
 And even in our Colleges, as already explained, less than half of the 
 pupils' time is devoted to these languages. 
 
 I am not going to w^eary you with an attempt even to recapitulate 
 all the grounds of apology (if I must use that word) for Classical 
 learning. The field has been so thoroughly trodden down by the 
 multitudes who have passed over it, that there is not a square inch of 
 green turf left, and it offers but a dreary prospect. Scholars can well 
 afford to rest their case on this single consideration, — that the words 
 and the thoughts of the old Greeks and Romans have been so thor- 
 oughly incorporated, so deeply ingrained, into modern language and 
 literature, whether French, Italian, Spanish, or English, that no 
 thorough knowledge or appreciation of these derivatives is possible 
 except by going to the sources whence they were drawn ; that this 
 infusion has taken place, even in a greater degree, into modern science, 
 which is so built upon ancient learning, — its precise, far-extended, 
 and ever-increasing nomenclature being almost exclusively Greek, — 
 that, without a tolerable knowledge of that language, it may fairly be 
 said that the student of science, however earnest and capable, knows 
 hardly a word of what he is talking about. Without such knowledge, 
 the lawyer must seem, even to himself, in the names of the writs which 
 he .every day draws, and in the phraseology of the legal aphorisms 
 which he is compelled constantly to cite, to be prating a jargon com- 
 pared with which even Choctaw would be significant and harmonious. 
 Without it, the physician cannot read intelligently a single page of a 
 medical book. Without it, the divine, except by dim approximation 
 and with much blind trust in very fallible human guides, cannot inter- 
 pret the very title-deeds of man's salvation. Language itself, in its 
 widest sense, not of this or that particular nation, but of the whole 
 human race, — that marvellous work, as I believe, not of man, but of 
 God himself, — with all its intricacies of structure, complex harmonies, 
 
CLASSICAL STUDIES. 
 
 7 
 
 and subtle adaptations to the nicest shades of meaning, cannot be 
 anatomized in structure or unfolded in thought, except by the aid of 
 that special, and yet typical, form of it which was spoken in Attica 
 two thousand years ago. Universal grammar is a science which owes 
 not merely its terminology, but its very being and substance, to the 
 light which the special formations and historical development of Latin 
 and Greek, with their derivatives, have shed upon the structure of all 
 other tongues. It is but an illustration of this- general fact to say of 
 English grammar, in all its parts, — orthography, etymology, syntax, 
 and prosody, — as taught in our lowest public schools, that it is only, 
 as these very words import, an uncouth representative — a sort of 
 bastard child — of the Latin and Greek Accidence. And I believe 
 most practical teachers will bear me out in asserting, that it is never 
 taught with any thoroughness or to much profit, except as a conse- 
 quent, and not as an antecedent, of the Latin grammar. How could 
 it be otherwise, in view of the very complex origin of our language, 
 its vigorous but somewhat wild development, and the heterogeneous 
 elements of which it is made up ? Our noble mother-tongue is alike 
 remarkable for its copiousness, its flexibility, its strength, and its law- 
 lessness. It will acknowledge no rule but 
 
 " usus 
 
 Quern penes arbitrium est et jus et norma loquendi ; " 
 
 it will conform to no analogy; but its abundant life and luxuriant 
 growth push forth into the most anomalous forms of branch, leaf, and 
 fruit. Nearly forty per cent, of its vocabulary, it has been computed, 
 is Latin or Greek ; and only in the complex but regular structure 
 of those languages, can we find — I will not say a key to its intricacies, 
 but — a criterion and instrument by which we can trace its processes 
 of development and measure its departures from rule. 
 
 EngHsh literature, too, is so deeply imbued with the spirit of the 
 Classical ages that a large portion of it cannot be read with any en- 
 joyment or intelligent appreciation, except under the light reflected 
 from those stars of a distant firmament. Take Milton, for instance, 
 in either of his two epics or in his minor poems ; and, apart from the 
 gorgeous diction, so redolent of Greece and Rome, you find the very 
 matter and substance of his verses so deeply saturated with the Clas- 
 sical aroma, — so rich with allusions, imitations, and illustrations from 
 the old perennial sources, from Greek and Roman mythology, history, 
 tragedy, and art, — that, take away all recollection of these, and the 
 
8 
 
 CLASSICAL STUDIES. 
 
 poet's coloring fades, his spirit evaporates, and nothing remains but a 
 caput mortuum. Even of his " Samson Agonistes," it may be affirmed, 
 that only the framework is Hebrew ; the substance, the drapery, the 
 soul within, is pure Greek, — a mere infusion of Sophocles and Eurip- 
 ides. Nearly as much may be said of Cowley, Dryden, Gray, John- 
 son, Keats, and even large portions of Tennyson, Mrs. Barrett, and 
 other popular bards of our own day. Bacon, rightly or wrongly 
 claimed as the founder of modern utilitarian science, wrote half of his 
 works in Latin, and decanted so much of the Classics into his English 
 prose, even into his most popular work, the Essays, as to be well nigh 
 unintelligible to any but a Classical scholar, except in a richly anno- 
 tated edition. Thomas Hobbes, the true master and exponent of 
 modern utilitarianism and materialism, also wrote Latin nearly half 
 the time, and spent his youth on a translation of Thucydides, and his 
 old age on a metrical version of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Follow 
 down the line of English prose writers of any note, from Hooker and 
 Bacon to Macaulay and Sir William Hamilton, striking out of each 
 every allusion to the Classics, — every citation from and everything 
 suggested by them, — and what will remain but ragged fragments, 
 alike destitute of coloring, coherence, and beauty ? 
 
 Dr. Bigelow's Essay appears as a further exposition and defence of 
 the theory maintained in his Discourse on the Limits of Education, 
 pronounced at the opening of the Technological Institute ; and must 
 be viewed in connection also with an able Lecture on Classical Studies, 
 published, a short time before, by Prof. Atkinson of that establishment. 
 But the peculiar functions and studies of that Institute, as it seems to 
 me, stand in no need of this indirect advocacy, and will not be promoted 
 by depreciating the quite dissimilar work and office of our American 
 Colleges. The great want of special training in physical science and 
 art, by many who have not the time, means, or taste for a full course 
 of liberal education, was recognized long since by the friends of such 
 education, and was met, over twenty years ago, by the establishment, 
 first at Harvard, and afterwards at most of our New England Colleges, 
 of a " Scientific School," open to all who are acquainted with no lan- 
 guage but their own, and who desire to study no other. Following 
 the example thus set, and organized on precisely the same plan, the 
 educational department of the Technological Institute has been created, 
 to meet the wants of Boston, for whose youth it is evidently a great con- 
 venience to be enabled to pursue their studies and still to live at home. 
 The design is an excellent one, and every friend of liberal, as well as of 
 
CLASSICAL STUDIES. 
 
 9 
 
 scientific, studies will bid God-speed to the enterprise. But it seems 
 very injudicious on the part of its special advocates to attempt to 
 recommend it still further, by maintaining that a proper College educa- 
 tion is worthless, or unsuited to the wants of the age, and a scientific 
 one all-sufficient for everybody. At any rate, is it quite consistent 
 for them, under such circumstances, as soon as they have created a 
 professorship of English language and literature, to proceed to appoint 
 to it a gentleman who has been a most accomplished teacher of Latin 
 and Greek for about a quarter of a century, and to fill nearly every 
 other professorship in the Institute by distinguished graduates of Col- 
 leges ? Such action is an involuntary confession, on their part, of the 
 truth of the doctrine here maintained, — that, whatever may be said 
 against the utility of Classical Studies, a good proficiency in them is, 
 at any rate, indispensable for obtaining or imparting any competent 
 knowledge of the English language or its literature. 
 
 I should not have alluded to this bit of local history, if it did not 
 farther illustrate the importance to the whole community of that course 
 of liberal studies, in which the Classics occupy the chief place, — of that 
 comprehensive, systematiCj and generous training, enjoyed though it 
 be only by comparatively few, — which no one thinks of seeking 
 elsewhere than in the walls of a College. It teaches the teachers. It 
 breaks down the partitions, and even the jealousies, which would other- 
 wise sunder and impede labor in special vocations. By laying the 
 foundations broad, even if not deep, — by widening the range of our 
 sympathies, as well as of our power of comprehension, — by counter- 
 acting the necessarily narrow and narrowing influences of the division 
 of labor when applied to intellectual pursuits, it creates, what here 
 in America, at any rate, we are in sore need of, a literary and scien- 
 tific public, able and patient always at least to hear, not infrequently 
 qualified to understand, sometimes competent to judge. 
 
 And here I need not wander far in search of an illustration, but 
 may find one in the very constitution of this Academy, and an echo in 
 the feelings, as well as the judgment, of every gentleman who hears 
 me. Here, our functions are as unexclusive as our corporate appella- 
 tion, which might otherwise perhaps appear somewhat sweeping and 
 pretentious. Here, more and more frequently, perhaps, than in any 
 other assembly called together at stated times on this continent, we 
 are reminded of the essential brotherhood of all the arts and sciences ; 
 and this truth cannot be felt, as well as understood, anywhere so well 
 as in a society composed in the main of scholars, — of liberally edu- 
 2 
 
10 
 
 CLASSICAL STUDIES. 
 
 cated men. I have not sought out the statistics of this subject, as it 
 would be an impertinence to do so ; but I fear not to avow the belief, 
 that more than three-fourths of our number are graduates of Colleges. 
 Neither can there be any fear lest I should seem to be here making 
 an invidious distinction ; since it appears from the proceedings of this 
 evening,^ as well as from the results of several other meetings which 
 are still recent, that what few honors we have to bestow, our Rum- 
 ford medals and our elections to office, often fall to the share of the 
 small minority who are more or less self-taught. All the merit which 
 my argument requires me to claim for those of us who have been 
 trained at College is, that our Classical Studies, however little else they 
 may have done for us, have, at least, so far liberalized our minds and 
 increased our power of intelligent apprehension, that we can gladly 
 hear, and to some small extent understand and appreciate, whatever is 
 done to extend the bounds even of the most recondite and difficult 
 science. We cannot make telescopes, probably could not adjust or 
 use them when made ; but we can honor those who have this power, 
 and are thereby enabled to pierce farther into the remote secrets of 
 God's universe than mortal eye ever saw before. Our Latin and 
 Greek, however imperfectly remembered, serve at least to remind 
 us, during the somewhat abstruse and otherwise forbidding expositions 
 and discussions to which we often listen here, that all the sciences, 
 whether they date from Aristotle and Hipparchus, or from this nine- 
 teenth century, whether the latest improvements in them come from 
 Italy, Germany, France, England, or the United States, still speak a 
 common language, and that one which we learned when we were boys, 
 and which calls up a rush of pleasant memories. We can hear, not 
 only without flinching, but even with gleams of significance and de- 
 light, Prof. Peirce discourse about quaternions, isoperimetrics, loxo- 
 dromics, and brachystochrones ; or you. Sir, of exogens, endogens, 
 phyllotaxis, epiphytes, dichotomous, pentdgynous, and pentandrous plants ; 
 or Mr. Agassiz, of digitigrades, acalephs, gasteropods, cephalopods, 
 pachyderms, echinoderms, — and other "gorgons and chimceras dire ; " 
 and even Dr. Bigelow, talking Greek in spite of himself, by lecturing 
 about diagnosis, prognosis, prophylactics, an (Esthetics, endemics, epi- 
 demics, and sporadics ; and yet farther, though physical science, in 
 
 1 At this meeting of the Academy, tlie Kumford Medal was delivered to Mr. 
 Alvan Clark, of Cambridgcport, for improvements made byliim in the constructioa 
 of lenses for refracting telescopes. 
 
CLASSICAL STUDIES. 
 
 11 
 
 the intoxication of great success, has been somewhat encroaching and 
 domineering of late, even logic and metaphysics are permitted at least 
 to whisper of suhsumptions, epicheiremas, sorites, and the qaantijica- 
 tion of predicates, or of ontology, entelechy, noumena, apperception, 
 teleology, and synthetic cognitions a priori. These, and ten thousand 
 others like them, are not merely intelligible as simple appellatives or 
 single words, with a sort of Classical fragrance about them, but in their 
 composite character they are concise definitions or descriptions, which 
 stir the imagination and the memory, as well as the intellect proper. 
 As quaint old Fuller says, to us "the joints of these compound words 
 are so naturally oiled, that they run nimbly on the tongue, which 
 makes them, though long, never tedious, because significant." But to 
 those who have no tincture of Classical learning, whether addressed 
 to the ear or the eye, they are only sesquipedalian agglutinations of 
 syllables, as little significant as abracadabra or Ghrononhotontliologos. 
 
 Any one who should fancy that they are too numerous, cumbersome, 
 and pedantic, or that they might be replaced by pithy English words, 
 may be assured that his education in any one science has not yet 
 reached the pons asinorum. These formidable polysyllables are " a 
 kind of short-hand of the science, or algebraic notation ; " and without 
 them, the investigator would be as helpless as an algebraist or chemist 
 without his symbols, or an arithmetician without the Arabic numerals. 
 In the last analysis, all science, whether physical or moral, is nothing 
 but skilful classification ; and without a curiously compounded nomen- 
 clature and terminology, which can be built up only from Latin or 
 Greek roots, classification would be but another name for confusion. 
 And for this use, it does not matter much that most of us retain but a 
 very dim memory of our studies at school and College ; as almost num- 
 berless compounds can be formed by ringing the changes on a very 
 few elements, a mere smattering of the Classical vocabulary, such as 
 is kept up almost involuntarily by reading common English prose and 
 poetry, suffices to interpret these scientific shibboleths. A very few 
 prepositions often repeated, a small stock of adjectives, also frequently 
 recurrent, and a moderate supply of the most familiar nouns are forged 
 into the keys which unlock every coffer in the treasure-house. 
 
 Intelligent companionship, appreciation, and sympathy, such as the 
 scientific associations constituted like this Academy are enabled to 
 afford, through the fact that all the sciences speak what may be called 
 a common language, together with the secret consciousness of the far 
 wider companionship and sympathy which is kept alive by finding this 
 
12 
 
 CLASSICAL STUDIES. 
 
 scientific vocabulary also common to nearly all civilized nations, 
 though in ordinary discourse they use a babel of diverse tongues, fur- 
 nish an almost indispensable encouragement for persistent scientific 
 effort and research. The greatest need of the savant at the present 
 day, especially in the more recondite branches of inquiry, as it seems 
 to me, is the need of an audience. He is in no danger of starving ; 
 the age and the country have at least raised him above that peril. 
 Books are always at hand, and even laboratories and museums 
 are frequent. But isolate him altogether in his work, cut off his 
 readers and hearers, as Dr. Bigelow proposes to do, first by breaking 
 up the comprehensive scheme of studies at College, where alone one 
 comes to know a little of almost everything, and then by cutting up 
 from the roots the common language of the learned, and you dis- 
 hearten him altogether ; you reduce him first to silence, and finally to 
 inaction. 
 
 How important this community of scientific terms among all culti- 
 vated languages is to the savant^ may be seen from the example of 
 the only nation in Europe which seems to be under no necessity of 
 building up its technicalities out of the dead languages. Alone among 
 all modern tongues, the German fully rivals the Greek in its power of 
 forming compounds without limit from native roots ; and it has used 
 this power to a considerable extent, by employing such words as 
 sauerstoff, wasserstoff^ Izohhtoff^ and stickstqff, instead of oxygen, hy- 
 drogen, carbon, and nitrogen. But, convenient at home as such a 
 vocabulary certainly is, and flattering to national pride, it is found to 
 place too great a bar upon their freedom of scientific intercourse with 
 other nations ; and hence their list of such terms has never been com- 
 pleted, and it is but in partial use even as far as it goes. So true is 
 it what Homer says, as cited and applied to illustrate this very point 
 both by Plato and Aristotle, that 
 
 " By mutual confidence and mutual aid, 
 Great deeds are done, and great discoveries made." 
 
 Because the sciences in these modern times have been multiplied 
 and enlarged, and the arts increased. Dr. Bigelow argues that any 
 liberal and comprehensive culture of mind, such as is attempted in our 
 Colleges through a course of general studies, has become impracticable. 
 To adopt his own metaphor, as " the educational loaf on which the 
 community is fed " has been so much enlarged, he will not allow to 
 Classical literature even a fragment of the crust. And farther, be- 
 
CLASSICAL STUDIES. 
 
 13 
 
 cause the division of labor has been profitable in mechanical pursuits, 
 he affirms that pupils cannot " undertake to make themselves compe- 
 tent representatives of all the various sciences, the literary studies, the 
 languages dead and living, which are now professedly taught in our 
 Colleges and seminaries." Of course, they cannot ; but in view of that 
 solidarity of the sciences, which every day's progress is making more 
 evident, the real question is, whether a student can become a " com- 
 petent representative " of any one science, without that very general 
 culture of mind which is nowhere attempted but in College ; or whether 
 any one scientific or literary pursuit would flourish and expand, if 
 each were isolated, none but its special votaries having any acquaint- 
 ance with it whatever, and these being doomed, like each class of 
 artisans in a big workshop, to spend their lives intellectually in mak- 
 ing the eighteenth part of a pin. Dr. Bigelow's scheme of a scientific 
 education begins by depriving the student of the common language 
 of all the sciences, proceeds by leaving him without any scientific pub- 
 lic, either at home or abroad, competent to hear and judge his work, 
 and ends by requiring him to mount to the mast-head after he has 
 taken away all the shrouds. Such a scheme might produce a chemist, 
 though I doubt it; but it certainly would not make even the eigh- 
 teenth part of a man. And yet the Essayist complains of sciolism. 
 "Why, the worst sort of sciolism, and one with which we are peculiarly 
 afflicted in this country, is that men assume to be scientific chemists 
 on an amount of general knowledge which would hardly qualify them 
 to be decent apothecaries ; or prate about the most difficult problems in 
 geology, before they know enough of botany or zoology to pronounce 
 on the character of a single fossil. Yet the starved and miserly train- 
 ing which breeds such pretenders, we are now invited to substitute for 
 the liberal and comprehensive culture, which aims to develop all the 
 faculties, and thereby to " fit a man to perform justly, skilfully, and mag- 
 nanimously all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war." 
 
 I appeal to your own favorite science. Sir. What sort of a botanist 
 is he, who knows nothing of physiology ; or how much physiology can 
 he acquire, if he is not something of a chemist ; or what is chemistry, 
 if not based on physics ; or can one become a physicist, without a com- 
 petent acquaintance with mathematics ; and how much time and labor 
 must be spent on the very elements — the far-extended vocabulary 
 and notation — of each of these sciences, by one whose total ignorance 
 of Latin and Greek obliges him to master them, as it were, mechan- 
 ically and by main strength, just as he would commit to memory whole 
 
14 
 
 CLASSICAL STUDIES. 
 
 pages of a dictionary ? I suspect the first lesson you would assign him 
 in botany would be the first six pages of the Latin Grammar, — to be 
 taken on an empty stomach. 
 
 Besides, in the argument we are now considering, it is forgotten 
 that a process of generalization, condensation, and elimination takes 
 place, at least pari passu, generally in advance, of every step of prog- 
 ress in science. Often, indeed, the progress consists in this process of 
 " boiling down " the previous results ; one general law takes the place 
 of a multitude of formerly isolated facts. Hence it is, as has been 
 often remarked, that an undergraduate in College may now easily ac- 
 quire mathematical truths and formulas which Newton was ignorant 
 of ; he must know more astronomy than Copernicus did, and more 
 physics than Galileo ; and he makes these attainments, too, with but 
 half the time and effort which it cost the contemporaries of those illus- 
 trious men to rise even to the level of their own day. And if we are to • 
 adopt the mode of estimating relative merit which the. Essayist coolly 
 applies to the ancients and moderns, acting on the maxim that a liv- 
 ing dog is better than a dead lion, it follows that our school-boys are 
 to be preferred over the great discoverers of truth, — the teachers of 
 the world. 
 
 Dr. Bigelow affirms that " the world mainly owes its present ad- 
 vanced and civilized state to the influence of certain physical discov- 
 eries and inventions, of comparatively recent date, among which are 
 conspicuous the printing-press, the mariner's compass, the steam-en- 
 gine," etc. And, in speaking of those great events which are usually 
 considered as marking the origin of modern civilization, namely, the 
 Reformation, the exodus of Greeks from Constantinople, and the 
 revival of letters, — two of these, be it observed, being only names 
 for the revival of Classical Studies, especially of Greek, — he still 
 asserts, that " at the root of all these agencies, and deep and far beyond 
 and above them, was the vivifying nurture of utilitarian science." If 
 so, it is somewhat remarkable that the effect preceded the cause by 
 about a century, since the dawn of modern utiHtarian science cannot 
 be placed earlier than the age of Bacon and Galileo, at the very close 
 of the sixteenth century, when the three great agencies in question 
 had been at work about a hundred years. 
 
 But let this pass, as I would call attention only to the main doc- 
 trine here and elsewhere propounded by the Essayist, which, like 
 Mr. Buckle's theory, makes civilization itself mainly consist in such 
 things as gas-lights, steam-engines, sewing-machines, photographs, 
 
CLASSICAL STUDIES. 
 
 15 
 
 and vulcanized India-rubber. I reject the definition altogether. Not 
 what men have^ but what they think and believe, or, rather, what they 
 are, are at once the tokens of their culture and the sources of their 
 strength. Turn a civilized community naked into a wilderness or a 
 desert, and they will be a civilized community still ; and their hands, 
 guided by their minds, will subdue that wilderness and turn that 
 desert into a garden. The Athenians, in the age of Pericles, had not 
 one of these soi-disant material and tangible means and agents of 
 civilization ; but these Athenians, saving only their lack of one ele- 
 ment, which originated in Palestine some four hundred years after- 
 wards, were the most highly civilized people the world has ever 
 known ; and their works, their arts, their literature, their philosophy, 
 have fed and colored, from within outwards, the civilization of all 
 succeeding times. The men of that age and place are even now 
 
 " the dead, but sceptred, sovrans, 
 Who still rule our spirits from their urns." 
 
 As Sir William Hamilton tells us, " every learner in science is now 
 familiar with more truths than Aristotle or Plato ever dreamt of 
 knowing ; yet, compared with the Stagirite or the Athenian, how few 
 even of our masters of modern science rank any higher than intel- 
 lectual barbarians ! " 
 
 After all, have these recent physical discoveries and inventions 
 contributed so largely even to our material well-being, that we can 
 fairly consider them as the glories of modern civilization ? Have 
 most of them had any other effect than to feed man's vanity and 
 nourish sterile wonder ? Take, for example, one of the most brilliant 
 and striking of the whole number, and one to which abstruse science 
 most largely contributed, — the discovery of Neptune. What matters 
 it to you or me personally, or to any human being, or even to the 
 other members of the solar system itself, that, on its outmost verge, 
 some two thousand eight hundred millions of miles from us, and so 
 hardly perceptible to the unaided vision as a faint dot in the evening 
 skies, there is a planet called Neptune, of which we know nothing 
 whatever, except that it is there, and that it circles steadily at a 
 measurable rate round the sun ? I have heard a remark quoted from 
 a queer little girl, who said she was afraid to ask her Sunday-school 
 teacher who Nimrod was, for fear he should tell her, and it would be 
 so useless to know. So I am afraid to ask Prof. Winlock, if he has 
 
16 
 
 CLASSICAL STUDIES. 
 
 recently ascertained, through his big telescope, whether Neptune is 
 still extant in his proper place, or whether he has seceded, — gone off, 
 in a hyperbolic or parabolic curve, never to come back again. I am 
 afraid to ask, lest he should tell me, and it would be so useless to 
 know. Why, if Neptune himself should threaten such secession, I 
 doubt not that the other planets, in solemn congress assembled, would 
 say to him, " Erring brother, depart in peace ; it is a matter of pro- 
 found indifference to us whether you go or stay." 
 
 And then the telegraph. For a year or two, we have all been 
 shouting, at the top of our voices, " Great is the Atlantic telegraph, 
 and Cyrus W. Field is its prophet ! " But here, again, we forget to 
 ask what the thing is worth, in the greatness of our astonishment that 
 it should be done at all. Like the fly in amber, 
 
 " The thing itself is neither rich nor rare ; 
 But wonder how the devil it got there." 
 
 What has the Atlantic telegraph done for us ? It has given us news 
 from Europe less than a day old, instead of the same news ten or 
 twelve days old. But the intelligence does not lose its distinctive 
 character as news, through the greater or less time occupied in its 
 transmisL'ion. I never heard that news were like eggs, liable, if kept 
 over ten days, to become addled Let me not undervalue the good 
 sometimes done by the telegraph. It has played an important, even 
 an indispensable, part in the apprehension of John H. Surratt. Once 
 in a great while, it is a tolerable catchpole, an efficient subsidiary 
 agent to the State's prison and the gallows. By its means, we now 
 have Surratt safe in irons, and can bring him to fair trial ; though, at 
 this late day, I suppose, very few persons cars whether the miserable 
 wretch is hanged or not. 
 
 Because the ancients had none of these things, — no telegraphs, 
 newspapers, chloroform, or lucifer-matchcs, — it is charged against 
 them that their civilization was narrow and barren, and, " in their do- 
 mestic habits, they were primitive, destitute, and uncleanly." This 
 whole accusation may be summed up in the old sarcasm against the 
 Emperor Augustus, that, " with all his splendor, he had no glass in 
 his windows and not a shirt to his back." 
 
 Here is the utilitai isjn idea of civilization ! It does not consist in 
 the mignt of intellect, nor in the beauty of poetry, nor in the power 
 of oratory, ncr in the skill of statesmanship, nor in the graces cf 
 
CLASSICAL STUDIES. 
 
 17 
 
 sculpture and architecture, nor in the wisdom of philosophy, ror in 
 the depths of abstract science. No. Civilization — true, modern 
 civilization — consists in none of these things ; for, in each and all 
 of them, unluckily, the men of the Periclean and the Augustan age 
 were undo ibtedly our equals, if n. t our superiors. But civilization — 
 the genuine modern article — consists in glass windows and linen 
 shirts. As to the two assertions contained in this sarcasm against the 
 emperor, I may as well mention, in a parenthesis, that they are not 
 more than half-true. Long before the time of Augustus, the Romans 
 had glass enough to stock a modern fashionable apothecary's shop ; 
 though they seem to have used it chiefly for bottling, not their medi- 
 cines or their wines, but their tears. If they did not put it in their 
 windows, it was probably for the same reason that half of the Italians 
 at the present day do not put it there, — because the climate does not 
 require it. I suspect glass windows are an indispensable condition of 
 civilization only in high latitudes. As to the other alleged fact, if 
 having a shirt means, as I suppose it does, wearing linen next the 
 skin, it is singular enough that, within a few years, nearly all of us, 
 for hygienic reasons, have discarded linen, and gone back to the old 
 Augustan dress, — fine wool or silk next the skin. In the sense of 
 this sarcasm, if it has any sense, I doubt whether a single gentleman 
 here present has a shirt to his back. To the Union army, consisting 
 of over a million of men at the close of the late war, I believe Fal- 
 stafF's account of his own troop was applicable, — that there was but 
 a shirt and a half in the whole company. 
 
 Even if it be granted that the glory of modern times is its mechan- 
 ical inventions, it may well be doubted whether the study of physical 
 science and the establishment of Technological Institutes will lead to 
 their multiplication or improvement. The fact is notorious, that most 
 of these are the results of accident, or have been made by unlearned 
 men, chiefly by ingenious artisans. Even the disposition which seeks 
 for them, and the course of experiments instituted for their attain- 
 ment, are unfavorable to habits of scientific research ; for gold, not 
 truth, is the object in view ; and though some general fact or law of 
 nature may incidentally be developed, the mind was not on the watch 
 for it, and it will probably be overlooked or forgotten. If you would 
 train up inventors, educate your sons at the blacksmith's forge or the 
 carpenter's bench, in watch-factories, cotton-mills, or machine-shops. 
 These were the schools in which Arkwright, Watt, Stephenson, Paul 
 Moody, Howe, Hobbs, McCormick, and Goodyear studied. Sir 
 3 
 
18 
 
 CLASSICAL STUDIES. 
 
 Humphrey Davy received great laudation for the Safety Lamp ; but it 
 is now known that he was anticipated in it, several years, by a sooty 
 son of the mine, who, at the time, was hardly able to write his name. 
 History has not even recorded the authorship or the date of some most 
 useful contrivances and processes, and has left others in dispute ; such 
 as glass, the mariner's compass, gunpowder, and the printing-press ; 
 probably because their inventors were ignorant and obscure men, who 
 did not even know the worth of what they had accomplished. The 
 very process of invention is often blindly tentative, like hunting for a 
 needle in a haymow ; after you have sought it in vain for a week, 
 there comes along a clown who thrusts his hand into the mow, and 
 pricks his finger with it at the first trial. 
 
 Science, it is true, has an office to perform, but generally it is one 
 which is subsequent to tlie invention, and which consists in explaining 
 the rationale of the process, by pointing out the laws of nature 
 through which the result is obtained. But even in this subsidiary 
 function, it is often baffled and lags far behind inventive art. Why 
 should caoutchouc and sulphur, moderately heated and rubbed to- 
 gether, produce that marvellous and most useful compound, vulcanized 
 India rubber ? The chemist does not know ; and he is equally igno- 
 rant in respect to many of the processes in metallurgy and pharmacy. 
 Why is cinchona a potent febrifuge ? Ask the Peruvian Indians, 
 who first taught our doctors how to use it. 
 
 These facts, if rightly weighed, do not discredit physical science, 
 and certainly are not here cited for that purpose. But they do mani- 
 fest the pitiable folly — I had almost said the impiety — of measur- 
 ing the value either of physics or metaphysics, chemistry or phi- 
 lology, by a low utilitarian standard ; of estimating our proper mental 
 food by its casual and indirect results, in fattening our bodies, or 
 pampering our lower appetites and desires. In this Academy, at 
 least, I dare assert that the ultimate object of scientific research is 
 not any external good, but knowledge for the sake of knowing ; and 
 let it be remembered, in behalf of the Classics, that this great truth 
 has at least the verdict of all antiquity in its favor, though it is too 
 often forgotten or slighted in this nineteenth century. It is only 
 a corollary from this maxim, but one specially applicable to the sub- 
 ject of education, to say, that the mere effort to know is of more 
 worth to the individual who makes it than the knowledge acquired. 
 The chief object of education, as it seems to me, is not to multiply in- 
 ventions, but to develop the intellect and form the character. " The 
 
CLASSICAL STUDIES. 
 
 19 
 
 intellect," says Aristotle, as cited by Hamilton, " is perfected not 
 knowledge, but by activity." But as Aristotle was an old Greek, 
 whose authority will be disputed, I will rather cite one who is a mod- 
 ern Aristotle, at least in the estimation of his admirers, — the great 
 hierophant of Positive science, — Auguste Comte ; who tells us, that 
 " les hommes ont encore plus hesoin de methode que de doctrine, d'edu- 
 cation que instruction " [men stand much more in need of the 
 method, than of the matter, of learning, — of education, or the means 
 of drawing something out of the mind, than of instruction, or the 
 means of putting something into it]. Or take the same meaning 
 in Greek, in which form I well know it will best please the Essayist ; 
 ov q)iXoooq)ia, alia q)ilo6oq)Eiv. 
 
 Every generation of civilized men inherits the intellectual wealth, 
 the mechanical contrivances, and the useful arts of all the ages and 
 the nations which have preceded it ; but the natural wonder and self- 
 complacency with which men view their own achievements, often pre- 
 vent them from estimating fairly the extent of their patrimony. 
 When the Essayist shouts and claps his hands at the feats of modern 
 science, he may be reminded of the witty reply made by the elder 
 Astor, of New York, who, when mildly reproved for not contributing 
 so largely to some public object as his own son had done, answered, 
 " That is not a fair example ; he has a rich father." Scholars will 
 not admit that the attainments of the Greeks and Romans in practical 
 science and art were inconsiderable, or that their every -day life was 
 meagre, uncleanly, or comfortless. We still teach in our schools and 
 Colleges, essentially in its original form, the geometry of Euclid and 
 Archimedes, and the 'fundamental principles of mechanics, hydrostat- 
 ics, and optics, as originally expounded by them. The discovery of 
 the principle of specific gravity by the latter, and its application 
 by him in determining the amount of alloy in base metals, was per- 
 haps the most important single step that was ever taken in physical 
 science ; while his writings, and his noted exclamation, that he would 
 move the universe if he could find a fulcrum, show how clearly he 
 understood the mechanical powers. His defence of Syracuse for 
 three years, against the legions of Marcellus, was as marvellous a 
 display of the resources of physical science and mechanical ingenuity 
 in war, as the modern sieges of Sebastopol and Charleston ; and his 
 affecting exclamation when the Eoman sword had already reached his 
 neck, " Do not efface my diagrams," places his name at the head of 
 the list of the illustrious martyrs of science. Eratosthenes measured 
 
20 
 
 CLASSICAL STUDIES. 
 
 the obliquity of the ecliptic, and a degree on one of the earth's merid- 
 ians, with an astonishing approach to accuracy, thereby virtually de- 
 termining the circumference of the globe, though he had hardly any 
 better instrument than a sun-dial. Hipparchus detected the precession 
 of the equinoxes, worked out the doctrine of the sphere, and the first 
 ideas of plane and spherical trigonometry, noticed the parallax of the 
 sun and moon, calculated lunar and solar tables, and predicted eclipses 
 with great accuracy, and by a method which is still in use in the 
 higher mathematics, and of which Whewell says, that it is " not only 
 good, but, in many cases, no, better has yet been discovered." Strabo 
 and Ptolemy are still high authorities in geography, the latter having 
 determined the mathematical principles of projection, and constructed 
 maps, charts, and almanacs with great correctness. Hippocrates and 
 Galen are still quoted as in high repute among medical writers, and 
 whole cases of surgical instruments have been found at Pompeii. 
 The Julian correction of the calendar was not perfect, but England 
 had no better till tlie reign of George II. 
 
 In farther support of the conclusion w^hich I seek to establish, I 
 will cite an authority that Dr. Bigelow will surely respect, as it is 
 that of the arch-utilitarian of our times, the acknowledged chief of the 
 clan, and confessedly one of the greatest thinkers, as well as one of 
 the great scholars, of our day ; I mean John S. Mill. Speaking of the 
 Greeks, he says: "They were the beginners of nearly everything, Chris- 
 tianity excepted, of which the modern world makes its boast. They 
 were the first people who had a historical literature, as perfect of its 
 kind (though not the highest kind) as their oratory, their poetry, their 
 sculpture, their architecture. They were the founders of mathematics, 
 of physics, of the inductive study of politics, so early exemplified in 
 Aristotle, of the philosophy of human nature and life. These things 
 were effected in two centuries of national existence ; twenty, and up- 
 wards, have since elapsed, and it is sad to think how little, com'para- 
 tively, has been accomplished^ 
 
 As early as the time of the kings, Rome seems to have been as 
 thoroughly drained by common sewers, of marvellous size and sohdity 
 of workmanship, as the best of our modern cities. Before the age of 
 the emperors, its magnificent aqueducts, some of them still in use, gave 
 it a better supply of pure water than any modern city had thirty years 
 ago, and better than London has now ; wdiile the number and magnifi- 
 cence of its public baths indicate that its inhabitants higlily prized 
 the virtue of cleanliness. Their roads were so skilfully and solidly 
 
CLASSICAL STUDIES. 
 
 21 
 
 constructed, that, after being two thousand years in use, their remains 
 still challenge the admiration of modern engineers. Their masonry 
 and brick-work are equal, if not superior, to the best constructions of 
 our own day. The arts of agriculture, ship-building, tanning, and 
 metallurgy were highly developed among them, and they furnished 
 the models of some of our most graceful forms of parlor furniture. 
 Indeed, to one who has strolled through the streets and buildings of 
 Pompeii, and inspected the collections in the Royal Museum at Na- 
 ples, where the kitchen utensils and contents of the shops of this 
 disinterred city have been brought together, or visited the remains of 
 the magnificent villas that once studded the coast around Baiae and 
 Cape Misenum, the assertion, that the ancients had made little prog- 
 ress in the useful arts, and that in their " domestic habits they were 
 primitive, destitute, and uncleanly," will appear equally amusing and 
 extravagant. If it be answered that these comforts and luxuries, 
 after all, belonged only to the privileged few, and afford little indica- 
 tion of the number and welfare of the bulk of the people, I reply by 
 pointing to the number and condition of those who are emphatically 
 called the " dangerous classes " in London, Liverpool, Glasgow, and 
 New York, to the dens of filth and wretchedness which they inhabit, 
 and to the social state of three-fourths of the Irish people, and ask, if 
 your boastful modern civilization has much reason to plume itself on 
 the comparison ? 
 
 I have occupied. Sir, too much of the Academy's time, and far more 
 than would have been necessary, if the question had concerned only 
 the relative merits of ancient and modern literature and science. My 
 object has been to plead the cause not merely of " Classical," but of 
 " liberal studies," — of that broad and generous culture of all the 
 faculties, which is nowhere even attempted save in our Colleges and 
 Universities, and of which Latin and Greek form a large and neces- 
 sary part, but by no means the whole. Dr. Bigelow's argument 
 seemed to me directed not merely against Classical, but against all 
 literature ; against, not merely the moral and abstruse sciences, but 
 all science whatever, which does not directly promote man's outward 
 comfort and material well-being; against not this or that special 
 scheme of education, but any comprehensive course of general studies. 
 But in view of some of the ominous tendencies of the age, which are 
 nowhere so fully and darkly developed as in our own land ; in view 
 of these materialistic and fatalistic doctrines, which seem already 
 the most popular among students in most departments of natural his- 
 
22 
 
 CLASSICAL STUDIES. 
 
 tory and physical science ; in view of the accursed thirst for gold, and 
 the frenzied passion for luxury and ostentation, which are debasing 
 the morals of industry and commerce, and corrupting the tone of our 
 politics, till many have come almost to despair of the republic ; in 
 view of the ignominy of some of our large municipal governments, 
 and the want of either character or ability in our Congress, it seems 
 to me, that he who attacks the cause of liberal education, and thereby 
 so far tries to lessen the number, diminish the influence, and benumb 
 the powers of that class of independent, educated, and thoughtful men, 
 who alone are competent, humanly speaking, to resist these debasing 
 tendencies and uphold the cause of integrity, learning, and truth, is, in 
 fact, though unwittingly, striking a death-blow against the chief agen- 
 cies and supports of American civilization. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 THE ABUSE OF THE STUDY OF GRAMMAE. 
 
 If a tolerable proficiency in Latin and Greek could be acquired only by 
 devoting eight or ten wearisome months exclusively to studying the grammar 
 of each of these languages, I should not have a word to say in defence of 
 Classical learning. Such an employment of time appears to me not only 
 injudicious and unnecessary, but almost sinful. It seems of late to have 
 been forgotten among us, that grammar at best is only a subsidiary science, 
 a knowledge of it being valuable not for its own sake, but as a key to the 
 meaning and structure of sentences, and thereby a necessary introduction 
 to literature. Formerly, we studied grammar in order to read the Classics ; 
 nowadays, the Classics seem to be studied only as a means of learning 
 grammar. Surely a more efiectual means could not have been invented of 
 rendering the pupil insensible to the beauties of the ancient poets, orators, 
 and historians, of inspiring disgust alike with Homer and Virgil, Xenophon 
 and Tacitus, than to make their words mere pegs on which to hang long 
 disquisitions on the latest refinements in philology, and elaborate attempts 
 to systematize euphonic changes and other free developments of stems and 
 roots. The Germans have corrupted philology as well as philosophy by 
 their ponderous metaphysics; and their latest theories and technicalities 
 have been imported into our school grammars, an acquaintance with them 
 being made a condition precedent to admission to College. A foreigner 
 would make slow progress in learning to read English, if he should begin 
 with Home Tooke's Diversions of Purley as a text-book. Yet our gram- 
 mars have swelled to their present inordinate size in order to include much 
 which perfectly resembles the speculations of Horne Tooke, except that 
 they have not the faintest claim to be regarded as " Diversions." An- 
 drews and Stoddard's Latin Grammar covers about four hundred closely 
 printed pages, in type so fine as to be injurious to the eyesight ; Hadley's or 
 Crosby's Greek Grammar contains nearly as much. Instructors complain, 
 and with some reason, that the candidates whom they offer for admission to 
 College are liable to be conditioned, as the phrase is, or declared to be 
 insufiiciently instructed in grammar, to the great injury of their teacher's 
 
24 APPENDIX. 
 
 reputation, if they have not committed to memory, and been thoroughly 
 drilled in explaining and applying, every paragraph of this vast collection 
 of grammatical theories and niceties. 
 
 Over thirty years ago, a small abridgment of Mr. Edward Everett's 
 translation of Buttmann's Greek Grammar, comprising, to the best of my 
 recollection, not more than one hundred and eighty openly printed pages, 
 was accepted as a sufficient qualification for admission to the Freshman 
 class; and the amount of Latin Grammar required was proportionately 
 small. Yet, at that period, the quantity of Latin and Greek studied by 
 undergraduates was at least one-third more than what is now required of 
 them. That this amount was not, in one sense, so well studied then as 
 now, — that is, that the student did not acquire so much minute philological 
 information, — may be readily admitted. But in the ability, at the time of 
 graduation, to read and enjoy the Latin and Greek authors, he was consid- 
 erably in advance, as I believe, of our recent graduates. He had command 
 of a larger vocabulary, had profited by more experience in disentangling 
 difficult constructions, had stored his memory with a larger number of pithy 
 phrases, gnomic sentences, and scraps of verse, and had been less injured 
 by the indiscriminate use of translations. Classical learning seems to me 
 to have steadily declined in this country of late years, in respect both 
 to the number of its votaries and to its estimation with the public at large, 
 just in proportion as its professors and teachers have diminished the time 
 and effort bestowed on reading the Classics, in order to enforce more minute 
 attention to the mysteries of Greek accentuation and the metaphysics of the 
 subjunctive mood. He will do most to revive it who shall be the first to 
 publish, in a volume of not more than three hundred openly printed pages, 
 all the grammatical forms and principles both of the Latin and Greek 
 languages which are required to qualify a candidate for admission to College, 
 and which will suffice even for the undergraduate studies of nine-tenths of 
 the students. Those who are ambitious to become Scaligers, Bentleys, or 
 Porsons, may study the whole of Andrews and Stoddard or Zumpt, Kriiger 
 or Buttmann.