The Study of Greek

THERE are reasons why the earliest philosophy and literature of the civilized world should have not only a transcendent interest, but a unique teaching power. Our abstract terms are concrete ; our simple ideas are complex. In the realm of mind the course of things in physical science has been reversed. The ancients had four elements; we have fourscore, or more. But it often takes many of their elementary thoughts to make one of ours. Thus the study of the old philosophers leads us into a more minute analysis of the rudiments of ontology, and of deontology, too, than is dreamed of by their successors in these latter centuries. In poetry, equally, our comprehensive knowledge and our easy command of nature place us at a disadvantage. There is no scope for the imagination in fields of space thoroughly measured, familiarly known, and traversed with more than the speed of the wind. The master of a paltry Coasting vessel who should encounter any serious peril, or bring home accounts of any wonderful adventure or strange sight, on a voyage like that described in the Odyssey, would be remanded to the forecastle. Yet there still exist on that route as rich materials for the plastic imagination as Homer found there ; but we must go back to Homer to find them. It is, moreover, well that we should go back ; for steam and electro-magnetism are too fast exorcising the spirits that used to dwell in wave and storm, in fountain, field, and forest, and degrading poetry into loosejointed metaphysics, or sentimental egotism, rhythmically written. We must admit, however, that the best translations will furnish a very large part of the profit and pleasure to be derived from the Greek classics.

Yet not all. There is the untranslatable in every language, and in none more than in the Greek. There are, especially in Homer, in the tragedians, and in Aristophanes, compound words to which we have none that correspond, and which drop much of their meaning in a paraphrase ; and there are turns of expression, descriptive traits, metaphors, which are almost despoiled of their pertinence and beauty either by a literal rendering or by a free translation. Take, for instance, the apostrophe of Prometheus to the sea, in the tragedy of Æschylus that bears his NAME,— πουτíωυ κυμáτωυ áυηρθμου Υϵλασμα literally, innumerable laugh of sea-waves, which is not graceful English. The Greek implies something seen and something heard, — the manifold glancing of the sunlight from a slightly mottled surface, and the gentle, gleeful murmur of the sluggish waves as they lap the shore. This very phrase adds a new joy to the seaside. There are, too, single words, phrases, verses, which plant themselves ineradicable in the memory, and which are not infrequently recalled even by those whose Greek scholarship is neither deep nor fresh. It is hardly too much to say that the pleasure of reading and of having read the Prometheus Vinctus of Æschylus in the original is worth the time and labor spent in acquiring the capacity to read it.

But it is not our present purpose to discuss the comparative worth of æsthetic pleasures ; nor are we prepared to deny that., for many minds at least, equal enjoyment with that derived from the ancient classics may flow from the literature of our own or other modern tongues. What is now proposed is to consider the worth of Greek, in its practical aspects, for a liberally educated man, whatever his profession may be.

In the first place, the study of Greek is of immeasurable worth in forming a good English style. Comparative philology is as essential to a knowledge of grammar as comparative anatomy is to a knowledge of the human frame. No man ignorant of other languages understands the powers and capacities of his own. Especially is grammar learned by acquaintance with languages that have a grammar, which the English hardly possesses, and which those modern languages that are the abraded débris of the Latin possess very imperfectly, but which is preëminently the attribute of the Greek. There is not an inflection of a variable Greek word which does not represent a corresponding inflection of thought, and a corresponding expression of the thought in English. Conversance with such a language tends to create precision, copiousness, and flexibility in the choice and use of words. Then, too, the translation of Greek into English teaches the pupil as much English as Greek. In the competitive endeavor to furnish the best rendering of the Greek text, he enriches his English vocabulary, and acquires invaluable experience in its use. It is virtually an exercise in English composition, with this difference in its favor : that the young writer of themes is confined within his own narrow range of thoughts and the words that represent them, while in translating Greek he is obliged to seek and ambitious to find adequate expression for what is picturesque, graphic, grand, and beautiful, far beyond anything of his own that he will write for years to come, if ever, yet enabling him, whenever he has anything to say, to clothe it in such drapery as shall render it presentable.

This is not a matter of mere theory. It is perfectly easy to detect the absence of classical training in a writer. There are undoubtedly exceptions, but so few as not to disprove the rule. In many years’ experience as an editor we never failed to detect a difference in favor of contributors who had received a classical education ; and in some cases, and with reference to writers of superior ability and reputation, we discovered the deficiency in that regard from itrnal evidence before we otherwise obtained knowledge of the fact, Nor was it unusual for such a writer to impose upon the editor hardly loss labor in bringing a valuable paper before the public than had been employed in its first composition ; thus rendering it certain that, when he published anything on his own account, he was largely indebted to a competent reviser or proofreader. The men to whom we refer were all well educated, doubtless familiar with one or two modern languages, and it may be supposed with the amount of Latin that used to be taught in the upper classes of our academies and high schools. One of them was the president of one of our oldest and best endowed colleges, after an eminent career at the bar and on the bench of his native State ; and he not only in his letters expressed deep regret that he had learned, in his boyhood, little Latin and no Greek, but showed in papers, otherwise of great merit, a sad lack of proper linguistic training.

It would be well worth our while to see how a man of this sort would conduct the war against Greek. Its assailants, so far as we know, have had and have manifested the benefit of classical training in a style with the genuine stamp and ring ; and one of the ablest and most graceful of them, among the recreations of his old age, found special delight and won no little reputation by the version of certain well-known nursery melodies into Greek verse, in metres with which the most fastidious scholar could find no fault.

It may, indeed, be said that every man does not need to be a good writer. True. But it is equally true that no well-educated man ought to be incapable of being a good writer. There are few men of culture who do not perform more or less pen-work, whether in private correspondence, or in reports or addresses to a smaller or larger public ; and hardly less than good manners, the free and graceful use of the pen on ordinary occasions is essential to the ornament and dignity of social life. It is especially desirable that our scientific men should keep themselves on the same plane with their brethren in other lands. We crave for them the ease, suppleness, and elegance of diction so eminently characteristic of the great English scientists of our day, who may have obtained ascendency among their peers chiefly by demonstration and argument, but who in large part have owed their power in moulding general opinion and belief to their skill in handling that most subtle and delicate of organs, our vernacular English. At least, let our scientific professors and writers learn a lesson from Æsop’s curtailed fox, and keep out of the trap till they can make the amputation of classical culture, which some of them commend, acceptable to all their kind.

To pass to another consideration, we look to our liberally educated men for the guardianship and oversight of our educational institutions. Even the most sanguine of the anti-Greek host do not anticipate the speedy advent of the time when Greek will not form an important, and in some quarters a favored, portion of the high-school curriculum. Some years ago, the chairman of the committee on modern languages, appointed by the visiting board of one of our colleges, when asked which of four recitation - rooms, devoted to as many tongues, he would first honor by his presence, frankly replied, “ It makes no manner of difference to me ; I know not a word of either of those languages.” We should be sorry to see the time when a graduate of that same college may be constrained to make a like impartial visitation of a classical school or academy under his charge. Careful, discriminating cognizance of every kind of school-work by competent trustees or supervisors was never so necessary as now, when a large part of that work is in the hands of novices, who take the office of teacher on their way from college to some permanent profession. The utter incapacity to follow a class in a simple lesson in the Greek Reader would be taken by the class for much more than it means, and the incompetent classical scholar would suffer far more than he deserved as regards respect for and confidence in his general intelligence and scholarship. One would hardly covet the position of the college president already mentioned, who must either have kept clear of the Greek department, or felt an oppressive awkwardness in visiting it. It would be unfortunate were one of our colleges to establish an alternative curriculum, which should at some future time render its most honored graduates unfit to preside creditably in its counsels. This argument seems to us of no little weight ; yet it would lose its force were the study of Greek to lapse into general disrepute and neglect. Let us pass to some reasons why it cannot so decline, but, even in case of temporary discredit, must be restored to a permanent place among the essential departments of liberal culture.

The Greek is in many respects the most important factor of the English language. Of the words used and understood by persons of narrow intelligence and little reading, while there are many derived from the Greek, the greater part are of other origin. Of the additional words used and understood by educated persons, by reading and thinking persons, and by those conversant with the arts and sciences, more, probably, are derived from the Greek than from all other languages beside. The same is true of words that have been formed and have come into use within the last half century, and of those which are at this moment pressing their way into current use. Of the sources of English diction, some are drained and dry, others are intermittent; the Greek alone maintains a constant and copious flow. It furnishes the names of all the sciences, and of many of the arts ; of many geometrical figures ; of almost every mathematical, astronomical, and physical instrument; of many of the old and of almost all the new surgical instruments ; and of most of the various instruments, apparatus, and methods employed in the practical applications of science. Chemistry derives from it the larger and more important part of its nomenclature. In botany it has given names to all the classes and orders of the Linnaean system, and, equally, to the series, classes, sub-classes, and divisions thereof, in the system that has superseded it. There is no department of life, no line of business, hardly an invoice of goods, never a column of advertisements in a newspaper, that is not bristling with Greek words. The man who makes an invention, precious or worthless, deserving a high-sounding name or craving one to catch the popular ear, resorts nowhere but to the Greek for the term that he needs. In a late edition — we dare not say the last — of Webster’s quarto Dictionary, of words beginning with ana there are 159, with anth 64, with chl 27, with chr 90, with geo 60, with ph 436, with ps 86, with sy 294. To these should be added about 100 out of 126 words, with these several beginnings, in the Supplement, a few of which are the same words with different meanings, but most of which are different words. We have in these several classes more than thirteen hundred words, not twenty of which are of other than Greek derivation. The list, to be sure, embraces several large clusters of words from a common root, it may be, not larger than some from Latin roots that might be named; but if Greek roots are really more prolific than any others, it only shows their vitality when thus transplanted, and their special adaptation to English soil. There are also several terminations not uncommon in our language which, perhaps with no exceptions, certainly with few, indicate a Greek origin. Such are atry, gen, ics, metry, ogy, phy, sis, tomy. Many of the words thus ending are, indeed, included in the thirteen hundred; but the greater part of them would be found under other initial letters.

A great many of these words are technical words, the meaning of which it is important, or at least becoming, that scientific men and practical men of liberal culture should know. In saying this, we would place special emphasis on the word know. To know that a certain instrument is designated by a certain word is not to know the meaning of the word ; a liberally educated man ought to know why the instrument is called by that name rather than by any other. Now the technical and scientific terms derived from the Greek are, without exception, significant names, descriptive of the properties, objects, or classes of objects which they represent, and so descriptive of them that one previously unacquainted with them would learn what they are from their names alone. Thus a Greek scholar who had never heard of a thermometer, or a microscope, or a phototype, would at once know what they were; while a man ignorant of Greek, though he might know that certain objects were called by these names, could give no reason why the thermometer might not as well be called a phototype. These technical and scientific words — we cannot cite an exception— bear the precise and ordinary signification of the Greek words from which they are derived or compounded.

A very limited Greek vocabulary, such as is acquired in the minimum classical course in our colleges, suffices to make these words easily intelligible, and thus to open to the student not only the nomenclature of his own specific science or profession, but the entire range of terms in all the arts and sciences. Moreover, as has been said, the terms within this range are constantly multiplying. Whole sheaves of them have come into being within the memory of the writer of this paper, and he has often seen a brand-new word, which but for the little of Greek he knew would have puzzled him and teased his curiosity, perhaps in vain, but which was its own prompt interpreter. This inrush of Greek will continue so long as classification, invention, and discovery shall still be progressive and aggressive; for the Greek furnishes a most ample affluence of words which combine the qualities of intelligibleness, euphony, and facility in the graceful formation of compound terms. Apart from any considerations connected with Greek literature, one who has lived in clear light as to so large and important a portion of our own language cannot think with patience of any theory of liberal education which should leave this, else the most luminous region of our English vocabulary, in perpetual eclipse. If our technological schools aim at making their graduates anything more than very narrow specialists, they will find it necessary to introduce Greek into their curriculum, We should be sorry for them to dispense with Latin ; but Greek is by far the more important of the two.

We add yet another reason for the study of Greek by our educated classes. We call ourselves a Christian people, and ill as we deserve the name, it never was so truly ours as now, if we may trust the statistics of the churches and benevolent institutions of all the leading Christian denominations. The wave of agnosticism, already refluent in Germany, and past its flood in England, was slower and later in reaching our shores, yet shows infallible tokens that it has attained its high-water mark here. But for the self-laudation of those whom it lifts from their feet, thus giving them a transient elevation, its impact here has been so languid and of so limited extent as hardly to attract the notice of the religious world. For the greater part of our people the Christian Scriptures are a series of sacred books, and none the less so for the decline of bibliolatry. Indeed, the very writers who have been the most efficient in their assaults on unreasoning and superstitious reverence for the mere letter of the Bible are foremost in their appreciation of its paramount and inestimable worth, and of its rightful hold on the intelligent and fervent interest of every mind and heart. The Jews train their sons in Hebrew for the sole purpose of enabling them to read their Scriptures. Many Christian men and women have learned Greek even late in life, and at the utmost disadvantage, merely in order to read the New Testament in the original. The sacred books of a people have certainly a strong claim on such of its citizens as hold a foremost place in culture and influence. There are many questions raised in the discussion of dogmatic theology, and many references and allusions in the pulpit, which need for their clear understanding some conversance with the Greek of the New Testament. The Revised Version is creating in the arraignment and defense of its authors an already voluminous body of fresh literature, in which our principal reviews and, equally, some of our popular newspapers have borne no inconsiderable part; and the whole ground thus covered is well worthy of the enlightened cognizance of the Christian public, and ought to be within the easy comprehension of a liberally educated man. In fine, there are many occasions on which a person who has any interest — whether on the score of intelligence, taste, or piety — in Christianity and its canonical writings ought to be glad to know for himself, or to determine from his own best judgment, precisely what is the voice of Scripture.

More than all else, there is in the New Testament no little of the untranslatable. There are shades of meaning, delicate lines and hues of pictorial narrative, traits of sentiment, evanescent under the hand of the most skillful translator, yet flashing vividly upon him who reads the very words of the evangelist or the apostle. This is especially true, as every qualified witness will testify, of the biographies of Him who is his own religion. They are stories that grow perpetually on re-perusal and on close perusal, and no one who prizes them in the vernacular version can ever have read them in the Greek without being devoutly thankful for the ability so to read them. If Christianity has, as we believe it has, its birth in the bosom of Eternal Love, and its mission coeternal with Him from whom it came, there will always remain sacred and cogent reasons for the study of the language consecrated by the earliest permanent records of the Divine humanity, destined to be the light and life of all ages and nations.

There exist exaggerated notions as to the time required for the study of Greek. It has been repeatedly said and written that it demands the hardest work of four years in a course preparatory for college. This may have been seemingly true of one or two schools a quarter of a century ago; but in most of our classical schools the entire preparatory course then occupied but three years, and was often completed in two. Indeed, at a still earlier period, when school vacations were merely nominal, when all that a studious boy did was to study, and when plain living did more to keep students in vigorous health than hygienic restrictions and rules do now, it was no uncommon thing for a boy who had more brains than his father had money to fit himself for college in a year. The requirements then included more Greek and Latin than at present, but much less of mathematics, and very little beside, and a year then was probably equivalent to two years now ; for about one third of the school year is now taken up by vacations and holidays, and our school-boys are encouraged, or at least permitted, to have not a few engrossing objects and pursuits aside from their school-life. In most of our good preparatory schools Greek now occupies a portion, by no means the principal portion, of from two to three years ; being commenced in many of them in the last quarter (ten weeks) of the third year before entering college. We have before us the course of study in one of our principal schools, in which Greek is studied for three years. The Greek in this course embraces four books of Xenophon’s Anabasis, one of Herodotus, four of the Iliad, portions of the Cyropælia, and the Greek Testament, with exercises for the last year and a half in reading at sight Xenophon, Herodotus, and Homer, and exercises during nearly the whole time in writing Greek. This is considerably in advance of the requirement for admission in any of our New England colleges ; and the time spent in writing Greek might well seem excessive and unreasonable, were not this exercise so arranged and conducted as to supersede in great part the formal study of the grammar, and by enriching the student’s vocabulary to save much of his mechanical toil in turning over the leaves of his lexicon.

We have before us a full statement of the time devoted to Greek in a private school, which always sends to college admirably prepared pupils, and which has its clientelage almost wholly among families in which there would be no disposition to shorten the term, or to apply undue stimulants to the diligence, of school life. Greek in this school is commenced two years and a quarter before entering college. The lessons are from two to four each week. The entire number of lessons does not exceed three hundred. We are assured on the best authority that little more than half that number of lessons would suffice for a boy who made study his vocation, instead of his a-vocation, or side-calling, secondary to base-ball, military drill, and miscellaneous amusements.

It must be borne in mind that the lessons in Greek in our good schools are not, as of old, mere recitations, but what they purport to be, hours of direct and positive instruction ; superseding a considerable portion of the study formerly required, and facilitating all the rest.

It ought, in this connection, to be emphatically stated that in the method of teaching Greek there has been in all our best schools not so much an essential improvement as an entire revolution, and one which must very soon sweep the old, cumbrous methods out of the way. The grammar is now studied, not in mass, but in great part from words and sentences as they occur in reading. The mode in which one acquires the command of his vernacular tongue is copied in every respect in which it can be made availing. The scholar learns what words are by seeing where they stand and how they are used. For much of the labor of the lexicon the pupil’s own sagacity is substituted. The Greek tongue is justly reputed as the most copious of all ancient languages, and yet it is meagre in its roots. It is rich in its wealth and unequaled power of combination. The student used to be suffered to regard every word as a separate entity, to be sought by itself in the lexicon, without reference to any kindred words. He is now taught to analyze a compound word, and to determine its meaning by its component parts and its context. Thus reading at sight, which would formerly have been considered as a more recondite art than Hindoo jugglery, is now made easy, and a very slender vocabulary, with an active mind, will enable a boy to feel quite at home in a page of the Anabasis, or in one of Lucian’s Dialogues, which he had never seen before.

Nor let it be imagined that for a boy who is going to be an engineer, or an architect, or a chemist, the hours spent in learning Greek are, even in the utilitarian view, so much lost time. They will certainly facilitate his acquisition of the more difficult modern languages, especially of the German and its allied tongues. They will save him a great deal of labor in consulting dictionaries for words of Greek parentage. They will preclude embarrassing ignorance and mortifying blunders as to terms which he ought to understand. They will render the writing of English very much less toilsome, and thus will bring him into easier relations with the members of his own profession, and with the public at large.

The importance of the modern European tongues has been urged as a reason for dropping Greek in a scientific or practical education. With regard to these languages, the great mistake has been that in our colleges and classical schools they have been studied too much in the way in which Latin and Greek used to be studied, as if they were not only dead languages, but incapable of being raised to life. Better methods are fast coming into use. French and German are now taught as they might be learned in Paris or Dresden. The pupil acquires the language by using it, rather than as a condition precedent to using it. This improved method is fast making its way, and will soon become universal. From one of our schools, second to none in its reputation for Greek, the pupils now go to college capable of conversing with a good degree of fluency in either French or German, and many of them in both; and we doubt whether more time is there consumed in Greek, French, and German by a boy who takes all three than used to be occupied under the old method, and to much less advantage, by Greek alone.

There is one argument against Greek, which we have not attempted to meet, because we have not known how to deal with it. It is alleged that the study of Greek is not only a waste of time, but that it cramps the mind, employs it in work unsuited to the development of capacity for scientific labor and for practical usefulness, and is a drawback on one’s success in other than literary pursuits. A charge like this admits of specifications, and ought to be brought only by those who can make some show of damage. But when a member in the fourth generation of the most successful family in America ascribes to Greek all the misfortunes and failures of his ancestors and kindred, we might almost suspect him of anti-republican aspirations ; for the only misfortune that can be conceived of in the history of that family is their failure to become a race of hereditary monarchs. Then again, when the man who, confessedly at the head of his department of science in this country, has only his peers among the foremost scientific men in Europe complains of having been weighted down by Greek in his boyhood, we doubt whether any ambitious youth will spurn the weight if with it he can start on a career so very full of honor. Men of this sort are not valid witnesses, and we have no others. When the men who linger in the outer courts of science, and try in vain to enter, or when those who in business or in political life are perpetually stumbling and faltering, can show us that such smattering of Greek as they have has been the insuperable obstacle in their way, it will be a fit time to inquire how and why.

Fortunately for us, the experiment of dispensing with Greek at the option of candidates for university honors in the mathematical and physical sciences has been tried in Germany, and it has been found that even for these sciences a regular classical course, including Greek, furnishes a better preparation than is attained by the non-classical, but most skillfully devised and ably conducted curriculum of the Realschulen. Such is the almost unanimous testimony of the professors in the Prussian universities. We could hardly expect more favorable results in this country, especially when we bear in mind that the Prussian educational system is in every department thoroughly organized, and administered by instructors who have passed a prescribed test; while it would be impossible in our country, except by slow degrees and with numberless exceptions and failures, to establish a uniform and adequate system for the preliminary training of scientific students.

We rest our case here, trusting that we may have added some little weight of truth and reason in behalf of classical education as the best possible discipline for scientific study, and for the arts, pursuits, and employments of liberally educated men.

A. P, Peabody.