The Case Oe Greek

To a lover of Greek who is not at the same time a professed follower of that branch of learning, the case of Greek is a complex one. Herein he differs from both enemies and partisans, who can settle the case at short notice; for hostility and devotion are alike simple, while the balancing of affection and reason is always hard. A man does not have to know Greek over-much to be its lover or even its partisan; some of the strongest graduate sentiment in its favor comes from men who probably no longer know the alphabet, — a fact which causes no little astonishment to one who is aware that they have left more than one vade mecum of this field of intellectual travel to the shelves of the second-hand bookseller. Nor does one require an intimate acquaintance in order to be Greek’s enemy. Unintelligent judgment may lead straight-away to either pole, Few of us who are not professional Grecians know very much about Greek; for which reason we fear that if we essay any criticism we shall be speedily reminded of our incompetence from some quarter. But this is not right if we are candid, any more than it is fair to discount the Greek professor’s opinion a hundred per cent, on the ground of parti pris. Things are pretty nearly balanced off in this matter. No doubt it is irritating to receive criticism from a source little respected; but, on the other hand, if the Greek professor had been less haughty in waving off criticism and critics, and more intent upon seeing the case of Greek in candor and with mind receptive, his cause would get a better hearing. Few of us can recall admissions of error or of insufficiency in the subject-matter or the teaching of the classics. But this attitude is probably passing with the shrinking of a formerly unquestioned prestige, just as it has been forced to pass among the clergy. At any rate, there is no reason why admittedly ignorant lovers of Greek should not state the case as they see it.

Most of us who are of this persuasion would like to see a change in the way Greek is taught, believing that, if this is possible, there will result, for individuals and for the race, a diffusion of much intellectual treasure which at present stands a chance of being walled Up. And we arrive at this conclusion through a retrospect of our own experiences. These differ according as we traverse different walks of life, and each man has his own; but they converge into a general type. The dominant viewpoint of what is to follow is that of one interested in the social sciences; but there is no doubt, to judge from the recollection of a good many informal talks with others, that some generalization is safe.

Probably the case of Greek, which must rest, like all human things, upon its utility in the broad sense, may be most conveniently treated if cultural worth and practical value are arbitrarily set over against each other. Such a distinction is not possible except for purposes of analysis, of course, but it is the more in point because these two aspects are continually confused by both assailants and defenders. The purely practical values of a knowledge of Greek are concrete enough, and the overlapping in our distinction is mainly that of the cultural over the practical; it is asserted not infrequently, for instance, that cultural training acts as a practical advantage, operating as a solvent upon the narrowness of specialization, and making the investigator more of a man. This is unequivocally true; if Greek were the only influence making toward this end our sons and daughters should learn it at any cost. But this contention may be set aside for the present, except in so far as what there is to say about Greek as a purely cultural influence, affording wealth to the mind and spirit alone, may bear indirectly upon it.

First, then, in the interest of perspective, it must be realized that Greek is not the only cultural influence, nor yet the greatest, as some of the ill-advised of its partisans would, at least by implication, have us believe. Cultural agencies are incommensurable; each Is itself and no other. Hence, to assign the palm to any one is to attempt to dictate tastes and inclinations. Music deserves fully as high a place as Greek; and so does art in its several forms. The latter days have contributed something to the world. Sophocles and Euripides, noble as they are, have nothing to replace the richness of Goethe’s thought, or indeed the beauty of his poetical execution; Thucydides cannot compete with modern historians. A great many of these ancient things look grander because seen afar and by reason of the almost unconscious taking into account of the setting of their time. They are, relatively to their time, very great indeed, but in considering the equipment of to-day we must deal in today’s appraisals. The rude stone axe was itself a marvel in its time. Not that the Greeks cannot present that which is of perennial worth and beauty; but there must be discrimination if there is to be truth. In any case it is bootless to compare culture-factors; the only result that emerges from the labor is that all are important,and each in its individual way. All must pass across the stage before him who would be culturally complete. But this, considering the brevity of human life and the feebleness of the human mind, is impossible. The question then arises as to the comparative cost in time and effort required to secure to one’s self the maximum of profit possible.

But this consideration too is ideal; no man’s power of selection is so wide. Even Goethe was weak in science and of undeveloped taste in music. The only object of bringing such an aspect to the fore is to show the inaptness of the claim of any one discipline to be supreme. In practice, the choice made must be from the curriculum of some higher institution of instruction: and, narrowing this down to meet our own case, from that of an American college as the typical higher school. Formerly there was no choice except of colleges; and in the time-hallowed trinity of Greek, Latin, and Mathematics was all salvation to be found. That was about all there was to teach. When, now, this was superseded and choice came, it lay first between Greek and the “modern” studies. These were modern languages, first of all. That they are the cultural equals of the Greek is conceived to require no proof. The rest are mainly history and the sciences, or, since the historians confess themselves led to scientific method in order to give any value to their subject, they are the sciences alone. It is mainly against science, as by some natural antipathy, that the classicist of the past has vented his displeasure, and the unhalting advance of all its branches has occasioned some bitter words from classicist as from theologian, that were, to say the least, untimely and, in the interest of dignity, better left unsaid. A goodly portion of these words and prophecies have had to be eaten subsequently, and there have been an uncomfortably large number of pleased onlookers, still smarting from former castigation, who would not turn their eyes away during the repast.

Assuming that French and German literature must be taken together to equal the cultural value of Greek, — and if this be done it must also be borne in mind that you can acquire French and German while you are getting a modicum of Greek,—the two modern languages possess the added advantage of opening to the inquiring mind a vista of opportunities of a cultural nature which Greek could never afford. For through them one gets access to the present and past thought of practically all modern peoples except his own. This leaves to French and German a plus over the ancient languages which is increasingly better realized, and which, unless the world falls upon arid millenniums, can but augment with time. Of this something more will be said further on.

Turning to the sciences, we reach the region par excellence of debate.¹ Nothing has been said hitherto of the comparative cultural value of scientific studies and those of Greek, or of literature in general. It has been assumed by some non-scientists that, because science has been turned to so many tasks whose accomplishment has bettered the lot of the race in respect to material things, these studies are utilitarian (in the narrow sense) only. This being the case, they are “banausic.” This view any scientist would be drawn to combat, and conceivably he should be allowed to appear. however ex parte his arguments might be, in the case of such a general negation of cultural influence. But nobody who is entitled to a hearing believes this latter any more.

There are narrow specialists in the sciences, as in the classics, but taking several of the sciences together, if objection be made to any single one, — say, geology, astronomy, biology, — the sum of culture, whatever meaning short of the most restricted be given that term, which they vouchsafe, is not small. It helps a man little, as he walks the fields knowing nothing of the lower organisms and of their life, or as he watches the stars merely surmising their identity and movement to stay his inquiring mind by recalling Alcibiades, or Medea, or Nausicaa, or even Prometheus. He may wonder at the stately beauty or the graceful charm of uncounted passages in the Greek, and that broadens his nature and expels at least for a time the commonplace, — das Schaudern ist der Menschheit boster Theil, — but he marvels no less, if he be but partially instructed, and no less to the refinement of his spirit, at the stately beauty or the graceful charm of Nature’s ways. No one thing is alone cultural and broadening, though it is genially so hailed by thorough and devoted love.

Thus far the argument has striven to uphold the rights of other disciplines than Greek to the title of culture-agents. It would seem foolish to discuss the claim of Greek to superiority were it not so often uttered or implied. But there are also those who, with equal self-absorption and narrowness, or hostility, deny to Greek any claim to a high place in the temple of learning. Our argument is as little disposed to admit detraction as exaltation; and there are, besides, reasons a-plenty why, if unimportance is to be assigned to any subject, it should not be Greek. Those who assert its inferiority are seldom competent to pass judgment, and if they are, they will often be found to have confused the issue by fixing attention upon the comparative cost of the acquisition of Greek—a question which is theoretically beside the point, and to which we shall presently come.

As has been remarked, one does not have to know very much Greek to become a lover of Greek. Probably those of us who are half instructed, and think we get a great pleasure from the little to which we have access, can form no real conception of the experiences of one who can really “read Greek,” of his profit from that language and its literary riches. But we have our good reason for asserting its cultural influence even in diluted form. Greek literature is certainly what the college vernacular would call “the real thing.” If a man can no more than read Homer, and that with assiduous plying of the lexicon, he can draw on riches of a unique type. Matthew Arnold has attempted to show wherein the charm of Homer lies; he catches what he can of the indefinable impression, as of the childhood of the world. And let Keats sayhow deeply, even through a medium not too faithful, the antique bard impressed himself upon the modern unschooled poet. Similarly with Æschylus and the younger tragedians, with Theocritus, Pindar, Sappho, Anacreon: to each his charm, peculiar to himself. And if we were to desert the absolute criterion and name those famous in their own day only, or who have exerted powerful influence upon subsequent thought without being of present importance except historically, many more would join the roll. It is here intended, however, to confine attention to those whose qualities cannot be reproduced in another tongue, those to know whom one must read their language at least fairly well. The painstaking collegian can get a taste of all the best of the Greeks if he manages well and makes considerable sacrifices elsewhere in his preparation; whether he will do this latter, or ought to be asked to do it, is a separate question.

There is no diversity of opinion among those competent to have one as to the high cultural value of the Greek. To deny it is on a par with denying the high cultural value of conversance with the theory of Darwinian evolution. But a verneinender Geist is not always purely malicious, nor entirely bereft of reason for his cynical remarks. Sometimes the doubt invades the mind of even the lover of Greek, as to whether his valuation is not too high, being influenced by considerations that apply to that which is in a foreign language, and further in a foreign “dead” language. Is it all that it seems ? How much of the charm is subjective ? This matter is susceptible of a rather detailed development, and perhaps psychologic analysis, and certainly deserves a word here.

One often notices that when a college student has got his modern language through the eye mainly, or alone,— and this is the way he usually does it, — the foreign terms do not summon actual concrete objects directly before his mind. They are held in temporary suspension in the brain while they are being correlated, through the native terms, with those objects. Cheval, for example, means h-o-r-s-e, not a quadruped with equine characteristics, except by a sort of time-taking secondary intension. As one comes to associate the terms more directly with that for which they stand, supposedly the interval of recognition is shortened; but where the foreign language is not intimately known and colloquially used, it is doubtful if there does not linger some unreality about the translated terms. The thing itself is seen through a sort of prismatic medium; its exact form and location are distorted and displaced, and outlines are nebulous and with a color-fringe. There is a flashing interval for idealization. Homely terms and ideas lose their humdrum quality.

And the more remote the foreign language is from one’s own, and the more diverse of type the life to which its terms refer, so much the greater chance for idealization; so much the greater necessity for it, and so much the greater failure of apprehension if it be absent. In the mediaeval tales the glamour of romance blinds the eye to much that is sordid and mean; one simply does not see it. And if this is true of mediæval things, says the objector, how much more so of ancient ones as approached through “dead” languages. There is a good deal of force in this observation.

How many, even of Greek scholars, habitually think of the thing, the object, when they read ? Certainly they do not teach one the art of so doing. Some objects they cannot visualize except through a mental process of some complexity, entailing suspension of the term for a considerable time. As an instance in point, take a term like chiton : inasmuch as there is nothing in the English language corresponding to that word, because there is no similar object in English dress, the mind must recall vase-paintings, illustrations, or the like, and could never in that way arrive at so crass a concept as, for instance, shirt.

How much more poetic is tunic or some other term of equal unhomeliness! Now, says the objector, you Greek enthusiasts idealize the other things just the way you do the clothing. You deal in girdles and clasps, not belts and pins. You see a value and beauty that are in your own eyes. Such a point is worth notice because there is a truth behind it; one might labor it, especially in its general bearing, but it is not, for our present purpose, necessary.

There is an answer to this challenge right at hand, and perfectly apt when one is discussing the cultural value of Greek, and that is: What of it? The flavor of old wine is not the less delicious because age has brought to it what it did not have at first, and what the vintner could not give. Our values are nowvalues. If a homely term may attain, by traversing the alembic of a thousand or two of years, a greater attenuation and more delicate content, let it be so; too few of human affairs fall out that way.

But yet let us render full justice to our apparently captious critic. The enthusiast’s tendency is to assign the Greeks a life too high and ethereal for his own world, and there are reckless devotees whose ravages in the reputation of classical studies are deplorable. (A sociologist is familiar with the type.) They tell the man of science, with ecstatic mien and moistened orb, that the Greeks had nothing to learn in his field, they make a blanket-claim for Hellenic anticipation of the ages progress, they rave over Greek preeminence in architecture and art, in gymnastics of body and mind, in loftiness of life and soul, and so on, to cause the discreet to grieve. These vates are often old enough to know better. A good book and a portly might be written on what the Greeks did not know of the macrocosm and microcosm, but have been credited with knowing.

Where the collegian, the later cynic, gets his views is, first of all, in the classroom, and especially during the early years of his Greek study. He is there fulsomely introduced to certain stock fetiches and caused to bow before them. The tutor, he thinks, must know better than he: that passage in Cicero is wisdom, not pedantry; this one is the characteristic self-assurance of the great man, not pitiful self-conceit. The classic writers are never crude of grammar; if it seems that they are, or that their style is hopelessly and irrationally involved, a good and sufficient reason may he found in the list of exceptions under Rule 324, or under the piquant and admirable style-variations, hysteron-proteron, and so on, in articles so-and-so of the grammar. The ancient writers are too often mere examples or illustrations of that grammar. If an English author’s sentences should back limply into the arena as some of those of Thucydides do, if he left clauses hanging hopelessly in air, where is the editor who would tolerate him ?

All this the uncritical mind of youth may sense, but only inchoately; the reflective graduate sees it and feels that he has been duped. This persuasion, held in however slight a degree, colors his whole purview of the classics. It is a great and prime error to teach even the masterpieces uncritically and from the lowly attitude of genuflection. Even Homer nods; the ancients admitted it; and if the moderns wish to outdo mediæval scholiasts in abjectness before authority, it is at a cost. The most enthusiastic lover of Shakespeare regrets certain passages, and wishes that there were no clock in Julius Cœsar; the staunch admirer of Wordsworth balks at “the very pulse of the machine.” Uncritical adulation of the ancients cannot endure such contrasts in the next classroom.

All this obscures and minimizes the real cultural value of the Greek and lends justification to the scoffer. In general, Greek teaching does not succeed in developing the cultural content of its subject, for it fixes attention upon a few traditional aspects, and whiles away upon the means attention, patience, and effort that should be expended upon appropriating the ends.

But avoiding any further discussion of the absolute or relative worth for culture of any one discipline or group of disciplines, reflection would now be invited upon the topic of the comparative cost of Greek as compared with other agencies for cultivating the mind. And here is the vital, and also reasonable, objection to Greek as now taught. It underlies all that has here been said or will be, and, in a sense, renders all discussion mere Spielerei. The language simply is not acquired by any percentage of college graduates worth mentioning. If the lower half of every class were to be excluded from count, yet the vanishing proportion hardly emerges into sight; and if, then, in fairness, those also are excluded who have been making a profession of the Greek, the percentage of graduates who can use the language, even humbly and on a few easy authors, is reduced practically to nil. And yet a respectable part of four to seven years has been spent for such halting results. This is an ominous arraignment and a crushing charge, but it cannot be gainsaid. Postponing its further consideration for a later place, it is sufficient here to call attention to the high relative cost involved in the pursuit of Greek regarded simply as a branch of culture. Most people cannot afford it. Even if these years of study had yielded the results that half the time spent on German, for instance, does assure the conscientious student, it would not be so bad. But still to be unable, after all that industry, to read enough of a Greek poet at a stretch to get his real flavor, — to be Unable to understand off-hand some simple quotation used as an epigraph to somebody’s book or chapter, — this is in very truth the dregs of discouragement.

But we have delayed over-long, though only touching its borders, upon the cultural side of Greek training. We now approach the practical, and under that head propose to include such cultural influence as contributes to success in other fields. But as this latter is the hardest to be definite about, though one of the easiest to talk about, it is perhaps better to try to clear away other and more direct practical utilities first. The practical value of Greek is naturally attached almost exclusively to the language and what you can get by knowing it; the thrills and haunting moods of the literature do not come into account here.

Let us presuppose a fair knowledge of the language, then, not forgetting, however, the rareness of this acquisition among those to whom Greek has been only incidental, or, in any case, not a specialty,—and the high comparative cost. Reiteration of the statement may be pardoned, that this is the crux of the whole situation; that neglect to consider it utterly stultifies most pro-Greek argumentation. Unless this condition can be bettered, Greek must resign its place among the general studies of the young. There are too many new competitors, and more are coming; and once-existent favoring handicaps are recognized no longer.

The knowledge of the language is, in general, of small practical utility except to those few specialists to whom language is the material of investigation. Professor Lester F. Ward (who is himself somewhat prolific in the coinage of terms of Greek origin) asserts its value for the understanding and use of terminology. He says that “a knowledge of the structure of Latin and Greek words is essential to the correct use of the current vocabulary of nearly every science, and especially of the biological sciences.” But this is a statement, at least so far as it refers to Greek, which can be tested to its detriment by any one who cares to reflect upon the grasp of Greek possessed by scientists of his own acquaintance, or to scan the biographies of a few notables. You can get this term-making done for you, and need not spend years learning to do it any more than in learning to wield the higher mathematics in order to figure out an occasional relation. It is questionable whether the average man could trust his own results in either case.

Greek as a tool of investigation is scarcely more valuable, as will presently appear. In general its claims to utility for the historian or scientist are reducible to the following: specifically, it best fits the scholar for the acquirement of other tongues; and inclusively, it forms the developing agency par excellence of the mental processes. The former contention is stronger than some are inclined to admit. No one doubts the indispensability of several modern languages to the modern investigator, and this need can but increase, in default of a “universal” language, as time goes on; few also would deny that the practice gained, under proper training, in Greek syntax and etymology is of great value in the acquisition of other languages of the same stock. There are here, however, two major considerations to be met; first, that the training given is seldom one conducing to other ends than its own immediate ones; and, second, that no sufficient reasons have been presented for denying that an equal or briefer period of time spent upon Latin or some other language, under adequate direction, would yield the same result. It is under the best professors only that training is planned, not upon local but upon far-sighted and catholic lines; preparatory teachers and college instructors do not often have the time, education, or breadth of outlook to do this. There is a great deal to be said, in the interest of both Greek and the student, in favor of beginning Greek in college.

The question of the value of Greek in the acquisition of other related languages is really a special one under that of the value of Greek as a mental discipline in general. The assertion of its supremacy here is again the out-of-date call to fetichworship. It is valuable, but so are other branches, for the purpose in hand; it has defects of a serious nature as a mental discipline, though these are mainly survivalistic in the pedagogical system, and so remediable, at least in some degree. Its strongest claim is perhaps its difficulty; its complexity and consequent capacity for precision of expression render it an excellent disciplinary agency for him who gets any control of the medium. But these can yet be spared without catastrophe, as any thing and any man can be spared, and the world still go on under satisfactory — or, to judge from prevailing analogy, more satisfactory—substitutes. Of course it is unfair, as must be admitted, to balance Greek, here as elsewhere, against any other single available language, if there be taken into account the time and effort now necessary to penetrate even its outer precincts. It does not alter this contention even if one admits that Greek affords certain combinations of mental exercises not to be met with elsewhere.

But there is a reverse side to a training based upon the classics, as any one knows whose line of specialization has diverged from early absorption in them. As to whether certain undesirable qualities are inherent in such training, opinions may well differ; the question awaits an answer, and that through demonstration. But it is certain that the attitudes and mental processes acquired in orthodox classical study are not of much use elsewhere; and the reason is that such study is not alive, or is not made so. In the classics all is cut and dried, and reverence for authority is the conventional attitude. “If,” said one active and noted professor of the classics, “a man has health, energy, and industry through a long life, he may hope to cover part of the ground already traversed before him.” It all goes back to the fathers. One somewhat admires this system, settled and articulated, as he marvels at that of the Roman church, and for much the same reasons. The structure is grand, austere, aweight with the prestige of generations. But it does not breathe the spirit of the present age, and its acolytes can blame only themselves if they are not content to be left in cloistered peace. There is no fault to be found with an ideal of calm and tranquil erudition, quiet refinement, and serene unworldliness; it appeals to one in the stress of life, at times with an almost irresistible charm. It is a noble existence, but it is rare, and should be so. The youth of this age do not take to it, and should not, for it is anachronistic. And, being so it is positively detrimental to the majority to be taught its ways as a training for the life of the present age.

Under the classical system of past generations the collegian has learned to take things for granted and upon authority, and to approach them uncritically. He is engaged in the main in a study of words, and the ideal held before his youthful strivings is the discipulus, able, with the aid of lexicon, grammar and notes, to extract the information, often obscure, insipid, or long antedated, from certain lines and pages, and recite thereon. The net influence of such training has been too often the inculcation of intellectual dependence, timidity in the exercise of individual judgment, distrust of one’s own conclusions, and a general haziness and uncertainty of mental operations. There is no need of the modern scholar’s labor-saving methods and appliances, because too often the work is in itself the end. Collection and collation of data, classification and critical discrimination — what need of these ?

Having come to graduate work in history or science, after a typically classical course, there is trouble in store for him who hopes to use his preliminary training to further his later ends. Historical and scientific investigation call for qualities of mind and results of mental discipline which the classical régime has not fostered. Between the end of college training and the beginning of real usefulness in the new field, between preparation for life-work and that life-work itself, there must and does occur for many a promising young man a great mental and moral shock, accompanied by the necessity of taking a new start. Not only that; there is a period of broken standards and superseded criteria, with all the misery which that implies. Naturally this is a matter of degree; but teachers who have been much thrown with advanced students of a non-classical specialty, particularly with those who have, during a highly creditable undergraduate course assimilated most faithfully the classical training and “method,” have too often been witnesses of ineffectual and bewildered attempts to regain lost bearings. The young man knows his work is crude and ineffective, but he does not know why; surprised and disgusted, his disappointment often takes the form of selfrecrimination and distrust. The situation is rendered the more blind and torturing if, as is so often the case, he sees less studious companions falling in successfully with the new order of things. The college senior year, which generally awakens the less prudent to a sense of vanishing opportunity, often shows an astonishing advance in the quality of work in extra-classical subjects performed by erstwhile indifferent men. They see for the first time, in history or science, a species of learning that is understandable and full of life-interest; they catch the swing better, having little to unlearn, and not seldom cause heart-burning in their one-time easily prevailing rivals.

After an indefinite period devoted to this weary waste of vital energy, matters begin to mend for the discomfited; probably after one gets definitely out of the old grooves, a formerly acquired habit of steady and careful industry tends to advance its possessor with greater strides and with fewer interruptions than would otherwise be the case. But, having reached with pain a new orientation, he does not feel inclined to assign any special educational value to the classics, until through the lapse of time a truer perspective is gained and there is leisure to con the actual treasures which, albeit with great expenditure of effort, he has retained from his college days.

These remarks are naturally better applicable to the system of required classics than to that of the present day, and one who grew up under the old régime can scarcely place himself in the position of the free chooser. He feels that the latter has got a better education and is apter for the struggle of life, without visible cultural disabilities. But, assuming a retroactive power of choice, it is but fair to estimate the sacrifices incurred in securing what training in Greek one has. This is the question of comparative cost looked at from a slightly different angle. When one had completed the largely required course of ten or fifteen years ago, he emerged from college self-distrustful in modern languages, short on history, law, and economics, and devoid of even the rudiments of certainly half or three-quarters of the sciences. Music and the fine arts he knew not. He had covered certain courses in English literature, that oasis for saint and sinner alike, but had had no systematic practice in expressing himself in his native tongue. He found his Greek and Latin, it might be added, empty of the values asserted for the teaching of such expression; rather did they inculcate the involved and Johnsonian style, together with a shamefaced leaning toward trite classical allusion. How much of this gaping hiatus in education, four to seven years at three to five hours a week, plus preparation for the same, would have bridged, may be left to individual judgment.

The question presents itself something like this to the student of the social sciences: Would I trade my Greek, considered both culturally and practically, for biology, for zoölogy, or for geology, let alone a combination (which would be a fairer equivalent) of these or similar other sciences ? A positive affirmative leaps to the lips. Upon reflection it is sustained. You go over in this reflection some such line of thought as the above, and in addition you scrutinize the value of Greek as an aid in research—for it is that to a student of human societies in a degree far surpassing its importance in most other sciences. But it is of small advantage, after all, to read Aristotle, Plato, or even Homer, in the original, you feel. You may miss certain fine points and sacrifice some accuracy through dependence upon a translation; but if you do essay the original, the constant plying of the lexicon eats up time, strength, and patience, for relatively insignificant increments of superiority in your results. In fact you doubt, when you finally set down your reference to the original, whether it is not done more out of latent pedantry and a desire to get credit for unusual labors than because of the special weight of your opinions referable to direct approach to sources. If one renounces wholesale reading in the original and confines himself to the intensive study of an occasional author or significant passage, and takes the necessary time and pains, he is doubtless repaid, that is, he gets something more out of them than one who does not do this; but he cannot repeat the process often, or he is ruined. And so he betakes himself to Jowett or Lang or Voss, and chances it on the loss of atmosphere and possibly completer accuracy. He regrets this proceeding intensely, and reflects bitterly on what he could do for the satisfaction of scholarly instincts were it German or Spanish, recalling meanwhile, and with a resentful sense of loss, that he has put upon the latter languages but a fraction of the time and pains which his indifferent control of Greek has cost.

It is this kind of thing that makes enemies for the Greek among perfectly fair-minded, but human, scholars. It is not that they deny its absolute value; it is its relative worth that is, and should be, determinative. In fairness such men should not be loftily dubbed utilitarian and of taste unrefined. The line which limits the power of neglecting the utilitarian is not drawn for all men in the same place; and it must not be forgotten that dictation of tastes is presumption. Some choice has to be made, for men have limitations in powers and hours; perhaps in the millennium all working-days will have twenty-four hours, and all eyes and minds will be tireless, and then one will have the chance of assimilating to himself the sum of all species of culture.

Naturally that which is most in the eye of adverse opinion to Greek is, as so often, the unnecessary and unessential. There is absolutely no reason for hostility to the language and its literature; there is no excuse for hating aorists and abhorring Herodotus. But irritation at the assumptions and methods of the advocates of Greek is too often carried over by association to create a thoroughly unjust estimate of everything connected with the language. The old assumptions (of superiority, etc.), dating, like the dogma of papal infallibility, from a time of unquestioned prestige, appear now so gratuitous to those unendowed with a sense of humor, or too indignant to use it, that they arouse wrath rather than the tolerance due to passing survivals. All sponsors of Greek ought now to drop even the shadow of such pretensions and come out into the open with their good wares, to offer them on their merit with those of the rest. There will always be a select concourse who can afford, or will afford, the price; they may realize that it is high, but they will feel, and that correctly, that the value is great. But there should be no effort to force them upon the reluctant, nor any heart-burning because other good things are now offered in the educational market. Such an attitude, with the reasoning back of it, is mediæval.

But why cannot the wares be less costly ? Cannot processes be applied which shall, without cheapening the product in any essential way, bring it within reach of a rather extended patronage ? Cannot the old patterns be modified, or set aside in favor of those which appeal to the changed taste of an age of greater opportunity ? There is no alternative if the restriction of Greek to a smaller clientèle is intolerable. Prophecies of Greek “coming into its own again,” of the inevitable return-swing of the pendulum, are hazardous; they do not take into account the altered setting in which Greek finds itself. Reaction may not duplicate action if friction is too great, or in tire presence of diverting forces in the field. Nor is it apposite, however picturesque, to stand out in disdain as from the worship of some golden calf. The essence of viability is power of adaptation to change when this is not mere fitful oscillation; and the sentiment regarding Greek studies has gathered too much headway to be dismissed as a capricious vagary. Granted even that it is locally referable to the character of the American people, yet who would hope for a return to simple and docile ways when such alteration, deplorable though it may seem, is due to the action of no less than elemental forces ?

It would be a risky task and a thankless to suggest methods of popularizing Greek culture as it should be popularized if this is possible. Tentatives are being put forth in this direction. In last analysis, these must through actual experimentation be subjected to elimination and selection of the best. If the orthodox methods have proved themselves inefficient, they should be the object of the most searching scrutiny and the most ruthless weeding-out. In general, it is only common sense that such proposed variations of procedure should be fostered as look to the appropriation of that in the methods of other branches of study to which these latter owe their progress. Moreover, greater attention should be given, it would seem, to the correlation of Greek with other subjects; aloofness and pride of place should be renounced. The instructor should seek to make himself a man of such breadth as to be capable of indicating to scholars of all persuasions what Greek has to offer them. It would be a long story and vexed with detail if any outsider were to develop his idea of how Greek should be taught; and he would doubtless come to shipwreck speedily against some unforeseen reef. This is a subject more suitable for informal discussion, if it be candid and not heated, than for an essay. But that time-saving methods ² cannot be developed who will affirm ?

The case of Greek seems to many of us vitally a pedagogical one, granted that, apart from obsolete attitudes and assumptions, the situation be squarely viewed with the idea of learning the truth, not expounding it as preconceived. Whether it can be solved or not will determine whether Greek will widely and directly, or exclusively and only indirectly, advantage the race. The treasures of the Greeks are attractive enough to any man of mind and heart; there is no trouble there. Would that Latin could approach Greek in this respect! If it were as easy to learn Greek as German or French, or German and French, many a man would hasten to acquire it, even in later years, for the sake of knowing a mighty age in its own words, replete with their subtle suggestion of place, time, and environment. But such potential lovers are not likely to be content with the “residuum” which, as some defenders of the classics, rather graveled for matter, say, is sure “after all” to remain in the mind of the student. The truth is that scarcely any one does learn Greek in college or before; and what could be more damning than this ? In view of this fact all discussion about cultural and practical utility is really suspended in the air. The comparative cost of Greek is exorbitant and well-nigh prohibitive. The vital question is: Can it be lowered ?