the slightest thought of or regard for the greatest good of the greatest number; for certainly it could not have accomplished the thing better, if it had been really devised with that deliberate intent. No system of performing the work of education, or for performing any other work, can be called a good system, which fails with the great majority and succeeds only with the few.

But then, if the argument so often used in defence of our system, derived from the great value of the classical knowledge it is presumed to impart, be fallacious, is not at least that which rests upon the disciplinary efficacy of classical study more substantial? Upon this point, again, there is some reason to believe that our educationists accept too readily what might be for what is. If mental discipline consists in invigorating the mental faculties by wholesome exercise, and in training them to habits of method in exercise, it is indeed certain that the study of language, undertaken at the suitable stage in the process of culture, must prove a most efficacious instrumentality— perhaps the most efficacious of all—for accomplishing this object. But to place before the immature mind a subject which might possibly later call into exercise certain of its powers, say for instance comparison, judgment, reasoning, is not by any means to insure that, under the actual circumstances, it will do so. It may hardly awaken an active faculty at all, and may remain merely matter of consciousness and memory. And especially is it probable that in early life the higher faculties, the reflective and reasoning powers, will fail to respond to the provocatives addressed to them, when those provocatives consist of abstractions which are not themselves conceived without effort.

The first step, for instance, in the process of reasoning,

is comparison. The easiest efforts of comparison are made when the objects are objects of simple perception; and if Nature dictates any thing on the subject of education too plainly to admit of mistake, it is that children should first be taught to compare by the help of visible things. But if this plain dictate of Nature is disregarded, and we present to immature minds, as subjects of thought, definitions (for instance) of the parts of speech, or the distinctions between the dative and ablative case, the probability is that no comparison or discrimination will be exercised at all, and that the only faculty which will come into play will be the memory. I say the probability is, but I might better say the certainty; and if personal experience is worth any thing in the case, I may add that in one instance, at least, this certainty has been to me matter of knowledge.

Valuable then as is the study of language for its educational uses, it does not follow that it is so for the earliest stages of education. Still less, at that early period, will that language be found useful, of which the structure is the most complicated, the inflections the most numerous, the syntax the most artificial, and the order of words and clauses in a sentence the most widely contrasted with that which prevails in the learner's own vernacular. And yet such a language possesses in the highest degree the properties which make of language a useful educational instrumentality, provided the proper place be assigned to it in the educational course.

There is a professor of physical training in New York who promises a wonderful development of the muscles of the arms and chest, to such as choose to practise under his direction for a few months in wielding certain ponderous clubs-thirty pounds, more or less, I believe, in weight.

He can point to some striking living examples of the success which has attended his method; but I have never heard that he had placed his clubs in the hands of boys of ten years old. And so, when we impose on the intellects of boys, at the same tender age, a burden like that of the grammar of the Latin or the Greek language, we overtask them as much as we should overtask their bodily strength by requiring them to go through a gymnastic exercise with a club of thirty pounds' weight. They can lift the burden no more in the one case than in the other. They do not lift it, though we may persuade ourselves that they do, because we tie them to it and leave them there. And by this I mean to say that the study of Latin and Greek, between the ages of eight and twelve (I have heard of cases in which the study began at six), does not really serve the educational purpose that it is supposed to do; does not really occupy the reflective and reasoning powers of the mind, but exercises almost exclusively the memory. But then, if it does not do this, it does something worse. It blinds us to the fact that the educational process is not going on at all, at the very most important and critical time in the youthful learner's life. It prevents us from perceiving that the mind which we are endeavoring to train, refusing a task to which it is unequal, remains inactive, except in the very humblest of its faculties. It conceals from us the unhappy truth that the perceptive powers remain dormant or sluggish; that the powers of comparison, analysis, judgment, and reasoning, are never called into action; and that the period of life when habits of careful observation are most easily formed, when in fact they must be formed, or never formed at all, is passing away unimproved.

To me, therefore, it seems to be an error of very se

rious gravity to suppose that the study of the ancient languages at a very early period of life is a means of valuable and wholesome mental discipline. That study seems to me rather, at that time, to act as a sedative, repressing the activity of the higher mental powers, than as a stimulant awakening them to exertion. And no stronger corroboration of the justice of this view could be presented than is to be found in the very moderate amount of attainment which appears in the end to be acquired, as the result of all this labor. The object of education, considered as a formative process, is not indeed directly the increase of knowledge. It is to form and not to inform the mind. But there is no process of formation which does not imply information. There is no species of mental exercise in which the understanding is not employed in the acquisition of new truths, or in forming new combinations of familiar truths, in such a manner as to enlarge the scope of our ideas. And in so far as the processes we call educational fail to increase knowledge, although not planned with that express intent, in precisely so far they fail to accomplish their proper end. There is then no impropriety in judging of the educational value of any study by considering how much it has contributed to the learner's stock of positive knowledge, and what proportion this addition bears to the time which has been devoted to securing it. Now, imperfect as is the acquaintance of our college graduates with the languages which occupy so largely their attention throughout their whole educational course, there is no doubt that the greater part of what they know of them is acquired after they become members of college. And yet, considering the exclusiveness with which, in the preparatory schools, they are confined to these subjects of study, there is as little doubt that the time they expend on

them in those schools exceeds in most cases, and very much exceeds in many, all that they can give to them afterward. That is to say, in the earlier years the study is comparatively barren of results; it fails to impart an amount of knowledge bearing any fair proportion to the amount of time expended on it. And this fact is sufficient proof in itself that the disciplinary value of the study, at that period of the education, cannot be what has been claimed for it.

I shall be very much misunderstood if I am supposed, because of what I have said, to undervalue classical learning. I shall be misunderstood if I am supposed to desire to exclude the classics from our course of liberal education. No one places a higher estimate upon the ancient learning than I do.* No one feels more sensibly than I the force of all the arguments which have been urged in its favor. The influence which the perusal of the many

* It seems worth while to insist a little upon this point. There is a great deal that is sensible and well worth attention uttered by the class of educational controversialists who take the greatest pains to display their contempt of classical learning; but this fails to impress their opponents, because their heterodoxy upon the point esteemed most vitally important discredits them with these upon every other. The writer is not to be confounded with such. He has labored as earnestly as any man in vindication of the claims of classical learning to the prominent place which it holds in our system of higher education-a place which he hopes to see it still maintain. But there is certainly danger, and a daily increasing danger, that it will lose this pre-eminence; and this appears to the writer to be inevitable, unless some such reform as is recommended above shall be introduced into the earlier periods of the educational So far, therefore, is the writer in what he has said from meditating any assault upon the classics, that he honestly believes that the prevalence of the views here advocated, and the practical consequences which would follow, would do more than any thing else to fortify them against assault, and to quiet the growing disposition to assail them. This belief may be a mistaken one; but however that may be, its existence is an evidence that the foregoing remarks and reasonings are dictated by a friendly and not by a hostile spirit.

course.