One advantage adduced under this head deserves notice. The languages
being dead, as well as all the societies and interests that they
represent, they do not excite the prejudices and passions of modern
life. This, however, may need some qualification. Grote wrote his
history of Greece to counterwork the party bias of Mitford. The battles
of despotism, oligarchy, and democracy are to this hour fought over the
dead bodies of Greece and Rome. If the professor meant to insinuate,
that those that have gone through the classical training are less
violent as partisans, more dispassionate in political judgments, than
the rest of mankind, we can only say that we should not have known this
from our actual experience. The discovery of some sweet, oblivious,
antidote to party feeling seems, as far as we can judge, to be still in
the future. If we want studies that will, while they last, thoroughly
divert the mind from the prejudices of party, science is even better
than ancient history; there are no party cries connected with the
Binomial Theorem.
The professor's last branch of argument, I am obliged, with all
deference, to say, contains no argument at all. It is that, in classical
education, a close contact is established between the mind of the boy
and the mind of the master.
Pages:
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177