JOHNSON AND MACAULAY

In no section of the community is this more prevalent than in our University scholars. Dr. Johnson, who was a typical Anglo-Saxon in his time, denounced the Athenian of the schools in vigorous terms, and thereby aroused the ire of Lord Macaulay. "Of remote countries and past times," said Macaulay of Johnson, "he talked with wild and ignorant presumption. 'The Athenians of the age of Demosthenes,' he said to Mrs. Thrale, 'were a people of brutes, a barbarous people.' In conversation with Sir Adam Ferguson he used similar language: The boasted Athenians,' he said, 'were barbarians. The mass of every people must be barbarous where there is no printing.' The fact was that he saw that a Londoner who could not read was a very stupid and brutal fellow; he saw that great refinement of taste and activity of intellect were rarely found in a Londoner who had not read much; and because it was by means of books that people acquired almost all their knowledge in the society with which he was acquainted, he concluded, in defiance of the strongest and clearest evidence, that the human mind can be cultivated by means of books alone. An Athenian citizen might possess very few volumes; and the largest library to which he had access might be very much less valuable than Johnson's bookcase in Bolt Court. But the Athenian might pass every morning in conversation with Socrates, and might hear Pericles speak four or five times every month. He saw the plays of Sophocles and Aristophanes; he walked amidst the friezes of Phidias and Zeuxis; he knew by heart the choruses of Eschylus; he heard the rhapsodist at the corner of the street reciting the Shield of Achilles or the Death of Argus; he was a legislator, conversant with high questions of alliance, revenue and wars;

he was a soldier, trained under a liberal and generous discipline; he was a judge, compelled every day to weigh the effects of opposite arguments. These things were in themselves an education eminently fitted, not indeed, to form exact or profound thinkers, but to give quickness to the perceptions, delicacy to the taste, fluency to the expression and politeness to the manners. All this was overlooked. An Athenian who did not improve his mind by reading was, in Johnson's opinion, much such a person as a Cockney who made his mark; much such a person as black Frank before he went to school; and far inferior to a parish clerk or a printer's devil.” 1 I have quoted the whole of this passage because Lord Macaulay appears to represent, very fairly, the opinion of the school-men of to-day. But a little consideration will, I think, show how grossly exaggerated this opinion is. It will be observed that neither Macaulay nor Johnson defines precisely what he means by the term "the Athenians." But Johnson, presumably, included in the term all selections and classes of the inhabitants of Attica, or at least of Athens; while Macaulay, also presumably, spoke only of the "upper four hundred," and excluded the workers and slaves, for whom the aristocrats of all branches of the Melanochroi race have always professed profound contempt.

THE GREEK FETISH

The Greeks had certainly no greater inherent sense of knowledge than other people, and in all branches of the race to which they belong it has been the settled policy to keep the lower orders in ignorance. Therefore reason tells us that in Greece and Rome from the earliest times the masses were uneducated, and Greek civilisation was merely a very thin veneer

1 Croker's Edition of Boswell's "Johnson."

over a mass of the most degraded and savage barbarism. That this was so is evidenced by the fact that when the Greek formulated his religion, he based it not on the teachings of the philosophers of his own race, but on the philosophy of an alien race, and it remained for the Teuton at a very much later date to make the Greek and the Latin acquainted with the writings of the philosophers of their own race. As far as I am aware this instance is unique. In no other case has a race based its religion on an alien science, and the fact that the Greeks did so goes far to prove that they were, except in a few cases, ignorant of the science of their own race, that is to say that they knew nothing of the knowledge which is most valuable to a race. The fact is that some centuries ago, when the writings of the Greek philosophers were unearthed after their long interment, their beauty and excellence made them appear to the childish and ignorant Teuton as something approaching the Divine. The works of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, etc., were regarded almost as a new revelation, and the school-men of the day elevated the ancient Greek on a pedestal and fell down and worshipped him; and this worship has been carefully inculcated in the schools and is still as lively as ever, although we have long since surpassed the Greek in all branches of learning and science, and have developed a science as superior to that of the Greeks or Romans as theirs was to the science of the

Australian savage. That the study of the Greek science and literature was of great value to the Teutons goes without saying, but that it is so still is untrue. The ancient Greek was not an epitome of all science for all time; but the school-men apparently desire to make him so, if possible, as they are continually reading new meanings into the writings of the ancients-meanings which are due to the development of modern science and which could not possibly have occurred to the minds of the ancient writers

and thus keeping them up to date, and this is perhaps one of the most mischievous and degrading superstitions which have been handed down to us from the past. Sooner or later even the Englishman must learn that cramming a child's head with Greek or Latin is not teaching, and the worship of the Greek fetish must sooner or later go the way of other superstitions.

DEMORALISING INFLUENCE OF THE GREEK

It is a sign of the undecided state of the AngloSaxon mind that the Anglo-Saxon shows an inclination to adopt, more or less, any alien worship which he is induced to study. The Greek scholar is taught to worship the ancient Greek, but if an Anglo-Saxon man or woman studies the Hindoo or the Arab philosophy he or she frequently becomes an esoteric Buddhist or a neo-Moslem. The Anglo-Saxon has not yet learned that the science of his own race is far superior to the science of any of the older races, and that if he studies the Greek, or the Hindoo, or the Arab, or any other ancient philosophy or science, he should make it subservient to the science of his own race. Instead of doing this the Anglo-Saxon has, from the earliest times, been content to take his religion from an alien race and to read even the Jewish Scriptures through Greek or Latin spectacles. He goes to the Greek to interpret the Hebrew Scriptures instead of to the Hebrew himself, although it must be apparent to any impartial thinker that the Jew is quite as worthy of study as the Greek. In fact the sole object of the English system of education seems to be to subordinate the AngloSaxon intellect to the Greek and Latin, to cramp the mind of the superior race down to the intellectual level of the inferior race. In a letter to George Borrow, J. P. Harfeldt said: "I am quite of your opinion that in England they have an incorrect notion

of education and instruction in the Universities. Who is to blame if the scholars have perverted ideas? The world must advance in time, but your Universities force it back into the Middle Ages. They fill men's heads with trash instead of good serviceable wares. The greater part of these products of art, called 'the learned,' would not be able to earn a living if our Lord were not a guardian of fools. What would these creatures do if they did not have Uncles and Aunts? It is because this craze for Greek learning is stronger in England than in other Teutonic countries that education is at a lower ebb in England than in these countries. The Century Dictionary says: "There is no authority for the common statement that the primary sense of 'educate' is to draw out, or unfold' the mind!" Probably this is because it has always been to the interest of those who constitute the authorities on education to cram in instead of draw out. The result is that we have a number of "ignorant men with good memories "men who never utter an original thought, but who can take an idea from some other person, and write gracefully and elegantly all round it with a wealth of quotation and allusion to what has been said on the subject before. Thus the University tends to crush out originality, to produce minor poets, parodists, and triflers with serious subjects, and this will continue as long as the highest educational authorities teach that it is of greater importance to produce more or less meritorious imitations of the work of the Greeks than to do original work. “Literature has her quacks no less than medicine, and they are divided into two classes: those who have erudition without genius, and those who have volubility without depth. We shall get second-hand sense from the one, and original nonsense from the other," said

1 "Life of George Borrow," by W. J. Knapp, M.D., LL.D., p. 222.