main object. Hence, the very same methods and processes-with necessary modifications according to the nature of the subject-should be employed in learning these languages as are employed for the easy, clear and rapid learning of any other language. When this shall be done, in rational and natural teaching, classical studies may be made as attractive as they have been often onerous and disagreeable. Equal results may then be accomplished in half the time required by the old scholastic method. Classical scholarship will again be possible within the time now allotted to classical study, and the old reproaches against the classics may give way to a new zeal for their cultivation. That such may soon be the case the character of the latest and most approved text-books of classical study in this country gives us good reason to hope.

2. The second requisite for the improvement of classical study is the extension of the elective system in our colleges and universities. Up to a recent period, under the old organization of the curriculum, classical studies were required of every college student. As a result, these studies were exacted of many who had neither time, capacity nor inclination to pursue them; and hence, in a vast number of cases, followed only failure, disgust, and reproach against classical studies. I take it as an axiom in education that there is no discipline in fragmentary knowledge, unwillingly pursued and imperfectly acquired. Better do any thing well and heartily than any other thing-however much better-meanly and haltingly. However valuable the classical languages may be for discipline or culture, there is no magic in them that absolves them from the natural laws of the human mind; and they can not be useful unless studied with an honest purpose and to useful results. No student should be required to pursue them who has not the time and the will to attain a fair scholarship, and to realize, in some good degree at least, the reasonable benefits of his labor. Any work that is done is, as we have just said, better than the best left undone; and so, for students who have no fair opportunity or inclination for classical study, any other study that they can and will do, is better both for education and for service. The infliction of classical studies upon every student, without regard to his ability, tastes, or calling in life, serves only in many cases to breed disgust and aversion toward these studies-if not toward all study,—and in many others to substitute a superficial sciolism in the classics for what might have been an honest and fruitful scholarship in some other direction. The abolition of this procrustean rule, by the gradual introduction of the elective system of studies, will relieve the crowded pressure of the curriculum, and give an enlarged scope for scholarship in every department. Then we may expect, too, to find a new devotion to classical study among its willing votaries, who will be largely relieved of the burden of unwilling or incapable classmates; and scientific studies, on the other hand, for the same reason, will receive a like impetus and improvement.

This reform, in some shape or another, has become indeed inevitable with the educational progress of the age. The practical impossibility of compressing all studies, beyond the most minute quantum of each, into one limited curriculum, becomes with each year more and more manifest; and as, with each year, the demand for more thorough training in every direction becomes stronger, we believe the time can not be far distant when the necessity for

the elective principle-so long practiced in Virginia* and now adopted by some of the best institutions of the country elsewhere, will be recognized by all-as experience has fully proved that this system is not unfriendly either to the highest scholarship or to the most efficient collegiate organization. Then only can we hope to see a culture at once broad enough, various enough, and high enough, to meet the manifold and progressive demands of this age. Then may we hope, too, that classical studies may resume their unquestioned and unquestionable place, not, indeed, as the exclusive or prescriptive study of the scholar and gentleman, but as one of the largest, noblest and most graceful of all the studies that fill the circle of modern culture; and that, as the examples of Greece and Rome still illuminate the progress of modern civilization and philosophy, so, too, the study of their noble languages and literature may, under a new revival of learning, shed its generous and sympathetic light over every department of education.

Dr. Reed called upon President ELIOT to explain the effect of the elective system at Harvard.

President Eliot replied at length.

Prof. M. Van Rensselaer, of Hobart College, asked a question as to the effect of the elective system in Washington-and-Lee University, Va.

Prof. Joynes replied that the Latin and Mathematical schools are the largest. Prof. John R. Roche, of Baltimore, began to read from a manuscript, but was soon called to order by the President, as introducing matter not relevant to the discussion.

Prof. Mears, of Hamilton College, claimed that no education leaving out classical studies, can be called liberal.

J. G. Burbridge, of Elmira, could not see how Latin is a better discipline than German. He spoke at length on the study of modern languages, and what he had accomplished as a teacher.

Prof. E. L. Youmans, of New-York City, protested against Prof. MEARS's position, and cited Count RUMFORD, Sir HUMPHREY DAVY, FARADAY and TYNDALL as men not classically educated.

Chas. Hammond, of Munson Academy, Mass., spoke of how TYNDALL prepared himself by the study of MILTON.

Rev. McKnight, of Trinity Church, Elmira, asked President ELIOT as to the comparative disciplinary value of Greek, Latin, and German.

President Eliot illustrated at length, putting Latin first, Greek second, and German a little after Greek.

Remarks were then made by HAMMOND and ATKINSON, and President ELIOT replied to a question proposed by President RAYMOND, of Vassar College.

The elective system was first introduced into this country by Mr. JEFFERSON, in the organization of the University of Virginia in 1825. It is now the prevailing organization of the Virginia colleges.

After some remarks by Prof. STEVENSON, of Dennison University, Ohio, Prof. JOYNES closed.

HENKLE, TAPPAN and JOYNES were appointed a committee to nominate officers.

S. G. Burbridge arose to make explanation.

THIRD DAY.

THURSDAY P.M.-AUGUST 7.

The Department met in the lecture-room of the First Presbyterian Church, Dr. REED in the chair.

Prof. W. P. Atkinson, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, Mass., read the following paper.

LIBERAL EDUCATION OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

The collapse of that classical system of liberal education which has held almost undisputed sway since the revival of learning in the sixteenth century, and the now generally recognized insufficiency of the theory which makes the study of the languages of Greece and Rome the sole foundation of the higher education, are leading, as all familiar with the educational thought of the present day are aware, to the greatest variety of speculations as to the system which is destined to supersede it. That a theory of liberal education as well adapted to the wants of the nineteenth-or, shall we not rather say the twentiethcentury, as was the classical theory to the wants of the sixteenth, has yet been elaborated, would be quite too much to affirm. We are living in the midst of a chaos of conflicting opinions, and it seems to be the duty of all who think at all on a subject on which the vital interests of the future so much depend, and especially incumbent on all practical teachers, to make such contribution as they are able, from their studies and reflection or their experience, toward the right solution of the problem. It is to such a contribution that I now ask your attention.

I begin with a definition of Liberal Education, in regard to which I presume we shall not be much at variance. The term liberal is opposed to the term servile. A liberal education is that education which makes a man an intellectual freeman, as opposed to that which makes a man a tool, an instrument for the accomplishment of some ulterior aim or object. The aim of the liberal education of any period is the right use of the realized capital of extant knowledge of that period, for the training of the whole, or only of some privileged part of the rising generation, to act the part and perform the duties of free, intellectual, and moral beings. So far as the nature of the human mind and the foundations of human knowledge remain the same from age to age and

generation to generation, a liberal education is the same thing in every age and generation; so far as the condition of society varies from age to age, and as the accumulated capital of extant knowledge increases, the liberal education of one generation will differ from that of another. There are, therefore, both constant and variable factors in our problem. It is with the variable factors, as modifying our conception of the liberal education of the nineteenth century, that I have here chiefly to do.

I reckon five leading influences which are acting powerfully to modify all our old theories, and slowly working out a new ideal of liberal education: 1. A truer psychology, giving us for the first time a true theory of elementary teaching. 2. Progress in the science of philology, enabling us to assign their right position to the classical languages as elements in liberal culture, and giving us, in modern philological science, an improved and more powerful teaching instrument. 3. The first real attempt to combine republican ideas with the theory of liberal education-in other words, to make the education of the whole people liberal, in stead of merely the education of certain privileged classes and protected professions. And when I say the whole people, I mean men and women. Nothing, I will say in passing, to my mind so marks us as still educational barbarians, so stamps all our boasted culture with illiberality, as an exclusion of the other sex from all share in its privileges. No education can be truly liberal which is not equally applicable to one sex as to the other. 4. As the influence more profoundly modifying our conceptions of liberal education than any other, I reckon the advent of modern physical science. 5. I count among those influences the growing perception that art and aesthetic culture are equally necessary as an element in all education worthy of the name. Let me give the few words, which are all the time will allow me, to each of these influences.

And, first, the advance we have been making toward a truer educationphilosophy, based upon truer conceptions in regard to the growth and early development of the human mind, is pretty well disposing of what, perhaps, I may be permitted to call the old-fashioned grindstone theory of elementary education; the doctrine, namely, that, as preparation for higher culture, all youthful minds require a certain preliminary process of sharpening upon certain studies, valueless or next to valueless in themselves, at least so far as regards the vast majority of their recipients, but quite as needful, nevertheless, to them as to all others who are hereafter to be considered as liberally educated, for the indirect benefit their pursuit was supposed to confer. The accepted theory of liberal education has heretofore been, that it was a certain very special kind of training which required this peculiar preliminary sharpening process, and that, as the instruments for it, there were certain almost divinely-appointed studies exclusively set apart, to wit, the grammars of two dead languages, and the elementary portions of abstract mathematics. It was not and could not be maintained that these studies would ever be the natural choice of the youthful mind in the beginning of its scholastic career; rather, it was thought to be a prime recommendation that they were as remote as possible from any thing the youthful mind would of itself appropriate as intellectual nutriment. Like medicine, the value of such disciplinary studies was sup

posed to be in direct proportion to their disgustfulness; for they were not food to nourish the mind withal, but tonics, wherewith artificially to strengthen it. They were rods for the spiritual part, the counterparts of those material ones which the strong right arm of the ancient pedagogue wielded with such efficiency on the bodies of his youthful charge, and the benefit of both alike was not utilitarian, but disciplinary.

*

That I may not be suspected of caricaturing, I will make two quotations, the first from a lecture by Prof. SELLAR, Professor of Greek in the University of Edinburgh: "The one extreme theory," he says, "is that education is purely a discipline of the understanding; that the form of the subject is every thing, the content little or nothing. A severe study, such as classics or mathematics, is the thing wanted to train or brace the faculties; it does not matter whether it is in itself interesting or not. The student will find sufficient interest in the sense of power which he has to put forth in training for the great race with his competitors. It is not knowledge, they say, 'but the exercise you are forced to incur in acquiring knowledge that we care about. Read and learn the classics simply for the discipline they afford to the understanding. You may, if it comes in your way and does not interfere with your training, combine a literary pleasure with this mode of study, but this is no part of your education. As teachers, we do not care to encourage it; we do not care to interpret for you the thought or feeling of your author. All such teaching is weak and rhetorical; we do not profess to examine into your capacity for receiving pleasure. Accurate and accomplished translation, effective composition in the style of the ancient authors, thorough grammatical and philological knowledge- these are our requirements. The training in exactness, in concentration, in logical habits, and in discernment of the niceties of expression, is the one thing with which we start you in life. Whether you have thought at all, or care to think, about the questions which occupy and move the highest minds, is no affair of ours.'

"This theory is, I think, a purely English theory of education. It has grown up within the last half-century, and it is in the University of Cambridge that it has been, and still is, most fully realized."

My other extract shall be from an essay by the Public Orator of the University of Cambridge: "I conclude, then," says Mr. W. G. CLARK, "that the first subject of study must be the same for all, and that it is no valid objection to any subject to affirm that it is dry and distasteful, but, on the contrary, a strong recommendation. It can not be denied that this condition is amply satisfied by the Latin accidence, as exhibited in our time-honored and muchabused text-books. . . . The question arises, where, besides the Latin grammar, can we find any subject equally dry, and by consequence as powerfully tonic to the juvenile mind, which recommends itself as deserving in lieu thereof to form the basis of education by its general applicability and greater fertility of after-results. Except the Greek language, which, from its intimate connection with the Latin in structure and literature, is a necessary complement to it, and not a possible substitute for it, I know of none."

Theories of Classical Teaching: A Lecture, p. 10.

+ Cambridge Essays, for 1855.