Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1845-06-21

that is valuable in their teachings and in the exam
pies which they hold up TO youth, may as well DC
studied in wellexecnted translations as in the ORR
I ginas." II this opinion be just, then the adver-
sary whom jefferson" attacks and Jefferson
himself may as well join arms against the colleges:
for if they have SO long and SO obsnately persisted
in teaching, as the main object OF learning, that
which is mere waste Of time, they as much de-
serve to be pulled down if they had been all the
while intoxicating what is anti-republican.
These, them can hardly be considered as adverse
opinions, since they arrive at the same conclusion
the Punishment Of the classic tongues from our col
leges. Such is really the effect of what "Jefer-
son" says; and his very note, intended to modify
this opinion, only serves to show that he would ex-
clude from all college courses every thing beyond
little /. rudimental instruction " in the Greek and
Latin.
Now, the absurdity Of his adversary having been
sufficiently exposed by himself, we have only to
argue with him.
II may be said that Locke's is the first and almost
the only great name which has somewhat lent itself
to this barbarian, uttaran, and democratic opposi-
ton to the making literary education the main
basis of all academic instruction. That philoso-
pher-n several other things sort of forerunner of
observation-disclosures only devised system Of teach
ing by lnterlneary Translation, (since reinyented
by Hamilton and fit only to ruin all good and tho
rough teachng but favored preference, in all re-
guar education, of science to literature.
The answer to all his ideas on this subject may
be found, not only in the continued practice of the
~ oil s,,hca hoe
sustained, but in the plainest reason.
Letters science, politics, history, art--all form,
of necessity, great unbroken, historic body Of
thought not to be mastered for the great purposes
Of any, unless we ascend to their first distinct and
regular forms, where they arose. Even science,
the most positive Of them all, is little else than
series of systems; nor can Newton's the greatest
of all, presume to say that alone is certain, and
can venture to reject all preceding as entirely
unworthy to be known. Sir Isaac himself had seen
that, from the times of Thales and Pythagoras, sys
TENS had only grown up to perish, and that his own
if apparently demonstrated to his times, might by
and-by be exploded in its turn. He, therefore,
would never have consented that, after him. the stu
dent of physics should be taught not to look back
beyond him. Hetknew that the rise of some fresh
theory, as confident and as widely received as his
own, might consign him, with the same arrogance
of the Present. to forgetfuness; that it was for no
human wisdom to pronounce that all which went
before it was false and worthless; and, indeed, that
the very of the Past are often capital part
Of knowledge. If man is to be a thorough mathe-
matician or astronomer, he desires, if he is not
obliged, to be learned one, and to be acquainted,
not only with La Place and Euler Leibnitz, CALI
leo, Kepler, and Copernicus, but with Ptolemy,
Archimedes, Euclid, Hipparchus, and their prede-
cessors up Thales, many of them as great in their
day as Newton in his. For learned men hold that
if Hpparchus, for instance had possessed the teles
cope and the pendulum, fifty years of observation
would probably have placed astronomy where it
stood at the birth of Newton.
But out of mathematical science, the case is inf
nitely stronger. Literature, poetry, and the imag-
native arts reached excellence among the Greeks
which modern times in no sort rival and which,
indeed, when their causes are explored, one will
think little likely ever TO be rivalled by any people
that has now reached state Of civilization The
more imperfect and secondary languages which we
speak, the more conventional state in which live,
the lessened sensibility produced by the growth Of
Positive Science, the enfeebled invention brought
about by the rise of great and multifarious learn
ing, all serve to make the Greeks easily and per-
haps forever masters in all that belongs TO poet
ry eloquence, and the art of composition generally
In these, we cannot dispense with them models,
any more than in sculpture and architecture, arts
which many circumstances enabled them to exer-
else no modern people can. To talk of our OBJ
tanning through TRANSACTIONS the literary benefits to
be gotten from Homer and Pindar, from Eschylus,
Sophocles, and Euripides, from Demosthenes and
Eschines, from Herodotus and Thucydides, is talk
ing if Milton or Shakespeare would be the same
thing in Choctaw or Kickapoo version.
As little can we dispense with them in history or
politics, or morals or theology. In the two first,
the peculiarly Of their societies and institutions have
no modern parallel; while, further, it is strictly
true that ancient history and governments afford far
better scope for profitable study than modern.
The causes at work in the former are simpler and
more easily understood; while modern affairs, in
their growing completely and confusion, defy too
GENERALLY all comprehension. For this country, in
particular the study of Greek politics, which dis
play popular institutions under SO many forms and
combinations, is valuable far beyond any thing
that the whole modern world can offer. In theol-
ogy not merely for the sacred text, but for great
and venerable body Of fathers and commentators,
what divine will say that Greek and Latin are