Mower County transcript. [volume] (Lansing, Minn.) 1868-1915, 1874-11-19
EDUCATION, Is.
Prot: Bonamy Prices Views on the
Study Of the Greek and Latin Lam
J.. guages.

-
University, England, lecturcd last even
ing before large audience, at Standard
Hall, corner of Thirteenth street and
Michigan avenue, on "Education." He
introduced his lecture with defining cdu-
cation as consisting of two distinct parts {:
first, the storing of the mind with asccr-
tanned knowledge; and second, the OPEN
ing of all the faculties Of the mind, so
that the student should be ready for any
pursuit and all the affairs of life. If we
looked We would find that the education
was the man. Watch the successful men
note what their course had been, and fol-
low it, and we would become educated.
OF the various machinery employed
for the purpose Of educating, some said
give our youth such instruction that
when they come from school they could
do things. This he pronounced mar
row utilitarianism: It was simply to
give special training, to!giye mere skill.
The plowman was skilled, the sailor
knew how 10 reef topsail, but were they
educated men? When We wanted oar
sons to learn German because we wanted
them to make use of it in the counting
room, was that educations This acquisi-
ton of special skill to do special things
was too narrow to be considered educa.
ton.
There were those who turned to IN ath-
cmatics IIe didn't believe in the differ
ential-intcgral-calc Mus machine into
which were put formulas and from which
were ground out formulas. But Euclid's
reasoning was sustained step by step, and
the last link in the chain, though there
were u thousand, was as strong as the
first 1t required and developed the pow
er of reasoning, and was valuable, for it
was astonishing how few people there
were who had learned when they an
nounce proposition, that they should be
able to sustain it by argument, and if the
reasoning failed, they should not an.
nounce tue proposition. But mathemat-
les did not deal with the things that had
to be dealth with in life Fixed scientif
the sort men had to deal with i'll their az
fairs, and the great mathematicians, be.
cause Of their habit Of dealing with af.
fairs as fixed scientific facts, were gcner
ally, almost always great children.
The great attention that is now paid to
what is called science was severely criti-
cised by Professor Price,. Science, the
knowledge of things about us, was i'm.
portant There was adhesion in science,
in that all the facts must be had, else a
mess was made of it; and in that it taught
the collection of all the facts, it was valu.
able. But it was not the highest educa.
ton. Professor Huxley had once been
so ill-advised in speech as to say that ed
ucation of the Greeks and Romans, wEo
had dealt with the everlasting problems
of existence, was less than that of him
who could give the history of the piece
Of chalk he held in his hand. But the
history of piece Of chalk was simply a
record of the series Of chemilal changes
which it had undergone. Huxley him
self afterward confessed the superiority
Of general literature, which was Il treasu
ry of the thoughts and emotions, and thus
confessed beyond doubt the highest cdu
cation was the study of what was contain
cd in the human intellect.
OF language, he said, the mere learn
ing to speak French or German from ono
who spoke either correctly was not edu
cation. The study of grammar, the mode
OF expression Of thought implied a stud,
of thought, and in this and because of i
there could be no higher education thar
is the Greek land Latin, more particular
ly the former. 1t put one in the compa
ny of the greatest men-thc greatest phil
osopher, moralists, and poets. This was
his first mention of the word, and he
would digress to say that poetry, a:
| Wordsworth used to tell him, must bt
true-which meant that, though by ma
ny regarded as fiction, poetry, to be such
must be the true expression Of the fines
emotions of life, and these were higher
than reason. AS Aristotle put it, poetr,
was more philosophical than philoso
ply
Professor Price then proceeded to ar
elaborate eulogy of the study of the Greek
1t introduced us to the company of thu
greatest men the world ever saw, and hi
could be educated in it only who so stud
led that when brought into their compa
ny he heard them speak. The fact tina
the language was dead, that it was intri
cate, that in making TRANSACTIONS select
ion Of the word that exactly expressed
the idea was necessary, brought the stu
dent to the mastery Of the thought he hac
to weigh and consider it, to master the
language in which it was expressed.
Professor Price closed with an elo
quent appeal for an education that was
higher than mere utilitarianism.-[Ch Chi
cago Inter-Ocean.