Sacramento daily record-union., 1881-11-08
THE STUDY OF LATIN.

body regarded the world as having sunk
into degradation, and everybody agreed
that the only way to redeem it from this
degradation was to revive the learning
OF the ancients. Thus the eyes of men
came to be fixed upon the past instead of
upon the future, and all tendencies toward
the origination of new and broader ideas
were prevented by the rapidly increasing
intellectual serviity of the time to Greece
and Rome. And though it may be ad-
mitted that the standards then adopted
were far in advance of anything existing
at the close of the Dark Ages, it is not less
true that the result of accepting those
standards was to produce Chinese kind
of culture, which gradually became ab-
sorbed in form and style, and cared less
and less for matter. The one offset to the
mischief thus caused lay in the employ
ment OF Latin as the language of the
highest civilization and of science. This
practice undoubtedly did much to diffuse
the learning Of the time, and to promote
intellectual friction but it is also to be
observed that the learning of the time was
after all comparatively barren and frivo-
loua learning and that it was SO principally
because of the paralyzing influence of the
classical infatuation which prevailed.
The central tendency of the Renascence.
however, namely the tendency to look
backward for guidance and information
instead OF forward, has deeply affected
European culture from that day to this.
The extreme reverence for Latin and
Greek has long since ceased to be much
more than survival from barbarism, for
tie world has turned round within the
past century has ceased to contemplate
the past, and has it's gaze bent upon the
present and the future. The past cannot
help this generation to the solution of any
OF the problems which are before il.
Modern science has thrust the philosophy
of the schoolmen and the speculations of
the ancients into the background. Men
are realizing more every day that if ever
the secret of the universe is to be won
it must be through the development of
these myriad branches of knowledge
which have made such enormous advances
during the LAST fifty years. And the liter
ature of ell this fresh and important know
ledge is written in modern languages. A
man may devote his whole life to Latin,
and after all remain so ill.informed as to
be incapable of comprehending the COM
mon events of his era. Latin represents
literature which has long ceased to be
capable Of afording liberal education
which in fact may be said to embrace very
little which cannot be learned as well in
English.
The favorite plea of the Latinist is that
the study of the language is an excellent
mental discipline. It is mental dis
cipline just as the treadmill is bodily
discipline, however. It is for the most
part no more useful than the metaphysic
of the school. And the answer to this
plea is that quite as good discipline and
very much better general results can be
obtained by substituting living languages,
or physical sciences, for the classics. But
it is also fact which must be recognized
that there is no longer any time for
methods of education which do not bring
positive and tangible results. No lad can
devote couple of years to Latin nowadays
without depriving himself of scme study
very much more important. because
it involves practical consequences. The
study of Science and of modern languages
enlarges the requirements of the student
at once and undeniably. The study of
Latin does not admit him to field which
he could not enter otherwise, and there
fore it is waste of time, or even worse.
The things best worth knowing are for the
most part modern, and not ancient. Aris-
totle, Plato and Socrates could speculate
as shrewdly on the unkno wable as nine.
teenth century philosophers, perhaps, but
q wisely ordered education will master
that phase of human inquiry once for all,
and then drop it, as having no practical
relations. 1t is with the researches of mod
ern Science that the world of to-day has
to do, and all its hopes and interests and
aspirations depend upon the extension of
those researches.
The classic age is separated from ours
by an impossible gulf, and there can
never again be any connection with that
age. And because this is true the recent
attempts to restore the dying interest in
the obsolete study of Latin must fail of
their purpose. To us they seem as
discordant with the time as Pope Leo's
attempt to revive the study of the
scholastic philosophy. The works of the
" Angelic Doctor" are not more ghostly
and cut of place in this fercely.inquiring
and forward pressing century than is
the endeavor to refasten upon our children
that slavery to the classics which so unfor.
tunately prolonged the period of the
Renascence, and which in go doing post.
poned the beginning of the present pro-
ductive intellectual epoch. Depend upon
it that modern literature is the only liter
ature which will repay study. If any
one has leisure for classical discussions
when he has filed his mind with the
knowledge of the century. well and good
but to put Latin or Greek before Science
and modern languages evinces fatal
adhesion to theories which have ceased
to have any raison d'etre, and to methods
which have through the rapid expansion
of human knowledge become nothing less
than obstructive.