be less than the best use that can be made of the time of our youth, for their highest and best success

all its senses and forms

success in

then let it cease, and let better implements of mental training take its place.

In the task which I set before me the only task I attempt of replying to Mr. Adams - it is necessary to observe his exact positions, so far as they are disclosed by this address. Much misapprehension exists on this point which ought to be at once corrected, and for which Mr. Adams is not responsible.

Let me quote Mr. Adams's words, which state his main demand and conclusion:

"The modernist asks," he says, "of the college, to change its requirements for admission only in this wise: Let it say to the student who presents himself, 'In what languages, besides Latin and English, those are required of all in what other languages - Hebrew, Greek, German, French, Spanish or Italian, will you be examined'? If the student replies, In Greek,' so be it; let him be examined in that alone; and if, as now, he can stumble through a few lines of Xenophon or Homer, and render some simple English sentences into questionable Greek, let that suffice; as respects languages, let him be pronounced fitted for a college course. If, however, instead of offering himself in the classic, he offers himself in the modern tongues, then, though no mercy be shown him, let him at least no longer be turned contemptuously away from the college doors; but instead of the poor quarter-knowledge, ancient and modern, now required, let him be permitted to pass such an examination as will show that he has so mastered two languages besides his own, that he can go forward in his studies, using them as working tools."

This is a fair-sounding proposition: Do not make Greek compulsory leave it optional. But it involves just this question and consideration whether Greek is or is not the best implement for doing the proper work of the college? The fact that some or many wished to take German or other modern language, in place of Greek, would not be even an argument in favor of allowing them to do it, unless it was first determined that German or some other modern language, could equally well do the work for which the college exists.

Let no one here charge me with illiberality, for it is Mr. Adams who, in this address, tells us, "In regard to the theory of what we call a liberal education, there is, as I understand it, not much room for difference of opinion. There are certain fundamental requirements, without a thorough mastery of which no man can pursue a specialty to advantage. Upon these common fundamentals are grafted the specialties."

Again he says, "I think all will admit that, as respects the fundamentals, the college training should be compulsory and severe. It should extend through the whole course. No one ought to become a Bachelor of Arts until upon the fundamentals, he has passed an examination, the scope and thoroughness of which should set at defiance what is perfectly well defined as the science of cramming."

Mr. Adams and the advocates of Greek are, then, in complete agreement on these initial positions ;-first, that there must be a fixed and compulsory course of study, embracing certain studies which he has well enough called "fundamentals"; second, that as to these "fundamentals,' the training should not only be compulsory and severe, but that it should extend through the whole course; and third, that upon these "fundamentals" no one should be

admitted to the degree of Bachelor of Art, who has not passed a rigid and thorough examination.

These positions seem to leave only the question — what ought these "fundamentals" to be? If we can determine that question our controversy ends; for no man can dispute with me about the need of the utmost attainable thoroughness in all college studies, or the correctness of what Mr. Adams calls "the greatest of all practical preceptsthat every man should in life master some one thing, be it great or be it small"; that "superficiality is dangerous as well as contemptible"; that "what is worth doing at all is worth doing well"; or, "finally," to quote still from Mr. Adams, "that the power to follow out a line of sustained, close thought, expressing ourselves in clear, concise terms," is the result of "a mastery of well-selected fundamentals"; or, that a familiar knowledge of the modern languages is needful for the best success in many of the pursuits and studies of modern life, and that these languages embody the best results of modern thought, modern science, and modern attainments of all kinds.

I observe, with sincere pleasure, that Mr. Adams is not a champion of the so-called scientific training in distinction from the classical or literary. Upon this point it is pleasant to quote from Mr. Adams: "I desire to say," he remarks, "that I am no believer in that narrow, scientific and technological training which now and again we hear extolled. A practical, and too often a mere vulgar, money-making utility seems to be its natural outcome."

I see no trace, likewise, in this address, of approval of an extensive system of optional or elective studies in a college course. Judging him by the whole tenor of his discourse-by what he most insists upon - Mr. Adams

may be called orthodox and conservative on all these questions.

Let us first see, then, what are Mr. Adams's reasons for not putting Greek among the "fundamentals."

In his judgment, Greek is in general too remote from modern life and thought; "The human mind, outside of cloisters," he says, "is occupied with other and more pressing things," especially with "scientific thoughts"; students are now brought up in a "new atmosphere,” and are "not in sympathy with the remote past," and as the modern languages are the avenues to modern thought, they should be the college studies in preparation for modern life. Of Greek he says: "Not only is it a dead tongue, but it bears no immediate relation, to any living speech or literature of value."

It is true that Mr. Adams in several instances concedes and asserts the value of Greek and Latin, declaring, for example, that no one can admire more than he, "the subtile, indescribable fineness of thought and diction which a thorough classical education gives to the scholar." Elsewhere he says, "Of Greek really studied and lovingly learned, there cannot well be two opinions"; it is "the basis of the finest scholarship"; yet he finally says, “There is, in what are called the educated classes, both in this country and in Europe, a very considerable amount of affectation and credulity in regard to Greek and Latin masterpieces. That is jealously prized as part of the body of the classics, which if published to-day in German or French or English, would not excite a passing notice. There are immortal poets, whose immortality, my mature judgment tells me, is wholly due to the fact that they lived two thousand years ago." He declares as the result of all his experience and observation that "whether viewed as a

thing of use, as an accomplishment, as a source of pleasure, or as a mental training, I would rather myself be familiar with the German tongue and its literature than be equally familiar with the Greek. I would unhesitatingly make the same choice for my child. What I have said of German as compared with Greek, I will also say of French as compared with Latin. On this last point I have no question. Authority and superstition apart, I am indeed unable to see how an intelligent man, having any considerable acquaintance with the two literatures, can, as respects either richness or beauty, compare the Latin with the French; while as a worldly accomplishment, were it not for fetish-worship, in these days of universal travel the man would properly be regarded as out of his mind, who preferred to be able to read the odes of Horace rather than to feel at home in the accepted neutral language of all refined society."

Mr. Adams takes some positions from which indeed it is difficult to dislodge him. When he declares that in the Harvard of his day he was "compelled to devote the best part of his school life to acquiring a confessedly superficial knowledge of two dead languages"; that "not only was the knowledge of our theoretical fundamentals to the last degree superficial, but nothing better was expected"; that "the fundamentals were no longer studied as a means, but as an end—the end being to get into college"; that "thoroughness of training in any real-life sense of the term was unknown in those branches with which I came in contact"; he speaks of matters of which his knowledge ought certainly to be better than mine. I do not intend to be disrespectful to Mr. Adams when I say, however, that I do not believe that this is a fair or just account of the instruction in Harvard thirty years