Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

nature. Modern schools have divided human nature into too many departments. In order to prevent them from being so one-sided, and to ensure that they should send not half men but whole men to Oxford and Cambridge, I suggested years ago in your columns that all candidates in Responsions should be examined in Greek and Latin, mathematics and mechanics, so that they might bring up to the University minds directed to things in general both without and within themselves, and at the University should thus be able to specialize without becoming narrow. I think so still.

All education should aim at perfecting the whole man. A good education is one which develops the capacity and corrects the defects of the pupil. The best education of a candidate preparing for the University such as that of Oxford is one which, among other things, includes on the more linguistic side enough Greek and Latin, and on the more scientific side enough mathematics and mechanics, to enable the student to understand and to act according to the laws of nature and of human nature. In the production of this beneficial result Greek is not the least but the most necessary of these excellent accomplishments. It is indeed coming to be thought that the things best to learn are the natural sciences, and especially chemistry, physics, and biology, on the ground that the laws of nature discovered in these sciences are useful for material prosperity and important in war. But in the ordinary vocations of life the proper study of mankind is man-what man is, what I am and what other men are, how man reasons truly or falsely, what it is to be good or to be bad, to be happy or miserable, and especially what is the end of good government, what it means, and who are the statesmen able and willing to govern other men for this end by those means.

It is evident then that, necessary as it is to study

the nature of material bodies, it is still more necessary for mankind to study the nature of thinking men. If so, Greek and Latin language and literature are even more necessary to mankind than mathematical and natural science; for the Greeks theoretically and the Romans practically exhibited an extraordinary knowledge of human nature, human action, human law, and human government. Greek, too, is even more necessary than Latin, on account of the almost superhuman insight of the great Greek historians and philosophers into the principles of human nature. He who has the most capacity of studying in the original the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides and the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle has the best chance of acquiring the most knowledge of the interior of men's minds and of the principles which ought to rule them. In particular, from Aristotle's Logic countless men for many centuries have learnt the analysis of human reason; from his Ethics the main truths concerning men's individual characters and actions, good, bad, and indifferent; and from his Politics the first principle that the end of a good government is not the selfish interests of a single tyrant, or of a few oligarchs, or of a multitude of democrats, but the common good of all the governed, which can be obtained only by the intellectual and moral education of the community, and by the ability and the purpose of patriotic statesmen willing to devote themselves to the common good.

Time has not dimmed nor has modern thought overtaken this Greek superiority in the humane sciences. Nay, rather Greek has become still more vital to the education of mankind, and especially to the education of statesmen. Has it not, from the governments of Gladstone downwards, become more and more a commonplace of nearly half a century that the first policy of a Prime Minister is to pursue the mere will of the majority, and at last

propagate democracy, and with it trade unionism, over what once was the civilized world? If so, there was never a time in which Greek was so absolutely necessary as the present time to the Universities, which are the nurseries of statesmen, to politicians who aim at becoming statesmen themselves, and to the nation itself, in order to recall the true principles of reasoning, morality, and politics, with a view to the common good.

Corpus Christi College, Oxford, June 11, 1919.

III. LETTERS ON OTHER SUBJECTS CON

CERNING THE UNIVERSITIES

MATTHEW ARNOLD AND THE MODERN LANGUAGES AT OXFORD

John Churton Collins was a graduate of Balliol College and was a noted writer and lecturer on literary subjects. In 1904 he became Professor of Literature at Birmingham University. He died in 1908. The proposal to found a scholarship in memory of Matthew Arnold in the University of Oxford came to nothing, although in 1901 a prize in his memory was founded under the terms of the will of his widow, Mrs. Frances Lucy Arnold.

Sir John Lubbock (later Lord Avebury) was at this time Member of Parliament for London University.

A Final School of Modern Languages was not established in the University of Oxford until 1903; candidates are examined in one language only; a proposal, however, to hold the examination in two languages has now been revived, and has received strong support.

FROM The Times, MAY 25, 1888.

A few days ago you published a letter from Mr. Churton Collins on the subject of the Matthew Arnold memorial. He quoted from an interesting correspondence in which Matthew Arnold had expressed to him the opinion that the study of English should be associated with, and not separated from, the study of the classics at Oxford. He rightly concluded that, if the memorial is to take the form of a scholarship for English literature, it will not truly commemorate Matthew Arnold unless it combines ancient with modern times. In the University new appointments tend to generate new schools, and it would indeed be a sad irony of fate if the memorial of a man were to eventuate in a school opposed to his opinions. Meanwhile, these opinions suggest fresh food for reflection. If English ought not to be separated from the classics, Oxford was right in recently rejecting a proposal to found a school of

pure English, or rather Anglo-Saxon. If English ought to be associated with the classics, Oxford has long justified herself by encouraging English philosophy in Literae Humaniores; but she ought also to consider whether she might not effect a still closer alliance of English language and literature with Greek and Latin in all her classical examinations.

In the same correspondence Matthew Arnold expressed another opinion, which cannot be so readily accepted; he was not for adding other modern languages. The very contrary has quite recently been maintained by Sir John Lubbock in a speech on University studies. I cordially agree that it is necessary to develop the study of modern languages generally in the University of Oxford. The only question is the way. Now the way, I cannot help thinking, is best indicated by extending Matthew Arnold's principles from English to all modern languages; as English should be associated with the classics, so should other modern languages be associated with the existing studies of the University.

Professor Nettleship, in an able speech in Congregation supporting the proposal to establish a separate school of modern languages, called attention to the light thrown by such languages as French and German on all sorts of subjects. A student cannot nowadays be abreast with any serious subject unless he can read foreign books. But how would this good purpose be served by a separate school of modern languages, divorced from the very subjects on which they are to throw light? Suppose a young man devoting himself, for example, to French in the manner contemplated. He would be able to read ordinary French literature; but he could not, by a linguistic study alone, go beneath the surface into the sciences on which his French is to throw light, unless it be pretended that the mere learning of the language would enable him to understand

[ocr errors]
« VorigeDoorgaan »