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cluding the whole organized creation. If has been written the greatest part is of litno other science existed but this, there tle general value. If all that has actually would be labor enough and more than been committed to papyrus, parchment or enough to employ for life the students and paper had by chance been preserved from observers of the world. Each kingdom of the effects of time and barbarism, the agorganic nature already offers to our acquaint- gregate would be so vast and the interest ance its hundred thousand specific forms, so little, that the busy world could hardly and these are but the vanguard of a still turn aside for its examination from more greater multitude believed to cover the sur-absorbing and necessary pursuits. face of countries yet unexplored, and to fill the mysterious recesses not yet penetrated by the microscope. And as far as we know, every one of these organisms, great or small, carries with it its parasites, to which it affords habitation and food, and which may be supposed not only to double but to multiply in an unknown ratio its original numbers. Again, when we reflect that every one of these species has its own anatomy, its physiology, its peculiar chemistry, its habits, its sensations, its modes of reproduction, its nutrition, its duration, its metamorphoses, its diseases and its final mode of destruction, we may well despair of knowing much of the whole, when a single species might furnish materials of study for a human lifetime.

But the world is not contented with history which states, or professes to state, the progress, arts, dates, successes and failures of distinguished men and nations. It requires further, the supplementary aid of fiction which finds facts, not in testimony, but in probability; not as they are recorded to have happened, but as they ought to have happened under the circumstances and with the actors. Fiction, moreover, not being restrained by the limits of circumstantial truth, is at liberty to seek embellishment from exaggeration, from ornament, from poetry, from dramatic utterance and passionate expression. Hence it has taken the lead in modern literature, and it is not probable that at this day the most accomplished bibliographer or bookseller could point the way to one-half of its multiplied and perishable productions.

There is neither time nor inducement to refer to the pseudo-sciences, which in all ages have made serious drafts upon the limited lifetime of man, nor to the ephemeral and unprofitable issues which consume his time and labor and wear out his strength. At the present day we have not much to fear from alchemy, palmistry or astrology, nor yet from spiritualism, homœopathy or mormonism. But it is not easy to prevent men from wasting their time in the pursuit of shadows, from substituting exceptions for general laws, from believing things, not because they are probable, but because they are wonderful and entertaining. less can we divert them from yielding to the guidance of an excited will, from following prejudices or creating them, from adopting one side of a controversy or party strife for no better reason than that some other party has adopted the opposite.

Still

The foregoing are examples of the claim on our attention and study advanced by a portion only of the progressive sciences. They serve to develop truths and laws appertaining to the material earth, which truths and laws, must have existed had there never been minds to study them. The relations of number and figure, the laws of motion and rest, of gravity and affinity, of animal and vegetable life, must have been the same had the dominant race of man never appeared on earth. But there is another extensive class of scientific pursuits, the subjects of which are drawn from his own nature. He has devised metaphysics to illustrate the operations of his own mind. He has introduced ethical and political science to promote order and happiness, and military science to assist for a time at least in destroying both. He has built up history with "her volumes vast," which volumes are as yet a small thing compared with those that are to come. Under the name of news the press daily inundates the It would be unnecessary to add to what world with a million sheets of cotempora- has already been said, even an inventory of neous history, for history and news, under other studies, whieh present seducing but small qualifications, are identical. The an- interminable claims on the life and labour nals of the last four years may deserve as of man. It would be vain to open the flood large a place in the attention of man- gates of philology, and to follow the thoukind as was due when the poet informed sand rills of language which have intersectthe Egyptian mummy that since his dis-ed and troubled each other ever since they ccase, a Roman empire had begun and left their fountains at Babel. ended." The greatest part of what should pause in humility before the very portals of have been history is unwritten, and of what astronomy, which has revealed to us that

And we

we roll and revolve, and perhaps again revolve, around we know not what. And helpless as animalcules on the surface of a floating globule, we are ever striving to see, to explore, and to mark our way through the "starry dust" of infinite space. Strong and devoted minds have piled up unreadable tomes, the result of their life-long studies and observations, yet few, save the professional and the initiated, attempt to invade the recondite sanctuary of their deposit.

Thus the immense amount of knowledge, general and special, true and fictitious, salutary and detrimental, the record of which is already in existence, has grown into an insurmountable accumulation, a terra incognita, which from its very magnitude is inaccessible to the inquiring world. Hence the economy of the age has introduced the labor-saving machinery of periodical literature, which, by substituting compendiums and reviews for the more bulky originals, has seemed to smooth the up-hill track of knowledge and lighten the Sisyphean load of its travellers. But periodical literature, useful or frivolous as it may be, and indispensable as it undoubtedly is, has become by its very success inflated to an enormous growth, and bids fair in its turn to transcend the overtaxed powers of attention of those for whose use it is prepared. Like our street cars, while it helps forward to their destination a multitude of struggling pedestrians, it substitutes pressure for exercise, and does not save the fatigue of those who are still obliged to stand that they may go. In looking forward to another century, it is curious to consider who will then review the reviews, and condense, redact and digest the compends of compendiums from which the life. has already been pressed out by previous condensation.

Since these things are so, since in the dying words of Laplace, "The known is little, but the unknown is immense," and

"Since life can little more supply Than just to look about us and to die,"

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What is now called a liberal education is a term which means something and nothing. Among us it generally implies an attendance for four years upon the "curriculum or course of studies prescribed and pursued in some incorporated college or university. This attendance may be punctual and thorough, or it may be negligent and unprofitable, so that while one student makes a limited acquirement of multifarious knowledge, another forgets a great part of what he knew on entering the college, and prepares to forget the rest as soon as he enters upon active life.

Subdivision and selection afford the principal avenues through which men arrive at success in the humbler as well as the more conspicuous walks of life. The mechanical labour of artisans is best performed, and its best results obtained, by distributing its duties among a multitude of special agents, and this is more or less successfully done in proportion as a society, or a crat, is more or less perfectly organized. S likewise in the higher or more intellectual pursuits of life, in which men procure bread by the labour of their heads instead of their hands, the number of learned professions has been within a short time wonderfully increased. In the days of our fathers the learned professions were accounted three in number, Law, Physic, and Divinity. But now more than three times that number afford means of honorable subsistence to multitudes of duly educated persons. We have now a profession of authors, of editors, of lecturers, of teachers, of engineers, of chemists, of inventors, of architects and other artists; and to these may be added the better class of soldiers and politicians. And all these professions are again subdivided in proportion as society advances in its requirements.

For precisely the same reason that it would not be profitable for experts in a mechanical vocation to distract and dissipate their attention among pursuits alien to their tastes and qualifications, it can hardly be advantageous for pupils and neophytes in learning, to undertake to make themselves competent representatives of the various sciences, the literary studies, the languages, dead and living, which are now professed y taught in our colleges and seminaries. Every individual is by nature comparatively qualified to succeed in one path of life, and It is not presumptuous to say that educa- comparatively disqualified to shine in anothtion to be useful must, as far as possible, be er. The first step in education should be made simple, limited, practicable, accepta- for the parties most interested, to study, ble to the learner, adapted to his character and as far as possible to ascertain, the pecuand wants, and brought home to his partic- liar bent and capacity of a boy's mind. ular case by subdivision and selection. This being done, he should be put upon a

it is a question of paramount importance, how in this short period education can be made to conduce most to the progress, the efficiency, the virtue, and the welfare of

man.

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course of intellectual and physical training corresponding, as far as possible, to that for which nature seems to have designed him. But in all cases a preparatory general elementary education, such as is furnished by our common schools, must be made a prerequisite even to qualify him to inquire. The more thorough this preparatory training is made, the better it is for the student. But after this is completed a special or departmental course of studies should be selected, such as appears most likely to conduct him to his appropriate sphere of use fulness. Collateral studies of different kinds may always be allowed, but they should be subordinate and subsidiary, and need not interfere with the great objects of his especial education.

A common college education now culminates in the student becoming what is called a master of arts. But this in a majority of instances means simply a master of nothing. It means that he has spent much time and some labor in besieging the many doors of the temple of knowledge, without effecting an entrance at any of them. In the practical life which he is about to follow he will often have occasion to lament, be he ever so exemplary and diligent, that he has wasted on subjects irrelevant to his vocation, both time and labor, which, had they been otherwise devoted, would have prepared and assisted him in the particular work he is called on to

do.

Young men, as well as their parents in their behalf, are justly ambitious of a collegiate education. Older men often regret that they have not had the opportunity to receive it when young. And this is because of the generally acknowledged fact, that four years, spent under the tuition of faithful, accomplished and gentlemanly teachers, can hardly fail to improve their character, language and bearing, as well as their store of useful knowledge. It is the habitual contact and guidance of superior minds, as well as the progressive attrition with each other, which make young men proficients in rectitude, in honor, in science, in polite literature, in tact, and in manners. And this result will appear, whether they have been taught French at West Point, or Greek in Harvard or Yale.

It is the province of the Institute of Technology, so largely and liberally sustained by the Legislature, by the mun ficence of individuals, and by the untirin labors of its distinguished president, to endeavor within its sphere to assist in providing for the educational wants of the most practical and progressive people that the world has seen. By its

programme of instruction a separate path is provided for all who require to accomplish themselves in any one or more of the especial branches of useful knowledge. It would not be just to ignore the fact that the same thing has long been doing in several of our larger universities, where the practical sciences and the modern languages are extensively taught. But these time-honored institutions exceed some of their younger associates in this respect, that under the name of classical literature they premise and afterwards carry on a cumbrous burden of dead languages, kept alive through the dark ages and now stereotyped in England by the persistent conservatism of a privileged order. I cannot here say much to add to the lucid, scholarly and convincing exposition of the state of education as it now is in the great schools of England, given in a recent lecture before this Insti ute, by one of its professors, on the subject of classical and scientific studies.* No one who examines this discourse can fail to be impressed with the injudicious exactions made in favor of the dead languages in the English schoo's and universities, their superfluity as means of intellectual training, and their limited applicability to the wants of the present advanced generation.

I would not underrate the value or interest of classical studies. They give pleasure, refinement to taste, breadth to thought, and power and copiousness to expression. Any one who in this busy world has not much else to do, may well turn over by night and by day the "exemplaria Græca." But if, in a practical age and country, he is expected to get a useful education, a competent living, an enlarged power of serving others, or even of saving them from being burdened with his support, he can hardly afford to surrender four or five years of the most susceptible part of life to acquiring a minute familiarity with tongues which are daily becoming more obsolete, and each of which is obtained at the sacrifice of some more important science or some more desirable language. It may not be doubted that a few years devoted to the study of Greek will make a man a more elegant scholar, a more accomplished philologist, a more accurate and affluent writer, and, if all other things conspire, a more finished orator. But of themselves they will not make him what the world now demands, a better citizen, a more sagacious statesman, a more far-sighted economist, a more able financier, more skilful engineer, manufacturer, merchant, or military commander.

*Professor W. Atkinson.

They will not make him a better mathema- | ing he loads his "sclopetum" with "pulvis tician, physicist, agriculturist, chemist, navi- nitralis." If modern Greece should ever gator, physician. lawyer, architect, painter, become a first-class power among the naor musician. The ancient Greeks knew but little, though they knew how to express that little well. The moderns know a great deal more, and know how to express it intelligibly. Antiquity has produced many great men. Modern times have produced equally great men, and more of

them.

It is common at the present day to say that the Greek language disciplines the mind, extends the compass and application of thought, and that, by its copiousness, and by its versatility of inflection and arrangement it trains the mind to a better comprehension of words, thoughts, and things. All this is no doubt true, and might have great weight as a governing motive in education, were it not that the same ends can be more cheaply obtained by the agency of other means. Unfortunately for the supremacy of classical literature, all civilized countries are at this moment full of distinguished men and women who write well and speak well, and who have never acquired the learned languages. It is easy to say that such persons would have been more distinguished if they had known the classics. It is easy to say that Laplace would have been a better mathematician, and Faraday a better chemist, if by chance they had been duly instructed in Greek. But this is gratuitous assumption. The contrary result is more probable, inasmuch as the pursuit of classical literature would have abstracted just so much time from more pertinent and profitable investigations. At this day nobody believes that Watt would have made a better steam engine, or Stephenson a better locomotive, if they had been taught philosophy by Plato himself.

The ancient languages, if applied to use, are not adequate to supply the wants of modern cultivation. Truth and things have grown faster than words. Modern customs, arts and sciences can be expressed in French or German, but not in Greek and Latin. A French writer, Professor Goffaux, has undertaken to translate Robinson Crusoe into Latin. The translation is successful as far as easy diction and pure latinity are concerned. But the language of the Romans is at fault in the islands of the Pacific, and new words must be coined to express even imperfectly things which are not coeval with the language employed. The world-renowned "man Friday "is introduced to us under the vicarious name of "Vendredi," and when Friday goes a shoot

tions, it will have to complete, as it is now trying to do, a vocabulary of new terms to express the arts and commerce, the facts and fancies, the business and belles lettres of the existing time. In other words, it must reënforce its language with a new half, not found in the ancient classics.

The admiration of the old Romans for the Greek language and literature had its origin in the fact that in that age of limited civilization they found not much else of the kind to admire. They looked to Greece as the fountain of what had been achieved in art, philosophy, poetry and eloquence. Of consequence it was chosen as the great place of resort for educational objects, and Athens became the emporium of literary and philosophic instruction. But the Roman youth would never have been sent to Athens, had there been, as now, a railroad to take them to Paris, or a steamship to bring them to America. They would not have consumed their time in the groves of Academus, if they could have gained admittance to the Ecole Polytechnique, or to the Royal Institution.

At the present day we relish the Greek language, from the mingled impression not only of its own superiority, but of the pleasure it gives us and the pains it has cost us. We relish it as the musician enjoys his music, the mathematician his geometry, and the antiquarian his diggings. We are pleased that it has been preserved with its enphonious intonations, its copious expressiveness, and its noble literature. We know that the spirit of Homer cannot be translated into English, any more than the soul of Shakspeare can be done into Greek. All languages have their idiomatic expressions of thought, and in all of them translation has a killing effect on the strong points of literature. In the opera of Macbetto the term "hell broth" in the witch scene, is rendered in Italian as polto inferno." And on the opposite page of the libretto, it is served up afresh in English as "infernal soup." It is highly probable that the half savage accomplishments of Homer's heroes and gods cannot be made duly appreciable in the English tongue. Nevertheless, the modern world can get on without them, and we may be excused for believing that if the study of Greek should be abandoned as a requisite in our universities, although it would still be cultivated, like other exceptional studies, with success and delight by a few devotees, yet our practical, bustling

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and overcrowded generation would never again postpone more useful occupations to adopt it as an indispensable academical study.

the field of wholesome competition between the well taught and the self-taught, between advantage on the one side and energy on the other, between early development under assistance and slow maturity under difficulties. The success of either condition awakens and stimulates the zeal of the other.

In regard to success in the world at the present day, it is not an academic education, however desirable in any shape it may be, that gives a man access to the confidence and general favor of his fellow-men, There are many persons who even in this or to the influential posts of society. It is age speak in terms of derogation of what native talent, reliability, perseverance and are called utilitarian studies, in contrast with indomitable will, that conduct him to the classical and ideal literature, as if pursuits high places of the world. In all countries, which tend directly to the preservation and and most of all in our own country, a con- happiness of man were less worthy of his attest continually goes on between academic tention than those which may be founded education and self-education, the education in fancy, exaggeration and passion. Poetry, that comes from without and the education art and fiction have sought for the beautiful that comes from within. The much culti- and sublime in creations which are imagi-· vated boy, who under favor of advantages, nary and often untrue, which "o'er inform performs faithfully his allotted tasks, who the pencil and the pen," and attract because fulfils the requirements of his teachers, who they are mysterious and inaccessible. But is accustomed to subordinate his own judg- in the present age, fact has overtaken fancy ment to the dictation of others; although and passed beyond it. We have no need to he may hold a high rank in the scale of create new miracles, nor imagine them, proficiency and the amount of acquisition, when the appetite for wonder is more than is liable on arriving at manhood, to contin- satiated with reality, and objects of delight ue to lean rather than to lead, and thence and amazement confront us in the walks of to occupy a secondary place in the struggle daily life. I know nothing in nature or art for worldly distinction. On the other hand, more beautiful than a railroad train, when the neglected but independent youth, who it shoots by us with a swiftness that renders is brought up in the suggestive school of ne- its inmates invisible, and winds off its sincessity, who becomes original and inventive ous way among mountains and forests, because his life is a continued contest with spanning abysses, cleaving hills asunder, and difficulties, who balances character against travelling onward to its destination, steadiopportunity, and individual vigor and pa- ly, smoothly, unerringly, as a migratory tience against external guidance; such an bird advances to the polar regions. And I one, from the habit of directing himself, be- know of nothing more sublime than in the comes more competent to direct others, and hold of an ocean steamship, to look on the to wear more easily offices of trust and re- mightiest emergency that has been raised by sponsibility. It is remarkable how many man, as it wields its enormous limbs like a of our distinguished men have been self-living thing, and heaves and pants and rolls educated, or at least without academic edu- and plunges, urged onward by the strugcation. Franklin was a philosopher, Wash- gling of the imprisoned elements. ington a statesman, Patrick Henry an orator, but not by the grace of classical education. Henry Clay knew nothing of the Greek language, nor did probably Thomas Benton. Andrew Jackson and Andrew Johnson had rougher nursing than that of an alma mater. Rumford, Bowditch and Fulton did not develop their intellects under the shades of academic seclusion. And if we were to go abroad for examples, we should find that Napoleon was no classical scholar, and that Peter the Great, when he issued from his lair at Moscow to study the civilization of Western Europe, did not repair to the universities of Cambridge and Oxford, but entered as a working mechanic in the shipyards of Saardam and Deptford We need not regret that our country is

The traveller passes daily by the neverending rows of posts and wires which mark the pathway of the electric telegraph, until at length by their very frequency they are blended in the inert features of the landscape and cease to attract attention. Yet, all the while, invisible thought is riding on those wires, and mind is answering to mind over a thousand miles of distance.

The half fabulous siege of Troy has been made immortal in the epics of Homer and Virgil, and we are led by their poetry to admire the achievements of heathen gods and of heroes descended from them. We stand in awe at the exploits of primitive warriors with the same emotions with which we afterwards mark in history the real deeds and eras of great military command

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