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The Greef Question
and Gli1swer.
36-43-f
THE GREEK QUESTION AND ANSWER .
EY
LOUIS DYER
AssistANT PROFESSOR OF GREEK AND LATIN IN HARVARD COLLEGE
A PAPER READ BEFore. THE HARVARD CLUB of RHope Island IN
Providence, FEBRUARY 25th, 1884
PRIVATELY PRINTED
CAMBRIDGE
1884.
Mr. President, Gentlemen and Fellow-members
of the Harvard Club of Rhode Island :
I AM puzzled at the outset by the words commonly
used in designating the subject assigned me for discus-
sion: “The Greek Question.” If this question is Greek,
then Greek should be its answer.
But no! the first answer which I hear is French and
German. Is it possible that we are again to witness the
ancient horrors of Babel? Are we to have a modern
confusion of tongues? But those who answer our Greek
question with French and German confound me in more
ways than one, for though they stoutly maintain that their
solution of this Greek problem is the very best, their one -
chief qualification for dealing with it is that they know
no Greek. They never can have done with dwelling
upon the marvellous completeness, the spherical integrity
of their ignorance of Greek, of the very language at
whose educational demerits they point with the finger of
certainty. * * t -
“We know no Greek, not we, nor have we any use for
Greek. Give us Latin if you must, French, German,
anything but Greek!” they cry, and they dwell upon the
delights of knowing French and German. This is what
they say, and we listen to them expecting information
about French and German. With these engines of the
“modernist” they must be marvellously familiar; no
4.
doubt they have discovered in them uses new and beauties
unperceived till now. What then is our surprise when
we hear these not wholly unprosperous persons say: “Oh
no! we do not know German, and with French we are unfa-
miliar; but see how utterly wretched and down-trodden
we are. Look at the lingering misery into which genera-
tions before us have been plunged,—it is all because our
forefathers, like ourselves, were forcibly debarred from the
study of French and German, and were dosed with Greek
instead.” Since these friends of ours, though they are so
entirely miserable, cannot in their own persons have
been made so by Greek which they do not know, we
recall Herbert Spencer's doctrine of hereditary tendencies
and begin to attribute their sad plight to the inoculation
of some remote ancestor with Greek, a subtle poison
which thus has tainted their blood. “No! no!” they has-
tily reply, “not one of our ancestors ever knew Greek,
though they all spent endless time and took untold
pains in a laborious failure to acquire that baleful tongue.
They would have been so much more useful, so much
wiser, so much better off in every way if, instead of being
forced not to learn Greek, they had been allowed to learn
French and German.”. When with genuine sympathy for
these accumulated woes ancestral, we venture to ask for
further enlightenment, when we would know more precisely
what were these lost opportunities in the years of an
irredeemable past, we are startled to find that there
were no opportunities, or next to none, for learning French
and German in those dark days of yore. We are at a
5
loss to answer the assailants of what has been called “A
College Fetich.” The very fact that they have chosen so
grotesquely inapplicable a phrase in describing the teach-
ing of Greek, reveals beforehand that they know not
whereof they speak. What can be done with an adver-
sary who, when you would prove to him by going into
particulars that the teaching of Greek, as an indispensable
part of a liberal education, is no Fetichism, says: “You
must not talk to me about Greek, for I do not know the
language”; while, if you seek to argue at length against
this same opponent's assertion that French and German
are better suited to the needs of the opening mind, he
checkmates your first move by saying: “Softly, my friend,
I am acquainted with neither of those languages; therefore
you must argue with some one else”? The discus-
sion seems to be hemmed in by an adamantine fatality and
we reluctantly but resolutely turn away from this oppo-
nent of Greek. Yet, as we go, we yearn towards him,
when we think of all the sorrows of his race. Since
argument is impossible, we are impelled to cry out to him
in the words of King Richard:
“For God’s sake let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the deaths of Kings,
How some have been deposed, some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed.”
Trusting that the College Fetich may, when he scans it
more closely, prove after all to be not Greek but some
ghost which our friend is striving to depose, let us bid
him good-bye and remember that there are men who know
Greek and French and German. To these may be com-
6
mended certain reasons showing the inexpediency of
substituting modern for ancient languages in a college
education and the frailty of
THE “MoDERNISTs’.” HUMANITIES.
In the first place there is no doubt that the intrinsic
value of the Greek language as a perfect means for ex-
pressing thought is greater than that of any modern
tongue, and even supposing that French or German, one
or both, expressed ideas with the fulness and subtlety of
the Greek, nevertheless the fact remains that with all
their idiomatic differences English, French, and German
are yet so similar in structure that the translation of
a given idea from one to the other of them is far too easy.
Translation from English into Greek or from Greek into
English is a searching process which enlarges a pupil’s
hold upon his mother-tongue far more effectively. Indeed,
for the better learning of English, a training in the classics
is most helpful, and one reason why both of the professors
of English at Harvard defend Greek is to be found in
their belief that the boy who learns Greek as he should
is perfecting as he should his knowledge of English.
The effort to become familiar with the nicely adjusted
framework of Greek forms and with the logical scheme
of Greek Syntax gives to every learner a new conception
of the power of language to express thought, and pre-
pares him to overcome in early years many impediments
which stand in the way of clearness of thought itself.
Nor should we ſail to recollect, when we talk of Greek as
7
a means for gaining a full knowledge of English, the help
which Greek gives in understanding the large number of
Greek derivatives commonly and uncommonly used in
our mother-tongue. w -
In the second place there is no doubt that Greek litera-
ture, as a means of stimulating the powers of imagination,
is superior to the literature of France and Germany. This
is true, though we may admit for the argument's sake that
French literature or even German has an equal range
and equal rank with the Greek. The approaches to
French and German must be made by reading books of a
more or less ephemeral character. These stories and
plays deal necessarily with commonplaces already familiar
to the learner in his own language; they do not involve
the understanding of characters and events that have the
dignity, the freshness, and the simplicity which should be
set before a young learner’s mind if, in guiding the educa-
tion of youth, we would not wholly lose sight of the
formation of character. These simple French and Ger-
man books at most tell the beginner the same things which
he can learn from similar books in English.
If it be urged that more than this rudimentary study
should be required in modern languages and that then we
shall have something to counterbalance the claim which is
made for Greek, - if, for instance, in French the plays of
Racine and the essays of Montaigne, and in German
Goethe's ‘Iphigenia' and Schiller's ‘Bride of Messina'
are to be read, then, I say, you will never be able to en-
force this high standard, you increase, the learner's diffi-
culties only on paper and in your printed requirements.
8
You ask him to substitute for hard work which he can do,
work so hard that he cannot do it. Instead of measurably
succeeding in an attempt to understand the words and ways
of the Homeric heroes, or of Xenophon and his soldiers, the
young pupil will disastrously fail in fathoming the allusions
and the sophistications of modern literature. And you
will find moreover that, in order to give your pupil the
dimmest appreciation of the great works of French or Ger-
man literature, you have to familiarize him in some way
with the leading facts of Greek literary history. So true
is it that all modern literatures go back to the one truly
original literature of our past, which is that of Greece;
so true is it that the foundation of all systematic and
thorough literary study must be laid in the study of
Greek. French and German cannot then be substi-
tuted for Greek in the preparation for college, unless we
are willing to decrease the amount of work now required
as the necessary outfit for a profitable college course.
This is so because,_ the moment we attempt to make up
by quantity for the easy quality of the knowledge required,
— we find involved in the intelligent study of the higher
works of modern literatures an acquaintance with Greek
facts and thoughts. ... *
Even supposing that some scheme could be devised to
meet this objection, there is one point which we have not
as yet considered. Any plan for the study of modern
languages, if it is to give the habits of self-command,
sustained application, and concentration of thought, which
are now acquired by diligent study in the classical course,
must be a systematic one. A certain number of years must
9
be methodically devoted to such work, but this whole sys-
tem may successfully be brought to confusion by any youth
who takes the short cut to a fluent knowledge of French and
German which is always open to him. When you have
constructed the cage you will discover that your bird has
flown, and a brief stay abroad before or after the age of o
twelve or fourteen will prepare a boy for entering college
without having formed the habit of regular work and with-
out knowing what thoroughness means. The French
and German substitute proposed for element-
ary Greek is then too easy or too hard and its
discipline may always be eluded, for there is a
royal road to the knowledge of every modern
language. * e
But let us resign even this point; let us say that black is
white, that those who know modern languages best have
learned them in school and in course, instead of absorb-
ing them by living where the atmosphere is impregnated
with them, where only French or only German is spoken.
Let us rescue our tender youth from French and
German nurses and prohibit them from travelling abroad
until they are graduated from college. Let us keepthbn
by force in the cage which the “modernists” have artfully
devised for them, and let them there learn, in many years.
and with much labor, what the might have learned bet-
ter elsewhere with no effort and in less than half the
time which the “modernists” system prescribes. This sys-
tem which substitutes modern for ancient languages will
put our pupil between the ages of ten and sixteen under
IO
foreign teachers. If we insist upon native American teach-
ing in French and German it will be defective, especially
for beginners; if we do not, then no matter how excellent
in character and how high in their purposes the French
and German masters may be, they will to some extent be
out of sympathy with our methods and will misunderstand
our morals. This objection at first sounds contemptible,
and it naturally provokes answering jeers aimed at the
supposed prejudice and “knownothingism” of such an ob-
jector. But, aside from cases in point nearer home, I have
the warrant of no inconsiderable English experience in
taking this view. •.
In what is called the ‘Modern Side’ of English schools
—I have in mind one in particular, well known for the
success with which modern languages are taught in it—
the masters in French and German are commonly
Englishmen. The reason which met my inquiries was,
that native French and German teachers failed to under-
stand the ways of the boys and the school, and that this
failure more than offset their superior knowledge. I
recollect vividly that when I taught French and German
in the school just alluded to, whither I was called for a
few weeks during the absence of the head master of the
‘modern side,” one of my duties was to be present and
see that no harm came to the boys while they listened to
occasional lectures on the French Drama from a one-eyed
communist, who was said by the boys to have emerged
reeking with the blood of freshly-slaughtered millionaires
from the ruins of his native Paris.
I I
A monograph' has recently appeared in Berlin upon the
career of Germans employed as masters in England. In
this book we read of their miserable failure and of the
enormous amount of suffering which they have to endure.
This is largely due, no doubt, to the hideous mismanage-,
ment of private schools; but a great part of it is as certainly
attributable to the difficulty which any human being must
find in the attempt to deal with young pupils whose lan-
guage, tastes, and ways are unfamiliar to him. Of course the
older the pupils are the more completely these difficulties
disappear; but in a preparatory school they must always
remain very considerable. My conclusion is accordingly
as follows. Let us make no attempt to substitute an
impossibly mature knowledge of French and German for
the rudiments of Greek, since this will surely disorganize
the already insufficiently articulated system in our prepar-
atory schools. Let us, however, in the interest quite as
much of the Classics as in that of Science or of Modern
languages, require the rudiments of French and German
as a part of the needed preparation for college. Thus
modern languages will take their place as necessary but
subordinate parts in our preparatory training. With any
one who urges that this overburdens a boy in the years
before he comes to college we will argue when it is
proved to our satisfaction that the American school-boy
is not about as much underworked as his German contem-
porary is overworked. -
1 Der Deutsche Lehrer in England by Heinrich Reichardt; Berlin 1883.
I 2
THE MODERN HUMANITIES.
The second answer to the Greek Question which
comes to me is Natural Science. Here I confess that I
find myself far more inclined to come to terms, since now I
have to meet no “modernist” attempting to cheapen the
college degree, but an antagonist—I wish that I could find a
better word—who represents a new development of human
thought and energy, and who says that the time has now
come when room must be made for a new discipline which
this development requires, a discipline no whit easier than
the ‘humanities’ which it now threatens to supplant.
Whatever it is that the scientific man wants, we may be
sure that there is work in it. What I maintain is that this
new training is needed to supplement not to supplant the
old, that by combining the old and the new we shall have
a broader and better preparation for modern life, which let
us trust has grown broader and better, THE MODERN
HUMANITIES, a very different thing from the “modern-
ists” humanities. I say that the new is needed not to sup-
plant but to supplement the old, because the first difficulty
which meets me, when I consider the important part played
by natural science in modern life, is the unimportant part
allotted to it in the course ordinarily pursued for a college
degree. Shall those who do not devote themselves to
science, but who choose law and theology, be wholly shut
out from the new light? Surely this is not a wise prepa-
ration for any man in these days when science and relig-
ion are so frequently, and often so ignorantly, pitted against
each other.
I3
That I am not alone in this opinion is proved by the
address to which we all listened six months ago to-night."
What we have heard on this point from a member of our
club, whose experience and whose exceptional knowledge
of educational subjects claim our admiring respect, is .
substantially as follows: ‘Natural science should be studied
in classical schools, for even literary men cannot afford to
be wholly ignorant of the great powers that move the world,
but they should be studied as useful knowledge only, not
as a discipline.” The scientific man should on the other
hand, as we are told by the same high authority, learn lan-
guages—no Greek however, and only ‘a limited amount of
Latin for the present’—merely so far as they are essential .
to the power of “observing, interpreting, and ruling natural
phenomena,’ i.e.: “as tools only, not as a discipline.’
I agree heartily that natural science should be studied
in classical schools, but I maintain—and here I have the
misfortune to differ from the speaker at Newport—that the
classics should be taught in scientific schools, and in fact
that there should be no subdivision of preparatory
schools into classical and scientific. To separate, during
their years of preparatory study, small boys who are to
live together when they are older and have entered college,
is to frustrate one of the best moral influences now at
work in our community, the feeling of comradeship among
college students which brings in its train the good-fellow-
ship of after years. The mistrusts and misunderstandings,
which are sure to arise between freshmen prepared in the
1 See in The Popular Science Monthly, November, 1883, an article entitled “The Greek
Quéstion: remarks made at the dinner of the Harvard Club of Rhode Island, Newport,
August 25, 1883. By Josiah Parsons Cooke, Professor of Chemistry in Harvard College."
I4
new scientific schools and those who come from the
classical ones, fill me with prophetic dismay; for how can
the immaterial circumstance that the names of all are
published in the same catalogue bring about an “entente
cordiale’ between these two warring factions? At this
proposed subdivision, which creates two ways of prepara-
tion for college, I therefore demur for social reasons as well
as on the educational ground that the modern humani-
ties must and can give the classical student his share, not
only in the information but also in the education and the
training to be derived from Natural Science. I am also
inclined to demur at the implication contained in the words
already quoted above: “for even literary men cannot
afford to be wholly ignorant of the great powers that
move the world.” I fail to understand how it can be
made evident that a literary man, as such, could be wholly
ignorant of the great powers which move the world. If
literature and the study of language have so restricted a
sphere that the world can move without them, it is time
to abandon such studies. If language is not worth any-
thing to the scientific man for some higher use than that of
a tool, if he needs no discipline from the study of literature,
then by all means let him abandon them, but then let the
rest of the world abandon them with him.
We are thus brought face to face with an uncomfortably
fundamental question. Is there not after all a moving
force over which the study of language and literature
gives us control? Shall we so lightly esteem this force or
these forces, for it is many, though I shall rightly name
it as one,—that we can believe that any scientific man, be
I5
he physician, engineer, or chemist, may go unpunished
if he remains wholly unfamiliar with it? For my part, I am
sure there is such a force, and that every man, whether he
is a lawyer or a doctor, a chemist or a clergyman, 1must
make himself in some degree a master of the arts by ,
which this force is understood before he can be suitably
designated as Master of Arts or as Bachelor of Arts.
The moving power of which I speak is not electricity,
nor is it gravity, but it uses these forces and all others as
its own. It acts in and through everything which strongly
appeals to individuals and effectively enlists the united
endeavor of communities. This power dwells in all the
great works of the past whether of literature, sculpture,
architecture, or painting. The first, the freshest, the full-
est, and the most potent presentation of it is given in the
masterpieces of the great Greek poets, artists, and philos-
ophers. The power of which I speak is BEAUTY. We
cannot with impunity refuse to study and to understand
beauty; for to misunderstand beauty is but the first false
step, and the next may lead to a misunderstanding of right
and wrong when we have become the unconscious servants
of some debased and debasing makeshift for beauty. All
the glorious impossibilities which have been made possi-
ble, all the seemingly remediless harms which have in the
end proved harmless, came under the transforming influence
of this omnipotent and omnipresent preserver. For omni-
potent and omnipresent it is, though labor and thought be
required to see it aright and to feel its full power. ‘Good
things are hard,” says the Greek proverb, to which may be
added, ‘Beauty is good.’ º . *
I6
In order to extort from unwilling human nature the
sacrifices demanded by any and every great end, it is need-
ful that the hearts of men should be moved, and for this
something more than the logic of facts must provide.
Something must enlist their enthusiasm which though not
a fact may, with long struggle and great hardship, be made
almost a fact. In short we are moved to united and effec-
tive action by ideals only, and ideals appeal to us only in
proportion to the force with which they compel our
hearts. This compelling force, this moving power, is in
them when they are clothed with beauty, this force is beau-
ty. To be able to detect this force and to make others alive
to its presence must therefore always be an essential part—
I had almost said THE essential part—in preparation for
leading an intelligent life. All this can as little be left
out in the training of a liberally educated man of science
as in that of a literary man. Every completely educated
human being must be brought under the fullest influence of
beauty in its purest form, because he is a man and requires
its humanizing influence. - -
If there is any period in the history of our race when
teauty came down to earth, as it were, and there, in close
and constant companionship with men, lived in all their
thoughts and works, then it follows that a study of the rec-
ords and monuments of that period will bring us under
the strongest and most immediate influence of beauty.
Few will be found—and I should not despair of their
conversion when found—to deny that there was such an
unparalleled epoch while the Greeks ran through their short
career upon earth. Why then should these pricelessly
I7
fresh and vivid impressions, the lessons learnt by our race
in its youth, not be brought within the horizon of every
college-bred man? Should any invasion of facts be suf-
fered to deprive us of our intellectual youth, or to enfeeble
and frustrate the one power most effectual in enabling lıS
to mould all facts to our enlightened will?
There is but one possible analogy to the singular posi-
tion which the children of Hellas occupy in our past, and
that is to be found in the unique importance of the chil-
dren of Israel in every education which is to establish
sane and stable religious conviction. The lessons
which Jewish thought and Jewish history can and must .
teach us are taught unceasingly and are taught well.
These lessons do not depend for their right understanding
upon a detailed study of Hebrew, the less so because the
more essential records of Christianity are lodged in Greek
writings though their inspiration is Jewish. The insight
into beauty, on the other hand, which is given us by
Greece is not to be gained at second hand, through trans-
lations and explanations. We need all the help which
translations and explanations can lend, after hard work on
the intricacies of the original Greek. The beauty of
every Greek masterpiece is inseparable from the words of
the original, for the excellence here resides in a perfect
union of shape, sound, and sense. The influence of the
diligent study of Greek issues in a subtle refinement of
the taste, a “purification of the emotions,’ to borrow Aris-
tole's phraseology. This refinement cannot in after life
be taken out of the pocket and exhibited, it cannot be bought
and it cannot be sold as can the useful scientific knowledge
I8
of a specialist. And yet it is precious, and yet it is useful,
and yet this revelation of lofty truth clothed in beautiful
words themselves a part of the very truth, and uttered in
musical measures which are the charms whereby falsehood
is tamed, must be made to every man whose character we
would fashion in the best way. In such an essential mat-
ter as this there can be no question of second best, and
therefore, in order to make right education possible, the
hard work of preparatory Greek study is imperative and
unavoidable. .
This training is equally indispensable for all, and I can-
not help rejoicing that it should be so, for the alternative
offered by the advocates of natural science—and theirs is
the only alternative which deserves serious consideration—
involves an absurdity, a premature performance of intel-
lectual hara #iri. It demands that boys at the early age of
ten or twelve should make an irreversible choice between
literature and science. How can they choose intelligently
and with any appreciation of the questions underlying such
a decision? Will they not rather, if they really choose at
all, be influenced by an ignorant bias or by the whimsey of
idleness, and thus on the very threshhold of life acknowl-
edge blind prejudice as their leader and make way with
themselves before they can know themselves or others can
know them?
There is practically and theoretically no escape for us;
we must enlarge our traditional conception of the humani-
ties, we must sooner or later agree definitely upon a com-
mon training for all who are to be admitted to college. Of
course the bracing wind of science must be judiciously
I9
tempered to the shorn lamb of literature, and we will not
overtask the solid scientific mind with too much of the
gymnastic discipline of language, but literature and
science must be insisted upon for all. My answer—the
Greek answer to the Greek question—is therefore: GREEK
AND SCIENCE, SCIENCE AND GREEK. -
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