own, it sharpens the edge of critical discrimination, it suggests new lines of constructive thought. It is no doubt more directly helpful to the lawyer or the clergyman or the statesman than it is to the engineer or the banker. But it is useful to all, for the man of affairs gains, like all others, from whatever enables him better to comprehend the world of men around him and to discern the changes that are passing on in it.

Without disparaging the grammatical and philological study of Greek and Latin, the highest value a knowledge of these languages contains seems to me to lie less in familiarity with their forms than in a grasp of ancient life and ancient thought, in an appreciation of the splendor of the poetry they contain, in a sense of what human nature was in days remote from our own. But it is a mistake to live so entirely in the present as we are apt to do in these days, for the power of broad thinking suffers. It is not the historian only who ought to know the past, nor only the philosopher and the statesman who ought to ponder the future and endeavor to divine it by recalling the past and filling his mind with the best thought which the men of old have left to us.

2. FROM JAMES LOEB

Formerly of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., New York

That a classical course is a valuable training for business life has always seemed to me a self-evident proposition. This question has been discussed often and at great length by those who are much more worthy of a hearing than I am. If I depart from the habit of years, and venture to send a message to your learned assembly, it is primarily owing to repeated urging. I find my only warrant for so doing in the thought that my personal

experience at Harvard University, in business, and now, last but best, in the pursuit of res dulciores et humaniores, gives me a perspective that may not be without interest to the Conference.

It would be a waste of your time and of my energy, were I to try to plead the cause of the classics. America does not stand alone in its decreasing attention to Greek and Latin. Schoolmasters and professors in England, France, and Germany make the same complaint. We must not close our eyes to the fact that the prevalent methods of teaching classical literature are largely to blame for this decrease. The dry, pedantic insistence on grammatical and syntactical detail, so usual in high school and university, has driven many a student out of the fold. It is asking too much of even a well-disciplined lad to read the Prometheus or the Antigone in this spirit. His eyes must be opened to the human values and to the aesthetic charm of ancient literature; and for this the teacher is often too incapable or too unwilling. I am confident that the younger generation of teachers, who are now coming into their own, and who have "tasted the dragon's blood" in Greece or in Italy, will inject new life into their subject, or rather, that they will understand how to show forth to their hearers that eternal life and beauty of the classics which is so often buried under mountains of dry philology.

In an age like ours, where ambitious youth no longer treads the cloistered walk, where "Make Money," "Win Success," "Out-do Croesus" are written in large letters on the blackboard of school, college, and university, usurping the place of the yvôli σavтóv, how can we expect people to find value in Homer or Euripides, in Caesar or Catullus?

Success, written with the dollar sign, instead of with the commoner, but more harmless sibilant, is the shibboleth of our day. In his last year's Phi Beta Kappa oration1 President Woodrow Wilson, of Princeton, said:

Is it not time we stopped asking indulgence for learning and proclaimed its sovereignty? Is it not time that we reminded the college men of this country that they have no right to any distinctive place in any community unless they can show it by intellectual achievement? that if a university is a place for distinction at all, it must be distinguished by conquest of mind? Splendid! But what does the average undergraduate think of such words as these? "Stuff and nonsense; very pretty in theory, but how does this apply to my caseto me, who want to make a success of my life?"

We have made the path of education too smooth; our young men and women rush over it on the soft cushions of hurrying automobiles. They are no longer forced to face that healthy struggle for knowledge that wearies the body, but refreshes the mind. Why, there are colleges and universities in our land where "original research" is recommended to young people as a profitable pastime before they know what a bibliography looks like! Most things can be popularized; original research cannot.

Some time ago I had the pleasure of a visit from a quite recent graduate of one of the largest New England universities, who is now taking a classical course at Oxford. This young man, who had distinguished himself on the football field as well as in the classroom, was thought worthy of an appointment to a Rhodes Scholarship. He means to study theology and ultimately to return home as a teacher. Just now classics are his chief pursuit. 1 Delivered in 1907, at Harvard University.

Our talk happened to drift to an incident in modern history. "Oh," said my young friend, "I know nothing at all of modern history." With the same engaging candor and honesty he protested his complete ignorance of mediaeval history. To my timid suggestion that life at Oxford and the long vacations would give him ample time to make up this regrettable lacuna in his education he archly replied, "Oh, I do not need to know anything about history, because I shall never have to teach it."Q.D.V.!

The degree of A.B. has been so far cheapened that the graduate of twenty-five years ago reluctantly admits the graduate of today into his intellectual companionship. The elective system has overshot its mark and a decided reaction must soon set in, if we mean to uphold the respectability of a university degree. It may be good business to encourage young men to take their A.B. in three years, but it is bad pedagogics.

The constant and growing abuse of a free choice of subjects is slowly but surely removing the props of solid intellectual achievement. "The distinction that can be gained only by conquest of mind"-to cite President Wilson's well-chosen words once more-is predicated on a much more thorough general education than the American undergraduate brings to college. Too much and, above all, too early "specialization" is a further obstacle to his acquiring that broader and fairer culture of two or three generations ago.

Conservation among men, and between men and women, is steadily losing those finer qualities which make an exchange of ideas profitable and uplifting. With the absence of respect for authority, which characterizes the youth of today, we are fast losing that respect for the

dignity of our own work which alone can give that work real and lasting value. The foolish attempt to keep abreast of the so-called literature of the day, of those morbid, pseudo-psychological novels, the prying and indelicate memoirs-to say nothing of the even more pernicious products of untutored writers would be impossible, were the taste of our growing youths and maidens formed by a proper study of Greek and Latin literature, the Bible, and the classics of our own and other languages. The applause bestowed on the decadent drama, the vulgar comedy, the immoral and dirty play would turn into hisses, were the audience better acquainted with the works of Aeschylus and Sophocles. Those old tragedies served a great moral purpose by focusing motives and lime-lighting consequences. I venture to say that the low ebb of our public and business ethics is due, among other things, to the absence of that fear of consequences which the better acquaintance with the dreaded Moîpa of the ancients would necessarily beget in our consciousness. And much of what I have said applies to conditions in Europe as well as at homein lesser degree, however, because Europe's mighty cultural inheritance still serves as a bulwark against the encroachment of these evils.

A thorough groundwork in the fundamentals of real culture, followed by a rigid training in the severer discipline of honest original research, of some sort, is the sine qua non of every successful life. Whether that life be devoted to science or letters, to theology or business, matters not. That an intimate acquaintance with Greek and Roman literature is among those fundamentals of real culture need hardly be urged here.

Business cannot be taught theoretically. The real