him more speedily than any other system does for its service. Ger As we go farther in the nineteenth century, and especially as we come to our own times, we are forced to acknowledge that to many thinkers the classics are no longer an indispensable part of education. The causes of this attitude are not far to seek-romanticism, naturalism, and the breaking-down of authority of all kinds. Germany has contributed largely. Germany rediscovered Greek literature and exterminated Latin. many has led the way to the scientific study of the classics, and garnered more results than any other nation. It contributed the philosophy of relativity which, joining forces with the doctrine of evolution, the product of English science, led to new methods and manifold results in the study of history. But an excessive scrutiny of origins has impaired the efficacy of the classics. The tendency of the historical spirit is to compel illustrious characters of the past to know their place, whereas the Middle Ages and the Renaissance summoned the ancients to transgress their periods—yes, to walk down the centuries and shake hands. A late mediaeval tapestry at Langeais sets forth a goodly troop of knights, all caparisoned cap-a-pie in the same manner; they are Godfrey of Bouillon, Julius Caesar, Samson, and some others. We shudder when we find the Byzantine chronicler Malalas putting Polybius before Herodotus, or John the Scot setting Martianus Capella in the times of Cicero, but are ourselves inclined to forget that, though history has its periods, the imagination has none. We should encourage it to glorious anachronisms, or rather hyperchronisms, for if it is chronologically fettered the classics become demodernized. A further tendency of historical analysis is to resolve great personalities and traditions into causes and effects. An author is not regarded as an entity unless he is influencing somebody else; when the critics look at him, he disappears in a mist of sources. Let me not be misunderstood. I regard the critical method of the historian as indispensable; but this very method is imperfect if it does not reckon with ethical and imaginative values as well. But to proceed no further with this arraignment of the age, let me conclude by referring to the hardest problem of all, which has been gradually accumulating for our generation, namely, the presence of various modern literatures of great power and beauty, which were only beginning to exist when the humanists based all teaching on the classics. May not the literature of any of the great nations of Europe serve the purpose as effectively? How can we neglect any of them, and how can we elect? Further, I would inquire, how have we teachers of the classics fulfilled our tasks? Have we always kept before us the true ideal of humanism? Have we made the sacred past living and contemporary, or have we banished our subject to a timeless district, illumined, not by the dry light of reason, which is a wholesome effluence, but by the dry darkness of the unprofitable? I raise these issues contentedly and bequeath them to the other speakers at this meeting. With many startling leaps down the centuries, and, I fear, with many hasty generalizations, I have at least made clear that the true program of humanism, which is nothing but the ancient program revived, has always pointed men to the treasured ideals of the past and inspired them to action in the present. II. THE CLASSICS AND THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM R. M. WENLEY My classical colleagues-whom I hold in due awe, knowing just enough to appreciate my dense ignorance in their field-have evinced no little temerity in summoning me to this assize. As for them, I can only suppose that they think philistinism an incurable disease, and that, hopeless, they revert to the consolations of philosophy. Unhappily, consolations are very like salt water: the more we slake our thirst, the thirstier we grow. So I issue fair warning. "The Classics and the Elective System!" What shall I say? Shall I hark back to the benches of that distant Greek classroom, nigh forty years down the files of time, alas, and transcribe this early effort? "The Isles of Greece were always quarreling as to which was the birthplace of Homer. Chaos has the best right to claim him." Rather let me exclaim Exegi monumentum aere perennius— "I have eaten a monument more lasting than brass," as a Glasgow student translated on an auspicious morning; "Then, for God's sake, sir, sit down and digest it," as Ramsay retorted instantly. Worse luck, I too must perform the operation "ore tenus"; worse still, "magna comitante caterva." Why, the job's as bad As if you tried by reason to be mad. Like comets, earthquakes, trusts, suicide, and anarchism, not to mention other lambent phenomena, the elective system may be tracked to its causes. Whether these vindicate its existence were another question. For, as every Freshman philosopher discovers, it is one thing to justify the ways of God to men, another to justify the ways of men to God. Let me step in where Mr. Rand feared to tread. What a truncated business the knowledge of a century ago appears to us now. Given the eighteen bodies forming the solar system, with inertia and gravitation, it was possible both to tell and to foretell their positions relative to each other in space. Nothing had been learned of their physical constitution-the future held Kirchhoff's happy birth. In the same way, chemistry was just breaking the bonds of the phlogiston legend, sorry recriminations resounding. Gelatine was believed to be the febrifuge agency in quinine, while otherwise the less said of the "sciences" of medicine, physiology, and the rest, the better. The surprise bath— tumble the patient from a high tower into an icy tubwas prescribed as a remedy for insanity, on the principle that like cures like, I presume. Further, if these marvelous fribbles characterized nature-study, the notions entertained about man, in his total structure and history, might well be described by Terence's line: "Better or worse, help or hurt, they see nothing but what suits their humor." Even Heyne, as you Grecians remember, could only gird at F. A. Wolf-his greatest title to fame. But a profound revolution had set in. Thereafter followed: (1) the extension and almost complete transformation of mathematics and the physical sciences; (2) the growth and progressive subdivision of the biological sciences; (3) the organization and startling ramifications of the human sciences; (4) inventions-the application of the new knowledge in engineering, commerce, manufactures, and the immense multiplication of practical outlets. As a consequence, numerous subjects forced their way into the curriculum. It were superfluous to specify, but, as everyone is aware, unprecedented enlargement ensued. At length, as has been alleged, so bemused did we become by the very wealth of our own successes, that we abandoned the problem of higher education and clambered into the elective automobile-the omnibus being voted too slow-recking not of destination. Having little Latin, we had never heard Seneca's comment: "Among other evils, folly has this special peculiarity: it is always beginning to live." In a word, the tried education went by the board, adjudged inadequate or even "sterile." Such was the first stage. The sequel next, an oft-told tale that runs somewhat thus: The world of our habitation had changed so radically that we attributed a parallel transformation to man. So, without much reflection, we presumed that any boy or girl, at nigh any age, might study anything with advantage. The idea flourished luxuriantly within the university. Pursuits permissible to the graduate, after extensive preparatory drill, seeped into the undergraduate college. Pathetic spectacles ensued. The goddess fled our altars, because the high mass of the human spirit had fallen into desuetude. Like his prototype, the political parson, the wire-pulling professor served other deities. We were midmost a sorry comedy, of the kind that takes its rise in the second-rate. Talk about culture and other precious possessions had displaced the fact. Horizons had been destroyed. The arts faculty, in particular, had gone to pieces-what did it import after all? The professional school alone provided a center of real "work." In these days every inhabitant of Israel did as seemed good in his own eyes. And now |