Englishman of the nineteenth century, and even in reading Thackeray's novels; that half of Charles Lamb's puns lose their point; and that when Punch alludes to the pathetic scene in which Colonel Newcome cries "absit omen!" for the last time, you don't see the joke.

If our scientific colleagues, forgetting outworn polemics and on sober second thought, assure us that the jealous requirements of their stern mistress demand this sacrifice, we can make no reply. Let them deal with purely scientific education and with its symbol, the B.S. degree, in their discretion. But let us hear no more of the farce of a literary, a philosophical, or a historical education that omits even the elements of the languages and literatures on which all literary and historical studies depend for men of European descent. Our acquiescence in such a "collapse of culture" is due to our supine and fatalistic acceptance of the disgracefully low standards which the abuse of the elective system and the premature distraction of the socially precocious and intellectually retarded American boy by the dissipations of modern life and society have imposed upon us. Mill may have overestimated the powers of acquisition of the human mind, but he was far nearer right than we are, who bestow degrees on students who have merely deigned to listen to a few chatty lectures on "anything and everything connected with modern life."

The talk of ten or twelve years' ineffectual study of Latin and Greek is nonsense or misrepresentation. It is an indictment of human nature and bad teaching, not specially of classical studies. Undisciplined students will doubtless dawdle over anything, from French to mathematics, so long as teachers and parents permit it. But in a serious school one-fourth of the student's time

for four or five years is enough for the acquisition, together with the power to read Cicero and Virgil with pleasure, of more English than classmates who omit Latin will probably learn. It is not a formidable undertaking, except for students whose attention is too dissipated and whose minds are too flabby to master anything that must be remembered beyond the close of the current term. There is and always will be ample room for a reasonable amount of Latin in any rational scheme of studies that extends four or more years beyond the graded schools.

Latin is a necessity in anything but an elementary or purely technical education. Greek is not in this sense a necessity. Neither is it a scholastic specialty. It is the first of luxuries, a luxury which no one proposes to prescribe for all collegians, but which ought to be enjoyed by an increasing proportion of those who are now frightened away from it by exaggeration of its difficulty or by utilitarian objections that apply with equal force to the inferior substitutes which partisan advisers recommend in its place. The value and the charm of even a little knowledge of Greek has often been explained,2 and has been repeatedly demonstrated in the courses in beginning Greek offered by American colleges in the past decade. Students of good but not extraordinary ability have, while keeping up their other work, read six books of the

1 I cannot pause to discuss the misconception of those representatives of science who argue, not quite seriously perhaps, that if only one ancient language is to be studied it should be Greek. This might be true for Mars or China. It is plainly not true for that Europe which was evolved from the Roman empire, and which until the second or German Renaissance received the inspiration of Greece mainly through Latin literature.

See Jebb, op. cit., 575–80; A Popular Study of Greek." President Mackenzie, supra, 166, adds the weighty suggestion that those "who do not possess these weapons of a full Christian culture" will tend to read only what is easy and avoid scholarly works that contain even a few Greek words or Latin quotations.

Anabasis in the first year of study; have completed in three years the A.B. requirements of the University of Chicago, including eight books of the Odyssey, two Greek tragedies, and Plato's Apology and Crito, and have in the fourth year of study read the entire Republic of Plato with intelligence and delight. These facts and similar results obtained in other universities are verifiable by any unprejudiced inquirer, and they make it difficult to characterize in parliamentary language the persistent misrepresentation that eight or ten or twelve years' exclusive study of the classics yields no results comparable to those achieved by the normal student in other studies. In the light of this experience no fair-minded dean or judicious adviser of students already biased by unthinking popular prejudice can refuse in Lowell's words to "give the horse a chance at the ancient springs" before concluding that he will not drink.1

Latest Lit. Essays, I, 53.

SYMPOSIUM VII

THE DOCTRINE OF FORMAL DISCIPLINE IN THE LIGHT OF CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY

I. THE DOCTRINE OF FORMAL DISCIPLINE IN THE LIGHT OF THE PRINCIPLES OF GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY

JAMES ROWLAND ANGELL

University of Chicago

It was not so very long ago that the recalcitrant small boy who objected to the study of the classics or of mathematics was urged to accept his fate gracefully on the ground that, however unpleasant the process, he was acquiring mental discipline which would stand him in good stead whenever later in life he had some especially hard intellectual task to face. The skepticism with which this doctrine was always greeted by the victim has in recent years found an echo in the heretical creed of certain pedagogical radicals, who have dared to proclaim in high places that the formal discipline cult was founded on a myth, and that the educational value of a study is measured directly by its intrinsic worth and not by its indirect gymnastic qualities. It is our business today to determine, if possible, how far this iconoclastic reaction is justified.

The problem raised by the doctrine of formal discipline or, as it might more justly be called, “general discipline," falls into two main divisions, one subordinate to the other: (1) Does the serious pursuit of any study whatsoever leave the mind better able than it was before to cope with every other study? Stated otherwise, is every

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intellectual undertaking rendered materially easier or more efficient by virtue of previous intellectual training, regardless of the material employed for such training? (2) Assuming an affirmative answer to the first question, are there specific studies (e.g., the classics) which are peculiarly valuable in this regard; or is any study (e.g., literary criticism) honestly pursued as valuable as any other (e.g., physics)? In short, does the merit consist in the mere drill given by the very fact of persistent concentration, or is there some residual value in the character of the subject-matter studied?

There are questions which-theoretically, at leastare capable of something approaching an empirical and experimental solution, and whenever such a solution is feasible, mere theorizing is impertinent. I regard the appeal to the general principles of psychology with which our program begins as justified, chiefly if not wholly, by the possibility of gaining from this source a certain orientation for the entire subject. Sundry details, already in part experientially determined, will be discussed by my colleagues on the program. Let us consider the psychological question raised by the first problem mentioned: i.e., does the conscientious pursuit of any intellectual occupation result in rendering the mind more efficient in all other lines of work? The limitations of time forbid any attempt to discuss adequately the second question.

We may at the outset clear the deck of certain possible grounds of misapprehension. That the higher branches of a study like algebra are both logically and psychologically dependent upon the previous mastery of their elementary features is a truism which requires no debate and ought to introduce no confusion into our delibera