well patronized. It is published and edited by J. B. Pradt, Madison, for $1.00 a year in advance. This number contains a steel portrait engraving of Hon. J. L. Pickard, our State Supt. Every teacher and devoted friend of education in the country should take it. From the Fox Lake Gazette: JOURNAL OF DUCATION.-The patrons of Education may not generally be aware that the State patronage is withdrawn from this most excellent periodical. It will continue to be published monthly by its present able and worthy editor, Rev J. B. Pradt, of Madison. Every teacher and school officer should subscribe immediately. Terms one dollar a year in advance. Send your dollar at once. Friends of education, the crisis in the Journal has come. Shall it fail for want of patronage? A NEW SCHOOL -FOR YOUNG LADIES! DIO LEWIS, A. M., M. D., Will open a School for Young Ladies, at Lexington, Massachusetts, on the A corps of able teachers will enter the Institution resolved to make it one of the best in our country. Lexington is ten miles from Boston, about 200 feet above the sea, and famous for its healthfulness. For a Ladies Seminary, the buildings are not second to any in New England. While the school will take a place in the first rank as regarde mental culture and female accomplishments, it will be made to illustrate the possibilities in physical culture. Of this department Dr. Lewis will have special and constant supervision. It is believed that in respect of bodily training the school will inaugurate a new era in female educa tion. It may be mentioned that THEODORE D. WELD, formerly principal of the Eagleswood School, New Jersey, will have charge of Conversation, Composition, and English Litera ture. For a circular, address Dr. Dio Lewis, Lexington, Mass. TO TEACHERS. Union School, No. 2, of the Citv of Beloit. The Board of this School wish to inform Teachers, and those desirous of becoming Teachers, that a Normal Class will be formed in the IIigh School, under the care of the Principal, Mr. Alexander Kerr. The Term will commence on the 1st Monday in September next, and consist of 15 weeks teaching time. The examination of those desiring to enter, will take place on Saturday, Sept. 3d, at the High School room, in the city of Beloit. Tuition $7.00, to be refunded to those scholars who pass the examination of the Normal Agent. Apply to J. BRITTAN, Beloit, Wis., or to ALEXANDER Kerr, Rockford, Illinois. SITUATION WANTED, As Principal and Assistant in a Graded School, by a gentleman and his wife, who have had several years experience in grading and teaching graded schools. The best of references will be given when required. Apply to Rev. J. B. Pradt, Editor Journal of Education, or address Box 110, Berlin, Wis. Before entering upon the discussion of the reasons that justify those who assign to classical studies the highest worth as educational means, I wish to state a truth upon which the value of the whole discussion depends, viz: The main object of education should be mental discipline-intellectual power, and not mere knowledge. It is strange that this simple truth is not more generally recognized. Even in training for any of the manual arts it is not so much knowledge, as it is the discipline of the muscles, that makes the skillful artisan. To illustrate: How simple is the knowledge requisite for driving a peg into the sole of a shoe. The knowledge is obtained in a moment, but the discipline that gives power to drive successfully a single peg is far more difficult to acquire; much more the discipline that unites unerring certainty with rapidity. This comes only from long practice. Can I, who have never driven a peg, not say to my neighbor Crispin, “I am unable to do it, not from want of your knowledge, for I have seen you do it and know how, but from want of your discipline-your skill ?" As with the special education of the muscles in the mechanic arts, so with the general culture of the mind, in preparation for successful action in the varied relations of life. It is discipline, it is intellectual power that is most wanted, and not knowledge. If schools were designed to facilitate the acquisition of mere facts, the text books, the methods of instruction, the whole machinery of education would be very different from what they are." That education has a higher object in view every intelligent teacher knows. This object is to develop thought, not merely to impart knowledge; to "draw out" the undeveloped energies and capacities, not alone to store the memory with facts of real or supposed utility. Yet every day I meet men who "wish their children to study what will be of practical use to them,-what they can apply in after life;" entirely forgetting the fact that generally the merest trifle of the bare knowledge that is learned in schools is employed in after life, entirely ignoring the importance of developing the mind and the insignificance of loading the memory. Let me not be understood as saying that the acquisition of knowledge is no part of education. It is an indispensable part up to a certain time, and an important part constantly, but greatly inferior, as an object to that of discipline. Reading, writing, the principles of arithmetic, &c., are of course more indispensable for knowledge than for anything else; but it is not of primary education that I speak; rather of the culture afforded by the higher schools to those more fortunate or more ambitious youth who seek to go beyond the necessities of elementary knowledge. The object of the education I speak of being intellectual power, mainly, what are the reasons for thinking this power can best be attained in the study of the classics? I will answer this by attempting to prove the correctness of the following statements: 1. The proper study of the classical languages brings into vigorous exercise a greater number of faculties than does the study of mathematics. 2. Those faculties are the noblest in the mind. 3. The same power of application-the same power to concentrate attention and thought—is given by the study of the ancient languages, that is afforded by any other study. In the first place: It has been admitted by the thoughtful in all ages that "the proper study of mankind is man. Man is the noblest work in creation of which we have any knowledge. Of God we know nothing except through His works and His word. We can by no possibility study Him except through one of them. Man is His highest work,-made in His own image. The study of man, then, is the noblest study in which we can engage. Thought is the highest phenomenon connected with man. It is what most distinguishes him from the inferior races, most nearly allies him with God. The study of human thought, then, is the highest study. But again, thought cannot be studied objectively without a body,-and the body of thought is language. Once more, the universal testimony of the world has for centuries pronounced, and still pronounces, the languages of ancient Greece and Rome, the most perfect ever employed by man; embodying man's noblest thoughts; containing almost the only records of a splendid civilization, in some respects superior to our own; and so embodying what is true, or beautiful, or grand in thought, that the best attempts at translation have produced only shadowy outlines of the original excellence. A priori, then, we might expect that the study of these languages, and the literature they contain, would bring into exercise a large number of the highest faculties of the mind. The great object of education, be it remembered, is exercise and development. This object is accomplished "not by the amount of knowledge communicated, but by the amount of thought which such knowledge calls into activity."-(Sir W. Hamilton.) We naturally infer that thought can in no way be more easily called into activity than by the study of thought. We here anticipate the result of the closer consideration that is to follow. Let us now see what faculties are brought into exercise by the study of the classical languages, and in what manner. First. The faculty of expression is improved. The study of a language is a constant exercise of this. The act of translation in which thoughts embodied in one language are transferred to another, is, in some respects, more profitable for merely cultivating expression, than original composition; more profitable because the thoughts themselves are clear and accurate, such as admit of precise and definite expression. The style of young writers is generally loose and vague because their thoughts are so. Every teacher knows how difficult It is to lead his pupils to the practice of making every sentence in their essays the clear representative of a distinct thought. In translation the thoughts are given; the words are to be those of the pupil. If properly conducted, this daily exercise in the original expression of the thoughts of another languagethoughts, also, generally of the greatest accuracy and beauty-is one whose value cannot be too highly commended. Here are more than the advantages of original composition. The exercise is daily and long continued. It has none of the features that render ordinary composition so repulsive to the young. In this respect the classical languages are far superior to the French or German, or any other modern tongue. In the former the inflections and the involved structure of the sentences render translation, if correct, a matter of more difficulty and of greater originality; while in the latter, especially in the French, the similarity of construction renders translation between that and English a matter of great ease, and little corresponding profit. Again, the study of Greek and Latin-especially the latter-develops fluency and accuracy of expression, by imparting a more precise knowledge of the meaning of words, these languages entering so largely into the composition of our own. This, however, scarcely falls under the present division of my subject,-coming under that of knowledge rather than of discipline. Of the former I shall speak more at length hereafter. Second. The study of the classics tends to cultivate the judgment. There can be no broad culture of this most important faculty without a many-sided activity of mind; and for habituating the mind to the making of comparisons, to the weighing of probabilities, to the detecting of fallacies, to the regarding of proprieties, to the consideration of the proper connection of statement and inference, of cause and effect there is absolutely no study so excellent as that of language, when properly pursued, under the direction of a competent and skillful teacher. The proof is easy. The science of Logic teaches the forms of reasoning, tells how to think and reason justly, while in the study of a language, which is but the study of thought, there is, or ought to be, a constant practice of reason. The conceptions embodied in language contain truth or falsehood, probable or improbable statements, ideas that agree or disagree, correct or incorrect inferences, sufficient or insufficient premises; the comparisons are proper or improper, the correct forms of grammatical logic have or have not been observed, these and many other things demand attention in the study of a language, and call for the constant exercise of judgment. Again, language also contains the record of human action; here is a vast field for the exercise of reason. We criticise the motives and the deeds of the men of whose exploits we read; and in this, perhaps, the faculty may have its highest and widest culture. If it is not pre-eminently by the study of thought that the judgment and reason are strengthened, then other definitions than those found in the books must be given for these faculties. May it not be safely asserted, then, that if by the study of Logic we learn the laws of correct thinking, by the study of thought itself, in all its varied manifestations of beauty, and grandeur, and power, in classic literature, we see the constant application of those laws, in their highest development, and by familiarity become ourselves skillful in their use? Since from correct think ing comes correct judgment—the proposition is proved. It may be objected, however, that since our own language is the embodiment of as much thought as the classical tongues, and contains all the same elements necessary to cultivate the judgment, therefore it is useless to have recourse to the Greek or Latin for this purpose. So far from its being true that the object could be as well attained by the study of English as by that of the classics, it could scarcely be attained at all by the study of the former. Besides the essential difference between the structure of our own and that of the ancient languages, a difference of which I do not now aim to speak, but one greatly in favor of the latter, our mother tongue is so much a part of ourselves, that, even with no inferiority of character, we could not regard it in that purely objective light so necessary for judging truly of its nature, or discerning fairly its proportions. Moreover, in the great classical masterpieces there is, at the same time with exquisite harmony and beauty of expression, a condensation of thought, which, in an uninflected language, is only to be obtained at the expense of the other qualities. In Greek or Latin while seven or eight words will express as much as ten in English, these seven or eight may be arranged in almost any order; the order depending upon the harmonious cadence of the period, or upon prominence given to particular thoughts. This coincidence of brevity and harmony renders the classical languages peculiarly valuable as objects of study. But the most important cause of the superiority of these over our mother tongue, as a means of mental training, is to be found in the difficulty which |
