Page:Anon 1830 Remarks on some proposed alterations in the course of medical education.djvu/27

 in Greek to improve themselves in prosody." Does the scholastic notion still prevail, that we can have no idea of the doctrines of mind but in the poetical hallucinations of Plato,—that we can look for Natural History and Physics only in the pages of and ,—that we can have no examples of eloquence, patriotism, or courage, but in the Grecian and Roman models. Is it impossible that a modern historian could have arisen if  and,  and  had not existed? Could there have been no military commanders without the  and  for their prototypes? And then, is it impossible for an Englishman to write his mother tongue, without having dived into the tangled depths of Greek philology? Can he not think and speak in it, without ever having troubled himself with its various revolutions? Who cares not whether this word is borrowed from the Greek or that from the Teutonic? Who has never heard of the Hermes of —the gigantic and laborious ingenuities of and, and who hardly ever reflects on the connexion of the philosophy of language with the science of thought? But have our energetic reformers taken the trouble to consider that sometimes much more is lost than gained by these classical studies? Are they attended with no dangerous consequences to the youthful mind? Is there to be found in the Grecian and Roman histories no ferocity—no contempt of natural