Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/165

Rh to diversions, checks, stops, reversals, renewals—all, indeed, proceeding according to the self-same tendency as the general movement, but out of which, together with that movement, comes in the long run true advancement—the cloth of gold of civilization; for it would be a grave mistake, as I have implied, to suppose that this propensity is not of capital importance to the development of man. Without imitativeness, the first and most fruitful years of life would be a blank, to say nothing of the loss to every later year; and without sequaciousness society would run to anarchy, and leap into ruin. The bell-wether, principle, it must be admitted, is a large factor in human progress; but, like every other factor, it may be taken too often, making the product not what it should be.

And this undoubtedly is what has happened in the case of education. In the infancy of our tongue, when the learning of the past was locked up in Greek and Latin, and the key to these languages, as well as the care of education, was in the hands of ecclesiastics, the study of the ancient classics became in some sort a necessity, the teachers being unable or unwilling to move in any other direction, and the learners having no choice but to follow. The jump of the ecclesiastical bell-wether drew on the herd, which, having once got under way, has kept on jumping in the same path, and is jumping in it now, when our tongue has grown up into a rich and glorious maturity, when the learning of the past not only has been transfused into it but is a drop in the ocean of its own acquisitions, and when the care of education, in common with other vital interests, is in the hands of the people. For this egregious persistence, however, the propensity I have mentioned is not alone responsible. Many things have coöperated with it. The dead languages, for one thing, have been put on guard at the gate of the professions, obstructing the admission of all to whom they were unknown; and, in case that obstruction fell short of exclusion, spreading the tables inside with their scraps, which haply might cause the bold intruder to repent that he had staid away from the feast of languages, or had not staid away from the feast of reason also. The flower of the youth of successive generations has thus been put under the classic screw. Then, again, many of the masterpieces of our language have been produced by men of classical training, and, pursuant to a familiar fallacy, the production is inferred to have come from the training because it came after it; whereas, it would be nearer the truth to infer that the production was not on account of the training, but in despite of it—the fruit of English training in the face of classical. Nevertheless, the classical has appropriated the credit. Something, likewise, must be imputed to the splendid renown of the Greeks and Latins, as also to the vague but strong attraction of the unknown, which, if we may believe a saying of the Latins themselves, is always thought to be magnificent. Finally, the victims of the dead languages, prompted by a natural pride, have for the most part kept their sacrifice to