Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/933

Rh the study of the classical languages, especially Greek, is that it facilitates and increases the enjoyment of all good literature. This is moderately stated and constitutes a more defensible position than the extreme advocates of classical studies sometimes take up. It seems to us to be greatly a question of time and opportunity. If one can grapple with a scheme of education including an accurate knowledge of the Greek language without being compelled to omit lines of study more necessary to place him—where every modern man should be—at the modern standpoint, we should say by all means let him study Greek and have his sense of beauty quickened by living intercourse with its wonderful literature, and his logical and critical faculties strengthened by investigation of its linguistic elements and grammatical forms. But we think it must be recognized that, as the claims of modern culture become greater, the number of those who will find time and opportunity for this will become more and more restricted.

On the subject of mathematics and the physical and natural sciences, the professor's views are eminently reasonable. He does not claim too much for mathematics as a training in deductive reasoning; he considers that its educational value lies rather in the alertness it bestows in attacking and solving problems. "For is not life," he asks, "one prolonged succession of problems that demand to be solved? To be sure," he adds, "most of the problems are not of the mathematical order; but it is a thoroughly good thing for a man not to be a coward or a sluggard when he is brought face to face with any hard problem." Before the liberalizing power of mathematics can be fully experienced, it is necessary to have attained in the first place "a certain amount of free and joyful movement in the handling of mathematical symbols and formulæ"; and, in the second, "a certain grasp upon the beautiful ideas and the wonderful laws which these symbols and formulæ represent." Mathematics, however, deals only with abstract truths: for that knowledge of the laws of Nature which is an essential and most important part of modern liberal culture we must have recourse to natural science. Here Prof. Ladd makes a distinction similar to that which he made in speaking of language. He postulates a training in science rather than in sciences. This training, he explains, "implies such a course of study as will impart a conception of what is now understood by the term science, and of the recognized method of scientific investigation common to all the natural sciences." A remark which follows contains much truth: "How often does one meet men of fine literary culture who show no little bigotry, and commit not a few important mistakes, because they simply do not know what science really is!" In answer to the question how much of scientific knowledge is necessary for a liberal education, Prof. Ladd replies: "Enough to give the student a firm grasp on those fundamental physical principles upon which the world of things is built, and enough of the pursuit of some form of descriptive natural science to impart the training of the powers of observation and the habit of properly connecting newly observed natural objects with groups of similar objects known before. We should be disposed to add—though perhaps the professor might claim that it is implied in what he himself has said: Enough to bring clearly and effectually home to the mind what is understood by scientific evidence, and to