Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/268

258 assumption has been made of reserving the monopoly of the full development of the mind for literary instruction. Literary education has hitherto found its highest and most efficient formula in the teaching of the ancient languages. The teaching of the modern languages is less efficient because modern literary culture was derived from ancient culture, and is still, in principle at least, subordinate to it. However brilliant and original our modern systems may be, they have not produced, in either literature or the arts, superior models to those of ancient, particularly Greek, culture. So far, then, as the essential object proposed in secondary instruction is the formation of cultivated minds, there is no reason for expecting equivalent results from the simple substitution of the teaching of living for that of the ancient languages. But a purely literary teaching, even if it preserves its form and intention, does not adequately meet the needs of modern societies. Everybody, even the most enthusiastic partisans of literary studies, demands the addition of a certain amount of scientific teaching as a subordinate affair, comprising at least the elements of the sciences, to which no cultivated man of our age has a right to remain a stranger, whatever place he may propose to take in society. We may go still further, for it is certain that the formula of classical literary teaching, even as thus comprehended, is not adequate to all the careers and fundamental needs of our period. A very large number of citizens demand another discipline, based on a more thorough knowledge of the sciences, which have become indispensable for practical life, as well as for the general direction of society. Human society does not live on art and literature alone, as it once did; it now lives more on science and industry. Hence the necessity for a scientific not less than for a literary teaching, not only from the practical point of view but also from that of mental and moral culture, and these should be given parallel with one another. This scientific teaching should not be exclusive any more than the literary teaching; and it should be complemented by a subordinate literary teaching to which no cultivated man should be a stranger. The ancient languages are not indispensable for the realization of this special kind of literary teaching, because it no longer constitutes the fundamental object of the new organism.

Two parallel courses of instruction, endowed with the same prerogatives—one founded essentially on ancient letters, with the addition of some scientific culture; and the other based on science, to which some modern literary culture is added that appears to me the most desirable formula of our time, and that to which we are destined to be led by the force of events.—Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from the author's book, Science et Morale.