Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/503

Rh department, will very soon find it necessary to go to the original sources and acquire a working knowledge of foreign languages. It is regrettable that under existing conditions a scientific student sometimes passes through his university without acquiring even this necessary equipment. I believe this to be largely due to the fact that he is compelled to spend so much of his time in preparatory work of a school character during the early stages of his university career.

In the literary subjects, and especially in classics, there is, of course, not the same scope for the spirit of investigation which it is so easy to encourage in experimental science. Here the only new advances and discoveries which can appeal to the imagination in quite the same way are those which are being made every year in the field of archeology, and it is therefore not surprising that this subject attracts many of the most ardent students: the methods of the archeologist are more akin to those of the scientific investigator, and his work*is accompanied by the same enthralling excitement of possible discovery. For the more able pupils and those who had a natural taste for language and literature no subjects have been more thoroughly and systematically taught for very many years at school, as well as at the university, than the classics; but for the less intellectual children or those who had no natural taste for such studies no methods could well be more unsuitable than those which used to prevail at schools. The grammatical rules and exceptions, the unintelligent and uncouth translation, the dry comparison of parallel passages, the mechanical construction of Greek and Latin verse, produced in many minds nothing but distaste for the finest literature that exists.

With the improved methods now in use Greek and Latin may be, and are, presented to the ordinary boy and girl as living literature and history, and school training in them may be made as interesting as anything else in the curriculum. Upon such a foundation the university should surely be able to build a course devoted to literary, philosophical, historical or philological learning even for the average student, provided that the university teacher undertakes the task of helping his pupils to learn for themselves, and to pursue their studies with a purpose, not merely as a preparation.

The spirit of inquiry which drives the literary student to find for himself the meaning of an author by study and by comparison of the views of others is really the same spirit of inquiry which drives the scientific student to interpret an experiment, or the mathematical student to solve a problem. Only by kindling the spirit of inquiry can teaching of a real university character be carried on. Give it what name you will, and exercise it in whatever manner you desire, there is no subject of study to which it can not be applied, and there are no intelligent minds in which it can not be excited.

The first question which a university teacher should ask himself is,