ies lend
themselves to this use more readily and effectively than others. You may,
for instance, if by extraordinary luck you get the perfect teacher, make
English literature disciplinary by the hard manipulation of ideas; but in
practice it almost inevitably happens that a course in English literature
either degenerates into the dull memorizing of dates and names or, rising
into the O Altitudo, evaporates in romantic gush over beautiful passages.
This does not mean, of course, that no benefit may be obtained from such a
study, but it does preclude English literature generally from being made
the backbone, so to speak, of a sound curriculum. The same may be said of
French and German. The difficulties of these tongues in themselves, and
the effort required of us to enter into their spirit, imply some degree of
intellectual gymnastics, but scarcely enough for our purpose. Of the
sciences it behooves one to speak circumspectly, and undoubtedly
mathematics and physics, at least, demand such close attention and such
firm reasoning as to render them an essential part of any disciplinary
education. But there are good grounds for being sceptical of the effect of
the non-mathematical sciences on the immature mind. Any one who has spent
a considerable portion of his undergraduate time in a chemical laboratory,
for example, as the present writer has done, and has the means of
comparing the results of such elementary and pottering experimentation
with the mental grip required in the humanistic courses, must feel that
the real training obtained therein was almost negligible. If I may draw
further from my own observation I must say frankly that, after dealing for
a number of years with manuscripts prepared for publication by college
professors of the various faculties, I have been forced to the conclusion
that science, in itself, is likely to leave the mind in a state of
relative imbecility. It is not that the writing of men who got their early
drill too exclusively, or even predominantly, in the sciences lacks the
graces of rhetoric--that would be comparatively a small matter--but such
men in the majority of cases, even when treating subjects within their own
field, show a singular inability to think clearly and consecutively, so
soon as they are freed from the restraint of merely describing the process
of an experiment. On the contrary, the manuscript of a classical scholar,
despite the present dry-rot of philology, almost invariably