tion of the
imagination and the emotions. These faculties, to which literature
makes appeal, are not, it was said, under the control of the will, and
you cannot cultivate or strengthen them by sheer resolve or strenuous
exertion. The first condition of any real appreciation of literature,
so ran the argument, is spontaneous enjoyment of it; and you cannot
command a right feeling for literature or for anything else. But a
normal development of the imagination and the emotions does usually
accompany the vigorous development of the intellect, so that the
advancing student will be found to turn spontaneously to art and
literature. And his appreciation of all the highest and deepest
meanings in literature will be quickened because he brings to his
reading a mind trained to accurate and vigorous thinking. Moreover,
all substantial advantages from the study of modern vernacular
literature can be better obtained from the Greek and Latin classics.
They afford the same richness of thought and charm of form as our
modern writing; but they demand for their appreciation that careful
attention and study which modern literature too often discourages. The
survivors of a former generation sometimes ask us today, with a touch
of sarcasm, "Do you think the average New England college student of
fifty to seventy-five years ago, when the Emersons and Longfellows and
Lowells were young men, the days of the old _North American Review_
and the new _Atlantic Monthly_, had any less appreciation and
enjoyment of whatever is good in literature, or any less power to
produce it, than the young fellows who are coming out of college today
after more than a quarter century of literary instruction?" And they
occasionally suggest that, at all events, it is difficult to find any
evidences of the result of such instruction in the quality of the
literature produced or demanded today.

=Conflict of utilitarian and cultural standards=

On the other hand, the study of English literature often fares little
better with the advocates of the modern practical tendency in
education. They have but scanty allowance for a study assumed to be of
so little use in the actual work of life. An acquaintance with
well-known English books, especially if they be modern books, is, they
admit, a desirable accomplishment if it can be gained without too much
cost, but not to be allowed the place of more valuable knowledge. A
typical modern father, writing not long ago to a modern