dents can be taught to
appreciate that part of this literature, the value of which lies
chiefly or wholly in its form. But people are not agreed upon two most
serious questions which arise in this connection. The first is whether
all students are capable of appreciating at all literature of this
sort, especially when it is conveyed in an ancient and difficult
language. The other question is how much of the classical literature
really depends for its values chiefly upon its form. To say that the
Psalms and the Gospels have no value or little value for the world
apart from the original form and language in which they were written
would, of course, be absurd. Is it any less absurd to say that the
study of the Homeric poems, the Attic tragedies, the works of
Thucydides and Plato would have little value for students unless this
literature were studied in the original language? These questions
cannot properly be ignored any longer by teachers of the Classics.

=Defects of these courses=

The defects of such courses are manifest to most persons. Students who
pursue these courses through most of the years of secondary school and
college fail to acquire either such a knowledge of the Greek and Latin
languages as would enable them to read with pleasure and profit a
Greek or Latin book, or such a knowledge of the Greek and Roman
literature and civilization as would enable them to appreciate the
value of classical studies. Many of them graduate from college without
even knowing that there is anything really worthy of their attention
in the classical literatures. The fact stares the teachers of the
Classics grimly in the face that they are not accomplishing the aims
which they profess.

One explanation of this fact suggests itself. In the classical courses
commonly given in American colleges the attention paid to the content
of the literature, to the author and his times--the lectures and
readings by the instructor, the discussion of archaeological,
historical, literary, and philosophical matters introduced into the
course,--distract attention from the study of the language itself, and
check this study before a real mastery of the language has been
secured. On the other hand, the time and still more the attention
devoted in these courses to the mere process of translation detracts
from the appreciation of the literature and obstructs the study of
the life and thought. In attempting to accomplish both purposes in
these courses th