it has to convey. While it may be said that all thorough language
instruction accomplishes this incidentally, the college makes this
_the_ aim of its teaching. The college should furnish an objective
appraisal of the fundamental elements of the foreign idiom, not merely
a subjective (and often superficial) mastery of details. For the old
statement remains true that--when properly studied--"proverbs, words,
and grammar inflections convey the public sense with more purity and
precision than the wisest individual";[85] and what shall we say when
"literature" is added to this list?

=Status of Romance languages in representative colleges--Early status=

From these preliminary observations let us now turn to the present
status of Romance languages in some of our representative
colleges.[86] One gratifying fact may be noted at once. Whereas a
quarter of a century ago Greek and Latin were still considered the
_sine qua non_ of a liberal education, today French and German, and to
a lesser extent Spanish and Italian, have their legitimate share in
this distinction. Indeed, to judge merely by the number of students,
they would seem to have replaced Latin and Greek. To be sure, several
colleges, as for instance Amherst and Chicago, alarmed by this swing
of the pendulum, have reserved the B.A. degree for the traditional
classical discipline. But in the first case the entire curriculum
includes "two years of Greek or Latin," and in the second the B.A.
students comprise but a very small percentage of the college body; and
while in both cases Latin and Greek are required subjects, Romance is
admitted as an elective, in which--to mention only Amherst--six
consecutive semester courses, covering the main phases of modern
French literature, can be chosen. As noted, the recognition of modern
languages as cultural subjects is relatively recent. As late as 1884 a
commission, appointed by the Modern Language Association, found that
"few colleges have a modern language requirement for admission to the
course in arts; ... of the fifty reported, three require French, two
offer an election between French and German, and two require both
French and German." And of these same colleges, "eighteen require no
foreign language, twenty-nine require either French or German, and
eighteen require both French and German, for graduation in the arts."

Obviously, few (at most seven) of the colleges examined admitted
students prepared to take advanced course