Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Powell) [PAGE 435]

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894

History University of Illinois

thought of being arraigned before the tribunal of all the monks and ecclesiastics of the old world, and no small number of their progeny in the new. It is deemed highly important that all in the professional classes should become writers and talkers; hence they are so incessantly drilled in all the forms of language, dead and living, though it has become quite doubtful whether, even in their case such a course is most beneficial, except in the single case, of the professors of literature and theology, with whom these languages form the foundation of their professions and the indispensable instruments of their future art in life. No inconsiderable share, however, of the mental discipline that is attributed to this peculiar course of study, arises from daily intercourse, for years, with minds of the first order in their teachers and comrades, and would be produced under any other course, if the parties had remained harmoniously together. On the other hand, a classical teacher, who has no original, spontaneous power of thought, and knows nothing but Latin and Greek, however perfectly, is enough to stultify a whole generation of boys and make them all pedantic fools like himself. The idea of infusing mind, or creating, or even materially increasing it by the daily inculcation of unintelligible words—all this awful wringing to get blood out of a turnip—will, at any rate, never succeed except in the hands of the eminently wise and prudent, who have had long experience in the process; the plain, blunt sense of the unsophisticated will never realize cost in the operation. There are, moreover, probably, few men who do not already talk more, in proportion to what they really know, than they ought to. This chronic diarrhoea of exhortation, which the social atmosphere of the age tends to engender, tends far less to public health than many suppose. The history of the Quakers shows, that more sound sense, a purer morality, and a more elevated practical piety can exist, and does exist, entirely without it, than is commonly found with it. At all events, we find, as society becomes less conservative and pedantic, and more truly and practically enlightened, a growing tendency, of all other classes, except the literary and clerical, to omit this supposed linguistic discipline, and apply