one has need for the speech in business or travel, he can acquire as
much of it as most of us have of French, with considerable ease.
People therefore argue that ancient Greek is particularly
superfluous in schools. Why waste time on it, they ask, which could
be expended on science, on modern languages, or any other branch of
education? There is a great deal of justice in this position. The
generation of men who are now middle-aged bestowed much time and
labour on Greek; and in what, it may be asked, are they better for
it? Very few of them "keep up their Greek." Say, for example, that
one was in a form with fifty boys who began the study--it is odds
against five of the survivors still reading Greek books. The
worldly advantages of the study are slight: it may lead three of
the fifty to a good degree, and one to a fellowship; but good
degrees may be taken in other subjects, and fellowships may be
abolished, or "nationalised," with all other forms of property.

Then, why maintain Greek in schools? Only a very minute percentage
of the boys who are tormented with it really learn it. Only a still
smaller percentage can read it after they are thirty. Only one or
two gain any material advantage by it. In very truth, most minds
are not framed by nature to excel and to delight in literature, and
only to such minds and to schoolmasters is Greek valuable.

This is the case against Greek put as powerfully as one can state
it. On the other side, we may say, though the remark may seem
absurd at first sight, that to have mastered Greek, even if you
forget it, is not to have wasted time. It really is an educational
and mental discipline. The study is so severe that it needs the
earnest application of the mind. The study is averse to indolent
intellectual ways; it will not put up with a "there or thereabouts,"