languages. It may be said that we cannot come into contact with the
Greek and the Roman spirit except through reading their respective
literatures; but if that is the case, how can a system of teaching
classics be defended which never brings the vast majority of the
boys, who endure it, in contact with the literature or the national
spirit of the Greeks and Romans at all? I do not think that
classical teachers can sincerely maintain that the average product
of a classical school has any real insight into, or familiarity
with, either the language or the spirit of these two great nations.

And if that is true of average boys educated on this system, what
is it that classical teachers profess to have given them? They will
say grip, vigour, the fortified mind. But where is the proof of it?
If I saw classically educated boys flinging themselves afterwards
with energy and ardour into modern literature, history, philosophy,
science, I should be the first to concur in the value of the
system. But I see, instead, intellectual cynicism, intellectual
apathy, an absorbing love of physical exercise, an appetite for
material pleasures, a distaste for books and thought. I do not say
that these tendencies would at once yield to a simpler and more
enlightened system of education; but the results of the present
system seem to me so negative, so unsatisfactory, as to justify,
and indeed necessitate, the trying of educational experiments. It
is terrible to see the patient acquiescence, the humble
conscientiousness with which the present system is administered. It
is pathetic to see so much labour expended upon an impossible task.
There is something, of course, morally impressive about the courage
and loyalty of those who stick to a sinking ship, and attempt to
bale out with teacups the inrush of the overwhelming tide. But one
cannot help feeling that too much is at stake; that year by year