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memory, and chiefly the duties of citizenship and the love of country.

In the oration in behalf of Archias, Cicero dwells upon the advantages of a liberal education, the value of poetry and literary studies, the lessons found in the lives of the noblest men whose deeds are recorded in literature, and the advantage of the employment of one's time in literary pursuits rather than in leisure and dissipation. How easy is the step in this refining and elevating discussion of the attractiveness of the intellectual life to pass to the necessity of the high moral life for the completion of the perfect character!

Xenophon, the follower of Socrates, in his lucid and picturesque narration of the Anabasis, leaves no doubt of his attitude towards right and truth. Among the many passages that afford opportunity for moral training none are more suggestive than the masterly character sketches of Cyrus, Proxenus, and Menon. In less than two lines he brings out the integrity of two slain heroes. "Neither did any deride them as being cowardly in war nor blame them for faithlessness in friendship." In the fifth book, with what sarcasm and scorn does he hold up the folly of mob rule and the evils of Judge Lynch; with what pathos does he set forth the meanness of ingratitude. "But verily it is noble indeed, and just and devout, and more pleasing, to make mention of good acts rather than of evil."

We come next to the poets. Here we expect that the seers will show us the real. The grace of poetic form is like a precious case for the moral thought. The selections from Ovid furnish rich gems from the storehouse of mythological lore. It is the golden age that honors the sterling virtues: "Sine lege fidem rectumgue colebat." In the iron age, when wickedness is rampant, there is no place for them: "Fugere pudor verumgue fidesque." Deucalion and Pyrrha were saved from the flood for their righteousness: "Non illo melior quisquam nec amantior æqui vir fuit, aut illa metuentior ulla deorum." In the words of Apollo to Phaethon is found freedom of the will and responsibility in choosing: "Man the architect of his own fortune." "Placeat sibi quisque licebit." When a class was asked, why the daughters of the sun were changed to trees, the answer was given that too long grief became rebellion against the gods. Battus sacrificed truth and fidelity for reward: "Postquam est merces geminata." What is that but an early instance of " graft." In the description of envy which is portrayed with a master's hand, there is found in the phrase, Supplicumque suum est, the thought that man is his own worst enemy, and so virtue is its own reward. Medea presents an instance where the head is right and

the heart wrong: "Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor." Philemon and Baucis illustrate frank, honest living within one's means: "Paupertatemque fatendo effecere lebem nec iniqua mente ferendo." It is not necessary to say that here is an example of " The Simple Life.”

The other epic poet is Homer. Scholars call him a universal poet. Broad as humanity, he covers all stages of life, presented not as criticism, but as simple, natural, real living. The Greeks regarded the Homeric writings as a great religious book, and looked upon them as authority in argument and practice. Some modern writers join Homer with the Bible and Shakespeare as the great expounders of life. I claim with my pupils that all the drudgery of the study of Greek is richly rewarded in the reading of Homer's Iliad. From what has been said it is evident how this story of life can be employed by the teacher to have a favorable effect upon moral character.

From the foregoing survey it is evident that there is a large field for moral instruction, of which good use is made by the classical teachers, but it is very difficult to measure the direct effect of such instruction upon the character of the pupils. These effects must consist in enlarging and strengthening the moral impulses that lead to nobler, stronger character. The test is life, its opportunities and temptations. Therefore, while the teacher may not expect to see much more than the aroused interest and the occasional advance in character-building, he will steadily continue his work, as the gardener, though he does not create, moves his plants into the sunshine, in the belief that the thinking of moral thoughts, the discussion of moral themes, the passing of moral judgments, and the awakening of sympathy with moral endeavors will give strength to the moral purpose.

DISCUSSION

PRINCIPAL EUGENE D. RUSSELL

LYNN CLASSICAL HIGH SCHOOL, LYNN, MASSACHUSETTS

The real subject is, Has the reading of four books of Cæsar's Gallic war, four books of Xenophon's Anabasis, and six or seven of Cicero's orations, with a sprinkling of Viri Romæ and Nepos for prose, and six books of Virgil's Æneid, four books of Homer's Iliad, and a few hundred lines of Ovid's Metamorphoses for poetry, any effect on the morals of pupils? For this is as close as the average secondary school comes to dealing with classical literature first-hand.

It becomes, then, a question of how far morals are affected by the story of the campaigns of a Roman general, told with an eye single

to his own glory, with no fear of reviewers and newspaper correspondents, and with the omission of details that might shock the sensibilities of pagan civilization-a story in which bulldog tenacity and organized brute force succeed in wresting freedom and territorial independence from liberty-loving peoples-a war which might, if its lesson is grasped, serve to justify the action of England in South Africa and Russia in Finland and Manchuria. To the youthful mind, at least, success is the test of right. One of the first lessons an American boy learns from his country's history is that a successful rebellion is a revolution, whose instigators are patriots, while an unsuccessful revolution is a rebellion, whose instigators are traitors. The lesson the boy learns, then, from the Gallic war is, if you are a bully, be a bully till you beat; if you are not a bully, do not resist a bully, for he will beat you if you do a lesson not altogether elevating.

Second, how are morals affected by another personal narrative of how ten thousand hired butchers escaped being slaughtered themselves, through the shrewdness and caution of the impersonal narrator? This furnishes a complete code of ethics for marauders of the burglar and tramp type, showing how it is possible, through excessive greed, to get into a very tight box, but that through courage and caution it is possible to escape, where cowardice and rashness would be fatala lesson not without practical value.

Third, how are morals affected by seven speeches of a smug, egotistical lawyer and orator, in which the right triumphs and the moral teaching is obviously correct, in which with Cicero we admire Archius and the power of verse, or detest Verres and the depravity of provincial graft? But the moral teaching of the Catilinarian orations is weakened by the display of sophistry by which the prosecutor prevails upon the senate to violate the constitutional rights of his fellow-citizens, and by the nauseating egotism of the self-righteous orator, who leaves with us the impression that he was not half the man that the traitor Catiline was. These three fragments, with detached biographical scraps out of their settings, constitute the prose of secondary school classic literature. In poetry, the stories of the fall of Troy, the quarrels of the Greeks, Æneas's wanderings and Dido's undoing, together with a few of the least suggestive of Ovid's Metamorphoses, complete the anthology. That nearly all the separate episodes in all these fragments teach lessons of fortitude, patience, and temperance is beyond dispute, but justice often appears with a weighed balance-beam in the record of real life, while in poetic fiction the will of the gods is made the all-sufficient excuse for any act of meanness or ingratitude, however base.

But it would indeed be surprising if books written with no ethical purpose should prove satisfactory text-books of ethics, or if poems that were consistent with a mythological pagan code of morals should satisfy the demand of a twentieth-century Christian civilization. But the question calls for the actual rather than possible effects. My answer is brief. With a single exception I have discovered no effect on the morals. When we consider the infinite pains pupils take to make translations absolutely devoid of sense and the homoeopathic doses of the text at rather long intervals, resulting in only a slight comprehension of the connection, I doubt if the ethical effect of the content is a measurable quantity.

The secondary school pupil-and teacher too, for that matteris compelled by the conditions and limitations under which he works to regard the text as the vehicle for syntax and training in guessing or inference, rather than as a setting for ethical principles. The teacher who takes from his scant time any considerable part or frequently diverts the attention of his pupils from the linguistic demands in order to point a moral is just so far sacrificing the aims of classical study.

There is, however, one unfavorable effect, very subtle and inevitable, which springs from the study of the mythological allusions with which classical poetry is replete. Examples of human weakness and vice are bad enough when described in their coarseness, repulsiveness, and eventual bitterness, but when vice and lasciviousness are deified and made attractive, and when, with an ingenuity that is devilish and an art that is divine, stories of wantonness are told with a beauty, suggestiveness, and intensity that makes the blood of youth tingle and the imagination run riot, then our boys and girls are put to a severe moral test. The sins of Noah, Lot, David, and Sampson are not ren- . dered attractive in the Bible narrative, and the lesson they teach serves as a warning, but the detailed accounts of the amours of the gods with mortals are fascinating; instead of being a warning against it, they are an invitation to lust, and they magnify the carnal above the spiritual. For this reason it seems to me unfortunate that our scheme of education opens this "Pandora's box" at the most critical and excitable period of the youth's physical and emotional development. However, I see no remedy for this evil and have no protest to make.

In conclusion, as some geniuses can make music on the crudest instruments, so the essayist could undoubtedly make Mother Goose the basis for ethical instruction, but we must admit that it is the man rather than the matter that contributes to the result. As compared with English literature and history, the ancient classics offer no advantage that will warrant diverting them from their present uses to texts on ethics.

THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE AS A MEANS OF

IMPLANTING HIGH MORAL IDEALS

MR. D. O. S. LOWELL

MASTER IN THE ROXBURY LATIN SCHOOL, ROXBURY, MASSACHUSETTS

Not much of English that may be called "literature " is immoral; a larger portion is perhaps unmoral, being negative in its quality; but most of the English literature taught in school or college, either directly or indirectly makes for morality. Such are my premises; if they are admitted, the conclusion is obvious: the study of English literature is a means of implanting high moral ideals.

But there is more to the topic, as I conceive it, than a mere agreement on this fundamental assertion. Is it a valuable means? What sort of literature should be taught? What method of presenting it is most effective? These are some of the questions that are suggested at the outset, and to some of these we will give our brief attention. Improvement of the body leads to enlightenment, and enlightenment to further improvement; and the same law holds in the region of the mind. It is a universal experience that those who eat of the tree of knowledge begin to perceive their nakedness and make haste to become respectable. The Philistine who learns to enjoy a page of Ruskin or a poem of Wordsworth finds that he has entered a new world; he no longer

"With low-thoughted care

Confined, and pestered in this pinfold here,

Strives to keep up a frail and feverish being,
Unmindful of the crown that Virtue gives ";

his ideals are nobler; his horizon is broader; his hopes are brighter; his face is set toward the east, and he begins to love light rather than darkness. At last it may be that the day-star shall arise in his heart and he shall come to hate his evil deeds.

Now, if the study of English literature is not only a means but a valuable means of implanting high moral ideals, a practical question that confronts us is, What authors shall we choose as being best adapted to this end?

Naturally, no teacher or body of teachers will select for young minds literature that is immoral. There is such that may fairly be termed literature and that has been produced by English writers; but we need not dwell upon it. Some of it, that is not corrupt at heart, may

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