CLASSICS IN THE COLONIES. "Nelson Examiner," July 29.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XXX, Issue 28, 5 August 1871, Page 7

CLASSICS IN THE COLONIES. " Nelson Examiner," July 29.

Professor Sale has opened his first course at Dunedinwith an address, which was attended by many besides those connected with the University. He has taken for his subject the place which classics should hold in education, especially in the colonies. While Professor Sale is far too good a scholar to undervalue the study of Latin and Greek, he has seen too much of the ■world to wish that those subjects, though they constitute the field of his own labours, should occupy the exaggerated prominence which, until recently, they have occupied in the higher education of England. "While he fully recognizes in high linguistic training a means of education tending to form certain habits of mind of unquestionable value, he lays no less stress on the fact, to which lie and all who like him were educated in the English Public Schools of some twenty years since, must be painfully alive. The man who has received his whole education from books, can be but half-educated; just as the man whose faculties of observation have alone been cultivated, is something less than halfeducated. The sedentary, unpractical "bookworm, is at one end of the scale ; the Bed Indian, or backwoodsman, at the other. The perceptive faculties must not be cultivated at the expense of reflection, concentration of thought, and extended reasoning, or we shall get little but preternaturally acute savages. The culture of the higher mental faculties must not be allowed to exclude the education of the perceptive, or those powers will themselves Be stunted by the want of the best material for their exercise — material, which perception aud observation can alone supply. Professor Sale, therefore, logically advises that every student who aims at a really "liberal" education, should select some one branch of physical study, in which to proceed part passu with his classical and literary studies. We believe sounder advice could not be given. Physical science will gain, and literature not lose by this arrangement. Professor Sale's remarks upon the two classical languages are not less to the point. It is not to be expected that so accomplished a scholar should depreciate Greek literature — the noblest the world can boast — rich at once in philosophy, poetry, and political experience of the nature especially valuable to ourselves at this period of our history — that literature, the introduction of which into Western Europe, about the fifteenth century, gave the signal, nay, was before many other concurrent factors, the chief causes of that extraordinary burst of poetry, philosophy, intellectual activity of the most varied character, which welcomed the birth of Modern Europe, of which the Renaissance and Heformation were but manifestations ; of which Shakespear and Bacon were, in our own land, but the highest exponents — "inter tot pares uterque primus." Eeeognizing fully, however, the glory of the Greek literature, Professor Sale shows that the utility of the study of Greek depends entirely upon the ability to read, mark, and digest the literature enshrined in it, and that this ability can only ensue upon many years of devotion. The study of Greek, which halts short of this, is time well nigh thrown away, certainly time far less profitably employed than the same time given to the study of other subjects readier of access — our own elder classics, for instance. With the study J of Latin, he deems it far otherwise. The

unparalleled exactness and logical accuracy of its grammar, render this language the easiest road to the knowledge of universal grammar — the grammar not only of other languages, but even, and perhaps more than any other of our own. Latin words, too, are so largely imported into English, that an acquaintance with the mere vocabulary is useful, and the more critical the more useful. The Latin language is the ready key to French, Italian, and Spanish, which are little more than cultivated dialectical varieties of the old speech. Not only our language, but much of our civilization, our ways of thought, our theology, above all, our law, can be unlocked only by the Latin key. For anything like a scientific study of law, the works of the great Koman jurists, of which no translation can give an accurate or adequate idea, is indispensable. They have never yet, say the best of our English lawyers, been approached, far less superseded. Accordingly, foremost among the reforms which the leading minds of the legal profession have introduced into legal education, is an examination, yearly becoming more stringent, in the original text of these Eoman jurists. Thi3 step is held by our most scientific lawyers — by such men as Mr. Austin and Mr. Mayne, the indispensable preliminary of what is perhaps the most crying want of English communities, the codification aud thorough reform of their civil and criminal law. For these reasons, Professor Sale appears to desire to discourage the mere dabbling in Greek, which is, except in most exceptional instances, all that is possible in the colonies ; while he eagerly presses the claims of Latin on all who aspire to a liberal education. We cordially agree with him; and heartily hope that the Council and Examiners of the New Zealand University will take his remarks to heart. On their action now depends, to a great extent, the development of our higher schools. In all but the most exceptional instances, the study of Greek is useless, because it must be brought to a premature close at the early entrance of our young men into the business of active life. Even a little Latin is useful ; and, abandoning Greek, a youth on leaving school may have easily gained such an acquaintance with the first language as to constitute a real possession and an enduring pleasure, and an increasing means of mental refinement, as well as a great aid to the correct employment of his own tongue, and the acquirement of others. Education, to approximate to its highest standard, must include mathematics, as the exponent of abstract truth ; language, as the expression of the history and the method of human thought ; and some I branch of the study of nature face to face. Under these three heads — the study of mathematics, of humanity it has well been called, and of nature — all human knowledge may be ranged ; and without some accurate knowledge in each department, the human faculties must fail to attain that balanced adjustment, which is the highest object of mental culture.