James Bowling Mozley

“ The authors of a nation are the natural centre of the history of the nation. To know a man it is necessary to hear what he says with his own mouth, as well as what others have to record about him; and in the same way the history of a nation is an insufficient means of getting acquainted with that nation, unless it be supplemented by that more intimate acquaintance implied in a knowledge of its authors. ”

“ The branches are much too numerous; it is necessary that all but the few that are of most extreme importance should be combined in a general system, having its centre in that which is the voice of the nation, in that which comes nearest to the very heart and being of the nation, namely, the literature. It is quite possible in such a mode of study to go far beyond the mere littérateur, the dabbler in criticism and politics. However much it be true that the literature must be the centre, yet that the researches of the student should stop with the literature need not and ought not to be the case. ”

“ It is only the condition, material and spiritual, of the nations with whom we come into immediate contact, whose disposition toward us constantly elicits from us the greatest interest and anxiety, that we do not think worthy of systematic study. It is of this alone that we are notoriously ignorant.
The best way, perhaps, of appreciating how wide the extent of this ignorance is, will be by considering how great is the variety of knowledge which an Oxford or Cambridge first-class man will often possess respecting the whole national being of Greece and Rome. ”

“ Now, let it be considered that there are five modern nations—England, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain who have each a history of equal length with the authentic history of Greece or Rome, a literature (at least in the first four cases) not greatly inferior, institutions and a manner of life far more complex, and it will be admitted that here we have a subject well worthy of systematic and regular treatment. These are not topics that can be handled satisfactorily in the idle leisure of a summer tour, in a long vacation. They deserve that a far more steady attention should be devoted to them. ”

“ As languages, French and German (especially the former) are less powerful instruments of training, for the abler boys, than Latin and Greek. As literatures—that is, as summing up the whole thought and history of a nation—they would, if properly managed, be much more powerful instruments (in proportion to the much greater variety of modern life as compared with ancients) , and are, besides, much more important for us to know. Now, school-boys have more need to apply themselves to languages as languages than to the wide field of information comprised in a literature ”

“ They paid no regard to the storing of the mind with material, to the preparation of it for efforts to which it was at present unequal, to the laying broad foundations of fact and experience, not for the sake of immediate argument, but as food to be gradually appropriated and assimilated in the insensible silent workings of the growing man. They made men discuss. They were like a person who should expect a plant to grow by its own intrinsic power, without the nutriment of earth and water. ”

“ Not that mental acuteness is not cultivated at the present day as much as ever it was; for putting a point on the mind, nothing can excel the mathematical course at Cambridge. But the value assigned to width of knowledge has increased in a much greater ratio, as will be plain by looking back a little in European history. The School-men were in modern times the earliest educationalists of Europe. Their educational system was like their philosophy—the most simply, purely, and nakedly intellectual that the world has ever seen. ”

“ Those, however, who think that any or all of the examinations above-mentioned will give those who prepare for them an adequate acquaintance with the nations of the modern world, take a very mechanical view of that which is meant by a nation. Nations, like individuals, or rather much more than individuals, extend far beyond any particular line of their action. The most accurate student of the law and philosophy of modern times will not thereby know any thing about military, commercial, and educational systems. ”

“ By nothing which is said here is there intended to be implied the slightest disparagement of the examinations in law and philosophy at Oxford and Cambridge, or the least idea that it is possible to supply their place by a more general examination in modern literatures. Law and philosophy, like science, are subjects that cannot be studied otherwise than on their own basis; they demand a stringent rigidity of consecutive reasoning that is wholly alien from the wide knowledge and free play of the mind that deals with literatures, whether ancient or modern ”

“ Surely no further argument can be necessary to prove that all knowledge which tends to throw light on our national relations is a most important acquisition.
And all our schools, all our educational bodies, except the old universities, are doing their best to remedy these our present defects. But the universities are the keystone of the whole system; all training to which they do not give the final touch is defective and aimless ”

“ The English and Germans alike speak of the French as a nation wholly swallowed up in themselves, and ludicrously ignorant of every thing outside themselves. The French retaliate by calling the Germans barbarians and the English shopkeepers. The Americans say that no foreigner, except a certain De Tocqueville, has ever gained the smallest glimpse of their character; while the English affirm that the Americans themselves are blinded to every thing except what they think their national grandeur. ”

“ Let the reader think what is the average knowledge of modern authors, modern history, and the institutions of foreign countries, possessed by his personal friends. It is pretty safe to say that it will be found very small indeed. The German or French works, which it is politely assumed that "every one" has read, will turn out perhaps to have been read by one out of every ten well-educated men. There are many who lament their ignorance, but yet, owing to the press of work in active life, cannot remove it. ”

“ Pure historical study does not try the intellect very deeply; the subjects with which it deals are so various that it cannot bestow on any of them more than a somewhat superficial glance. There are, of course, special kinds of history that may go deeply into special subjects, of which Hallam's work is an example ”

“ Or, again, the more serious fact that the French enter upon a war in the firm belief that they will find allies in the States of South Germany; instead of which, they find them enthusiastic enemies. This being the case," he might conclude by saying, "I naturally looked to those bodies in these countries whose office it is to attain and diffuse knowledge to the widest degree possible—the universities—assuming that the means of remedying so great a defect in knowledge, and one so universally complained of, would at any rate be under their consideration. ”

“ And this is the principal benefit gained at present in schools by the study of French and German, that the slower boys have something more within the range of their capacity than they had formerly; a benefit which, though it may in time receive augmentation, is in itself no inconsiderable gain. At the universities, however, the importance of linguistic study, as compared with material study, is much less. A youth of twenty will have the fibre of his mind, his actual mental grasp and capacity, in a great measure, determined ”

“ It is probable that modern literatures would require a greater exercise of judgment in the examiner than Latin and Greek. They verge more on controversial questions; it is more easy in them to win credit for a petty sharpness, a flimsy mode of dealing with great subjects. ”

“ In conclusion, as the course of instruction here advocated involves a smaller amount of intellectual sharpening, and a larger and more various acquisition of positive knowledge, than the generality of the systems in use at the present day, it will not be beside the point to observe that the tendency of modern education has for four centuries been in this direction—that is, rather to encourage wealth and variety of mental possessions, than extreme acuteness in their employment. ”

“ Mathematics are even a more severe intellectual gymnastic than Latin and Greek; but the superior variety of knowledge connected with the classical languages is considered to make them not inferior as means of education. The same argument, taken a step further, serves to defend modern literatures from the charge brought against them in this point of view. ”

“ Let us, then, consider what is the value of those incidental exceptions to which allusion was made just now; what, in short, is the actual amount of instruction in modern periods given at the universities. In such examinations as the law and modern history examination at Oxford, the law tripos and the moral science tripos at Cambridge, a good deal of acquaintance with certain aspects of modern times is required. And there have been at Cambridge, at different times, proposals for a history tripos, to comprise all history, ancient and modern ”

“ Is it not a hardship that they should not have had an opportunity of removing it in the course of their education? Very few people, when they have settled into a sphere of work, are able, even when they go abroad for their holidays, to do much beyond walking and seeing celebrated sights. ”

“ The advantage is one analogous to that which richer men have over poorer, in being able to command the services of better instructors. It would, however, be considerably diminished by the fact that, in such an examination, more regard must necessarily be paid to substance than to style or language. ”

“ Let this first be recognized fully—the importance, which cannot be exaggerated, of a kind of study in which no man in England has had a regular training—and then we may proceed to consider the method by which this study may be raised to the prominence which it deserves. ”

“ And few, indeed, must they be who have not reason to lament that they have not been furnished with better means for acquainting themselves with that whole family of nations among whom our lives are cast. ”

“ Heavy are the difficulties which oppose the cultivation of modern languages, even in schools which take them up most zealously. Is it not the inevitable conclusion that the universities are imperatively bound to supply some central system of instruction in modern literatures?—Contemporary Review. ”

“ From Demosthenes, he will know a good deal of the nature of her laws, in their application to the manifold interests of men—to the injuries which one man may suffer from another, in person or property, by fraud or violence. ”