THE GREEK FIGHT AT CAMBRIDGE.
THE Senate of the University of Cambridge have re- jected by an immense majority the proposal to inquire whether a knowledge of two ancient languages ought to be insisted on in the preliminary examination commonly called the " Little-Go." We cannot say that we either approve or condemn that decision. It seems to us that a great opportunity has been lost for reconsidering and reclassifying Cambridge degrees, and giving them more significant names. It is a pity that the controversy which has been raging as to the essentiality of the study of Greek as an element in liberal education, has not taken a somewhat wider range, and led to a discussion whether the Cambridge classification of degrees should not be recon- sidered, so as better to convey their true meaning, and whether the examinations should not be so recast as to test the candidates' acquirements in relation to Arts and Science respectively. It seems to us that even as it is, the mathe- matical degree at Cambridge is miscalled when it is treated as a degree iu Arta. It may be a sufficient test of an adequate education of some kind, but we should not have called it a sufficient test of a liberal education in the old sense of the word, even with its " Little-Go" unaltered, and the modicum of proficiency in Greek which is exacted in it still retained. At least, if Ia liberal education implies the liberal prepara- tion of a man or woman for entering into sympathy with the greater intellectual movements of the human mindiwe do not think that the Cambridge " Little-Go," with the mathematical discipline which follows it in the case of those who take the commonest of the Cambridge degrees, does secure for them an intelligent sympathy of that broader kind. It is a good certificate of one kind of education, but the kind it secures is rather an education of the reasoning faculties, than the sort of education which is usually associated with the meaning of the word "culture," without any specific adjective to describe what sort of culture is meant. The most common of the Oxford Arts examinations, the examination which ends with what are called " Greats " in classics and history, does secure general culture ; but the most common of the Cambridge Arts examinations ought to be called a test only of a. certain species of scientific culture, and not one of general culture at all. The examinations which have resulted in securing a B.A. at Cambridge to the greater number of Cambridge students, do not seem to us to deserve the diploma of Bachelor of Arts at all. They rather deserve the diploma of Bachelor of Science. And, as a matter of fact, the ordinary Cantab, even if he has secured a high Wranglership, does not necessarily turn out to be a man of liberal culture in the larger sense. If he is that, as of course he very often is, he has acquired the discipline for himself by his private reading and training, and not by the reading and training which he has gone through in order to secure his degree. That may make him a man of a certain kind of scientific culture, a man with a highly developed logical faculty, but it does not make him a man of general culture.
By this it will be seen that in some sense we go beyond those who contend for the retention of Greek at the " Little- Go " as an essential for testing true liberal culture. For that purpose we should be prepared to contend, not only that it should be retained at the preliminary examination, but pursued and taken to a much higher point at the further examination. Indeed, we have always regarded the mathe-' matical degree at Cambridge as very inappropriately named a degree in Arts. Many a Wrangler has left Cambridge with a mind excellently disciplined as regards logic and deductive reasoning, but with almost as little general culture as at artisan. On the other hand, we cannot go with those who would refuse all University degrees to men who do not 44 take degrees in Arts. Science, whether deductive or inductive, has become so vast an element in our modern life, and confers in many different ways a discip- line so valuable for the minds which pursue it, that it is, we think, impossible to refuse a degree in Science to those who have not studied Greek, and do not wish or intend to study it. - They may not be, and often are not, men of what we should call liberal culture ; they have not found the Mem ltamaniores of high interest, and are not in the proper sense literary men at all ; but they are, nevertheless, men of very con- siderable culture of a particular kind, and that, too, a kind which the world needs more and more, and which, more- over, if properly mastered, is engrossing enough to occupy all the time at a man's disposal before he takes his degree. Our impression is, that a young man of only average abilities cannot become, in these days of rapidly widening knowledge in all departments of life, but especially of widening knowledge in the scientific field, a man both of good liberal culture and of good scientific culture, before. he leaves the University. And as it is much better that the young should learn to be thorough, than even that they should learn to have large sympathies, we hold that a scientific degree should be obtainable without the necessity of showing a fair acquaintance with the most liberalising of human studies, especially as we do not regard the requirements of the " Little-Go " in relation to Greek, as at all of an order that does imply a fair acquaintance with the most liberalising of human studies. Of all the men who pass the Cambridge "Little- Go " without pursuing their Greek any further, we doubt whether one in ten has got any real good out of the study. The study of Greek is so liberalising, not chiefly for its linguistic effects, but for its literary treasures ; and men who pass the " Little-Go " and then drop Greek get no access at all to its literary treasures. It is true, we sup- pose, that the language itself may be called the most finely sculptured form of human speech ; that it opens out the study of the most statuesque poetry and the most refined and subtle philosophy to which the mind of man has given birth ; and that it gives the learner access to a range of the highest summits of human genius which the chart of man's mental wanderings contains. All this is true, but it is not true that any ordinary mind can familiarise itself with these achievements, and yet fami- liarise itself also with the methods of the newer science before a youth has reached the age of twenty-one or twenty-two. If he tries to be a man both of good liberal culture and of good scientific culture before that age, he will in the majority of cases fall between the two stools, and fail to be either the one or the other. Whatever education may aim at, it should at least aim at being sound so far as it goes, at avoiding superficiality, at drilling a man well in something, whether that some- thing be an elementary appreciation of science, or an elementary appreciation of human literature. And com- paratively few men have the talents to achieve both before they enter on the general work of life. It seems to us that the time has come when even a school education should either be predominantly practical, or predominantly scientific, or predominantly literary, and that the practical education should be more or less what is called modern or technical, the literary education should be what is called classical, and the scientific education a thorough drilling in either deductive or inductive science. We do not mean, of course, that there should not be a large common element in all three,—we do not mean that any youth should leave school without some mastery of the genius of his native language and literature, and of one or two other languages as well, of which one should be no longer a spoken language. The plea for Greek on the ground that it still is a spoken language, seems to us a plea for modern Greek, not for classical Greek, and might very well involve no training in the great Greek literature at all. A man who could chatter Greek well enough to get on easily in the commercial life of the Levant, to read Greek newspapers, and to amuse himself with Greek novels, need not have any of the culture to which we have been referring as that which constitutes the most liberalising element in a liberal education. Of course he might also know classical Greek, and know it all the better for his command of the modern tongue ; but it would not be the study of modern Greek as modern Greek that would liberalise his education, but only the study of that great literary world to which classical Greek is the only key.
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