THE FUTURE OF THE CLASSICS.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."3 Sin,—Your contributor "C.," writing in your issue of July 5th, deserves all our gratitude for his defence of classical teaching in England, but it is a little strange that be should write, with apparent approval, the dictum that the public school boy may be a fairly good agent for dealing with the "lower or more submissive races in the wilds of Africa or in the plains of India." In giving currency to such an unfortunate and ambiguous phrase your contributor overlooks the vast differences between the races in question. But that is not the worst. He accepts apparently the theory that the public school laboratory supplies the article which the submissive races of or in the plains of India require. Probably nothing could be further from the truth. A purely literary or theoretical education appears to unfit men for the task of dealing at first hand with the varied races of India, and the great desideratum for the sun-dried bureaucrats of the future is an
education which will bring them into contact with actualities. In mathematics this is being given them, as Dr. Butler's speech at Harrow the other day showed. A mathematical laboratory should be part of every school's equipment. Is there no possibility of teaching the classics upon analogous lines ? It is difficult to imagine a more valuable training for administrative work than the classics would afford if they were taught as a living subject upon anthropological lines. A recent correspondent of the Pioneer recounts the history of two murder cases which would never have occurred if our rule had not been so rigid and inelastic. One result of those qualities in it is that crime and litigation are rapidly increas- ing, while the Bar threatens to dominate the administration. Yet it is not difficult to imagine that the classics, as inter- preted by Verrall and others mentioned by your contributor (to the list Professor Ridgeway should be added), might eventually ensure us a fairly complete understanding of Indian ideals, ideas, and superstitions, which would make us something more than "fairly good" at our task.—I am,
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