30 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
filled with a greater and greater dislike of what, for want of a better term, and again 
aot speaking offensively, I will call cant. If the leading institutions of learning in this 
country, including Harvard, Yale, and other universities, were careful, in conferring the 
degree of Bachelor of Arts upon their graduates, to ascertain by proper examination that 
that degree was never conferred upon any one who did not have an adequate knowledge 
of the path through which it is alleged he has reached his right to that degree, I should 
have the utmost respect for the degree, as well for the institutions which confer it ; but 
vhen, as I have every reason to believe, that degree simply lends itself to a falsehood, I 
ind it difficult to speak of it with that respect which should be its due. 
If those who advocate thus conferring the degree of Bachelor of Arts are prepared to 
come forward and assert that the degree is now habitually conferred upon those only 
who have made themselves reasonably proficient in classic literature, I shall agree that 
there is sense and reason in the limitation under which it is supposed to be given. 
JIntil they do, I consider the burden of proof is not on me, but upon them, to show that 
they and the universities are not lending themselves to what is at best an innocuous fraud, 
and innocuous because generally understood. In fact, a harmless tradition, except for 
the false and injurious training it involves. 
I do not think it too much to ask of those upon whom a degree is conferred that they 
should be fairly acquainted with the elementary principles of the learning in regard to 
which the degree in question is their certificate of proficiency. Neither do I consider 
shat the ability to read at sight the more simple books of either of the so-called classic 
anguages constitutes an undue amount of elementary acquaintance with them. 
How many of our institutions of learning would care to subject the large classes of 
students upon whom they annually confer the degree in question to the test I have indi- 
;ated ? And what would be the result of so doing ? 
I remain, ete., 
CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, 
of Boston. Mass. 
Mr. Adams brings forward an argument not produced or foreseen at the July meeting. 
{ have therefore asked and obtained his permission to attempt an estimate of its value. 
Let me, at the outset, call attention to the fact that the question is not whether young 
people should continue to be forced to study Greek or go without a college education, 
but whether, if they do not study Greek, they should, nevertheless, demand the same 
degree. 
(1) The principal aim of the study of classics has been, and is, fo acquaint the stu- 
dent at first hand with a literary art which is of the highest kind, and which stands in 
the most vital relation to the great literary art of our own language and of its sisters, 
and so to establish in his mental constitution a standard of expression at once vigorous 
and sane ; to give him a direct outlook upon the thought and feeling of two epochs in 
the history of man which are of immense interest in themselves, and which stand in the 
most vital connection with the thought and feeling of our own time, and so to forestall 
mental narrowness ; to give him, on the purely formal side, a clear understanding of 
that manifestation of the human mind which we call language, an understanding best 
got from the study of a highly developed inflected tongue; and to train him to face 
difficulties in his own thought, and in the interpretation of the thought of others, and 
s0 to establish habits of insistent clearness of vision and rigor of inference. If the study 
is carried only a short distance, the results are proportionately small. But so are they 
in the study of modern languages, or mathematics, or natural science. If the teaching 
is mechanical, the results are bad. But so also are the results of mechanical teaching 
in natural science, or mathematics, or modern languages. 
As to the acquisition of the power of reading Greek and Latin at sight, desirable as it 
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