Blair Collection > Celtic magazine > Volume 12

Glasgow Students. 33
were "useful." For the word "useful" in learning is like the
word practical in politics, and the word orthodox in religion, or
like the eloquence of a Prime Minister, a thing which at the same
time means anything, everything, and nothing. We are be-
coming more civilised. The object of a University training is
twofold — to impart knowledge and give culture. If both of these,
a classical training often and conspicuously fails. After the
student and his nourishing mother have parted company for one
or two short years, he only knows enough of Greek and Latin to
misquote a few simple sentences, and his culture is represented
by an ignorant intolerance of other people's knowledge and a
contempt for all who have not like himself had an opportunity of
abusing glorious chances. Thus, while the journalism of this
country represents always intelligence and often the very highest
culture, it is the commonest of things to find a College — taught
booby who regards himself as belonging to a class infinitely
superior to journalists. The classical training of our Universities
overwhelms many a simple soul with intellectual ruin. He had
in him the elements of a man — he has become a prig. This
might not be so if the time passed in learning Greek and
forgetting it, as one builds a house of cards to knock it down
again, were passed in the acquirement of some modern language,
some living tongue not yet come to the philological sarco-
phagus. He would have gained a means of real culture. For
having once acquired masterly and fluent ease in a modern tongue,
every motive would urge him to retain his treasure. He would
read foreign books and newspapers ; he would come to see that
the vast world depends on the law of gravitation, and not on the
dictum of any little, great man whatever ; his mind would gain
strength, breadth, and fertility ; he would have been presented
with a true patent of nobility and culture. Nor would any injury
have been done to the cause of classical learning. The fates for-
bid. We need to-day the lessons of the Athenian teachers more
than any day upon which the sun has risen. The world is
engaged in a confused battle of hysterics and brutishness. Our
literature is not artistic, but canibalistic. We do not admire, we
vivisect. We gorge upon each others emotions, and at
last feast upon ourselves like the serpent devouring his own tail.
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