The "hairy quadruped furnished with a tail
and pointed ears, probably arboreal in his habits," this good fellow
carried hidden in his nature, apparently, something destined to develop
into a necessity for humane letters. Nay, more: we seem finally to be
even led to the further conclusion that our hairy ancestor carried in
his nature, also, a necessity for Greek.
And therefore, to say the truth, I cannot really think that humane
letters are in much actual danger of being thrust out from their leading
place in education, in spite of the array of authorities against them at
this moment. So long as human nature is what it is, their attractions
will remain irresistible. As with Greek, so with letters generally:
they will some day come, we may hope, to be studied more rationally, but
they will not lose their place. What will happen will rather be that
there will be crowded into education other matters besides, far too
many; there will be, perhaps, a period of unsettlement and confusion and
false tendency; but letters will not in the end lose their leading
place.
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