30982 IN CLASSICAL STUDY. BY WILLIAM GARDNER HALE, PROFESSOR OF THE LATIN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE IN BOSTON: PUBLISHED BY GINN & COMPANY. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1887, by WILLIAM GARDNER HALE, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. J. S. CUSHING & Co., PRINTERS, BOSTON. Omnis hic sermo noster non solum enumerationem oratorum, verum etiam praecepta quaedam desiderat: 93. 319. AIMS AND METHODS IN CLASSICAL STUDY. AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE MEETING OF THE MASSACHUSETTS CLASSICAL AND HIGH SCHOOL TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION, BOSTON, 1887. I HAD planned to speak to you to-day of the various phases of the classical education, the study of the Greek and Latin literatures as bodies of thought, the study of the forms and constructions of the languages, the study of the history of the peoples, the study of public and private life, the study of art. I had planned to discuss the relation of these studies to one another, and to speak with some detail of the methods by which certain of them might best be pursued. But at the very outset I find a difficulty in my path. Six months ago one would have thought oneself safe in assuming a common opinion in regard to the aim of all this. One would then have said that, while either the classics or the natural and physical sciences, properly dealt with, would teach young students that indispensable and rare accomplishment, the art of thinking, yet they greatly differed as regards the things brought before the mind; and that in the power of the great literary men of Greece and Rome to stimulate thought, to teach a severe taste, to form those qualities of mind and char |