Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

which shews not only his acute observation, but also his literary gift: "But such persons as are used to the disease, know beforehand when they are about to be seized, and flee from men; if their own house be at hand, they run home, but if not, to a lonely place, where as few persons as possible will see them when they fall, and they immediately cover themselves up. This they do from shame of the affection, and not from fear or from religious reasons, as most people suppose. Little children at first fall down wherever they may happen to be, because they are not used to the disease. But when they have been often seized, and feel its approach beforehand, they run to their mothers or to any other person they know, from terror and dread of the affection; for they do not know yet what it is to be ashamed." 1 Could anything be more moving than this? It is like an extract rather from a tragedy than a medical treatise.

To the same Hippocrates is attributed the noble physician's oath which, with small changes, is still used in some of our medical schools: "I swear by Apollo the physician, and by Asclepius, and Health, and All-Heal, and I call all gods and 1 περὶ ἱερῆς νούσου (ed. Littré, vi. p. 328).

[ocr errors]

goddesses to witness that, according to my ability and judgment, I will keep this Oath and this Bond -to reckon him who taught me this Art equally dear to me as my parents, to share my substance with him, and in the hour of his need impart what he requires, to look upon his offspring in the same footing as my own brothers, and to teach them this art if they wish to learn it, without fee or stipulation. I will follow the system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous. I will give no deadly medicine if asked, nor suggest any such plan; so too, I will not produce abortion. With purity and with holiness I will pass my life and practise my Art. . . . Into whatever houses I enter I will go into them for the benefit of the sick, and will abstain from every voluntary act of mischief and corruption. Whatever in my professional practice or outside it in the life of the world I see or hear, which ought not to be spoken of abroad, I will not divulge, considering that such things should be kept secret. While I continue to keep this Oath unviolated, may I be allowed to enjoy life and the practice of the art, respected by all men, in all times. But should I

[ocr errors]

1

trespass and violate this Oath, may the reverse be my lot." It is with men like the writer of this that we shall live if we study Greek; can we wish for or find better company in the world of the intellect?

We shall come back to the Greeks later; meanwhile we have glanced at some of the arguments for their place in education. We have seen that modern Europe is rooted in the culture of the classical world; that in studying this we become at the same time acquainted with a superb literature and a brilliant national life, and that, in particular, we are immersing ourselves in that spirit of free enquiry and rational explanation which is the oxygen in the air of the modern world, and yet never has been purer and more concentrated than in Greece. Perhaps too much stress has been laid on this point and too little said of Greek literature. But the outside world, while willing to admit the merits of the latter, is apt to think, illogically enough, that otherwise Greece is out of date. I have tried to show how false this view is, how living is her spirit, and how potent those

1 Ed. Littré, vol. iv. p. 628 f. Sydenham Society translation, with some changes.

rigorous teachers,' of whom Matthew Arnold

writes, that they

Seized my youth,

And purged its faith and trimmed its fire,
Showed me the high white star of Truth,
There bade me gaze, and there aspire.

Of course it is quite possible to dispense with the Greeks. It is quite possible to go through life without reading Shakespeare. It is possible even to go through it without reading the Bible; there have been great religious books since it was written, and great saints who have caught and in some measure reproduced its spirit. Yet the knowledge of all of them would not really replace the great fount and original of our religion. Something the same may be said of Greek literature, which is the Bible of the world of thought.1

1 A fuller discussion of our debt to the Greeks will be found in my book, The Greek Genius and its Meaning to us.

CHAPTER IV

THE CASE FOR LATIN

Graeci praeceptis valent, Romani exemplis. QUINtilian.

Now let us turn to Latin, and demand the credentials which have gained it admittance to our education. At first we are puzzled to find them. There is no intellectual supremacy here; no spirit of living reason moving through and ordering human life. It is a fine literature, but there are finer in languages yet spoken. It has three poets who are in the first rank, and it would be difficult to match Horace's literary art and genial commonsense; but the rest of Latin poetry is rarely more than excellent verse. "If we were without the four supreme poets, we should rise from the reading of Latin Poetry with the sense that a puissant and energetic people had deliberately, for six centuries, set themselves to prove that poets could be made as well as born-and had

« ForrigeFortsæt »