Page:Christian Greece and Living Greek.djvu/260

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238 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. The number of Latin scientific terms, with the exception of the vocabulary for law matters, is inferior to the number of words from the Greek. Moreover, we possess only the written Latin language; the language of daily commerce has not been transmitted. The Latin of the Church, of the learned, is an artificial, a forced language. It can easily be understood why, under these circumstances, the instruction in Latin became more and more purely grammatical ; but why the Greek, a living language, a language just as living as our own, has been treated alike in our schools, is a question which should be addressed to all the learned world, in order to expose a wrong that has been committed and kept up for centuries. "Grammatical schooling," says Virchow, "is not that auxiliary means of progressive develop- ment which is needed by our youth. It does not cause that desire for learning which is a pre- supposition of independent further development ; but, on the contrary, it is manifest that many scholars, as well as their parents, regard it with hatred." Professor John Williams White, of Harvard College, says : " High grammar, philological re- search concerning forms and laws of construe-