Page:Jesuit Education.djvu/370

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350
JESUIT EDUCATION

ally have much more confidence in such a doctor, than in one who has not had the advantage of the same logical training. The results will be similar in the case of a lawyer, a politician, a business man, a writer. The father in the fable told his sons that there was a treasure hidden in his vineyard. They began to dig the vineyard once, twice, and oftener, in the hope of finding the treasure. No chests of gold, no bags filled with good coin, appeared; but in the following year the vineyard yielded immeasurably more than ever before. Here was the treasure the wise father meant them to seek after. The same holds good in education. The man in later life may never again use his Latin or Greek, still the study of these languages has turned up the soil in the field of his intellect, fertilized it, and if now it yields a rich harvest, the result is to a great extent due to that patient digging, although he himself may not, and in most cases does not, realize to what source his success in life is to be ascribed.

But the logical training acquired by translating from or into the ancient languages, although a most important result, is by no means the only benefit of the study of those languages. There is, besides this formal side, the historical. The Latin and Greek literatures present to us at first hand all the great masterpieces of antiquity, which have inspired directly or indirectly most of what is really great and noble in modern literature. Most deservedly, therefore, have the classical studies been styled the ABC of all higher studies.[1] Latin especially is, as Professor Paulsen styles it, "the gate to the great historical world. No

  1. Verhandlungen. (Transactions of the Berlin Conference 1890.) See Duhr, p. 91.