civilization can be learned in other ways; at any rate, it is too dearly bought if it ruins the character of children."
That no prudishness is advocated by our remarks on reading the classics, is sufficiently proved from what has been said on Homer.[1] Nor do we deny that some editors of school-texts, as well as teachers, may not have gone too far in expurgating. Here, as in other matters, the golden rule is: Medio tutissimus ibis. It will always remain a delicate and difficult question to decide what is to be omitted or what may be read without danger. The tact of the teacher and skill in handling such passages will often give the proper solution. But about the correctness of the general principle laid down in the Ratio Studiorum there can be no doubt.
The same principle holds good not only of the classical authors of Greece and Rome, but of the moderns as well, if not in a higher degree.[2] The ancients are direct, outspoken and straightforward, even in their obscenity; the moderns are more indirect and insinuating. The latter method is not the more harmless as might appear to the superficial, but is by far the more dangerous, since it stimulates curiosity, sets the mind thinking and leaves the reader to reflect and dwell on an unsavory and prurient subject. The Jesuit teachers are exhorted not only "not to read in class any obscene author or any book which contains matter dangerous to good morals, but also to deter most energetically their pupils from reading such
