That a course in novels lacks mental discipline and is too easy depends mainly on the teacher and his method. As regards the time consumed in preparation, it is probable that a student would expend three or four times the number of hours on a course in novels than he would in ancient languages, where, unfortunately, the use of a translation is all but universal; and the translation is fatal to mental discipline. But it is not merely a matter of hours; novels can be taught in such a way as to produce the best kind of mental discipline, which consists, first, in compelling a student to do his own thinking, and, secondly, to train him properly in the expression of what ideas he has. APPENDIX B THE TEACHER'S ATTITUDE TOWARD CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE Two things must be admitted at the start--first, that no person is qualified to judge the value of new books who is not well acquainted with the old ones; second, that the only test of the real greatness of any book is Time. It is, of course, vain to hope that any remarks made on contemporary authors will not be misrepresented, but I have placed two axioms at the beginning of this article in order to clear the ground. I am not advocating the abandonment of the study of Homer and Vergil, or proposing to substitute in their stead the study of Hall Caine, Mrs. Ward, and Marie Corelli. I do not believe that Mr. Pinero is a greater dramatist than Sophokles, or that the mental discipline gained by reading _The Jungle_ is equivalent to that obtained in the mastery of Euclid. I am merely pleading that every thoughtful man who is alive in this year of grace should not attempt to live his whole life in the year 400 B.C., even though he be so humble an individual as a teacher. The very word "teacher" means something more than "scholar"; and scholarship means something more than the knowledge of things that are dead. A good teacher will remember that the boys and girls who come under his instruction are not all going to spend their lives in the pursuit of technical learning. It is his business to influence them; and he cannot exert a powerful influence without some interest in the life and thought of his own day, in the environment in which his pupils exist. I believe that the cardinal error of a divinity-school education is that the candidate for the ministry spends over half his time and energy in the laborious study of Hebrew, whereas he should study the subjects that primarily interest not his colleagues, but his audience. "Priests Should study passion; how else cure mankind, Who come for help in passionate extremes?" A preacher who knows Hebrew, Greek, systematic theology, New Testament interpretation, and who knows nothing about literature, history, art, and human nature, is grotesquely unfitted for his noble profession.