1. The degree to which power generated by education is general depends upon the extent to which it energizes the mind, and particularly the extent to which it overflows into congruent channels. 2. Such power is far more special than general; it is only in a limited sense that we can be said to have a store of mobilized mental power. 3. No one kind of mental exercise--no few kinds--can develop the whole mind. 4. No study, no single group of studies, contains within itself the possibilities of a whole education. On the other hand, American students rarely study classics long enough to acquire much facility in mastering the literary contents of the ancient writers. If, to considerable extent, the idea of formal discipline is a delusive one, and the idea of a broad, humanistic culture is an illusion of the American schoolmaster, we must justify the study of Latin upon other grounds. The linguistic advantages arising from it are obvious and decided. Among these stands first the mastery of the mother-tongue, first through the comparative study rendered necessary by translation, then by study of the roots of a large part of the English vocabulary, and more remotely by the light thrown by Latin upon history and institutional life. There is an advantage in Latin of great, though usually unmentioned, importance, and that is its peculiar usefulness as an educational instrument, in that it presents to the pupil a graduated scale of surmountable difficulties. In this respect it is surpassed only by mathematics. The difference between a good and a poor educational instrument lies in this: a study offering few surmountable obstacles is a poor educational instrument, for the pupil can find no fulcrum upon which to use his mental powers. Thus he may stare at a natural object when directed to observe its characteristics, but he finds it hard to think when no thought problem is presented to him. But a study that involves thought problems of a definite and solvable kind is a good educational instrument, for the pupil finds something to move and a fulcrum upon which he may exert his power. Translation from an ancient language exercises the working powers of a student up to their highest efficiency, for the translation of ten sentences may easily provide the hardest kind of work for an hour; if ten lines do not, then more lines will. When a foreign language ceases to offer such surmountable difficulties, we leave it for something else that does offer them. [38] Bennett and Bristol, “The Teaching of Latin and Greek,” pp. 11–32, Longmans, Green & Co., New York, 1900. [39] Russell, “German Higher Schools,” Longmans, Green & Co., New York, 1899. [40] Hinsdale, “Studies in Education,” pp. 46–61, Werner School Book Co., Chicago, 1896.