Education; Priestley, Joseph, 1733-1804; Science -- Study and teaching
I desire to speak with the utmost respect of that science--philology--of
which grammar is a part and parcel; yet everybody knows that
grammar, as it is usually learned at school, affords no scientific
training. It is taught just as you would teach the rules of chess or
draughts. On the other hand, if I am to understand by a literary
education the study of the literatures of either ancient or modern
nations--but especially those of antiquity, and especially that of
ancient Greece; if this literature is studied, not merely from the
point of view of philological science, and its practical application to
the interpretation of texts, but as an exemplification of and
commentary upon the principles of art; if you look upon the literature
of a people as a chapter in the development of the human mind, if you
work out this in a broad spirit, and with such collateral references to
morals and politics, and physical geography, and the like as are
needful to make you comprehend what the meaning of ancient literature
and civilisation is,--then, assuredly, it affords a splendid and noble
education. But I still think it is susceptible of improvement, and that
no man will ever comprehend the real secret of the difference between
the ancient world and our present time, unless he has learned to see
the difference which the late development of physical science has made
between the thought of this day and the thought of that, and he will
never see that difference, unless he has some practical insight into
some branches of physical science; and you must remember that a
literary education such as that which I have just referred to, is out
of the reach of those whose school life is cut short at sixteen or
seventeen.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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