The literary argument for enforced study of Greek and Latin in our day has not much weight. What I call the glossological argument has more. Every well-educated person should have a thorough understanding of his own language, and no one can thoroughly understand the English without some knowledge of languages which touch it so nearly as the Latin and the Greek. Some knowledge of those languages should constitute, I think, a condition of matriculation. But the further prosecution of them should not be obligatory on the student once matriculated, though every encouragement be given and every facility afforded to those whose genius leans in that direction. The College should make ample provision for the study of ancient languages, and also for the study of the mathematics, but should not enforce those studies on minds that have no vocation for such pursuits. There is now and then a born philologer, one who studies language for its own sake,--studies it perhaps in the spirit of "the scholar who regretted that he had not concentrated his life on the dative case." There are also exceptional natures that delight in mathematics, minds whose young affections run to angles and logarithms, and with whom the computation of values is itself the chief value in life. The College should accommodate either bias, to the top of its bent, but should not enforce either with compulsory twist. It should not insist on making every alumnus a linguist or a mathematician. If mastery of dead languages is not an indispensable part of polite education, mathematical learning is still less so. Excessive requirements in that department have not even the excuse of intellectual discipline. More important than mathematics to the general scholar is the knowledge of history, in which American scholars are so commonly deficient. More important is the knowledge of modern languages and of English literature. More important the knowledge of Nature and Art. May the science of sciences never want representatives as able as the learned gentlemen who now preside over that department in the mathematical and presidential chairs. Happy will it be for the University if they can inspire a love for the science in the pupils committed to their charge. But where inspiration fails, coercion can never supply its place. If the mathematics shall continue to reign at Harvard, may their empire become a law of liberty.