Humanistic studies when set in opposition to study of nature are hampered. They tend to reduce themselves to exclusively literary and linguistic studies, which in turn tend to shrink to "the classics," to languages no longer spoken.... It would be hard to find anything in history more ironical than the educational practices which have identified the "humanities" exclusively with a knowledge of Greek and Latin. Greek and Roman art and institutions made such important contributions to our civilization that there should always be the amplest opportunities for making their acquaintance. But to regard them as _par excellence_ the humane studies involves a deliberate neglect of the possibilities of the subject-matter which is accessible in education to the masses, and tends to cultivate a narrow snobbery--that of a learned class whose insignia are the accidents of exclusive opportunity. Knowledge is humanistic in quality not because it is _about_ human products in the past, but because of what it _does_ in liberating human intelligence and human sympathy. Any subject-matter which accomplishes this result is humane and any subject-matter which does not accomplish it is not even educational. The point is that it is precisely what a correct knowledge of ancient civilization through a study of the classics _does_ that our traditional educators most dread. William James once said that the good which came from such study was the ability to "know a good man when we see him." The student would thus become more capable of discriminating appreciation. He would grow to be a judge of values. He would acquire sharp likes and dislikes and thus set up his own standards of judgment. He would become an independent-thinker and therefore an enemy of crowds. Scholars of the Renaissance knew this well, and that is why in their revolt against the crowd-mindedness of their day they made use of the _litteræ humanores_ to smash to pieces the whole dogmatic system of the Middle Ages. With the picture of ancient life before him the student could not help becoming more cosmopolitan in spirit. Here he got a glimpse of a manner of living in which the controlling ideas and fixations of his contemporary crowds were frankly challenged. Here were witnesses to values contrary to those in which his crowd had sought to bring him up in a docile spirit. Inevitably his thinking would wander into what his crowd considered forbidden paths. One cannot begin to know the ancients as they really were without receiving a tremendous intellectual stimulus. After becoming acquainted with the intellectual freedom and courage and love of life which are almost everywhere manifest in the literature of the ancients, something happens to a man. He becomes acquainted with himself as a valuing animal. Few things are better calculated to make free spirits than these very classics, once the student "catches on."