“L’étude de l’antiquité grecque et latine a donné au génie français une mesure, une clarté et une élégance incomparables. C’est par elle que notre philosophie, nos lettres et nos arts ont brillé d’un sivif éclat; c’est par elle que notre influence morale s’est exercée en souveraine dans le monde. Les humanités doivent être protégées contre toute atteinte et fortifiées. Elles font partie du patrimoine national.“L’esprit classique n’est pas ... incompatible avec l’esprit moderne. Il est de tous les temps, parce qu’il est le culte de la raison claire et libre, la recherche de la beauté harmonieuse et simple dans toutes les manifestations de la pensée.”
“L’étude de l’antiquité grecque et latine a donné au génie français une mesure, une clarté et une élégance incomparables. C’est par elle que notre philosophie, nos lettres et nos arts ont brillé d’un sivif éclat; c’est par elle que notre influence morale s’est exercée en souveraine dans le monde. Les humanités doivent être protégées contre toute atteinte et fortifiées. Elles font partie du patrimoine national.
“L’esprit classique n’est pas ... incompatible avec l’esprit moderne. Il est de tous les temps, parce qu’il est le culte de la raison claire et libre, la recherche de la beauté harmonieuse et simple dans toutes les manifestations de la pensée.”
By the scheme introduced in these memorable terms the course of seven years is divided into two cycles, the first cycle (of four years) having two parallel courses: (1) without Greek or Latin, and (2) with Latin, and with optional Greek at the beginning of the third year. In the second cycle (of three years) those who have been learning both Greek and Latin, and those who have been learning neither, continue on the same lines as before; while those who have been learning Latin only may either (1) discontinue it in favour of modern languagesandscience, or (2) continue it witheither. As an alternative to the second cycle, which normally ends in the examination for thebaccalauréat, there is a shorter course, mainly founded on modern languages or applied science and ending in a public examination without thebaccalauréat. Thebaccalauréat, however, has been condemned by the next minister, M. Briand, who prefers to crown the course with the award of a school diploma (1907).
See H. Lantoine,Histoire de l’enseignement secondaire en France au XVIIe siècle(1874); A. Sicard,Les Études classiques avant la Révolution(1887); Sainte-Beuve,Port-Royal, vols. i.-v. (1840-1859), especially iii. 383-588; O. Gréard,Education et instruction, 4 vols., especially “Enseignement secondaire,” vol. ii. pp. 1-90, with conspectus of programmes in the appendix (1889); A. Ribot,La Réforme de l’enseignement secondaire(1900); G. Leygues,Plan d’études, &c. (1902); H.H. Johnson, “Present State of Classical Studies in France,” inClassical Review(December 1907). See also the English Education Department’sSpecial Reports on Education in France(1899). The earlier literature is best represented in England by Matthew Arnold’sSchools and Universities in France(1868; new edition, 1892) andA French Eton(1864).
See H. Lantoine,Histoire de l’enseignement secondaire en France au XVIIe siècle(1874); A. Sicard,Les Études classiques avant la Révolution(1887); Sainte-Beuve,Port-Royal, vols. i.-v. (1840-1859), especially iii. 383-588; O. Gréard,Education et instruction, 4 vols., especially “Enseignement secondaire,” vol. ii. pp. 1-90, with conspectus of programmes in the appendix (1889); A. Ribot,La Réforme de l’enseignement secondaire(1900); G. Leygues,Plan d’études, &c. (1902); H.H. Johnson, “Present State of Classical Studies in France,” inClassical Review(December 1907). See also the English Education Department’sSpecial Reports on Education in France(1899). The earlier literature is best represented in England by Matthew Arnold’sSchools and Universities in France(1868; new edition, 1892) andA French Eton(1864).
3. The history of education in Germany since 1500 falls into three periods: (a) the age of the Revival of Learning and the Reformation (1500-1650), (b) the age of French influenceGermany.(1650-1800), and (c) the 19th century.
(a) During the first twenty years of the 16th century the reform of Latin instruction was carried out by setting aside the old medieval grammars, by introducing new manuals of classical literature, and by prescribing the study of classical authors and the imitation of classical models. In all these points the lead was first taken by south Germany, and by the towns along the Rhine down to the Netherlands. The old schools and universities were being quietly interpenetrated by the new spirit of humanism, when the sky was suddenly darkened by the clouds of religious conflict. In 1525-1535 there was a marked depression in the classical studies of Germany. Erasmus, writing to W. Pirckheimer in 1528, exclaims: “Wherever the spirit of Luther prevails, learning goes to the ground.” Such a fate was, however, averted by the intervention of Melanchthon (d. 1560), theMelanchthon.praeceptor Germaniae, who was the embodiment of the spirit of the new Protestant type of education, with its union of evangelical doctrine and humanistic culture. Under his influence, new schools rapidly rose into being at Magdeburg, Eisleben and Nuremberg (1521-1526). During more than forty years of academic activity he not only provided manuals of Latin and Greek grammar and many other text-books that long remained in use, but he also formed for Germany a well-trained class of learned teachers, who extended his influence throughout the land. His principal ally as an educator and as a writer of text-books was Camerarius (d. 1574). Precepts of style, and models taken from the best Latin authors, were the means whereby a remarkable skill in the imitation of Cicero was attained at Strassburg during the forty-four years of the headmastership of Johannes von Sturm (d. 1589), who had himself been influenced by theDe disciplinisof J.L. Vivès (1531), and in all his teaching aimed at the formation of asapiens atque eloquens pietas. Latin continued to be the living language of learning and of literature, and a correct and elegant Latin style was regarded as the mark of an educated person. Greek was taught in all the great schools, but became more and more confined to the study of the Greek Testament. In 1550 it was proposed in Brunswick toThe Greek Testament.banish all “profane” authors from the schools, and in 1589 a competent scholar was instructed to write a sacred epic on the kings of Israel as a substitute for the works of the “pagan” poets. In 1637, when the doubts of Scaliger and Heinsius as to the purity of the Greek of the New Testament prompted the rector of Hamburg to introduce the study of classical authors, any reflection on the style of the Greek Testament was bitterly resented.
The Society of Jesus was founded in 1540, and by 1600 most of the teachers in the Catholic schools and universities of Germany were Jesuits. The society was “dissolved” in 1773, but survived its dissolution. In accordanceThe Jesuits.with theRatio Studiorumof Aquaviva (1599), which long remained unaltered and was only partially revised by J. Roothaan (1832), the main subjects of instruction were thelitterae humaniores diversarum linguarum. The chief place among these was naturally assigned to Latin, the language of the society and of the Roman Church. The Latin grammar in use was that of the Jesuit rector of the school at Lisbon, Alvarez (1572). As in the Protestant schools, the principal aim was the attainment ofeloquentia. A comparatively subordinate place was assigned to Greek, especially as the importance attributed to the Vulgate weakened the motive for studying the original text. It was recognized, however, that Latin itself (as Vivès had said) was “in no small need of Greek,” and that, “unless Greek was learnt in boyhood, it would hardly ever be learnt at all.” The text-book used was theInstitutiones linguae Graecaeof the German Jesuit, Jacob Gretser, of Ingolstadt (c. 1590), and the reading in the highest class included portions of Demosthenes, Isocrates, Plato, Thucydides, Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil and Chrysostom. The Catholic and Protestant schools of the 16th century succeeded, as a rule, in giving a command over a correct Latin style and a taste for literary form and for culture. Latin was still the language of the law-courts and of a large part of general literature. Between Luther and Lessing there was no great writer of German prose.
(b) In the early part of the period 1650-1800, while Latin continued to hold the foremost place, it was ceasing to be Latin of the strictly classical type. Greek fell still further into the background; and Homer and DemosthenesThe age of French influence.gradually gave way to the Greek Testament. Between 1600 and 1775 there was a great gap in the production of new editions of the principal Greek classics. The spell was only partially broken by J.A. Ernesti’sHomer(1759 f.) and Chr. G. Heyne’sPindar(1773 f.).
The peace of Westphalia (1648) marks a distinct epoch in the history of education in Germany. Thenceforth, education became more modern and more secular. The long wars of religion in Germany, as in France and England,Modern and secular education.were followed by a certain indifference as to disputed points of theology. But the modern and secular type of education that now supervened was opposed by the pietism of the second half of the 17th century, represented at the newly-founded university of Halle (1694) by A.H. Francke, the professor of Greek (d. 1727), whose influence was far greater than that of Chr. Cellarius (d. 1707), the founder of the first philologicalSeminar(1697). Francke’s contemporary, Chr. Thomasius (d. 1728), was never weary of attacking scholarship of the old humanistic type and everything that savoured of antiquarian pedantry, and it was mainly his influence that made German the language of university lectures and of scientific and learned literature. A modern education is also the aim of the general introduction to thenova methodusof Leibnitz, where the study of Greek is recommended solely for the sake of the Greek Testament (1666). Meanwhile, Ratichius (d. 1635) had in vain pretended to teach Hebrew, Greek and Latin in the space of six months (1612), but he had the merit of maintaining that the study of a language should begin with the study of an author. Comenius (d. 1671) had proposed to teach Latin by drilling hispupils in a thousand graduated phrases distributed over a hundred instructive chapters, while the Latin authors were banished because of their difficulty and their “paganism” (1631). One of the catchwords of the day was to insist on a knowledge ofthingsinstead of a knowledge ofwords, on “realism” instead of “verbalism.”
Under the influence of France the perfect courtier became the ideal in the German education of the upper classes of the 17th and 18th centuries. A large number of aristocratic schools (Ritter-Akademien) were founded,Ritter-akademien.beginning with the Collegium Illustre of Tübingen (1589) and ending with the Hohe Karlschule of Stuttgart (1775). In these schools the subjects of study included mathematics and natural sciences, geography and history, and modern languages (especially French), with riding, fencing and dancing; Latin assumed a subordinate place, and classical composition in prose or verse was not considered a sufficiently courtly accomplishment. The youthful aristocracy were thus withdrawn from the old Latin schools of Germany, but the aristocratic schools vanished with the dawn of the 19th century, and the ordinary public schools were once more frequented by the young nobility.
(c)The Modern Period.—In the last third of the 18th century two important movements came into play, the “naturalism” of Rousseau and the “new humanism.” While Rousseau sought his ideal in a form of education andThe “new humanism.”of culture that was in close accord with nature, the German apostles of the new humanism were convinced that they had found that ideal completely realized in the old Greek world. Hence the aim of education was to make young people thoroughly “Greek,” to fill them with the “Greek” spirit, with courage and keenness in the quest of truth, and with a devotion to all that was beautiful.Herder.The link between the naturalism of Rousseau and the new humanism is to be found in J.G. Herder, whose passion for all that is Greek inspires him with almost a hatred of Latin. The new humanism was a kind of revival of the Renaissance, which had been retarded by the Reformation in Germany and by the Counter-Reformation in Italy, or had at least been degraded to the dull classicism of the schools. The new humanism agreed with the Renaissance in its unreserved recognition of the old classical world as a perfect pattern of culture. But, while the Renaissance aimed at reproducing the Augustan age ofRome, the new humanism found its golden age inAthens. The Latin Renaissance in Italy aimed at recovering and verbally imitating the ancient literature; the Greek Renaissance in Germany sought inspiration from the creative originality of Greek literature with a view to producing an original literature in the German language. The movement had its effect on the schools by discouraging the old classical routine of verbal imitation, and giving a new prominence to Greek and to German. The new humanism found a home in Göttingen (1783) in the days of J.M. Gesner and C.G. Heyne. It was represented at Leipzig by Gesner’s successor, Ernesti (d. 1781); and at Halle by F.A. Wolf, who in 1783 was appointed professor of education by Zedlitz, the minister of Frederick the Great. In literature, its leading names were Winckelmann, Lessing and Voss, and Herder, Goethe and Schiller. The tide of the new movement had reached its height about 1800. Goethe and Schiller were convinced that the old Greek world was the highest revelation of humanity; and the universities and schools of Germany were reorganized in this spirit by F.A. Wolf and his illustrious pupil, Wilhelm von Humboldt. In 1809-1810 Humboldt was at theSchool reorganization.head of the educational section of the Prussian Home Office, and, in the brief interval of a year and a half, gave to the general system of education the direction which it followed (with slight exceptions) throughout the whole century. In 1810 theexamen pro facultate docendifirst made the profession of a schoolmaster independent of that of a minister of religion. The new scheme drawn up by J.W. Süvern recognized four principal co-ordinated branches of learning: Latin, Greek, German, mathematics. All four were studied throughout the school, Greek being begun in the fourth of the nine classes, that corresponding to the English “third form.” The old Latin school had only one main subject, the study of Latin style (combined with a modicum of Greek). The new gymnasium aimed at a wider education, in which literature was represented by Latin, Greek and German, by the side of mathematics and natural science, history and religion. The uniform employment of the termGymnasiumfor the highest type of a Prussian school dates from 1812. The leaving examination (Abgangsprüfung), instituted in that year, required Greek translation at sight, with Greek prose composition, and ability to speak and to write Latin. In 1818-1840 the leading spirit on the board of education was Johannes Schulze, and acompleteand comprehensive system of education continued to be the ideal kept in view. Such an education, however, was found in practice to involve a prolongation of the years spent at school and a correspondingly later start in life. It was also attacked on the ground that it led to “overwork.” This attack was partially met by the scheme of 1837. Schulze’s period of prominence in Berlin closely corresponded to that of Herbart at Königsberg (1809-1833) and Göttingen (1833-1841), who insisted that for boys of eight to twelve there was no better text-book than the GreekOdyssey, and this principle was brought into practice at Hanover by his distinguished pupil, Ahrens.
The Prussian policy of the next period, beginning with the accession of Friedrich Wilhelm IV. in 1840, was to lay a new stress on religious teaching, and to obviate the risk of overwork resulting from the simultaneous study of all subjects by the encouragement of specialization in a few. Ludwig Wiese’s scheme of 1856 insisted on the retention of Latin verse as well as Latin prose, and showed less favour to natural science, but it awakened little enthusiasm, while the attempt to revive the old humanistic Gymnasium led to a demand for schools of a more modern type, which issued in the recognition of theRealgymnasium(1859).
In the age of Bismarck, school policy in Prussia had for its aim an increasing recognition of modern requirements. In 1875 Wiese was succeeded by Bonitz, the eminent Aristotelian scholar, who in 1849 had introduced mathematics and natural science into the schools of Austria, and had substituted the wide reading of classical authors for the prevalent practice of speaking and writing Latin. By his scheme of 1882 natural science recovered its former position in Prussia, and the hours assigned in each week to Latin were diminished from 86 to 77. But neither of the two great parties in the educational world was satisfied; and great expectations were aroused when the question of reform was taken up by the German emperor, William II., in 1890. The result of the conference of December 1890 was a compromise between the conservatism of a majority of its members and the forward policy of the emperor. The scheme of 1892 reduced the number of hours assigned to Latin from 77 to 62, and laid special stress on theGermanessay; but the modern training given by theRealgymnasiumwas still unrecognized as an avenue to a university education. A conference held in June 1900, in which the speakers included Mommsen and von Wilamowitz, Harnack and Diels, was followed by the “Kiel Decree” of the 26th of November. In that decree the emperor urged the equal recognition of the classical and the modernGymnasium, and emphasized the importance of giving more time to Latin and to English in both. In the teaching of Greek, “useless details” were to be set aside, and special care devoted to the connexion between ancient and modern culture, while, in all subjects, attention was to be paid to the classic precept:multum, non multa.
By the scheme of 1901 the pupils of theRealgymnasium, theOberrealschuleand theGymnasiumwere admitted to the university on equal terms in virtue of their leaving-certificates, but Greek and Latin were still required for students of classics or divinity.
For theGymnasiumthe aim of the new scheme is, inLatin, “to supply boys with a sound basis of grammatical training, with a view to their understanding the more important classicalwriters of Rome, and being thus introduced to the intellectual life and culture of the ancient world”; and, inGreek, “to give them a sufficient knowledge of the language with a view to their obtaining an acquaintance with some of the Greek classical works which are distinguished both in matter and in style, and thus gaining an insight into the intellectual life and culture of Ancient Greece.” In consequence of these changes Greek is now studied by a smaller number of boys, but with better results, and a new lease of life has been won for the classicalGymnasium.
Lastly, by the side of the classicalGymnasium, we now have the “German Reform Schools” of two different types, that of Altona (dating from 1878) and that of Frankfort-on-the-Main (1892). The leading principle in both is the postponement of the time for learning Latin. Schools of the Frankfort type take French as their only foreign language in the first three years of the course, and aim at achieving in six years as much as has been achieved by theGymnasiain nine; and it is maintained that, in six years, they succeed in mastering a larger amount of Latin literature than was attempted a generation ago, even in the bestGymnasiaof the old style. It may be added that in all the GermanGymnasia, whether reformed or not, more time is given to classics than in the corresponding schools in England.
See F. Paulsen,Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts vom Ausgang des Mittelalters bis auf die Gegenwart mit besonderer Rücksicht auf den klassischen Unterricht(2 vols., 2nd ed., 1896);Das Realgymnasium und die humanistische Bildung(1889);Die höheren Schulen und das Universitätsstudium im 20. Jahrhundert(1901); “Das moderne Bildungswesen” inDie Kulture der Gegenwart, vol. i. (1904);Das deutsche Bildungswesen in seiner geschichtlichen Entwickelung(1906) (with the literature there quoted, pp. 190-192), translated by Dr T. Lorenz,German Education, Past and Present(1908); T. Ziegler,Notwendigkeit ... des Realgymnasiums(Stuttgart, 1894); F.A. Eckstein,Lateinischer und griechischer Unterricht(1887); O. Kohl, “Griechischer Unterricht” (Langensalza, 1896) in W. Rein’sHandbuch; A. Baumeister’sHandbuch(1895), especially vol. i. 1 (History) and i. 2 (Educational Systems); P. Stötzner,Das öffentliche Unterrichtswesen Deutschlands in der Gegenwart(1901); F. Seiler,Geschichte des deutschen Unterrichtswesens(2 vols., 1906);Verhandlungenof June 1900 (2nd ed., 1902);Lehrpläne, &c. (1901);Die Reform des höheren Schulwesens, ed. W. Lexis (1902); A. Harnack’sVortragand W. Parow’sErwiderung(1905); H. Müller,Das höhere Schulwesen Deutschlands am Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts(Stuttgart, 1904); O. Steinbart,Durchführung des preussischen Schulreform in ganz Deutschland(Duisburg, 1904); J. Schipper,Alte Bildung und moderne Cultur(Vienna, 1901); Papers by M.E. Sadler: (1) “Problems in Prussian Secondary Education” (Special Reports of Education Dept., 1899); (2) “The Unrest in Secondary Education in Germany and Elsewhere” (Special Reports of Board of Education, vol. 9, 1902); J.L. Paton,The Teaching of Classics in Prussian Secondary Schools(on “German Reform Schools”) (1907, Wyman, London); J.E. Russell,German Higher Schools(New York, 1899); and (among earlier English publications) Matthew Arnold’sHigher Schools and Universities in Germany(1874, reprinted fromSchools and Universities on the Continent, 1865).
See F. Paulsen,Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts vom Ausgang des Mittelalters bis auf die Gegenwart mit besonderer Rücksicht auf den klassischen Unterricht(2 vols., 2nd ed., 1896);Das Realgymnasium und die humanistische Bildung(1889);Die höheren Schulen und das Universitätsstudium im 20. Jahrhundert(1901); “Das moderne Bildungswesen” inDie Kulture der Gegenwart, vol. i. (1904);Das deutsche Bildungswesen in seiner geschichtlichen Entwickelung(1906) (with the literature there quoted, pp. 190-192), translated by Dr T. Lorenz,German Education, Past and Present(1908); T. Ziegler,Notwendigkeit ... des Realgymnasiums(Stuttgart, 1894); F.A. Eckstein,Lateinischer und griechischer Unterricht(1887); O. Kohl, “Griechischer Unterricht” (Langensalza, 1896) in W. Rein’sHandbuch; A. Baumeister’sHandbuch(1895), especially vol. i. 1 (History) and i. 2 (Educational Systems); P. Stötzner,Das öffentliche Unterrichtswesen Deutschlands in der Gegenwart(1901); F. Seiler,Geschichte des deutschen Unterrichtswesens(2 vols., 1906);Verhandlungenof June 1900 (2nd ed., 1902);Lehrpläne, &c. (1901);Die Reform des höheren Schulwesens, ed. W. Lexis (1902); A. Harnack’sVortragand W. Parow’sErwiderung(1905); H. Müller,Das höhere Schulwesen Deutschlands am Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts(Stuttgart, 1904); O. Steinbart,Durchführung des preussischen Schulreform in ganz Deutschland(Duisburg, 1904); J. Schipper,Alte Bildung und moderne Cultur(Vienna, 1901); Papers by M.E. Sadler: (1) “Problems in Prussian Secondary Education” (Special Reports of Education Dept., 1899); (2) “The Unrest in Secondary Education in Germany and Elsewhere” (Special Reports of Board of Education, vol. 9, 1902); J.L. Paton,The Teaching of Classics in Prussian Secondary Schools(on “German Reform Schools”) (1907, Wyman, London); J.E. Russell,German Higher Schools(New York, 1899); and (among earlier English publications) Matthew Arnold’sHigher Schools and Universities in Germany(1874, reprinted fromSchools and Universities on the Continent, 1865).
(4) In theUnited States of Americathe highest degree of educational development has been subsequent to the Civil War. The study of Latin begins in the “high schools,” the average age of admission being fifteen and the normalUnited States.course extending over four years. Among classical teachers an increasing number would prefer a longer course extending over six years for Latin, and at least three for Greek, and some of these would assign to the elementary school the first two of the proposed six years of Latin study. Others are content with the late learning of Latin and prefer that it should be preceded by a thorough study of modern languages (see Prof. B.I. Wheeler, in Baumeister’sHandbuch, 1897, ii. 2, pp. 584-586).
It was mainly owing to a pamphlet issued in 1871 by Prof. G.M. Lane, of Harvard, that a reformed pronunciation of Latin was adopted in all the colleges and schools of the United States. Some misgivings on this reform foundLatin pronunciation.expression in a work on theTeaching of Latin, published by Prof. C.E. Bennett of Cornell in 1901, a year in which it was estimated that this pronunciation was in use by more than 96% of the Latin pupils in the secondary schools.
Some important statistics as to the number studying Latin and Greek in the secondary schools were collected in 1900 by a committee of twelve educational experts representing all parts of the Union, with a view to a uniform course of instruction being pursued in all classical schools. They had the advantage of the co-operation of Dr W.T. Harris, the U.S. commissioner of education, and they were able to report that, in all the five groups into which they had divided the states, the number of pupils pursuing the study of Latin and Greek showed a remarkable advance, especially in the most progressive states of the middle west. The number learning Latin had increased from 100,144 in 1890 to 314,856 in 1899-1900, and those learning Greek from 12,869 to 24,869. Thus the number learning Latin at the later date was three times, and the number learning Greek twice, as many as those learning Latin or Greek ten years previously. But the total number in 1000 was 630,048; so that, notwithstanding this proof of progress, the number learning Greek in 1900 was only about one twenty-fifth of the total number, while the number learning Latin was as high as half.
The position of Greek as an “elective” or “optional” subject (notably at Harvard), an arrangement regarded with approval by some eminent educational authorities and with regret by others, probably has some effect on the high schools in the small number of those who learn Greek, and in their lower rate of increase, as compared with those who learn Latin. Some evidence as to the quality of the study of those languages in the schools is supplied by English commissioners in theReports of the Mosely Commission. Thus Mr Papillon considered that, while the teaching of English literature was admirable, the average standard of Latin and Greek teaching and attainment in the upper classes was “below that of an English public school”; he felt, however, that the secondary schools of the United States had a “greater variety of the curriculum to suit the practical needs of life,” and that they existed, not “for the select few,” but “for the whole people” (pp. 250 f.).
For full information see the “Two volumes of Monographs prepared for the United States Educational Exhibit at the Paris Exposition of 1900,” edited by Dr N. Murray Butler; theAnnual Reportsof the U.S. commissioner of education (Washington); and theReports of the Mosely Commission to the United States of America(London, 1904). Cf. statistics quoted in G.G. Ramsay’s “Address on Efficiency in Education” (Glasgow, 1902, 17-20), from theTransactions of the Amer. Philol. Association, xxx. (1899), pp. lxxvii-cxxii; also Bennett and Bristol,The Teaching of Latin and Greek in the Secondary School(New York, 1901).
For full information see the “Two volumes of Monographs prepared for the United States Educational Exhibit at the Paris Exposition of 1900,” edited by Dr N. Murray Butler; theAnnual Reportsof the U.S. commissioner of education (Washington); and theReports of the Mosely Commission to the United States of America(London, 1904). Cf. statistics quoted in G.G. Ramsay’s “Address on Efficiency in Education” (Glasgow, 1902, 17-20), from theTransactions of the Amer. Philol. Association, xxx. (1899), pp. lxxvii-cxxii; also Bennett and Bristol,The Teaching of Latin and Greek in the Secondary School(New York, 1901).
(J. E. S.*)
1The above derivation is in accordance with English usage. In theNew English Dictionarythe earliest example of the word “classical” is the phrase “classical and canonical,” found in theEuropae Speculumof Sir Edwin Sandys (1599), and, as applied to a writer, it is explained as meaning “of the first rank or authority.” This exactly corresponds with the meaning ofclassicusin the above passage of Gellius. On the other hand, the French wordclassique(in Littré’s view) primarily means “used in class.”2See also the articleSchools.
1The above derivation is in accordance with English usage. In theNew English Dictionarythe earliest example of the word “classical” is the phrase “classical and canonical,” found in theEuropae Speculumof Sir Edwin Sandys (1599), and, as applied to a writer, it is explained as meaning “of the first rank or authority.” This exactly corresponds with the meaning ofclassicusin the above passage of Gellius. On the other hand, the French wordclassique(in Littré’s view) primarily means “used in class.”
2See also the articleSchools.
CLASSIFICATION(Lat.classis, a class, probably from the rootcal-,cla-, as in Gr.καλέω,clamor), a logical process, common to all the special sciences and to knowledge in general, consisting in the collection under a common name of a number of objects which are alike in one or more respects. The process consists in observing the objects and abstracting from their various qualities that characteristic which they have in common. This characteristic constitutes the definition of the “class” to which they are regarded as belonging. It is this process by which we arrive first at “species” and then at “genus,”i.e.at all scientific generalization. Individual things, regarded as such, constitute a mere aggregate, unconnected with one another, and so far unexplained; scientific knowledge consists in systematic classification. Thus if we observe the heavenly bodies individually we can state merely that they have been observed to have certain motions through the sky, that they are luminous, and the like. If, however, we compare them one with another, we discover that, whereas all partake in the general movement of the heavens, some have a movement of their own. Thus we arrive at a system of classification according to motion, by which fixed stars are differentiated from planets. A further classification according to other criteria gives us stars of the first magnitude and stars of the second magnitude, and so forth. We thus arrive at a systematic understanding expressed in laws by the application of which accurate forecasts of celestial phenomena can be made. Classification in the strict logical sense consists in discovering the casual interrelation of natural objects; it thus differs from what is often called “artificial” classification, which is the preparation,e.g.of statistics for particular purposes, administrative and the like.
Of the systems of classification adopted in physical science, only one requires treatment here, namely, the classification ofthe sciences as a whole, a problem which has from the time of Aristotle attracted considerable attention. Its object is to delimit the spheres of influence of the positive sciences and show how they are mutually related. Of such attempts three are specially noteworthy, those of Francis Bacon, Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer.
Bacon’s classification is based on the subjective criterion of the various faculties which are specially concerned. He thus distinguished History (natural, civil, literary, ecclesiastical) as the province of memory, Philosophy (including Theology) as that of reason, and Poetry, Fables and the like, as that of imagination. This classification was made the basis of theEncyclopédie. Comte adopted an entirely different system based on an objective criterion. Having first enunciated the theory that all science passes through three stages, theological, metaphysical and positive, he neglects the two first, and divides the last according to the “things to be classified,” in view of their real affinity and natural connexions, into six, in order of decreasing generality and increasing complexity—mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, physiology and biology (including psychology), and sociology. This he conceives to be not only the logical, but also the historical, order of development, from the abstract and purely deductive to the concrete and inductive. Sociology is thus the highest, most complex, and most positive of the sciences. Herbert Spencer, condemning this division as both incomplete and theoretically unsound, adopted a three-fold division into (1)abstractscience (including logic and mathematics) dealing with the universal forms under which all knowledge of phenomena is possible, (2)abstract-concretescience (including mechanics, chemistry, physics), dealing with the elements of phenomena themselves,i.e.laws of forces as deducible from the persistence of forces, and (3)concretescience (e.g.astronomy, biology, sociology), dealing with “phenomena themselves in their totalities,” the universal laws of the continuous redistribution of Matter and Motion, Evolution and Dissolution.
Beside the above three systems several others deserve brief mention. In Greece at the dawn of systematic thought the physical sciences were few in number; none the less philosophers were not agreed as to their true relation. The Platonic school adopted a triple classification, physics, ethics and dialectics; Aristotle’s system was more complicated, nor do we know precisely how he subdivided his three main classes, theoretical, practical and poetical (i.e.technical, having to do withποίησις, creative). The second class covered ethics and politics, the latter of which was often regarded by Aristotle as including ethics; the third includes the useful and the imitative sciences; the first includes metaphysics and physics. As regards pure logic Aristotle sometimes seems to include it with metaphysics and physics, sometimes to regard it as ancillary to all the sciences.
Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan) drew up an elaborate paradigm of the sciences, the first stage of which was a dichotomy into “Naturall Philosophy” (“consequences from the accidents of bodies naturall”) and “Politiques and Civill Philosophy” (“consequences from accidents of Politique bodies”). The former by successive subdivisions is reduced to eighteen special sciences; the latter is subdivided into the rights and duties of sovereign powers, and those of the subject.
Jeremy Bentham and A.M. Ampère both drew up elaborate systems based on the principle of dichotomy, and beginning from the distinction of mind and body. Bentham invented an artificial terminology which is rather curious than valuable. The science of the body was Somatology, that of the mind Pneumatology. The former include Posology (science of quantity, mathematics) and Poiology (science of quality); Posology includes Morphoscopic (geometry) and Alegomorphic(arithmetic). See further Bentham’sChrestomathiaand works quoted underBentham, Jeremy.
Carl Wundt criticized most of these systems as taking too little account of the real facts, and preferred a classification based on the standpoint of the various sciences towards their subject-matter. His system may, therefore, be described as conceptional. It distinguishes philosophy, which deals with facts in their widest universal relations, from the special sciences, which consider facts in the light of a particular relation or set of relations.
All these systems have a certain value, and are interesting as throwing light on the views of those who invented them. It will be seen, however, that none can lay claim to unique validity. Thefundamenta divisionis, though in themselves more or less logical, are quite arbitrarily chosen, generally as being germane to a preconceived philosophical or scientific theory.
CLASTIDIUM(mod.Casteggio), a village of the Anamares, in Gallia Cispadana, on the Via Postumia, 5 m. E. of Iria (mod.Voghera) and 31 m. W. of Placentia. Here in 222B.C.M. Claudius Marcellus defeated the Gauls and won thespolia opima; in 218 Hannibal took it and its stores of corn by treachery. It never had an independent government, and not later than 190B.C.was made part of the colony of Placentia (founded 219). In the Augustan division of Italy, however, Placentia belonged to the 8th region, Aemilia, whereas Iria certainly, and Clastidium possibly, belonged to the 9th, Liguria (see Th. Mommsen inCorp. Inscrip. Lat.vol. v. Berlin, 1877, p. 828). The remains visible at Clastidium are scanty; there is a fountain (the Fontana d’Annibale), and a Roman bridge, which seems to have been constructed of tiles, not of stone, was discovered in 1857, but destroyed.
See C. Giulietti,Casteggio, notizie storiche II. Avanzi di antichità(Voghera, 1893).
See C. Giulietti,Casteggio, notizie storiche II. Avanzi di antichità(Voghera, 1893).
CLAUBERG, JOHANN(1622-1665), German philosopher, was born at Solingen, in Westphalia, on the 24th of February 1622. After travelling in France and England, he studied the Cartesian philosophy under John Raey at Leiden. He became (1649) professor of philosophy and theology at Herborn, but subsequently (1651), in consequence of the jealousy of his colleagues, accepted an invitation to a similar post at Duisburg, where he died on the 31st of January 1665. Clauberg was one of the earliest teachers of the new doctrines in Germany and an exact and methodical commentator on his master’s writings. His theory of the connexion between the soul and the body is in some respects analogous to that of Malebranche; but he is not therefore to be regarded as a true forerunner of Occasionalism, as he uses “Occasion” for the stimulus which directly produces a mental phenomenon, without postulating the intervention of God (H. Müller,J. Clauberg und seine Stellung im Cartesianismus). His view of the relation of God to his creatures is held to foreshadow the pantheism of Spinoza. All creatures exist only through the continuous creative energy of the Divine Being, and are no more independent of his will than are our thoughts independent of us,—or rather less, for there are thoughts which force themselves upon us whether we will or not. For metaphysics Clauberg suggested the namesontosophyorontology, the latter being afterwards adopted by Wolff. He also devoted considerable attention to the German languages, and his researches in this direction attracted the favourable notice of Leibnitz. His chief works are:De conjunctione animae et corporis humani;Exercitationes centum de cognitione Dei et nostri;Logica vetus et nova;Initiatio philosophi, seu Dubitatio Cartesiana; a commentary on Descartes’Meditations; andArs etymologica Teutonum.
A collected edition of his philosophical works was published at Amsterdam (1691), with life by H.C. Hennin; see also E. Zeller,Geschichte der deutschen Philosophie seit Leibnitz(1873).
A collected edition of his philosophical works was published at Amsterdam (1691), with life by H.C. Hennin; see also E. Zeller,Geschichte der deutschen Philosophie seit Leibnitz(1873).
CLAUDE, JEAN(1619-1687), French Protestant divine, was born at La Sauvetat-du-Dropt near Agen. After studying at Montauban, he entered the ministry in 1645. He was for eight years professor of theology in the Protestant college of Nîmes; but in 1661, having successfully opposed a scheme for re-uniting Catholics and Protestants, he was forbidden to preach in Lower Languedoc. In 1662 he obtained a post at Montauban similar to that which he had lost; but after four years he was removed from this also. He next became pastor at Charenton near Paris, where he engaged in controversies with Pierre Nicole (Réponse aux deux traités intitulés la perpétuité de la foi, 1665), Antoine Arnauld (Réponse au livre de M. Arnauld, 1670), and J.B. Bossuet (Réponse au livre de M. l’évêque de Meaux, 1683).On the revocation of the edict of Nantes he fled to Holland, and received a pension from William of Orange, who commissioned him to write an account of the persecuted Huguenots (Plaintes des protestants cruellement opprimés dans le royaume de France, 1686). The book was translated into English, but by order of James II, both the translation and the original were publicly burnt by the common hangman on the 5th of May 1686, as containing “expressions scandalous to His Majesty the king of France.” Other works by him wereRéponse au livre de P. Nouet sur l’eucharistie(1668);Œuvres posthumes(Amsterdam, 1688), containing theTraité de la composition d’un sermon, translated into English in 1778.
See biographies by J.P. Nicéron and Abel Rotholf de la Devèze; E. Haag,La France protestante, vol. iv. (1884, new edition).
See biographies by J.P. Nicéron and Abel Rotholf de la Devèze; E. Haag,La France protestante, vol. iv. (1884, new edition).
CLAUDE OF LORRAINE, orClaude Gelée(1600-1682), French landscape-painter, was born of very poor parents at the village of Chamagne in Lorraine. When it was discovered that he made no progress at school, he was apprenticed, it is commonly said, to a pastry-cook, but this is extremely dubious. At the age of twelve, being left an orphan, he went to live at Freiburg on the Rhine with an elder brother, Jean Gelée, a wood-carver of moderate merit, and under him he designed arabesques and foliage. He afterwards rambled to Rome to seek a livelihood; but from his clownishness and ignorance of the language, he failed to obtain permanent employment. He next went to Naples, to study landscape painting under Godfrey Waals, a painter of much repute. With him he remained two years; then he returned to Rome, and was domesticated until April 1625 with another landscape-painter, Augustin Tassi, who hired him to grind his colours and to do all the household drudgery.
His master, hoping to make Claude serviceable in some of his greatest works, advanced him in the rules of perspective and the elements of design. Under his tuition the mind of Claude began to expand, and he devoted himself to artistic study with great eagerness. He exerted his utmost industry to explore the true principles of painting by an incessant examination of nature; and for this purpose he made his studies in the open fields, where he very frequently remained from sunrise till sunset, watching the effect of the shifting light upon the landscape. He generally sketched whatever he thought beautiful or striking, marking every tinge of light with a similar colour; from these sketches he perfected his landscapes. Leaving Tassi, he made a tour in Italy, France and a part of Germany, including his native Lorraine, suffering numerous misadventures by the way. Karl Dervent, painter to the duke of Lorraine, kept him as assistant for a year; and he painted at Nancy the architectural subjects on the ceiling of the Carmelite church. He did not, however, relish this employment, and in 1627 returned to Rome. Here, painting two landscapes for Cardinal Bentivoglio, he earned the protection of Pope Urban VIII, and from about 1637 he rapidly rose into celebrity. Claude was acquainted not only with the facts, but also with the laws of nature; and the German painter Joachim von Sandrart relates that he used to explain, as they walked together through the fields, the causes of the different appearances of the same landscape at different hours of the day, from the reflections or refractions of light, or from the morning and evening dews or vapours, with all the precision of a natural philosopher. He elaborated his pictures with great care; and if any performance fell short of his ideal, he altered, erased and repainted it several times over.
His skies are aerial and full of lustre, and every object harmoniously illumined. His distances and colouring are delicate, and his tints have a sweetness and variety till then unexampled. He frequently gave an uncommon tenderness to his finished trees by glazing. His figures, however, are very indifferent; but he was so conscious of his deficiency in this respect, that he usually engaged other artists to paint them for him, among whom were Courtois and Filippo Lauri. Indeed, he was wont to say that he sold his landscapes and gave away his figures. In order to avoid a repetition of the same subject, and also to detect the very numerous spurious copies of his works, he made tinted outline drawings (in six paper books prepared for this purpose) of all those pictures which were transmitted to different countries; and on the back of each drawing he wrote the name of the purchaser. These books he namedLibri di verità. This valuable work (now belonging to the duke of Devonshire) has been engraved and published, and has always been highly esteemed by students of the art of landscape. Claude, who had suffered much from gout, died in Rome at the age of eighty-two, on the 21st (or perhaps the 23rd) of November 1682, leaving his wealth, which was considerable, between his only surviving relatives, a nephew and an adopted daughter (? niece).
Many choice specimens of his genius may be seen in the National Gallery and in the Louvre; the landscapes in the Altieri and Colonna palaces in Rome are also of especial celebrity. A list has been printed showing no less than 92 examples in the various public galleries of Europe. He himself regarded a landscape which he painted in the Villa Madama, being a cento of various views with great abundance and variety of leafage, and a composition of Esther and Ahasuerus, as his finest works; the former he refused to sell, although Clement IX. offered to cover its surface with gold pieces. He etched a series of twenty-eight landscapes, fine impressions of which are greatly prized. Full of amenity, and deeply sensitive to the graces of nature, Claude was long deemed the prince of landscape painters, and he must always be accounted a prime leader in that form of art, and in his day a great enlarger and refiner of its province.
Claude was a man of amiable and simple character, very kind to his pupils, a patient and unwearied worker; in his own sphere of study, his mind was stored (as we have seen) with observation and knowledge, but he continued an unlettered man till his death. Famous and highly patronized though he was in all his later years, he seems to have been very little known to his brother artists, with the single exception of Sandrart. This painter is the chief direct authority for the facts of Claude’s life (Academia Artis Pictoriae, 1683); Baldinucci, who obtained information from some of Claude’s immediate survivors, relates various incidents to a different effect (Notizie dei professori del disegno).
See also Victor Cousin,Sur Claude Gelée(1853); M.F. Sweetser,Claude Lorrain(1878); Lady Dilke,Claude Lorrain(1884).
See also Victor Cousin,Sur Claude Gelée(1853); M.F. Sweetser,Claude Lorrain(1878); Lady Dilke,Claude Lorrain(1884).
(W. M. R.)
CLAUDET, ANTOINE FRANÇOIS JEAN(1797-1867), French photographer, was born at Lyons on the 12th of August 1797. Having acquired a share in L.J.M. Daguerre’s invention, he was one of the first to practise daguerreotype portraiture in England, and he improved the sensitizing process by using chlorine in addition to iodine, thus gaining greater rapidity of action. In 1848 he produced the photographometer, an instrument designed to measure the intensity of photogenic rays; and in 1849 he brought out the focimeter, for securing a perfect focus in photographic portraiture. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1853, and in 1858 he produced the stereomonoscope, in reply to a challenge from Sir David Brewster. He died in London on the 27th of December 1867.
CLAUDIANUS, CLAUDIUS, Latin epic poet and panegyrist, flourished during the reign of Arcadius and Honorius. He was an Egyptian by birth, probably an Alexandrian, but it may be conjectured from his name and his mastery of Latin that he was of Roman extraction. His own authority has been assumed for the assertion that his first poetical compositions were in Greek, and that he had written nothing in Latin beforeA.D.395; but this seems improbable, and the passage (Carm. Min.xli. 13) which is taken to prove it does not necessarily bear this meaning. In that year he appears to have come to Rome, and made his début as a Latin poet by a panegyric on the consulship of Olybrius and Probinus, the first brothers not belonging to the imperial family who had ever simultaneously filled the office of consul. This piece proved the precursor of the series of panegyrical poems which compose the bulk of his writings. In Birt’s edition a complete chronological list of Claudian’s poems is given, and also in J.B. Bury’s edition of Gibbon (iii. app. i. p. 485), where the dates given differ slightly from those in the present article.
In 396 appeared the encomium on the third consulship of the emperor Honorius, and the epic on the downfall of Rufinus, theunworthy minister of Arcadius at Constantinople. This revolution was principally effected by the contrivance of Stilicho, the great general and minister of Honorius. Claudian’s poem appears to have obtained his patronage, or rather perhaps that of his wife Serena, by whose interposition the poet was within a year or two enabled to contract a wealthy marriage in Africa (Epist.2). Previously to this event he had produced (398) his panegyric on the fourth consulship of Honorius, his epithalamium on the marriage of Honorius to Stilicho’s daughter, Maria, and his poem on the Gildonic war, celebrating the repression of a revolt in Africa. To these succeeded his piece on the consulship of Manlius Theodorus (399), the unfinished or mutilated invective against the Byzantine prime minister Eutropius in the same year, the epics on Stilicho’s first consulship and on his repulse of Alaric (400 and 403), and the panegyric on the sixth consulship of Honorius (404). From this time all trace of Claudian is lost, and he is generally supposed to have perished with his patron Stilicho in 408. It may be conjectured that he must have died in 404, as he could hardly otherwise have omitted to celebrate the greatest of Stilicho’s achievements, the destruction of the barbarian host led by Radagaisus in the following year. On the other hand, he may have survived Stilicho, as in the dedication to the second book of his epic on theRape of Proserpine(which Birt, however, assigns to 395-397), he speaks of his disuse of poetry in terms hardly reconcilable with the fertility which he displayed during his patron’s lifetime. From the manner in which Augustine alludes to him in hisDe civitate Dei, it may be inferred that he was no longer living at the date of the composition of that work, between 415 and 428.
Besides Claudian’s chief poems, his lively Fescennines on the emperor’s marriage, his panegyric on Serena, and theGigantomachia, a fragment of an unfinished Greek epic, may also be mentioned. Several poems expressing Christian sentiments are undoubtedly spurious. Claudian’s paganism, however, neither prevented his celebrating Christian rulers and magistrates nor his enjoying the distinction of a court laureate. It is probable that he was nominally a Christian, like his patron Stilicho and Ausonius, although at heart attached to the old religion. The very decided statements of Orosius and Augustine as to his heathenism may be explained by the pagan style of Claudian’s political poems. We have his own authority for his having been honoured by a bronze statue in the forum, and Pomponius Laetus discovered in the 15th century an inscription (C.I.L.vi. 1710) on the pedestal, which, formerly considered spurious, is now generally regarded as genuine.
The position of Claudian—the last of the Roman poets—is unique in literature. It is sufficiently remarkable that, after nearly three centuries of torpor, the Latin muse should have experienced any revival in the age of Honorius, nothing less than amazing that this revival should have been the work of a foreigner, most surprising of all that a just and enduring celebrity should have been gained by official panegyrics on the generally uninteresting transactions of an inglorious epoch. The first of these particulars bespeaks Claudian’s taste, rising superior to the prevailing barbarism, the second his command of language, the third his rhetorical skill. As remarked by Gibbon, “he was endowed with the rare and precious talent of raising the meanest, of adorning the most barren, and of diversifying the most similar topics.” This gift is especially displayed in his poem on the downfall of Rufinus, where the punishment of a public malefactor is exalted to the dignity of an epical subject by the magnificence of diction and the ostentation of supernatural machinery. The noble exordium, in which the fate of Rufinus is propounded as the vindication of divine justice, places the subject at once on a dignified level; and the council of the infernal powers has afforded a hint to Tasso, and through him to Milton. The inevitable monotony of the panegyrics on Honorius is relieved by just and brilliant expatiation on the duties of a sovereign. In his celebration of Stilicho’s victories Claudian found a subject more worthy of his powers, and some passages, such as the description of the flight of Alaric, and of Stilicho’s arrival at Rome, and the felicitous parallel between his triumphs and those of Marius, rank among the brightest ornaments of Latin poetry. Claudian’s panegyric, however lavish and regardless of veracity, is in general far less offensive than usual in his age, a circumstance attributable partly to his more refined taste and partly to the genuine merit of his patron Stilicho. He is a valuable authority for the history of his times, and is rarely to be convicted of serious inaccuracy in his facts, whatever may be thought of the colouring he chooses to impart to them. He was animated by true patriotic feeling, in the shape of a reverence for Rome as the source and symbol of law, order and civilization. Outside the sphere of actual life he is less successful; hisRape of Proserpine, though the beauties of detail are as great as usual, betrays his deficiency in the creative power requisite for dealing with a purely ideal subject. This denotes the rhetorician rather than the poet, and in general it may be said that his especial gifts of vivid natural description, and of copious illustration, derived from extensive but not cumbrous erudition, are fully as appropriate to eloquence as to poetry. In the general cast of his mind and character of his writings, and especially, in his faculty for bestowing enduring interest upon occasional themes, we may fitly compare him with Dryden, remembering that while Dryden exulted in the energy of a vigorous and fast-developing language, Claudian was cramped by an artificial diction, confined to the literary class.