College Teaching Part 46

[82] See above, page 407 f.

[83] For a fuller list of inst.i.tutions where cla.s.sical courses not requiring a knowledge of the ancient languages are given see above, page 407.

[84] "Die hochste Aufgabe bei der Lekture des griechischen Dramas sei das Stuck Leben, das uns der Dichter vor Augen fuhrt, in seinem vollen Inhalt miterleben zu la.s.sen." C. Wunderer, in _Blatter fur das Gymnasial-Schulwesen_, Vol. LII (1916), 1.

XXI

THE TEACHING OF THE ROMANCE LANGUAGES

=The college course must emphasize power, not facts=

IT is well at times to emphasize old truths, mainly because they are old and are consecrated by experience. One of these, frequently combated nowadays, is that any college course--worthy of the name--has other than utilitarian ends. I therefore declare my belief that the student does not go to college primarily to acquire facts. These he can learn from books or from private instruction. _Me judice_--he goes to college primarily to learn _how to interpret_ facts, and to arrive through this experience at their practical as well as their theoretic value: as respects himself, as respects others, and in an ever widening circle as regards humanity in general. The first object, thus, of a college course is to humanize the individual, to emanc.i.p.ate him intellectually and emotionally from his prejudices and conventions by giving him a wider horizon, a sounder judgment, a firmer and yet a more tolerant point of view. "Our proclivity to details," said Emerson, "cannot quite degrade our life and divest it of poetry." The college seizes upon the liberating instinct of youth and utilizes it for all it is worth. We summarize by saying that the college prepares not merely for "life" but for "living"; so that the society whom the individual serves will be served by him loyally, intelligently, and broad-mindedly, with an increasing understanding of its aims and purposes.

=The college can attain its aim only when the student brings necessary facts from secondary schools=

This, let us a.s.sume, is the somewhat lofty ideal. What about its concrete realization? Especially when the subject is a language, which, considering that it consists of parts of speech, inflections, phonetics, etc., is a very practical matter and apparently far removed from the ideal in question. Every language teacher is familiar with this stock objection. How often has he not been told that his business is not to teach French culture or Spanish life, but French and Spanish? And as everybody knows, French and Spanish are not learned in a day, nor, indeed, if we judge by the average graduate of our colleges, in four years of cla.s.sroom work. It is not my purpose to combat the contention that college French or Spanish or Italian could be taught better, and that from a utilitarian point of view the subject is capable of a great deal of improvement. As Professor Grandgent has trenchantly said "I do not believe there is or ever was a language more difficult to acquire than French; most of us can name worthy persons who have been a.s.siduously struggling with it from childhood to mature age, and who do not know it now: yet it is treated as something any one can pick up offhand.... French staggers under the fearful burden of apparent easiness." I do not think these words overstate the case. All the more reason, then, to bear in mind that the burden of this accomplishment should not fall on the college course alone, or, I should even say, on the college course at all. For the fact is that a thorough knowledge of the Romance tongues cannot be acquired in any college course, and to attack the problem from that angle alone is to attempt the impossible. It is on the school, and not on the college, that the obligation of the practical language problem rests. If our students are to become proficient in French--in the sense that they can not only read it but write and speak it with pa.s.sable success--the language must be begun early, in the grade school (when memory and apperception are still fresh), and then carried forward systematically over a period of from six to seven years. But this will require on the part of our schools: (1) a longer time allotment to the subject than it now generally has, (2) a closer articulation between the grade-school, high-school, and college courses, and (3) the appointment of better and higher-paid teachers of the subject. An encouraging move is being made in many parts of the country to carry out this plan, though of course we are still a long way from its realization; and when it is realized we shall not yet have reached the millennium. But at least we shall have given the practical teaching of the subject a chance, comparable to the opportunity it has in Europe; and the complaint against the French and Spanish teacher--if there still be a chronic complaint--will have other grounds than the one we so commonly hear at present.

=Limitations of elementary and intermediate courses as college courses=

In the meantime, let us remember that the college has other, and more pressing, things to do than to attempt to supply the shortcomings of the school. It is certainly essential that the college should continue and develop the practical work of the school in various ways, such as advanced exercises and lectures in the foreign idiom, special conversation cla.s.ses, and the like--if only for the simple reason that a language that is not used soon falls into desuetude and is forgotten. But a.s.suredly the so-called elementary, intermediate, and advanced courses in French and Spanish (as given in college) do not fall under that head. They exist in the college by _tolerance_ rather than by sound pedagogical theory, and the effort now being made to force all such courses back into the school by reducing the college "credits" they give is worthy of undivided support. Not only are they out of place in the college program, but the burden of numerous and often large "sections" in these courses has seriously impeded the college in its proper language work. The college in its true function is the clarifier of ideas, the correlator of facts, the molder of personalities; and the student of modern languages should enter college prepared to study his subject from the college point of view.

Much of the apparent "silliness" of the French cla.s.s which our more virile undergraduates object to would be obviated if a larger percentage of them could at once enter upon the more advanced phases of the subject. It is, then, to their interest, to the interest of the subject, and to the advantage of the college concerned, that this reform be brought about.

=Aim of the teaching of Romance languages in the college=

In any case, the function of a college subject can be stated, as President Meiklejohn has stated it, in terms of two principles. He says: "The first is shared by both liberal and technical teaching.

The second applies to liberal education alone. The principles are these: (1) that activity guided by ideas is on the whole more successful than the same activity without the control of ideas, and (2) that in the activities common to all men the guidance of ideas is quite as essential as in the case of those which different groups of men carry on in differentiation from one another." As applied to the Romance languages, this means that while the college must of course give "technical" instruction in language, the emphasis of that instruction should be upon the "ideas" which the language expresses, in itself and in its literature. It is not enough that the college student should gain fluency in French or Spanish, he must also and primarily be made conscious of the processes of language, its logical and aesthetic values, the civilization it expresses, and the thoughts it has to convey. While it may be said that all thorough language instruction accomplishes this incidentally, the college makes this _the_ aim of its teaching. The college should furnish an objective appraisal of the fundamental elements of the foreign idiom, not merely a subjective (and often superficial) mastery of details. For the old statement remains true that--when properly studied--"proverbs, words, and grammar inflections convey the public sense with more purity and precision than the wisest individual";[85] and what shall we say when "literature" is added to this list?

=Status of Romance languages in representative colleges--Early status=

From these preliminary observations let us now turn to the present status of Romance languages in some of our representative colleges.[86] One gratifying fact may be noted at once. Whereas a quarter of a century ago Greek and Latin were still considered the _sine qua non_ of a liberal education, today French and German, and to a lesser extent Spanish and Italian, have their legitimate share in this distinction. Indeed, to judge merely by the number of students, they would seem to have replaced Latin and Greek. To be sure, several colleges, as for instance Amherst and Chicago, alarmed by this swing of the pendulum, have reserved the B.A. degree for the traditional cla.s.sical discipline. But in the first case the entire curriculum includes "two years of Greek or Latin," and in the second the B.A.

students comprise but a very small percentage of the college body; and while in both cases Latin and Greek are required subjects, Romance is admitted as an elective, in which--to mention only Amherst--six consecutive semester courses, covering the main phases of modern French literature, can be chosen. As noted, the recognition of modern languages as cultural subjects is relatively recent. As late as 1884 a commission, appointed by the Modern Language a.s.sociation, found that "few colleges have a modern language requirement for admission to the course in arts; ... of the fifty reported, three require French, two offer an election between French and German, and two require both French and German." And of these same colleges, "eighteen require no foreign language, twenty-nine require either French or German, and eighteen require both French and German, for graduation in the arts."

Obviously, few (at most seven) of the colleges examined admitted students prepared to take advanced courses in French; and only eighteen, or 36 per cent, allowed students to begin French in the freshman year, over one half of the entire number postponing the beginners' French until the soph.o.m.ore, junior, or even senior year. It is clear, therefore, that as late as 1864, and in spite of such ill.u.s.trious examples as that set by Harvard in the appointment of Ticknor to the Smith professors.h.i.+p in 1816, the Romance languages could hardly be cla.s.sed as a recognized college subject. At best, they were taught on the principles that "it is never too late to learn,"

and although this teaching failed from the "practical" point of view, it yet had little or no opportunity to concern itself with the cultural aspects of the subject. No wonder the commission reported[87] that in the circ.u.mstances "a mastery of language, as well as a comprehensive study of the literature, is impossible." With the part played by our Greek and Latin colleagues in keeping the modern languages out of the curriculum we need not deal in detail here. It is enough, in order to explain their att.i.tude, to observe that previous to 1884 the teaching of modern languages was generally poor: it was intrusted for the most part to foreigners, who, being usually ignorant of the finer shades of English and woefully ignorant of American students, could not have been expected to succeed, or to native Americans, who for various and often excellent reasons lacked the proper training, and therefore succeeded--when in rare cases they did succeed--in spite of their qualifications rather than because of them.

Add to all this the conviction natural to every cla.s.sicist, that Latin and Greek are the keys to all Western civilization and that without them Romance literatures (not to say "languages") are incomprehensible, and the situation up to the 90's is amply clear.

=Contemporary status of Romance Languages in college curricula=

Today, then, conditions are changed, and for better or worse the Romance tongues are on a par with other collegiate subjects. A glance at the latest statistics is instructive. In 1910, out of 340 colleges and universities in the United States, 328 taught French; 112 (the universities) offered more than four years' instruction, 50 offered four years, 90 three years, 68 two years, and only 8 one year. The present status can easily be divined: the interest in Spanish has certainly not waned, while the interest in French has grown by leaps and bounds. Some curtailment there has been, owing to the adoption of the "group system" of studies on the part of most of the colleges, and as the colleges are relieved of more and more of the elementary work there doubtless will be more. But, in any case, it is safe to say that French, Spanish, and Italian are now firmly installed as liberal studies in the curricula of most of our colleges. Now, how do they fulfill this function? What changes will be necessary in order that they may fulfill it better? What particular advantages have they to offer as a college subject? A brief consideration of each of these points follows.

In general, our colleges require fifteen units of entrance credit and about twenty collegiate units for the college degree.[88] Of the entrance units, a maximum of four in French and two in Spanish is allowed; and of the college units, an average of five, or about one fourth of the entire college work,[89] must be taken consecutively in _one_ department of study or in not more than _two_ departments. This last group of approximately five units thus const.i.tutes, so to speak, the backbone of the student's work. It is his so-called "princ.i.p.al sequence" (Chicago) or his "two majors" (Amherst) or his "major subject" (Wisconsin and Colorado); and while in the case of Amherst it cannot be begun "until after the freshman year," in general it must be begun by the junior year. Considerable variety prevails, of course, in carrying out this idea; for example, Johns Hopkins requires "at least two courses in the major and at least two in some cognate subject."

Harvard states that "every student shall take at least six of his courses in some one department, or in one of the recognized fields of distinction." Princeton demands of "every junior and senior ... at least two 3-hour courses in some one department." But almost all representative colleges now recognize four general groups of study: Philosophy (including history), language, science, and mathematics; and the student's work must be so arranged that while it is fairly evenly distributed over three of the groups it is at the same time definitely concentrated in one of them.

=Normal prescription in a Romance Language=

In answer to our first question, it follows that the student entering with the maximum of French should be able, before graduation, to get enough advanced courses to give him an intelligent grasp of the literature as well as the language. In our better-equipped colleges this is undoubtedly the case. Harvard, for instance, would admit him to a course (French 2) in French Prose and Poetry, which includes some "composition," to be followed by (6) a General View of French Literature, (8) French Literature in the Eighteenth Century, (9) French Literature in the Seventeenth Century, (16) Comedy of Manners in France, (17) Literary Criticism in France; and in some of these courses the linguistic aspects would be considered in the form of "themes," "reports," etc., while the student could choose (5) Advanced French Composition for that special purpose. Other colleges (e.g., Johns Hopkins, Chicago, Stanford) offer the same or similar opportunities. So that, although t.i.tles of courses are often deceptive, the general plan of offering (1) an introductory course in which both the language and the literature are treated, (2) a survey-course in literature, leading to (3) various courses in literature after 1600, and supported by (4) at least one specific course in language, now const.i.tutes the normal collegiate "major" in French; and, on the whole, it would be difficult in the present circ.u.mstances to devise a better plan.

=Changes in current practice that will enhance effectiveness of teaching of Romance Languages--Danger of minimizing the language phase=

It is obvious that the success of any plan depends on the thoroughness with which it is carried out, and this in turn depends on the qualifications and energy of those who have the matter in hand. That contingency does not concern us here. But what is worth noting is that the fourth point mentioned above,--the specific language part of the "major"--might be strengthened, especially since some excellent inst.i.tutions omit this consideration entirely. The danger of falling between two stools is never greater, it seems, than in treating both language and literature. An instructor who is bent on elucidating the range of Anatole France's thought naturally has little time to deal adequately with his rich vocabulary, his deft use of tense, the subtle structure of his phrase--and yet who can be said really to "know" such an author if he be ignorant of either side of his work? "Thought expands but lames," said Goethe--unless it is constantly controlled by fact. In order to give the undergraduate that control, it is essential that he should be placed in the position everywhere to verify his author's thought. How difficult it is to bring even the best of our undergraduates to this point I need not discuss. But at least once in the process of his work he might be held to a stricter account than elsewhere. And if we ask ourselves by what method this can best be accomplished, I believe the answer is by some _special_ course in which the language of several representative writers is treated as such.[90] The point could be elaborated, particularly in view of the present-day tendency to dwell unduly on so-called _realia_, French daily life, and the like--all legitimate enough in their proper time and place. But enough has been said to show that excellent as the present plan is, it could without detriment enlarge the place given to linguistics. In this bewildered age of ours we are forever hearing the cry of "literature," more "literature": not only our students but our teachers--and the connection is obvious--find language study dull and uninspiring, oblivious to the fact that the fault is theirs and not the subject's. Yet, as we observed above, French is "hard," and its grammatical structure, apparently so simple, is in truth very complicated. Manifestly, to understand a foreign literature we must understand the language in which it is written. How few of our students really do! Moreover, language and literature are ultimately only parts of one indivisible ent.i.ty: Philology--though the fact often escapes us. "The most effective work," said Gildersleeve,[91] "is done by those who see all in the one as well as one in the all." And strange as it appears to the laity, a linguistic fact may convey a universal lesson. I hesitate to generalize, but I believe most of our colleges need to emphasize the language side of the French "major"

more.

=Relative positions of French, Spanish, and Italian in a college course=

As for Italian and Spanish, few of the colleges as yet grant these subjects the importance given to French. For one reason, entrance credit in Italian is extremely rare, and neither there nor in Spanish, in which it is now rather common, owing to the teaching of Spanish in the high schools, does it exceed two units. Some work of an elementary nature must therefore be done in the college; indeed, at Amherst neither language can be begun until the soph.o.m.ore year--though fortunately this is an isolated case. Further, even when the college is prepared to teach these subjects adequately, it is still a debatable question whether they are ent.i.tled to precisely the same consideration as their more venerable sister. It is unnecessary to point out that such great names as Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Alfieri, Leopardi, Carducci, Cervantes, Calderon, Lope de Vega, Benavente, _e tutti quanti_, are abundant evidence of the value of Italian and Spanish culture. They unquestionably are. Where the emphasis is cultural, it would certainly be unwise to neglect Italian, since the Renaissance is Italian and underlies modern European culture in general. On the other hand, Spanish is, so to speak, at our very doors because of our island possessions: it is the _one_ foreign language which calls for no argument to make the undergraduate willing to learn to speak, and Spanish literature, especially in the drama, has the same romantic freedom as English literature and is thus readily accessible to the American type of mind. Pedagogically, thus, the question is far from simple. But while it is impossible to lay down any fixed precept, it seems worth while to remember: that the French genius is preeminently the vehicle of definite and clear ideas, that in a very real sense France has been and is the intellectual clearinghouse of the world, and that potentially, at least, her civilization is of the greatest value to our intellectually dull and undiscriminating youth. From French, better than from Italian and Spanish, he can learn the discipline of accurate expression, of clear articulation, and the enlightenment that springs from contact with "general ideas." Moreover, we must not forget that the undergraduate's time is limited and that under the "group system" some discrimination must necessarily be made. Granted, then, that, all things considered, the first place will doubtless be left to French, the question remains whether the attention given to Spanish and Italian is at least adequate. And do the colleges extract from them the values they should?

As a general proposition, we may take it for granted that the college should offer at least _four_ units in each of these subjects. For Spanish, certainly, the tendency will be to make the proportion larger. But two units devoted to learning the language and two devoted to the literature may be regarded as essential, and are as a matter of fact the common practice. Several ill.u.s.trations will make this clear.

_Johns Hopkins_ offers: in Italian, 1. Grammar, Short Stories, etc., 2. Grammar, Written Exercises, Selections from cla.s.sic authors, Lectures on Italian Literature; in Spanish, 1. Grammar, Oral and written exercises, Reading from Alarcon, Valdes, etc., 2. Contemporary Novel and Drama, Oral practice, Grammar and Composition, 3. The Cla.s.sic Drama and Cervantes, oral practice, etc., History of Spanish Literature. _Illinois_: in Italian, 1a-1b Elementary Course, 2a-2b Italian Literature, nineteenth century; in Spanish, 1a-1b Elementary Course, 2a-2b Modern Spanish, 3a-3b Introduction to Spanish Literature, 4a-4b Business Correspondence and Conversation, 5a-5b Business Practice in Spanish, 11a-11b The Spanish Drama of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, 17a-17b The Spanish Drama of the Nineteenth Century. _Harvard_: in Italian, 1. Italian Grammar, reading and composition, 4. General View of Italian Literature, 5. Modern Italian Literature, 2. Italian Literature of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, 10. The Works of Dante; in Spanish, 1. Spanish Grammar, reading and composition, 7. Spanish Composition, 8. Spanish Composition and Conversation (advanced course), 4. General View of Spanish Literature, 5. Spanish Prose and Poetry of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, 2. Spanish Literature of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.[92]

Since Spanish and Italian fall into the department of Romance languages, in order to make up his "major" the student is at present compelled to combine them with French. On the whole, this arrangement appears to me wise. To be sure, the deans of our colleges of commerce and administration will say that, granting the greater cultural value of French, the business interests of the country will force us nevertheless to give Spanish the same place in the curriculum as French. And the more radical educators will affirm with Mr.

Flexner:[93] "Languages have no value in themselves; they exist solely for the purpose of communicating ideas and abbreviating our thought and action processes. If studied, they are valuable only in so far as they are practically mastered--not otherwise." I have taken a stand against this matter-of-fact conception of education throughout this chapter. I may now return to the charge by adding that the ba.n.a.lity of our college students' thinking stares us in the face; if we wish to quicken it, to refine it, we should have them study other media of expression _qua_ expression besides their own (that is what Europe did in the Renaissance, and the example of the Renaissance is still pertinent); that if Mr. Flexner's reasoning were valid the French might without detriment convey their "ideas" in Volapuk or Ido (I suggest that Mr. Flexner subject Anatole France to this test); and that instead of being valueless in themselves, on the contrary, languages are the repositories of the ages: "We infer," said Emerson, "the spirit of the nation in great measure from the language, which is a sort of monument in which each forcible individual in the course of many hundred years has contributed a stone." In other words, however great the claim of Spanish as "a practical subject" may be and whatever concessions our schools and colleges may make to this fact, I still believe that Spanish should be subordinated as a college subject to the study of French. In principle we may admit the Spanish "major,"

as in fact we do at present with the Italian "major"; but some knowledge of French on the part of the student should be presupposed, or if not, it should be a required part of the Spanish sequence. This may seem extreme, but in reality few students would wish to proceed far in Spanish without some French, and, practically, the knowledge of one Romance tongue is always a great aid in the study of another.

=Training teachers of Romance Languages=

Thus we see that, with the addition here and there of an extra course (where the college is not up to the standard as we have outlined it), and an added stress on the advanced linguistics, the present curriculum in Romance apparently provides an excellent working basis.

If properly carried out--and the success of all teaching depends of course ultimately on the teacher--it ought to fulfill all legitimate needs, so far as the strictly collegiate aims are concerned.

A word is now in order as to its fitness for those students who are planning to take Romance as a profession. Normally these students would coincide with those who are taking up "special honors" in Romance languages; and for the latter group most of our colleges now make special provision--in the form of "independent work done outside the regular courses in the major subject and at least one other department during the junior and senior year (Wisconsin)," or as Amherst states it, "special work involving collateral reading or investigation under special conditions." In general, this gives the candidate certain professional options among the courses listed (in cases where the college is part of the university) as "primarily for graduates." In this way the student is able to add to his "major" such subjects as Old French (Chicago), Introduction to Romance Philology (Columbia), Practical Phonetics (Chicago), a Teachers' Course (Wisconsin), etc. Personally I am of the opinion that the day has pa.s.sed when any of our graduates who has not at least a Master's degree in Romance should be recommended to a teaching position. But evidently any such hard and fast rule is bound to be unfair, especially since a large percentage of our students is compelled to earn a living immediately upon graduation. Thus here again--as in the elementary courses as now given in the colleges--we are confronted with a makes.h.i.+ft which only time and continued effort can correct. In the meantime the value of such professional courses depends to a very marked degree upon the success with which they can be carried out where they are counted toward a higher degree (M.A. or Ph.D.) the difficulty is not so great, since their introductory nature is self-evident; but where they conclude, so to speak, the student's formal training the difficulty of making them "fit in" is often sadly apparent. At any rate, in this borderland between cultural and professional studies, where the college is merging with the university or professional school, the necessity for the able teacher is a paramount issue. If the transition is to be successful, the obligation rests upon the teacher so to develop his subject that the specializing will not drown out the general interest but will inform it with those values which only the specialist can impart.

=Final contributions of Romance Languages to the American college student=

And now as to our final consideration: What particular advantages have the Romance tongues to offer as a college subject? An obvious advantage is: an understanding of foreign peoples. The Romance languages are modern. They are spoken today over a large part of the habitable globe. We stand in direct relations with those who speak them and write them. Above all, a large share of the world's best thought is being expressed in them. The point requires no arguing, that translations cannot take the place of originals: _traduttore traditore_, says an excellent Italian proverb. If we are really to know what other nations think,--whether we accept or reject their thought makes little or no difference here,--we can do so only by knowing their language. And the better we know it, the greater our insight will be. To speak at least _one_ foreign language is not only a parlor accomplishment: it is for whoever is to be a citizen-of-the-world a necessity. There is a Turkish proverb that he who knows two languages, his own and another, has two souls. Certainly there is no better way to approach a nation's soul than through its language. But, in the second place, the Romance tongues have certain artistic qualities which English in a great measure lacks. The student who has intelligently mastered one of them has a better sense of form, of delicate shades of expression, and--if the language be French--of clarity of phrase: what Pater termed _nettete d'expression_. He learns to respect language (as few Americans now do), to study its possibilities in a way which a mere knowledge of English might never have suggested, and to appreciate its moral as well as its social power: for French forces him to curb his thought, to weigh his contention, to be simple and clear in the most abstruse matters. In a famous essay on the Universality of French, Rivarol said: "Une traduction francaise est toujours une _explication_."

And lastly, in themselves and in the civilizations they stand for, the Romance tongues are the bridge between ourselves and antiquity.

Since the decline in the study of Greek and Latin, this is a factor to be seriously considered. It is the fas.h.i.+on today to berate the past, to speak of the dead hand of tradition, and to flatter ourselves with the delusion of self-sufficiency. To be sure, the aim of education is never to pile up information but to "fit your mind for any sort of exertion, to make it keen and flexible." But the best way to encompa.s.s this is to feed the mind on ideas, and ideas are not produced every day, nor for that matter every year, and luckily all ideas have not the same value. There are the ideas of Taine, of Rousseau, of Voltaire, of Descartes, of Montaigne, of Ficino, of Petrarch, of Dante, of Cicero, of Aristotle, of Plato; and in a moment I have run the gamut of all the centuries of our Western civilization. Who will tell me which ideas we shall need most tomorrow? Evidently, we cannot know them all. But we can at least make the attempt to know the best.

And incidentally let it be said that he who professes the Romance tongues can no more dispense with the Cla.s.sics than the Cla.s.sics can today afford to dispense with Romance: French, Italian, and Spanish are the Latin--and one might add the Greek--of today. But to return to our theme: to deny our interest in the past is to throw away our heritage, to sell our mess of pottage to the lowest bidder. If the Romance languages have one function in our American colleges, it is this: To keep alive the old humanistic lesson: _nihil humani a me alienum puto_; to the end that the modern college graduate may continue to say with Montaigne: "All moral philosophy is applied as well to a private life as to one of the greatest employment. Every man carries the entire form of the human condition. Authors have thitherto communicated themselves to the people by some particular and foreign mark; I ... by my _universal_ being, not as a grammarian, a poet, or a lawyer." The college course in the Romance languages should prepare for a profession, but it must first help to prepare thinking men and women.

WILLIAM A. NITZE _University of Chicago_

Footnotes:

[85] The quotation is from Emerson, _Nominalist and Realist_.

[86] I make no attempt in this article, written before 1917, to treat actual teaching conditions: the premises are too uncertain.

[87] The above statistics are from C. H. Handschin, _The Teaching of Modern Languages in the United States_, Was.h.i.+ngton, 1913, pages 40ff.

[88] I cite the following figures: (_a_) Entrance: Harvard 16-1/2, Amherst 14, Wisconsin 14, Columbia 14-1/2, Colorado 15, Illinois 15, Chicago 15; (_b_) Collegiate Degree: Harvard 17-1/2 "courses," Amherst 20 "courses," Wisconsin 120 "credits," Columbia 124 "points," Colorado 120 "hours of scholastic work," Chicago 36 "trimester majors." It is certainly desirable that our colleges adopt some uniform system for the notation of their courses. Johns Hopkins, at least, is specific in explaining the relations.h.i.+p of its "125 points" to its "courses"; see page 262 of the _University Register_, 1916.

[89] At Chicago exactly 1/4 or "at least 9 coherent and progressive majors" must be taken in "one department or in a group of departments." But Chicago also requires a secondary sequence of at least 6 majors; Columbia requires three years of "sequential study--in each of two departments." Illinois, "a major subject (20 hours)" and "an allied minor subject (20 hours)."

[90] An excellent manner of procedure is that outlined by Professor Terracher in his interesting article in the _Compte rendu du Congres de Langue et de Litterature Francaise_, New York (Federation de l'Alliance Francaise), 1913.