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ROV 4 1919

The Classical Weekly

Published weekly, on Mondays, except in weeks in which there is a legal or a School holiday, from October 1 to May 31, at Barnard College, New York City. Subscription price, $2.00 per volume.

Entered as second-class matter November 18, 1907, at the Post Office, New York, N. Y., under the Act of Congress of

March 1, 1879

Acceptance for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in Section 1103, Act of October 3, 1917, authorized on June

VOL. XII, No. 4

28, 1918.

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Every Latin Student should be familiar with

GUERBER'S MYTHS OF GREECE AND ROME

This account in English of the early myths is of great value especially to the student of Latin. It furnishes an interesting and accurate explanation of the early myths, without which a real understanding of most of the classic masterpieces is impossible. Many reproductions of ancient and modern works of art in painting and sculpture are included.

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Essentials of Latin Syntax (New Edition)

This volume presents in compact and graphic form the essential features of Latin syntax-arranged to provide a general survey of the relation of the parts to the whole. The leading constructions of the noun, pronoun, and verb are presented in interesting tabular form with concise examples of each principle in English and in Latin. Eight complete exercises for translation from English into Latin afford adequate material for drill in the use of related constructions. 186 pages. $1.20.

Essentials of Greek Syntax

Like the foregoing volume this book presents in concise and usable form the essentials of Grammar. Part First presents Greek syntax as an organized whole, with references to four Greek grammars. Part Second provides exercises for translation into Greek. 165 pages. $1.25.

Ginn and Company

70 Fifth Avenue

New York

The Classical Weekly

Entered as second-class matter November 18, 1907, at the Post Office, New York, N. Y., under the Act of Congress of March 1, 1879 Acceptance for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in Section 1103, Act of October 3, 1917, authorized on June

VOL. XII

28, 1918.

NEW YORK, OCTOBER 28, 1918

DR. FLEXNER'S CRITICS
(Continued from pages 10, 18)

In The New York Times of February 5, 1917, Mr. W. V. McDuffee, of the Central High School, Springfield, Mass., then President of the Massachusetts State Teachers Association, called attention to Dr. Flexner's misuse of statistics in connection with reports of the results of The College Entrance Examination Board examinations. In The Springfield Republican of February 15, 1917, editorial reference was made to Mr. McDuffee's paper. One quotation will indicate the tenor of this editorial:

We need not overrate examinations, which are but an imperfect record or measure of results, but since the issue has been raised it is well to have it made clear that they tell in favor of Latin instead of in favor of "the modern school". It is not the only point at which the soundness of Dr. Flexner's theories is open to serious doubt.

In The New York Times for January 22, 1917, were given the views of Dr. John H. Finley, Commissioner of Education for the State of New York, and others, concerning Dr. Flexner's proposals. On one point I sharply disagree with Dr. Finley, if he was correctly quoted as saying that it

would have been wiser if the Rockefeller General Education Board had furnished to the State funds for the 'modernization' of the Schools, rather than undertaking the task itself the State had a machinery for making the experiment that the Foundation could not have, at the Teachers College or elsewhere.

As I wrote above, page 10, it is far better to have the 'experiment' tried outside the existing Public School System: the sponsors of the 'experiment' will be required to prove its success.

Dr. Flexner found in Philadelphia an ardent champion in Mr. William D. Lewis, Principal of the William Penn High School for Girls. Mr. Lewis voiced his support in The Evening Bulletin, of Philadelphia (I have not seen these articles). Mr. Lewis had previously expressed his hostility to the Classics in an article in The Saturday Evening Post. In April, 1916, during Schoolmen's Week at the University of Pennsylvania, Mr. Lewis and Professor West engaged in a debate on The Place of the Classics in the Modern High School. The debate is reported on pages 241-263 of the pamphlet called Schoolmen's Week, published by the University of Pennsylvania as part of The University Bulletins (Sixteenth Series: No. 6, Part 4: August, 1916): Mr. Lewis's remarks were, however, extremely brief. Dr. Arthur W. Howes, of the Central High School, Philadelphia, in two articles in The Evening

No. 4

Bulletin of Philadelphia, February 27 and 28, 1917, made a vigorous reply. So too did Dr. Lewis R. Harley, Professor of History in the Central High School. Dr. Harley reprinted these articles and circulated them in a pamphlet of 36 pages, entitled Table D'Hote versus Ála Carte in Public Education.

Professor H. C. Nutting, of the University of California, has been most energetic in defense of the Classics, in several vigorous assaults upon Dr. Flexner's proposals. To the pamphlet, A Modern School, he replied in The Curriculum of the Secondary School, School and Society 4.42-49, July 8, 1916. In Two Phases of Mental Discipline, School and Society 6.261263, September 1, 1917, he replied to Dr. Flexner's paper, Education as Mental Discipline (see THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY 12.17). In Latin and the A.Β. Degree, School and Society 7.121-126, February 2, 1918, he answered Ex-President Eliot's paper of the same title (see THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY 12.17). Other papers by Professor Nutting, whose titles only there is space to give, are Classics and the Reformer, Educational Review 54.293-306, November, 1917; The Peril of "Bookish" Education, Journal of Education 86.3132, July 12, 1917; Experimental Tests of Educational Values, Education, February, 1918.

In the Journal of Education 87.152, 158-159, under the title Mr. Dickens' "Modern School", Professor Nutting published an ingenious and interesting attack on Dr. Flexner's school; by citations from Dickens's Hard Times, and in one instance by setting a quotation from Dr. Eliot directly beside an utterance of Mr. Gradgrind, he shows that Dickens, in Hard Times, had made Mr. Gradgrind anticipate Ex-President Eliot and Dr. Flexner. The whole paper is delightful reading. One paragraph I take space to quote:

Mr. Dickens' modern school is, of course, a caricature. But, by its very nature, a caricature reflects some peculiarity or over-emphasis that exists in actual reality. The aspect of the modern school that lays it open to caricature is the emphasis placed upon the world of fact as against the world of ideas and ideals. To build up a well-rounded curriculum for any school designed for general training, it is desirable that several persons of different tastes should collaborate; for it seldom happens that in a single individual are found equal love and appreciation of values in the various fields of human endeavor. In regard to the experimental modern school of the present day, it is unfortunate that the shaping of the curriculum has fallen so largely to a single sponsor who frankly confesses the inequality of his interests and acquaintance. Of his study of Milton's "Lycidas" he says that the result was that he then and there "vowed life-long hostility" to it, and he cites this poem as a typical "obsolete and uncongenial" classic. Further, he adds: "Of the part to be played by art and music I am not qualified to speak".

An interesting paper by a non-classicist is that by Mr. Isaac Thomas, Head of the Department of Mathematics in the Hopkins Grammar School, New Haven. It is entitled Dr. Flexner's "A Modern School", and appeared in School and Society 6.605-608, November 24, 1917 (it was this paper that stirred Mr. Blumberg to speech: see THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY 12.17). Mr. Thomas says that even a cursory reading of Dr. Flexner's paper shows the author's obsession, "his demon of torment being 'traditional' education in general and the classics in particular". Mr. Thomas points out, as others have, glaring inconsistencies in Dr. Flexner's paper, and emphasizes Dr. Flexner's inability to reason. He then maintains that the Modern School is unscientific, in that, so far as Latin, Greek, and Mathematics are concerned, Dr. Flexner will allow no tests: he has prejudged the case and closed his mind against them. As a result of this unscientific attitude, the Modern School is to allow its pupils no freedom of choice with respect to their studies, and its studies will lead nowhere (607):

As it shuts its pupils off from unhindered choice at the beginning of their course, so in the path provided for them, the way has not only been hedged within very narrow limits, but has neither clear direction nor free exit. To me it resembles nothing so much as the nets we used to see in the Sound, set for menhaden, cunningly arranged for wind and tide but leading to the "pocket" from which there was no escape. Apparently "A Modern School" has given no thought, no care, to the question whether its pupils might not sometime find themselves caught in the net of inadequate preparation for future advance, if not in a cul de sae of unavailing and hopeless struggle.

Mr. Thomas maintains further that in the Modern School the spirit of manliness and bravery is conspicuously absent. A school should train (607)

in the three preeminently manly qualities, endurance, courage and patience. Many times and always in vain, I have read through A Modern School for some word or hint that it regards such training as part of its business. Work upon any subject as a means of gaining patience and courage for further work upon it, seems to have been wholly left out of the scheme, and training a pupil to self-dependence, to have been entirely forgotten. No future, needing any or all the three qualities I have mentioned, has been planned for in this school, but the needs or fancied needs of the pupil and what he might be interested in are to be the chief arbiters in determining what he is to do and how. So far as possible work-except as the pupil likes it is to be eliminated.

Finally, Mr. Thomas points out that from first to last in the Modern School the appeal is to the selfish interest of the pupil. "Himself is to be the center of all his thought; his material advancement, the object of all his care" (608).

In The Classical Journal 13.193-199, December, 1917, Mr. Clyde Murley, of the Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, attacked Dr. Flexner in a paper entitled Content Studies and Content Teaching. (To be concluded)

С. к.

SOME FOLK-LORE OF ANCIENT PHYSIOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY

(Continued from page 21)

With increasing knowledge of anatomy it was recognized that the heart and the liver did not possess all the functions and attributes ascribed to them. Thereafter the general tendency was to place the baser qualities below the diaphragm, in the abdominal cavity, to put the next higher in the thoracic cavity, and to assign to the head the highest elements of man's nature, the intellectual. One will recall in this connection Plato's three-fold division (see above, page 21).

We shall now pass to a consideration of the notions attaching to the abdominal cavity. The writer would not, however, imply that all the ideas hereafter mentioned originated after this step forward in anatomy.

As one's mental condition is directly influenced by his digestion, it is not strange that the word stomachus came to indicate good humor and contentment as well as irritation, vexation, and anger, and that stomachosus meant 'wrathful', and stomachari 'to be angry'27.

Martial (12 Praef.) rails at certain persons adversus quos difficile cottidie habere bonum stomachum. Cicero, Ad Att. 6.3.7, speaks of arousing laughter instead of stomach, i. e. ire; risum magis quam stomachum movere. The word stomachus can be used as a synonym of iracundia; compare homo exarsit iracundia ac stomacho (Cicero, Verr. 2.2.20).

While it is true that our mental state is affected by our digestion, it is just as true that anger impairs digestion, and causes the muscles of the stomach to go on strike, often bringing on an attack of indigestion. Possibly the ancients occasionally interchanged this relation of cause and effect, and accused the stomach of conditions for which it was not responsible.

This organ must have been regarded as one of the seats of merriment, since Cicero, Ad Fam. 2.16.7, has the phrase, in stomacho ridere. Apuleius, Met. 3.10. mentions an instance of people laughing till their stomachs ached: Hi gaudii nimietate gratulari, illi dolorem ventris manuum compressione sedare28.

The stomach was capably aided by the bile in upsetting mental equanimity. According to Pliny, N. H. 11. 192, the bile est nihil aliud quam purgamentum pessumum sanguinis et ideo amarum est29. He states also that some few men who are without bile have robust health and live longer30. It is not to be wondered at that the bile came to be regarded as the seat of illnature and melancholia and the cause of moodiness.

'In the black bile lies the cause of madness in man, and of death if it is entirely expelled. Hence the word

27Compare The queen uttered some choler and stomach against them, Throckmorton in Tytler, History of Scotland (1864), 3.134. 28 Compare Pero puedo jurar que jamás me vió después de una ausencia más ó menos larga sin que su abdomen dejase de experimentar viloentas sacudidas de risa. (Valdés, La Alegría del

Capitán Ribot, initio).

29 The Latin faex, 'dregs', supplies the root for a number of words for liver: Italian fegato, Venetian figdo, Spanish higado, Portuguese figado.

30 According to modern notions, the man who is without bile, metaphorically speaking, is a coward. Compare Er hat keine Bile; Il ne se fait pas de bile.

bile as applied to the character is a reproach. So great is the poison in the gall when it spreads to the mind. In addition when it wanders over the entire body it takes the color from the eyes too. When it is ejected on bronze vessels, they become black on contact with it, so that no one ought to wonder that bile is the poison of serpents'31.

The Latin atra bilis is, of course, a translation of the Greek μελαγχολία. Black bile is an entirely imaginary fluid. It was supposed to be thick, black and acrid, and was believed to be secreted by the renal or atrabiliary glands, or by the spleen.

An organ of a character far different from that of the stomach and the bile is the spleen. With a rather dubious air Pliny, N. H. 11.205, informs us that there are persons who believe that with the removal of the spleen man loses the power of laughter, and that unrestrained laughter is due to an enlarged spleen. Persius, 1.12, provides further evidence that this organ was regarded as the seat of laughter: sed sum petulanti splene cachinno. With this compare Shakespeare, L. L. L. 3.1.66 Thy silly thought enforces my spleen32.

At times the organs of the abdominal cavity are referred to collectively as exta, viscera, or even ilia. Occasionally qualities are ascribed to them generically when the writer has some special organ in mind. I shall cite but one instance (Vergil, Ecl. 7.25-26):

Pastores, hedera crescentem ornate poetam,
Arcades, invidia rumpantur ut ilia Codro33.

When classical writers used the words exta and viscera in connection with divination, they were thinking primarily of the liver or of the heart. Many of the ideas connected with these two organs were very probably ascribed in earlier times to the intestines. This is indicated by the etymology of the word haruspex, which Walde explains as 'Darmschauer', 'bowelsearcher'.

A seat of mirth may have been located in this part of the body; Apuleius, Met. 10.16, speaks of a person's laughing 'until his intestines hurt'.

The grammarian Didymus, who is said to have written as many as 3,500 books, was dubbed χαλκέντερος, which has been well translated 'Copper-guts', because of his capacity for work. The nickname seems to indicate that powers of endurance and vigor were associated with the entrails34. Compare "thou thing of no bowels, thu!" (Troilus and Cressida 2.1)35.

The use of the word renes as a seat of the emotions and affections was well established in ecclesiastical Latin: exultabant renes mei (Proverbs 23.16); ure renes meos et cor meum (Psalms 26.2); quia ego sum scrutans renes et corda (Revelations 2.23); possedisti renes meos (Psalms 139.13).

Even the diaphragm separating the upper and the lower cavity of the trunk has special powers popularly ascribed to it. The Greek word for mind, φρήν, or, more generally, φρένες (compare phrenology), means, in an anatomical sense, 'midriff'36. The Romans translated this word by praecordia, and in poetry at least transferred some of the Greek ideas connected with it. Hence Ovid, Met. 11.149, uses praecordia mentis for 'mind', and Propertius 2.4.21 employs mutare praecordia in the same way. Occasionally praecordia indicates the seat of the feelings and passions; compare e. g. Aen. 2.367 Quondam etiam victis redit in praecordia virtus.

The Latin used a borrowed form phreneticus in the sense of 'mad', 'delirious', 'frantic'37.

It is in the midriff that Pliny, N. H. 11.198, prefers to locate gaiety and laughter:

'In this part above all is the seat of gaiety, a fact which is best proved by tickling the armpits, to which it extends38. In no other part of the body is the skin more delicate, and it is for this reason that one experiences pleasure in scratching the flesh there. Hence in battles and gladiatorial combats men with the midriff pierced die in the act of laughing'.

In the same passage Pliny says:

'Surely to this organ quick ready wit is to be attributed; and hence it is not fleshy, but composed of fine sinews and membranes'.

With this statement one can contrast pinguis Minerva, an expression which attributes stupidity to

fatness.

Of the organs in the thoracic cavity, the heart and the lungs are the only ones to which I have found any qualities erroneously attributed. The notions connected with the heart have already been discussed. It may be noted, however, that the word pectus is sometimes used by synecdoche for cor. An excellent illustration occurs in Vergil, Aen. 1.567-568:

Non obtusa adeo gestamus pectora Poeni
nec tam aversus equos Tyria Sol iungit ab urbe39.

The lungs are naturally regarded as a seat of pride. Persius 3.27-29 exclaims:

Hoc satis? An deceat pulmonem rumpere ventis40 stemmate quod Tusco ramo millesime ducis, censoremve tuum vel quod trabeate salutas?

31Pliny, N. H. 11.193. Compare Plautus, Capt. 595-596. Viden tu illi maculari corpus totum maculis luridis? Atra bilis agitat hominem.

Compare also, T. N. 3.2.70-71 If you desire the spleen, and will laugh yourselves into stitches, follow me.

Compare Tausend Gefühle bestürmen mein Inneres, Zorn, Liebe, Freude, Schmerz (Hugo Miller, Im Wartesalon erster Klasse, 631-632).

This suggests the vulgar English, 'He has the guts'.
35 Among other peoples there are many notions connected with
the intestines. In Spanish, hacer de tripas corazón, 'to make heart
from intestines', means 'to hide one's dissatisfaction or disappoint-
ment', 'to pluck up heart'. Compare Schiller, Wilhelm Tell 365-
367:

Habt Ihr denn gar kein Eingeweid; dass Ihr
Den Greis, der kaum selber schleppen kann,
Zum harten Frondienst treibt?

A typical Biblical instance occurs in Gen. 43.30. And Joseph
made haste; for his bowels did yearn unto his brother.
Figurative uses are still current: he had every claim upon the

bowels of your compassion, Stevenson, The Merry Men; and how Sir Thomas and Mr. John had Christian bowels, and did not push him to extremities, Carlyle, Essay on Burns, 2; Thackeray, after revealing to Mr. Brookfield his love for Mrs. Brookfield, exclaimed: "Well, I have opened my bowels to you", The Outlook, February 14, 1914, page 342.

36 See Seymour, Life in the Homeric Age, 487-488. 37 Compare Spanish frenetico, 'mad', 'frantic', 'furious', 'insane'; French frenétique, 'distracted', 'frantic', 'raving'.

38In English we speak of laughing till our sides ache. Compare Milton, L'Allegro 32, And Laughter holding both his sides.

39 Compare also Aen. 1.502 Latonae tacitum pertemptant gaudia pectus.

40'airs'.

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