The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
EDUCATION / STUDYING THE CLASSICS
You ask my opinion on the extent to which classical learning should
be carried in our country. A sickly condition permits me to think and
a rheumatic hand to write too briefly on this litigated question. The
utilities we derive from the remains of the Greek and Latin languages
are, first, as models of pure taste in writing. To these we are
certainly indebted for the national and chaste style of modern
composition which so much distinguishes the nations to whom these
languages are familiar. Without these models we should probably have
continued the inflated style of our northern ancestors, or the
hyperbolical and vague one of the east. Second, among the values of
classical learning, I estimate the luxury of reading the Greek and
Roman authors in all the beauties of their originals. And why should
not this innocent and elegant luxury take its preeminent stand ahead
of all those addressed merely to the senses? I think myself more
indebted to my father for this than for all the other luxuries his
cares and affections have placed within my reach; and more now than
when younger, and more susceptible of delights from other sources.
When the decays of age have enfeebled the useful energies of the mind,
the classic pages fill up the vacuum of
ennui, and become sweet composers to that rest of the grave
into which we are all sooner or later to descend. A third value is in
the stores of real science deposited and transmitted us in these
languages, to-wit: in history, ethics, arithmetic, geometry,
astronomy, and natural history.
But to whom are these things useful? Certainly not to all men. There
are conditions of life to which they must be forever estranged, and
there are epochs of life too, after which the endeavor to attain them
would be a great misemployment of time. Their acquisition should be
the occupation of our early years only, when the memory is susceptible
of deep and lasting impressions, and reason and judgment not yet
strong enough for abstract speculations. To the moralist they are
valuable, because they furnish ethical writings highly and justly
esteemed: although in my own opinion, the moderns are far advanced
beyond them in this line of science, the divine finds in the Greek
language a translation of his primary code, of more importance to him
than the original because better understood; and, in the same
language, the newer code, with the doctrines of the earliest fathers,
who lived and wrote before the simple precepts of the founder of this
most benign and pure of all systems of morality became frittered into
subtleties and mysteries, and hidden under jargons incomprehensible to
the human mind. To these original sources he must now, therefore,
return, to recover the virgin purity of his religion. The lawyer finds
in the Latin language the system of civil law most conformable with
the principles of justice of any which has ever yet been established
among men, and from which much has been incorporated into our own. The
physician as good a code of his art as has been given us to this day.
Theories and systems of medicine, indeed, have been in perpetual
change from the days of the good Hippocrates to the days of the good
Rush, but which of them is the true one? The present, to be sure, as
long as it is the present, but to yield its place in turn to the next
novelty, which is then to become the true system, and is to mark the
vast advance of medicine since the days of Hippocrates. Our situation
is certainly benefited by the discovery of some new and very valuable
medicines; and substituting those for some of his with the treasure of
facts, and of sound observations recorded by him (mixed to be sure
with anilities of his day) and we shall have nearly the present sum
of the healing art. The statesman will find in these languages
history, politics, mathematics, ethics, eloquence, love of country, to
which he must add the sciences of his own day, for which of them
should be unknown to him? And all the sciences must recur to the
classical languages for the etymon, and sound understanding of their
fundamental terms. For the merchant I should not say that the
languages are a necessary. Ethics, mathematics, geography, political
economy, history, seem to constitute the immediate foundations of his
calling. The agriculturist needs ethics, mathematics, chemistry and
natural philosophy. The mechanic the same. To them the languages are
but ornament and comfort. I know it is often said there have been
shining examples of men of great abilities in all the businesses of
life, without any other science than what they had gathered from
conversations and intercourse with the world. But who can say what
these men would not have been had they started in the science on the
shoulders of a Demosthenes or Cicero, of a Locke or Bacon, or a
Newton? To sum the whole, therefore, it may truly be said that the
classical languages are a solid basis for most, and an ornament to all
the sciences.
to John Brazer, 24 August 1819
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