GREEK NOMENCLATURE IN ROMAN TRANSLATION One turn of the wheel again, and Greek science, or the dry bones of it, are being translated into Roman speech, by Lucretius, by Cicero, by a host of later adaptors. To Lucretius alone, of extent writers, did the physical philosophy make its old appeal: for Cicero, certainly, the Seven Sages, and the great observers, were antiques and nothing more. I can only deal briefly with the profound effects of the mistranslations, for such indeed they were, which substituted natura for φύσις, lex for νόμος, principium for ἀρχή, finis for Téλos, and so forth, and saddled European thought for fifteen hundred years with a terminology suitable enough for the discussion of the origin, and the latter end, of things, but quite inadequate, and misleading, always in the same direction, when applied to the description of processes which go on in what Heraclitus called our environment. Lucretius indeed seems to have felt the difficulty, and a pathetic emphasis is added to his repeated apologies for the inadequacy of Latin as a vehicle for Greek thought, when we realize that he alone of Roman writers shows any clear apprehension what the difficulty really was. For while puos belongs to pue, "to grow," and describes the whole process from ἀρχή to τέλος—“in the order of time," as Anaximander put it-natura, though a verbal substantive like púous, and to that extent appropriate, belongs to nasci, and deals exclusively with the process of "being born"; not with anything that happens after that. Thus even Lucretius found it necessary to devote a very large proportion of a treatise De Rerum Natura, based on Democritus' Tepì þúσews, to a “search into origins,” which is alien to his Greek originals. These, as we know, dealt primarily with what and how, not with whence and whither, and why. Principium and finis had no better fortune. Had Cicero written not De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, but Teρì Teλшv καλῶν τε καὶ ἀδίκων, his teaching might indeed have been (as Heraclitus hoped for his own) an accurate steeringchart for the estimation of human life.90 At worst it could only have been mistaken for a diatribe against the Tribunate, or an essay on the Principles of Taxation. More disastrous still was the replacement of voμos by lex. The Greek word describes a formulation of the way things actually happen: the Latin is a business term for a contract, binding them to happen so in future, under sanction of some religio. To speak, then, of ó vóμos Tŷs púσews was intelligible; but what was the meaning of a lex naturae, "the contract of a birth-process?" What lex, for example, was involved in the natura of water: under what penalties for non-performance did oxygen and hydrogen contract together to combine in the proportions of 16 to 2? 991 This concentration of men's thoughts upon questions not of processes which are accessible to us, "things as they grow, as Aristotle says in the Politics, but on origins which are not; this conception of origin as a matter of contract; and the inevitable conception of this contract as sanctioned by some all-powerful arbiter, who, being also regarded as a party to the contract, was conceived as judge in his own cause, and competent himself to break the contract at his discretion and with impunity-to permit or command H2O to observe the vapor of a hydrocarbon, and vice versa; all these were notions and hypotheses which we can trace as partly Roman, partly Babylonian; and which we recognize as un-Hellenic, and the antithesis of Ionian physicism. It was a proper theology, or metaphysic, for a world which had in fact turned stoic; which resigned itself in politics to glum acquiescence in the beneficent despotism of an emperor and a bureaucracy; and in physics to the despotism no less arbitrary because it was believed to be beneficent in the long run of one whose ways were "past 2 90 ἀκριβὲς οἰάκισμα πρὸς στάθμην βίου. 91 τὰ πράγματα φυόμενα. judgment." We have traveled a long way here from "the reasonable that surrounds us '92 of Heraclitus; and it was a long way to travel back at the Renaissance before attention was recalled once more from origins to processes, and from speculation about contractual leges naturae to the old Greek notion of the inherent reasonableness of the way things grow, and to detailed observations of how they grow, with a view to the formulation of vóμo descriptive of the process. But in physics in due course, and I think, in great measure, in politics, too, modern European thought comes back at last to the Greek view of the matter: to vóμoi puocol which are descriptions of the way things grow, like those of Archelaus, and to voμo ToλITIKOì which increasingly are formulations for the general guidance, of the way in which under normal circumstances decent citizens normally behave set up as a "considered opinion about behavior":93 "an accurate steering chart for the estimation of human life." : In the fog-bound air of Europe's Atlantic seaboard, "where neither sun nor stars for many days appear,' "' the Englishmen's horror of τὸ πέρας, his cult of ἄπειρον, his genius for muddling through without any oiáκioμa at all, are a philosophy antithetical to that of early Greece, and for that very reason, worthy of closer formulation as a "considered opinion about behavior" than they have yet received. But the other turn of thought, which seems, I think, to win recruits yearly, and to bring much practical wisdom to bear on the problems of us all, we are certainly right historically in attributing to the revelation of Greek thought once again which began with the revival of learning; and when we who devote ourselves chiefly to literatures and history look over to our colleagues the qvoukol piλooooo of today, I think we realize that whatever they may say about the Greeks and their culture, they are coheirs with us in Greek discovery, and themselves "not far from the Kingdom." 92 τὸ περιέχον ἡμᾶς, λογικόν τε ὄν καὶ φρενῆρες. 93 γνώμη ἠθῶν. PUER CYTHEREIUS Shoot, false Love! I care not; If thou canst, now shoot and harm me! While thy pomp did blear me; But now I do perceive Thy art is to deceive. And every simple lover All thy falsehood can discover. Then weep, Love! and be sorry; THOMAS MORLEY. Mitte, puer, tua tela! mea nihil, improbe, refert; At metuo iam non; etenim nunc omnia cerno: Arte tua solum perfidiosa facis. Omnis amans (neque enim quemquam tua fallere lingua Iam lacrimare decet, iam deplorare, Cupido; LEON J. RICHARDSON. UTILIZATION OF LAND BY HIGH SCHOOLS TEACHING AGRICULTURE PART 1. THE SCHOOL FARM W. G. HUMMEL The use of land in connection with high-school agricultural teaching is one of the most important problems with which agricultural teachers have to deal. It is also one with regard to which there has until recently been little agreement. Opinions still differ on many points-with regard to the function of land in connection with high school agricultural work, as to the amount of land needed, the ways in which it should be utilized, by whom and in what way it should be cared for, the amount of time which should be spent by students in school farm or garden work, the disposal of products, and other problems. However, it is agreed that some land must be used in connection with the instructional work, for practicums, demonstrations, and the like. It is conceded everywhere and by everyone that laboratory work is necessary for effective teaching of a science, whether it be a primary science, such as chemistry, a secondary science, such as physical geography, or a tertiary science, such as agriculture. All vocational instruction, whether in manual training, domestic science, agriculture, or other subjects, depends upon laboratory methods to a great degree. It is impossible to teach these subjects effectively without an appropriate laboratory. |