Book Reviews

The Dialogues of Plato. Selections from the Translation of Benjamin Jowett, Late Master of Balliol College and Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford; Edited with an Introduction by William Chase Greene, Assistant Professor of Greek and Latin in Harvard University. Boni and Liveright, New York, 1927. $3.50.

S

OME years ago a young graduate of a New England college

arrived at Yale with no Greek to speak of and less Latin than Shakespeare's, but with a genuine flair for poetry and zest for the human side of literature and with the unquenchable enthusiasm for Plato (read in translation) that so naturally goes with those other merits. He really knew very little that was academic, but he knew his Plato so well that he could talk interestingly and without pomposity about--for example—the four virtues that Socrates discriminates in Book IV of the Republic. This was what made him a personage. So it has always been. Plato is best in Greek, if one can read him so and has a lifetime in which to do it; but in Latin, French, Italian, or English also he has been continually throwing off the sparks that set the mind on fire.

This beautifully printed and excellently edited book by Greene will be a great find for all right-thinking persons. We have here, in less than 600 pages, virtually the whole of Plato, and what one needs to understand him by. It is not a matter of elegant extracts: practically all the dialogues are represented, and in such copious rendering that very little of the relevant thought is omitted. Where abridgment has had to be resorted to, it is clearly indicated and an admirable digest of the missing sections is supplied. The various works are presented in chronological order and each is prefaced by a short introductory essay, in which Greene sums up the nature of the dialogue and its place in the development of Plato's thought. The translation employed is the famous one of Jowett in its third edition, but wherever modern scholarship has discovered a better Greek reading than the text used by Jowett contained, the truer sense of the passage is scrupulously pointed out.

The Introduction, in thirty pages, is an admirably lucid and scholarly essay, written with grace and taking enthusiasm. “No one," Greene remarks, "ever became a Platonist in a day; for the philosophy of Plato is not an intellectual assent to a set of phrases, but an education from within, a turning of the eye toward the light, a slow process that transforms the character and all that it experiences.” His wise and winning presentation of the master's thought within the covers of a single attractive volume should make it materially easier for those who lack Greek and lack leisure to share in this inestimable process.

Reading for Honors at Swarthmore. By Robert C. Brooks, Joseph Wharton Professor of Political Science, Swarthmore College. With an Introduction by Abraham Flexner, Director of Division of Medical Education and Studies, General Education Board. New York, Oxford University Press, American Branch, 1927.

Professor R. C. Brooks of Swarthmore, a Ph.D. and former instructor of Cornell, and in ancient days a student at the German universities of Halle and Berlin, here gives us a very interesting and authoritative and undisguisedly enthusiastic account of the educational innovations at Swarthmore during the years since Frank Aydelotte has been president of that progressive college. The broad background of Dr. Brooks' academic experience and his responsibility as Chairman of one of the two divisions of studies at Swarthmore which have most utilized the honors method of teaching give a special value to his testimony and should go far to discountenance any suspicion that this method is but an unthoughtful imitation of the status quo at Oxford. Against such suspicion Dr. Brooks incidentally protests, but his narrative makes it clear, as of course he intends, that the main force of the movement toward honors work at Swarthmore derives from Oxford, or certainly from Oxford plus Cambridge. Indeed, the various steps in the educational system described, the names given them, and the ideals at which they aim are in most cases identical with what one remembers of the best practice and theory of the Oxford Honour Schools. The most important differences specified are perhaps that at Swarthmore only three grades of honors are distinguished (which because of American repugnance to anything not first-class cannot of

ficially be called first, second, and third), that so far the first class seems to have been awarded even more sparsely than at Oxford (only one in nineteen in the case of candidates in English), and the range of subjects covered in a single 'school' to be rather wider. The most striking difference of all, whether materially important or not, is that whereas at Oxford ordinarily one pupil meets one tutor in the gloom of night, at Swarthmore half a dozen pupils meet two professors in a sitting room embellished with tea things and frequented by as many visitors of varying celebrity as the chairs will hold.

The last adaptation makes for economy, thus obviating in some degree the most immediate objection to the Oxford method of teaching in our colleges. Professor Brooks's careful figures and estimates on this point are very interesting; they seem to show that the system followed at Swarthmore is considerably less onerous financially, at least for small colleges, than casual critics would assume. His quotations and comments show also that the visitors (among whom the reviewer gratefully numbers himself) have justified their presence both by actual contribution to the theory and practice of the scheme and by advertising widely and favorably what has undoubtedly proved itself a very courageous and useful experiment.

A Medical Letter

The Editor of the AMERICAN OXONIAN:

Dear Sir: I have enjoyed reading your able reply to one who recently found pleasure in damning us Rhodes Scholars both with faint praise and with strong abuse. I too felt aroused by what you have called "the real and surely not extraordinary dislike the writer felt for the image he created in the fancied likeness of the Rhodes Scholar."

You concluded that he who attacked us "simply carried to Oxford with him a certain vague prejudice, unfortunately not uncommon, and a plentiful lack of knowledge, unfortunately commoner still, and that he returned with the same. This makes him more a phenomenon and less a freak."

If this is so, if prejudice and ignorance regarding Rhodes Scholars are common, it may be that we need some such article as the one to which you replied. Perhaps we ought to welcome "each sting that bids, nor sit, nor stand, but go!" Perhaps a medicinal stimulant would do us all good. At any rate, I venture to prescribe a medicine that I have been brewing here at home. It contains five ingredients: take a drop of each, stir well, and imbibe!

The formula for Drop No. I is as follows:

"In the early days of college or university education in this country there was both in material and methods a far greater degree of simplicity than at present exists. There existed between faculty and student a sort of mutual understanding based on the joint efforts of teachers who used personal approach as their major pedagogical method and a youth that had time enough between amusements to allow deliberate thought and a considerable degree of poise and dignity to make its use natural.

"Today in the midst of a noisy and commercialized civilization the colleges and universities find themselves in the position of a beleaguered city against the defenses of which hordes of immature high-school boys and girls are hurled with something of the carelessness of disaster that marked the charge of the Light Brigade.

"We might pick at random an example from the Middle West to show how welcome there the invader is within the walls:

"Upon entering each student is assigned to a member of the Faculty who acts as his adviser. Each semester the student is required to consult his adviser concerning the choice of his studies, and the adviser must give his approval before the student is permitted to enter classes. It is the duty of the adviser to guide the students under his care in all matters concerning their university courses; to see that all rules relating to required or elective studies, promotion, and graduation are strictly complied with. (Itàlics mine.)

"Surely the words 'assigned,' 'required,' 'must,' 'approval,' ‘permitted,' 'duty,' 'rules,' and the phrase 'strictly complied with' can penetrate thick armor.

"What a foundation upon which to erect a shining temple of mutual respect and friendship! It would be a magician indeed who could fuse the cold inert mass of impersonal metal contained in that state

ment.

"Why is it not possible to obtain advice which aims to attract, not to drive, students to their studies?”1

The formula for Drop No. 2 is as follows:

"The relations between [Oxford] faculty and students are personal and friendly. To such an extent do the professors urge the students to come to tea on Sunday afternoons at their homes, that it is practically a social obligation to call upon every member of the faculty of one's own college at least once a term. It need hardly be said that in this case familiarity breeds not contempt but respect and shall it be admitted?-in some cases almost affection. Most of the Oxford 'dons' more than hold their own under scrutiny."

The formula for Drop No. 3 is as follows:

"It is the duty of university authorities to make of the college a society, of which the teacher will be as much, and as naturally a

1

Clarence C. Little, in Scribner's Magazine, November, 1926; reprinted in Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors, February, 1927.

2

Morrison C. Boyd, in the University of Pennsylvania General Magazine and Historical Chronicle, January, 1926; reprinted in the American Oxonian, April, 1927.