15
Nothing could be more detrimental to a youth's intellectual
development than to oxpose him to these two contrasting methods
in the course of one day. It is rather like spending the morning
in a cincme and the afternoon in a morgue. The one does not
propare in a fitting manner for the other, though thic student
reacts in both cases as we should expect him. In the one case
the novelty of the subjects, their obvious utility, and rclation
to every day life, leading as they do to highly remunerative
employment, the emphasis on the rational processos, or sciontific
thought, the stimulus to the imagination, the zost created by the
problems to be solved, and the opportunity for crcative work
all these are found in the western system, and hardly at all in
the eastern.
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Tho inadequacy of the old studies is obvious to the chinese
student bc cause politically the country has on the whole ceased
to be governed by the principles which it was the business of old
learning to inculcate, and again while cconomically the country
is being revolutionised, the old learning has little or nothing
to contributo directly to industrial progress. As this is vaguely
realised by those who are ordered to submit to the old classics,
the zost has gone, and the students mental vitality is sapped, for
position and power - those two grand stimulants to learning are no
longer reserved for the classical scholar, but for those who aro
acquainted with the now knowledge. Though few can gain such posi-
tion and power, there are thousands who hope to do so, and they
aro anxious therefore to acquiro such knowlodge as will ona blo
them to play their part if not in the higher offices then in the
minor oncs, in the political and economic life of the country as
newly constituted.
Is the old classical system dead then beyond recovery, or
can it be resurrectod? Can the dry bones of the old scholarship
bo medo to live? Can they be clothed with a now flesh and inspired
102
P.T.0.