The Importance of Latin
In defending any unpopular or unfashionable cause, it is always a good plan to bring the big guns to bear.
I recently found a most marvellous ally for this purpose in Dame Leonie Kramer. Writing on the condition of language in Australia in the September 1993 edition of Quadrant, she says: We must be concerned that ignorance of the language is growing, not diminishing. As the experience of learning Latin recedes into the past it gains perspective; and I have no doubt that the sometimes painful acquisition of that language, and the demands it makes on memory, patience, concentration and thought are one foundation of the understanding of English, and in particular of a vocabulary not confined to the basic necessities of communication. There seems to be no real prospect of a general revival of the classical languages, though there are some hopeful signs in the United States, and I meet young students from time to time who are enthusiastic about the pleasure and profit they gain from studying Latin. They are a privileged minority. You will note that Dame Leonie sees Latin as, to some extent, a remedy for ignorance—ignorance of our own English language. No doubt such a claim will cause hackles to rise and teeth to be gnashed, but it is a good and provocative beginning to our discussion of the value and importance of Latin. I should like to make it very clear at this point that I do not propose to defend Latin or argue for its importance, in relation to the modern languages. I have myself experienced the unhappy atmosphere that can exist in schools when teachers of modern and classical languages, who ought perhaps to be allies, find themselves in competition for the meagre allowances of teaching time available for their disciplines. It should not be like that. The arguments for teaching Latin are quite different, in my view, from the reasons for teaching modern languages—about which I shall not presume to say anything at all.
In my thumbnail sketch of this paper, which no doubt you saw in the pre-conference material, I personify Latin as the father and uncle of the languages of Europe. I mean by this that it has a remarkably close relationship (albeit one that is not always acknowledged) with the modern European languages, whether as parent or foster parent. Let us at this point try to agree on the facts behind this assertion.
In the first place, Latin is the father of the Romance languages, that is to say of French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Rumanian, to speak of the main members of the family.
Secondly, Latin is uncle, I would maintain, to all the other literary languages of western Europe. I mean by this that Latin, though not an immediate ancestor, is nevertheless a close relation and has been a powerful influence on their development. It has contributed vocabulary, most obviously, but there have also been subtler gifts: grammatical terminology and structure, an imprint of character which defies analysis.
If your language is German you might question this. German is a fascinating example of a language whose relationship with Latin is at first glance very remote, yet which appears on examination to be somewhat closer. It is of course quite true that German has been somewhat bolder than English in resisting the influence of Latin as a source of vocabulary, preferring wherever possible the honest integrity of its own native stock of words. The contrast with English is marked in all sorts of fields: in theology Himmelfahrt/Ascension; in technology Fernsehen/ Television. You may recall reading how when horse omnibuses were first introduced there was a movement of English language purists who wanted to call them 'folkwains', but as usual the Latin prevailed; in this case Latin has prevailed, surprisingly, in German as well and it was a hundred years later that the equivalent name volkswagen was applied to a different type of vehicle.
That aside, it appears to be usual for German to resist the temptation to borrow latinisms, preferring to use native elements of vocabulary to compose the vast number of sophisticated words that a modern society needs (or thinks it needs?). Might I suggest, though, that in this Latin has called the shots? Educated Germans have been educated in Latin since Luther's day and beyond, up until almost the present generation. The relationship between Latin words and the German words formed, apparently, in reaction to them is rather like the relationship between a mould and an extruded model: the latter does not deny the former, rather it affirms it. If Latin had never existed at all, how different would German be now? I leave you to answer that question, but if your conclusion is a good deal, then you will probably also concede what I think is the corollary, that a sound knowledge of German must be informed by a knowledge of Latin.
And if we concede that of German, how much more must it be said of English? English has never been shy about borrowing from Latin, never had the slightest reticence about accepting presents from its dear old uncle. Most of our vocabulary is quite simply Latinate: about three quarters of the words in the dictionary at least, perhaps more, depending on what system of classification you use. The skeleton may still be Anglo-Saxon, but we've put on a lot of flesh since our infancy and it's almost all been Latin, brazen and unashamed, even if sometimes filtered through French. Not only has Latin been the source of learned and technical vocabulary, but it has also been among the most prized assets of the pretentious and the affected. It's always been a mystery to me that people see a need to 'attend' school or church, while being content, merely to 'go' to the pub. It sounds more impressive to 'frequent' something than merely to 'go' there a lot. And look at today's frantic production of new coinages to fuel our passion for political correctness, administrative double-talk and commercial expansion. How utterly extraordinary it is that a language could be so dependent for its new coinages on the vocabulary stock of another language long dead.
But I'm going to swerve unexpectedly now. It may come as a surprise to you to hear that I am not proposing to defend Latin on the grounds that it provides us with the raw material for present and future vocabulary formation. The fact is that it does not. I have myself studied Latin for years, but I find the apparently Latinate language of the social sciences (including I must say Education) almost completely incomprehensible. I mean that quite literally: I find it very hard work to read with profit modern books and articles on education because they are poles apart from where I am linguistically—and the gulf is getting wider.
Recycling and Assimilations
No. English has reached what I will call phase two. It is recycling Latin words which were long ago naturalized, assimilated and given new meanings. It has long since breathed a new and different life and significance into them and will now do with them what it will. Words like 'proactive', though of course constructed from Latin raw materials, could have no meaning to a native Latin speaker. Here I am at a crucial point in my argument, because if I get it wrong I shall seem to be arguing against the study of Latin: if you learn Latin, I shall seem to be saying, you won't understand modern English!
But I have to run the risk and say, yes, learning Latin will not help people better understand today's and tomorrow's English. And if you happen to be one of those who are content to see the past recede into proper oblivion, yielding place to a new tomorrow, then we are probably in agreement and there is nothing more to be said on either side.
I would however be surprised if anybody here felt like that. I think you are ready to receive, and perhaps to agree with, the second claim I would like to make. No, Latin does little to help us comprehend the patois that is modern English, but yes, some Latin is essential to the full and complete and discerning enjoyment of all English literature (and I use the word in its widest sense), written up to the end of the 18th century, and probably almost everything up to the beginning of the 20th. In order to be more conciliatory I should moderate my assertion and say that what is necessary is not perhaps a fluent knowledge of Latin, but certainly an appreciation of, and an openness to discern, the Latin dimension of the language.
The reason for this is clear. Until the end of the 19th century almost everybody charged with education, and almost every writer, was formally educated in Latin. During the centuries from the Renaissance to virtually the present era, a huge number of Latin words was assimilated into English, and this always at the hands of men and women who were trained in Latin and readily understood the root meanings of their new coinages. Inevitably the words, once anglicized, tended to suffer some semantic adjustment in the course of daily use. A latinless society will therefore probably recognize only the secondary meaning. This is like seeing a three-dimensional object in only two. By way of providing a well-known example, when we read of Christ in the King James version of St. John's Gospel that the 'darkness comprehended him not', we are not expected to believe that the darkness was somehow lacking in intelligence. Perhaps being without Latin is to be in the position, linguistically speaking, of the cave-dwellers in Plato's famous parable!
Now it is perfectly possible for the energetic and enquiring mind to go to the dictionary and find out what words originally meant, not only in Latin, but to their first English users. It is also possible (and indeed probably normal nowadays) for students of medicine or law to learn their anatomy and their legal precepts parrot-fashion, without being able to recognize their root meanings in the first instance.
But how elusive, really, is the connotation of words, the subtle allusion to the literature of an earlier culture, the implication, the association, the innuendo. Studies have shown that even Shakespeare, who claimed to have 'small Latin', had read his Ovid, at least, in the original. But Milton's debt to Virgil is staggering yet probably invisible to many who read him. I had a very good friend who specialized in Milton at honours level, but had no Latin, and spoke often of the influence of certain renaissance Italian poets on his author. He may well have been right, but what he could not see —and I claim no credit, but merely good fortune, for having been able to do so— was the most potent influence of all.
A more subtle situation arises when a native English word has been used, from an early date, to represent a Latin technical term. Here the English word doesn't change its appearance, but it is invested with a new meaning—or is it? Can it ever be a true translation of a word in another language? Does not one need to know the other language in order to have an opinion? Our view may be distorted by the failure of our own word to convey all the nuances of the word it is said to translate.
Let me try to give you an example. The English word 'soul' is used as a translation of the Latin word anima, the principle of life or breath in a living creature. Do animals have souls? This might be a good question in English, but I doubt if it can be in Latin: no Latin speaker could deny that an 'animal' had an anima, but he might question whether the anima was immortalis or Christiana. So the argument in English centres on the existence of the soul, while in Latin it revolves around the character of it. A subtle distinction indeed, but you can imagine how such things might cause disputation. More importantly and more topically, I have heard it said that St. Ambrose is supposed to have questioned whether women have souls. I have not tried to find the passage in Ambrose which gave rise to such a view, but I have read enough of him to doubt whether he, either as a Latinist or as a theologian, could have said any such thing. Mistranslation or just mischief? Can the English dictionary, alone, clear up questions like this? It is not hard to imagine how the opinions and controversies of even a post-christian modern society might be affected by centuries of linguistic misunderstanding.
These matters aside, another very potent argument for retaining easy accessibility to Latin in our educational system is its value for historical research. Like it or not, a primary source once translated becomes a secondary resource; it loses the reliability of the original and is immediately subject to the aging process, as well as being a vehicle for the conscious and unconscious prejudices of the translator. The importance of Latin throughout the middle ages and even into the modern period is usually grotesquely understated; the bulk of surviving Latin documents is so vast that it will never be available in translation, and thus never known except by Latin readers.
Zeal for Truth
When all is said, my defence of Latin as an important element of the ideal curriculum is bound up with the whole notion of scholarship as an honest search for the best available understanding of things. If education is just for employment, if you want just enough English to do an MBA, or read newspapers, or write business plans and mission statements, then Latin won't help a lot. But if education is for life, and if it's about an honest zeal rerum cognoscere causas,—to know the causes of things—and doing things as thoroughly as possible, and not just by halves, then you won't neglect your Latin.
One final word. Latin was, I think, dreadfully abused by 19th century educators. Their rigidity and arrogance did it no lasting favour, and there emerged a great longing to be rid of it, a sense that it was elitist, and a rejection of all the arguments in defence of it which had been based on mental training. The Dean of Christ Church Oxford once asserted that the value of a classical education was twofold: to allow us to look down upon all those who did not share its advantages, and to prepare us for positions of emolument not only in this world but in the next. I would like to think he was joking. Arguments pretty much like these have remained in use, but have been transferred, great works of intellectual engineering that they are, to shore up mathematics and science. Nobody nowadays questions the dogma that maths and science are the best training for the brain and that they are the essential basis for effective existence in the modern world. Perhaps this should be questioned, but scientific imperialism carries all before it. I recall a time when as a teacher in an Adelaide school I said, reacting to the usual stance of my exasperating colleagues on the other side of the common room, that such-and-such a boy was far too stupid to do Ancient History and would simply have to take Physics instead. This was greeted not by hearty and sportsmanlike cries of touche, but rather by dull unbelief at an absurdly inappropriate comparison. Of course children who cannot manage Physics and Chemistry ought to do mickey mouse subjects, like History and English and Latin and French and so on. . .
Crisis point
I read recently an advertisement for PhD scholarships at the Australian National University which offered higher benefits —to the tune of about $4,000 a year —for research in subjects perceived to be of special value to the nation: Chemistry and Asian languages were in. History (of the western variety) and European languages were out. To do Latin, you would probably have to pay them. We and our civilization are at crisis point. Latin is like the miner's canary: if it snuffs it, then we might as well all pack up and go home.
© Christian Order, Penerley Road, Catford, London SE6 2LH.
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