tragedies. When all other methods failed to give satisfaction, or to end their dispute, a balance was brought in, and they were ordered each to place specimen verses in the opposite scales and see which weighed the most. This ancient precedent I propose to imitate, but instead of weighing Euripides' verses, I shall try to measure his ideas.
There are four great guides that lead us to the past,—history, philosophy, art, and literature. Probably all of the present initiates into this learned society have had courses in history proper and in the history of at least English Literature, but I am afraid that a majority of them will graduate from this institution without having studied either the history of philosophy or the history of art. Yet the one of them represents the supreme product of the human hand and the other the supreme product of the human mind. I think that it is a matter deeply to be regretted that in this College for Women so few courses are offered in the History of Philosophy and in the History of Art, and that those which are offered are not elected by a much greater perecentage of the students.
Now my investigation this afternoon lies in the borderland between three of these fields, history, philosophy and literature. If the scope of those subjects is broadly interpreted it will come under all three of them. But if history is narrowly interpreted as nothing but past politics and a chronology of events; if philosophy is limited to the systematic reasoning of a few great thinkers; if literature is read only for amusement, or studied chiefly for its form and for its general aesthetic effects, then my subject lies outside all three.
As one reads or thinks about any past period or bygone country, one naturally wonders, how did the men and women of that time look and dress, but above all, what were their real thoughts and feelings? Behind their wars and conquests, their statutes and their political revolutions, behind all that outward activity that is often the expression more of the ambition of a few leaders than of the spirit of an entire people,—behind, too, the systems of a few leading philosophers, systems, moreover, which have often been constructed for them by modern admirers—what was the real chaos of public opinion?
Would we, if we were transported suddenly back into the midst of that time, and if we were endowed with the ability to speak and understand their language, and if we found ourselves by some magic change dressed like them and resembling them in other external details—would we fall easily into their ways and notions and standards? Or would our impulses and our different reactions to situations and our modern ideas cause them to regard us as barbarians or heretics or madmen? It would be comparatively easy to adapt ourselves to the absence of many modern
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