If someone had asked me about the importance and significance of studying ancient languages not more than two years ago, my answer would have been completely different than the one that I am going to try and formulate now. I would definitely have spent some time explaining how Latin can be helpful for critical thinking and discipline of the mind, among other practical things.
However, after doing some reading and some more thinking and teaching, I came to conclusion that, even though these benefits are definitely among the perks that one can obtain learning Latin (or ancient Greek, for that matter), if they are your only goal when it comes to studying those languages, you should probably consider changing your methods.
If you want to train your mind to acquire knowledge faster or to be more critical, there are many other ways to do that, which can be more interesting for you, as well as far less demanding, that is for sure.
In his book "The Battle of the Classics: How a Nineteenth-Century Debate Can Save the Humanities Today", University of Maryland Associate Professor Eric Adler focuses on the crisis that the Classics endured in the 19th century, as well as the humanists' defence of those disciplines. However, even though very noble and rarely unreasonable, their arguments were often weak, as they narrowed down the whole of the Classical Philology to a mere acquisition of the skill of mental discipline.
Today, in this practically-oriented world, we are going through a similar situation, but differently dressed. There is, once again, the need to defend the classics and, it is bein done through arguing that the skill of critical thinking is the greatest perk of studying these languages.
Although I do agree that critical thinking is one of the perks, I think that it is a pretty narrow and shallow way to defend the value of the classics, as it is also a perk that many other disciplines can offer.
Carl Gustav Jung once stressed how differently life must have looked for a man born during the Middle Ages. He argued that, despite all the difficulties that took place during that period of time, people knew precisely what they should do and how to behave in order to reach a blessed and wonderful afterlife. They did not acquire that knowledge by an empirical or scientific research, but simply by reading and believing in stories and myths. Of course, Mr Jung took this period as an example, but same can be said for all the periods preceding the development of modern science, to put it roughly.
Science has helped us understand what things are and assign them specific and precise definitions and use, which is incredibly valuable. However, even though it gives us information on what something is and how to use it, it does not give us much information on its value inside a certain society, culture, or even individually. In other words, technology and science are advancing with incredible speed, while we are more or less lost without the values that our ancestors used to acquire through myths and stories.
According to Professor Jordan Peterson, the stance that those stories are just a primitive stage of science is completely wrong, as the messages they offer are often universally true and applicable even today. No one is denying the significance of science, but the stories of old are getting unjustly neglected for the sake of it, while we should take best from both worlds.
During the Renaissance, people started going back to ancient ideals for a reason. They considered that studying those stories offered a moral perfection of a character. I do not see why that would not be true today when, besides all the developments in science, law, ethics, etc., we still have very high crime rates, and we do not seem too close to any kind of ideal.
Therefore, I strongly hold that reading ancient authors cannot be harmful, but quite the opposite, and what is the best way to do it then learning to read them in their original form?
I have concluded that only after these crucial points all the other benefits come, such as much easier language acquisition (I learned French in just a few months, for example), critical thinking, and even mental discipline. These, and most probably, many others, are, however, nothing but positive side effects, and they should in no way be the goal of studying Latin itself.
All that having been said, besides giving you advice on the language and its learning itself, I will do my best to provide you with as many examples of those stories as possible on this website, hoping that we will all get a bit wiser and richer for an ancient thought with every one of them.
Excellent article!!