Improving mental natures...

"...The point of this method [of painstaking exercises in Latin and Greek translation] was to stretch the students' minds, to expand their capacities, to inure them to manipulating, to playing with words and ideas. A literary high culture would have no need to justify this flagrant expenditure of its students' time and effort. These students were novices. They were not learning a trade; they were improving their mental natures."
~T. L. Simmons, Climbing Parnassus, p.124