The evil effects of this imagined cultivation of the taste find expression often enough. The young savant who regards the composition of a scientific essay as a rhetorical exercise instead of a simple and unadorned presentation of the facts and the truth, still sits unconsciously on the school-bench, and still unwittingly represents the point of view of the Romans, by whom the elaboration of speeches was regarded as a serious scientific (!) employment.
Far be it from me to underrate the value of the development of the instinct of speech and of the increased comprehension of our own language which comes from philological studies. By the study of a foreign language, especially of one which differs widely from ours, the signs and forms of words are first clearly distinguished from the thoughts which they express. Words of the closest possible correspondence in different languages never coincide absolutely with the ideas they stand for, but place in relief slightly different aspects of the same thing, and by the study of language the attention is directed to these shades of difference. But it would be far from admissible to contend that the study of Latin and Greek is the most fruitful and natural, let alone the only, means of attaining this end. Any one who will give himself the pleasure of a few hours' companionship with a Chinese grammar; who will seek to make clear to himself the mode of speech and thought of a people who never advanced as far as the analysis of articulate sounds, but stopped at the analysis of syllables, to whom our alphabetical characters, therefore, are an inexplicable puzzle, and who express all their rich and profound thoughts by means of a few syllables with variable emphasis and position,—such a person, perhaps, will acquire new, and extremely elucidative ideas upon the relation of language and thought. But should our children, therefore, study Chinese? Certainly not. No more, then, should they be burdened with Latin, at least in the measure they are.
It is a beautiful achievement to reproduce a Latin thought in a modern language with the maximum fidelity of meaning and expression—for the translator. Moreover, we shall be very grateful to the translator for his performance. But to demand this feat of every educated man, without consideration of the sacrifice of time and labor which it entails, is unreasonable. And for this very reason, as classical teachers admit, that ideal is never perfectly attained, except in rare cases with scholars possessed of special talents and great industry. Without slurring, therefore, the high importance of the study of the ancient languages as a profession, we may yet feel sure that the instinct for speech which is part of every liberal education can, and must, be acquired in a different way. Should we, indeed, be forever lost if the Greeks had not lived before us?
The fact is, we must carry our demands further than the representatives of classical philology. We must ask of every educated man a fair scientific conception of the nature and value of language, of the formation of language, of the alteration of the meaning of roots, of the degeneration of fixed forms of speech to grammatical forms, in brief, of all the main results of modern comparative philology. We should judge that this were attainable by a careful study of our mother tongue and of the languages next allied to it, and subsequently of the more ancient tongues from which the former are derived. If any one object that this is too difficult and entails too much labor, I should advise such a person to place side by side an English, a Dutch, a Danish, a Swedish, and a German Bible, and to compare a few lines of them; he will be amazed at the multitude of suggestions that offer themselves.[122] In fact, I believe that a really progressive, fruitful, rational, and instructive study of languages can be conducted only on this plan. Many of my audience will remember, perhaps, the bright and encouraging effect, like that of a ray of sunlight on a gloomy day, which the meagre and furtive remarks on comparative philology in Curtius's Greek grammar wrought in that barren and lifeless desert of verbal quibbles.