[1] Ante, [Chapter III]. [↑]
[2] The Twentieth Century Child. Chapter III. [↑]
[3] Spencer: Study of Sociology. Chapter XV. [↑]
[4] Having properly decided that it is well for children to be fed plainly while at school, parents take the greatest pleasure in alleviating this plainness by “tuck baskets” during term, and the most wicked and immoral palate-tickling during holidays. Indeed an excessive appetite seems to be regarded even by quite sensible people as rather an ornament to the juvenile character. Mr Cooper, whose charming book, The Twentieth Century Child, has already been referred to, describes with what I am afraid is approval the incident of a boy whom he brought away from school for a pleasure-trip just after lunch, and who cheerfully devoured a second lunch in the company of his friend. Assuredly our descendants will make no such mistakes as this. [↑]
[5] Tyndall “On the Importance of the Study of Physics as a Branch of Education,” a lecture at the Royal Institution: quoted by Herbert Spencer in his Education, Intellectual, Moral and Physical, a work which, though not very practical, contains a mass of very suggestive matter on a subject which no one else, so far as I am aware, has approached in quite the same spirit. As this book has been reprinted at so low a price as sixpence, there is no excuse for any parent who is unacquainted with its absolutely invaluable teachings. [↑]
[6] I think Mr Andrew Lang. [↑]
[7] Should we ever have a “universal” language, is it altogether chimerical to imagine that it might be an idæographic one? Provided that some simple code of idæographic writing were invented to denote the very limited number of concrete notions essential to commercial correspondence, no one who has had occasion to study Chinese, even in the most cursory manner, would think it at all a severe effort of the imagination to conceive of an idæographic notation as being used for business correspondence. In Chinese, the unit of expression is an idea. Words which relate to kindred subjects include, in their idæographs, the sign for the connecting link. Thus the idæograph for “agriculture” is made up of the sign for “strength” and for “a field.” Consequently, although the Japanese language when spoken sounds so entirely unlike Chinese that a person knowing neither can distinguish one from the other when heard across the width of a street, the Japanese can read Chinese books without difficulty, and one form of printing can be read by the Chinese of the North and those of the South, although the spoken dialects differ so much that “pidgin” English is often used by the two as a means of spoken communication. An idæographic medium of commercial writing (not of course so archaic nor so cumbersome as Chinese, but philosophically devised for the purpose) would release the student from all difficulties of speech and accent; he would always name the signs to himself in his own language. [↑]
[8] A method, it may be added, which can very usefully be practised now. Those of us who “rub-up” our French or German a little before a summer holiday by reading a novel or two, would always find the results of this rubbing-up process to be greatly more effective, when presently utilised abroad, if we would read always aloud instead of in silence according to the usual procedure. [↑]