LANGUAGE STUDY AND LANGUAGE PSYCHOLOGY 369 



LANGUAGE STUDY AND LANGUAGE PSYCHOLOGY 



By Professor E. W. FAY 



UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS 



l~N The Popular Science Monthly for June, 1907, Professor 

 -*- Alexander Hill, the master of Downing College, Cambridge, con- 

 tributed an entertaining article on " The Acquisition of Language and 

 its Relation to Thought." What he had to say about the proved value 

 of the study of Greek and Latin sounds like a brief for the classics, and 

 ought to be more valuable as testimony than the arguments of any 

 professed classicist. It is thus that Presbyterians who value tradition 

 are fond of quoting Dean Stanley's admission of the priority of their 

 system of church government. So I am fond of quoting one of my 

 candid colleagues of the anti-classical battalions, who admits that much 

 first-year laboratory work in science is as valuable, educationally speak- 

 ing, as dish-washing. But, after all, the conclusions of Mr. Hill's essay 

 lead away from the classics, at least as a medium of general education ; 

 and his generous admissions of their tried worth as instruments of 

 training might, though unfairly, I think, be construed as the sort of 

 admission a skillful debater, flushed with anticipated victory, will 

 make of the strong points of his opponent's case; not to provoke a 

 verdict for his adversan^, but to gain credit for fairness on his own 

 part. 



A magazine article has some of the limitations of a sermon, due to 

 the special advantage that it either never gets answered, or the answer 

 must be addressed to different readers : even if it reaches the same 

 public, no real debate results after long lapses of time. But an essay 

 so stimulative and provocative as Professor Hill's calls for comment, 

 and in the main rather for approval than for contradiction. There is 

 instruction in it, too, for classicists, which a classicist may do well to 

 urge on his fellows. There are observations to challenge, because they 

 seem mistaken, and it may be well to point out that Mr. Hill's conclu- 

 sion is a recommendation of change, to see what the result of change 

 may be: it is not a consequence drawn from the observations of fact 

 that went before it. 



In the comment I am about to make, where considerations of space 

 do not admit of full quotation, I shall do my best fairly to state the 

 purport of Professor Hill's remarks, if for no other reason, for the 

 sense of personal obligation I feel toward him for his pleasing and 

 instructive " Introduction to Science " in the series of Temple Primers. 

 But I make free, by virtue, perhaps, of the classicist's hysteron proteron, 

 to rearrange the order of the original argument, even by transposing 

 sentences from their own paragraphs, the which aim at no formal logical 

 development. 



