LANGUAGE STUDY AND LANGUAGE PSYCHOLOGY 373 



sense of the relative difficulty of languages. My personal experiences 

 have been entirely convincing to me. While still a college student, but 

 with five or six years of Latin behind me, I began one summer to study 

 German privately, and after a careful reading, not conning, of the 

 grammar, I set out to read a German novel. In a few weeks I could get 

 on with it with some ease, and much more rapidly than I could then 

 read Latin. In the next year's work at college Lessing's " Minna " and 

 Schiller's " Tell," in long assignments, caused me much less labor than 

 Latin authors did. Even now, after two decades of Latin teaching, 

 with forms, syntax and vocabulary under good control, the Latin 

 language puzzle at times presents difficulties. True, I require of myself 

 greater accuracy with the Latin, but after a few weeks desultory 

 dabbling with Spanish, I can read with enjoyment and a fair under- 

 standing a play of Echegaray or a novel of Galdos with far less con- 

 centration of attention than it requires to read a fresh bit of Ovid, or 

 to reread for class preparation any but the most familiar satires of 

 Horace. 



My own experience aside, Professor Hill's surmise that the classics 

 might be advantageously replaced in the educational scheme by a 

 modern language or English seems to me not to weigh against the 

 actual experience of a master in an English public school, Mr. John 

 Charles Tarver, who thus expresses himself in his " Observations of a 

 Foster Parent " ; 



The claims of history and geography are on the surface so obvious that I 

 am tempted to a little piece of autobiography. Be it known, then, that my 

 first ambition in teaching was to teach history. I had as little faith in Greek 

 or Latin as the most ignorant of self-made men. I believed that great weight 

 should be given to English literature and English composition; and as for 

 language teaching, I saw no necessity for anything but French and German. 

 Therefore when I speak of Latin as the best educational instrument, I speak 

 with the authority of a person who has tried others. My opinion would be of 

 no value at all had I never stirred out of the classical routine. Similarly, if I 

 do not share the popular views about history and geography, it is after, not 

 before experience (pp. 174-175). . . . The one great merit of Latin as a teach- 

 ing instrument is its stupendous difficulty. Greek, in spite of its wealthy vocab- 

 ulary and infinitely numerous inflections, is child's play to Latin (p. 79). 



But why is Latin so much more difficult than a modern language ? 

 I find it hard to advance a reason. The differentiating factor lies not, 

 I am convinced, in the forms. The German noun — unless its article 

 were so helpful — is certainly as difficult in its forms as the Latin, and 

 the Spanish verb seems to me even more difficult; but I make a fair 

 headway in finding out the sense of Spanish or German, in spite of a 

 very poor knowledge of the forms. This can not be done in Latin. 

 Perhaps one reason lies implicit in the modernness of the modern 

 languages. Their sphere of thought is modern and therefore mine. At 

 least, I once heard this explanation advanced, with somewhat explicit 

 reference to the ethical value of classical studies, by a great scholar and 



