REASON IN THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE. 479 



All the faculties are subject to this law. Thus, persons in whom the 

 ear, exercised in melody, distinguishes the most delicate tones in mu- 

 sic, are not those who best seize the pronunciation of language. The 

 eye exercised in colors does not better appreciate form and distance ; 

 and reciprocally. 



Again, the development of the intellectual faculties is always con- 

 formed to the kind of exercise which produced it. Those who have 

 learned much by heart, learn easily by heart ; but they are not in con- 

 sequence better able to recall facts, dates, localities, forms of objects, 

 subjects of discourse, the details of a profession nothing, in fact, 

 which is useful for the exigencies of active life. It is to falsify Na- 

 ture to ask from the memory of words that which can alone be given 

 by the memory of things. 



All the time spent by a child in learning its lessons by heart is 

 lost, as far as concerns the exercise of judgment and the practice of 

 language. In a class, the great majority of pupils remain idle while 

 waiting their turn of examination. As to the master, what does he 

 do ? He does not instruct. Whatever he knows, his knowledge is a 

 dead page for his pupils. He who, in his teaching, does not go be- 

 yond the contents of the book is unworthy to be a teacher. 



It is with mnemonic lessons as with other useless drudgery imposed 

 on the young, which, without profit, puts their intelligence to torture. 

 All these preparatory exercises end in nothing practical. They only 

 retard the acquisition of direct reading. If the employment of these 

 diverse processes continues in our lyceums, they will give no better 

 results than they have given in the past, with professors probably as 

 clever, as zealous, as anxious to do well as their successors. 



VI. Conclusion. We would not object to the length of time spent 

 in classical study, as we have hitherto had a right to d, if the pupils, 

 giving not more than eighteen months or two years to acquire that 

 which alone is useful in the ancient languages, the art of reading them, 

 derive advantage from them during the remainder of their school-life, 

 however long it may be, in cultivating their minds, and extending their 

 knowledge of the national idiom. Unhappily, this is not the policy in 

 public instruction. As regards the living languages, students leave 

 the lyceum, for the most part, without having attained any of the ob- 

 jects of study. They are persuaded that they have nothing to learn, 

 when they know by heart all the rules of grammar, have written all 

 the themes they contain, and learned a volume of dialogues ; when 

 they commence to translate fluently, to read aloud good or bad, and 

 to make correctly grammatical and logical analyses. However, nothing 

 of all this is really the practice of language. Nothing of all this finds 

 its application in the commerce of life. They know the language by 

 rule, which means, in most cases, that they can neither read, nor under- 

 stand, nor speak, nor write it. 



It is particularly in the study of classics that routine is pernicious 



