REASON IN THE TEACHING OF LANGUAGE. 323 



useful than that of speaking. The same is also true of reading, for we 

 rarely have occasion to speak foreign languages, while we may read 

 them daily with profit. In reading, as in listening, we always learn 

 something, and especially the language. In speaking we learn noth- 

 ing, not even the language ; the mind is not enriched with a word or 

 an idea. The habit of following, in reading and hearing, the logical 

 connection of ideas which characterizes serious discourse, forms the 

 mind to all modes of reasoning, to all kinds of argument. But the 

 habit of speaking, to the exclusion of listening and reading, implies a 

 loss of judgment. The least instructed are often those who talk the 

 most. It was not by speaking French, but by reading it, that the 

 Prussians learned what they needed to know to insure their success 

 against us. 



It is infinitely more useful to read modern than ancient languages. 

 The latter are seldom read after the period of school ; but we read the 

 former throughout life, not only for the intellectual pleasure they af- 

 ford, but to gather knowledge needed in the professions and in our 

 social relations. 



Order of Study for a Living Language. The child learns 

 successively the four arts of his language. He first seizes the phrase- 

 ology that interprets to him the language of action which accompa- 

 nies the first words addressed to him. Gestures, expressions of the 

 face, tones of the voice, are equivalent to phrases, not to words. So 

 he understands the sense of phrases long before the w T ords that form 

 them. By the aid of these natural signs the infant listens and under- 

 stands, then he imitates and speaks. It is only when articulate sounds 

 awaken in his young intelligence the ideas of which they are the 

 signs, that he seeks to reproduce them as he heard them. He owes his 

 progress to example, not to precept ; to practice, not to theory. Such 

 is the method of Nature, admirable in simplicity and infallible in re- 

 sults. The nearer we come to it the surer will be our success. 



Articulate and written words, the signs of ideas, being convention- 

 al, we can apply them justly only so far as we have received the im- 

 pression associated with the ideas they repi-esent, only so far as they 

 are made familiar by the habit of reading and listening. In other 

 words, the double talent of understanding the written and spoken 

 foreign language conduces respectively to the arts of writing and 

 speaking. Just as in learning our native tongue, it is by the judicious 

 exercise of imitation founded on this double talent that we easily ac- 

 quire the arts of speaking and writing. On this point the laws of our 

 constitution and the nature of language are profoundly in accord. 



In fact, we possess, as means of improvement, two powerful in- 

 stincts, curiosity and imitation, which urge us ever toward the end 

 Providence has assigned, and assure our success in the acquisition of 

 language. Curiosity is the source of progress in the arts of reading 

 and listening; imitation, which comes after curiosity, is the source 



