REASON IN THE TEACHING OF LANGUAGE. 327 



demn Nature ; for the learning of the mother-tongue is so easy that 

 it is acquired without any hesitation. Besides, this rapid progress 

 leaves the student time for other studies. 



Pupils who study alone are limited to written language, but with 

 a master the spoken language may be entered upon by means of ex- 

 ercises in listening. By attention to the reading of the master, the 

 art of understanding foreign speech is acquired even more rapidly 

 than the art of reading ; because the elements of language being very 

 limited, they are frequently revived, and the association of the pro- 

 nunciation with the written word is easily made. In this way an 

 adult would be able in a year or eighteen months, in his own country, 

 without ennui or effort, to learn to understand the written or spoken 

 language as perfectly as the foreigners themselves ; but never in the 

 same circumstances w T ould he be able to speak it as they do. 



Children, by this rational method, could early learn a living lan- 

 guage, and be in full possession of these two arts, which would serve 

 conjointly with the mother-tongue in their other studies. As to the 

 arts of speaking and writing, they cannot hasten acquisition, and they 

 will be forgotten long before there is occasion to use them. Direct 

 reading, on the contrary, far from being forgotten, will become by 

 practice a habit of the mind, and, when the pupils leave the Lyceum, 

 their knowledge of English and German will be powerful auxiliaries 

 in the other careers to which they are destined, and they will be able 

 through life, by the aid of the periodic press and new publications, to 

 keep acquainted with all that is published by neighboring people. 



The little time and expense involved in learning to read a foreign 

 language, by means of translations on the opposite page, as well as 

 the facility with which it is done, will be sufficient motives to make it 

 an object of the higher primary instruction. Peasants need neither 

 to listen, to speak, nor to w T rite a foreign language ; reading alone suf- 

 fices them. The reading aloud of the mother-tongue, taught to chil- 

 dren in the primary schools, without stimulating the curiosity or 

 developing the taste for reading, leaves them all their lives with intel- 

 ligence as limited, and in an ignorance as profound, as if they could 

 not read at all. Such varied and extended reading as this method 

 proposes, creates a taste for reading, and a desire to understand, with- 

 out which the art of reading is worthless. 



The International Exchange of Thought. The twofold talent 

 of reading and understanding, the most important in international 

 relations, may be acquired by the humblest ; since the first can be 

 learned without a master, and the second requires only the services 

 of a reader for a few weeks. Their acquisition is so easy and so rapid, 

 when their study is taken out of the grooves of routine, that a pupil 

 would be able, without neglecting any of the usual studies, to learn 

 and understand half a dozen languages in less time than it would take 

 to learn to speak and write a single one easily and correctly. It is so 



