REASON IN THE TEACHING OF LANGUAGE. 329 



able to enter into the spirit of the foreign text, the student easily 

 seizes the relation between thought and its expression, and the analy- 

 sis of the expression, needed to render it into French, becomes an 

 intellectual exercise, which brings to his knowledge the genius of two 

 languages and two peoples. If he translates a good author, he forms 

 the habit of expressing in French only just ideas. He rises to the 

 height of the author by appropriating his thoughts : his own concep- 

 tions become more clear by the effort he makes to express them clearly. 

 He thus forms a good style, in trying to reproduce in his translation 

 the qualities of the original. 



Independently of its special use in giving power of expression, 

 translation is an indisputable source of progress in mental culture. 

 Correct expression and correct thinking are one and the same. Great 

 eloquence implies high intelligence. The act of mind by which a 

 student assures himself of the exact sense of the foreign text, and the 

 search for expressions which shall better render the thought of the 

 author, are operations of high intellectual import. They aid him to 

 express his meaning, to analyze it, and to state it neatly in his judg- 

 ments and reasonings. 



In the efforts of a translator to render the original clearly, pre- 

 cisely, and conformably to the genius of his language, he corrects, 

 expands, condenses his phrases, examines them under the relations of 

 style and meaning. He reflects, observes, compares, judges, chooses 

 understandingly, weighs the import of terms and reasonings, and ap- 

 peals to analogy, to his recollections, and his own experience. It is 

 this necessity of a complex action of the mind which is the principal 

 merit of classical and literary study. 



Some modern languages, as English and German, are rich in works 

 which rival those of antiquity in force, cleai-ness, and grace of expres- 

 sion, while imparting much more by the positive knowledge they 

 contain. They might profitably replace the classics, but they would 

 have to be taught by the French ; and then, on the other hand, pupils 

 would have small chance of being able ever to understand and read 

 them like the English and Germans. 



It is clear that, for this intellectual gymnastic, the language must 

 be read directly. By so much as one falls short of this, he cannot 

 derive advantage from the reading. In the first exercises of transla- 

 tion, whether we pass from the phrase to the word by the way of 

 reason, or from the word to the phrase by the way of routine, we can 

 neither take in the full import of the text, nor enter into the spirit of 

 the author. We should seek the promptest means to free ourselves 

 from oral translation, which is best done by means of the translation 

 on the opposite page. 



Translation, as ordinarily practised, not as an exercise in French 

 composition, but to construe the authors, violates the law of Nature, 

 which requires that we pass from the phrase to the words. In our 



